Kogan is launching a trio of new budget computing products in Australia: an Android tablet, an Ubuntu notebook, and a set-top-box that brings Android to your TV. I know, the tablet is just another in a sea of tablets, but the Agora model is just $140 (it will go up to $189). The tablet is expected to ship at the end of May with a 1 GHz Samsung processor, a 7 inch 1024 x 600 pixel capacitive touchscreen display, 512MB of RAM, and a 3600mAh battery. It runs Google Android 3.0.

The Internet TV Portal will retail between $149 and $199, allowing you to run Android apps on your TV. The set top box will come with a special remote control that features special Android buttons. You can expect the Internet TV Portal on May 27th.

Kinect owners now have the ability to sort through their videos without using a controller. After you download the 43Mb update all you have to do is wave your hand for the camera or say Xbox and it will pull up the new menu above, which auto sorts selections for browsing by voice or gesture what it thinks you want to watch next. Pretty neat. Who needs controllers?

Select “browse all” and you are back to the standard menu. You can also pause the movie during playback by saying Xbox, Pause (or FF, rewind, skip scene, etc.). That will come in very handy. What do you think?

You can already capture still photos in 360 degrees, but what you really want is a way to capture panoramic video as well. Us too. And we aren’t the only ones. That’s why EyeSee360 has given the iPhone 4 the ability to record video in 360-degrees with the GoPano Micro.

It consists of a case for your iPhone, a detachable 360-degree lens(Obviously), and the GoPano app. It will allow you to do a circular pan with the simple swipe of a finger. How fancy is that? Looks like it has met its $20,000 funding goal, so we should be seeing this very soon. Awesome.

It looks like Microsoft may announce plans to introduce Silverlight for the Xbox 360. The company will apparently detail its plans at the MIX11 conference next week in Las Vegas. This has been planned for months and Microsoft had already revealed that it was planning to bring Silverlight to the Xbox.

This seems like a good plan for Microsoft, to bridge the gap between it’s mobile, PC and Xbox platforms. It ties in with their plans for Windows 8 as well.

While the Xbox 360 is still outselling the PS3 in the US, new data from Strategy Analytics shows that globally, Sony’s console reached 43.4 million at the end of 2010, compared to 42.9 million for Microsoft’s system. Take that Xbox.

In comparison, the Wii’s worldwide installed base was 75.5 million at the end of last year. If you have been paying attention, global demand for Sony’s PS3 has exceeded that of the Xbox 360 for the past two years, and there’s no reason to think it will stop this year. Microsoft needs to keep innovating and build on the success of the Kinect to compete.

The number of Xbox 360 users who download games is on the rise. 55 per cent of all Xbox 360 users bought at least one downloadable game last year. That number is up from 43 per cent in 2009. Also according to data from market research firm EEDAR, 50 per cent of PlayStation 3 users and 43 per cent of Wii users are down loading games.

Those PS3 numbers are up from 42 per cent in 2009, with the Wii numbers up from 37 per cent. So yes, it looks like downloading digitally is on the rise. Should Gamestop be worried? Probably not yet, but they must be keeping a sharp eye on these figures.

Ben Heck, the man behind thousands of awesome mods is back. This time it’s an old school 1977 Atari merged with the Xbox 360 in a laptop kind of deal. This custom mod looks just like Atari would have made the device had they been capable.

It will handle all of the newest games and the old, including Yar’s Revenge and Star Raiders. In his latest show, he takes viewers through the entire build process. The final build is a thing of geek beauty. He has done it yet again.

The Xbox 360 is about six-years old. The PlayStation 3 and Wii almost the same age. Microsoft and Sony had said that their current consoles will have 10-year life cycle and it looks like they were pretty on target. A Wii 2 is even expected this year to compete with the 360 and PS3′s Kinect and PlayStation Move motion controllers.

Now we have word that Square Enix, makers of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest to name a few, are already planning to open a 100 staff studio in Canada next year. This way they will be ready for the next generation consoles and get their games out accordingly.

This generation of consoles is pretty long-lived. It’s taking awhile before a new model is released. But the time is drawing near. Now, an online portfolio of a team member of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business Design Group has said that a new Xbox is scheduled for a 2015 release.

They have already started work on it this month. If this is true, then it means that the Xbox 360 will be a decade old when the new model arrives. We know that Microsoft was recently searching for engineers who are willing to work on its next-generation console.

After selling 500,000 units of the Nintendo 3DS handheld on day 1 in Japan, Nintendo has hit another milestone. Amazon UK has announced that they have received more pre-orders for the 3DS than any other gaming console they’ve previously sold.

The Xbox 360, PS3 and the Wii all come in second to Nintendo’s portable glasses-free 3D gaming sensation. They didn’t reveal the exact numbers, but 3DS pre-orders were 20% higher than the PS3, 56% higher than the Wii and 255% higher than the DSi. Looks like the big N has a huge hit on it’s hands.

Tomorrow Samsung will ship their latest 13.3-inch laptop, the Series 9. This laptop features an Intel CoreTM i5 Processor 2537M (1.4 GHz, 3MB), 128GB solid state disk, 4GB of RAM, and Windows 7 Home Premium and you have the option to upgrade to Windows 7 Professional.

The 13 inch model will retail for $1649 and Samsung also has a smaller 11 inch Series 9 laptop that will be arriving in April. The 11 inch version will feature an Intel Core i3 Processor 380UM (1.33 GHz, 3MB) and will have 2Gb DDR3 memory and a smaller 64GB solid state drive.

No surprises here. We knew that the Kinect has been a complete success. Since it was released last year, the motion control device for the Xbox 360 has been flying off of store shelves like crazy. Now it looks like the Kinect has set a new world record too.

In the first 60 days it was on sale, it sold an average of 133,333 units per day, for a total of 8 million units in those 2 months alone. And these figures were units that left the store and went home with customers. Not the shipments that were sent to retail stores. It’s amazing when you think about it. The Kinect beat the iPhone and iPad for the equivalent periods after launch. These numbers for the Kinect will be in the Guinness World Records Gamer’s Edition book that will be available early next year.

Microsoft may be working on the next generation Xbox, which we might as well call the Xbox 720. This speculation comes from some recently posted some job listings on Linkedin for what seems to be Microsoft’s next generation console.

There are listings for an Audio/Video Hardware Architect, an Audio Architect and a Graphics Architect and the listings reference ‘next generation’ consoles, so this isn’t wild speculation. We have no idea when we might see a new console, but at least they are working on it.

The iPad 2 is arriving this week, but if you are happy with your original iPad, you still want cool accessories for it. So Bracketron has a new case called the Twist360 that has a handle on the back which is articulated. It’s called the TwistGrip. The handle can be gripped when you are holding the iPad with one hand, making it safer so that you won’t drop it.

The handle will also spin in a complete circle and can be titled to act as a stand. It will prop the tablet in landscape or portrait mode. And as a bonus, the TwistGrip will also allow you to hang the iPad on the wall. The Twist360 will ship soon for $59.95. Who wants to hang their iPad on a wall with this?

Check out the Official WWE All Stars Arcade BrawlStick for Xbox 360 and PS3. Now you can lay the smack down with an arcade style joystick. This BrawlStick from Mad Catz features a redesigned ball top joystick and high quality concave action buttons for gaming precision.

Wrestling fans will love the graphics and you can get right into the game without having to manually configure the buttons since Mad Catz has already pre-programmed it. It will cost you $79.99.