Microsoft says one of its main goals with IE9 is to provide a faster browsing experience — always good news. Preliminary ACID3 tests on the preview show the IE9 scores a 55/100, up from IE8’s dismal 20/100 — a ‘huge’ leap forward no doubt. Microsoft has also confirmed that IE9 will not support Windows XP, but the preview Microsoft is showing off plays nice with Vista SP2 and higher. Microsoft’s also made the first developer preview of Internet Explorer 9 available for download today.

Hey All, This is what is up. I’ve wanted to do a daily news show about the new in the world of games, tv, tech, and nerdy nerd stuff. So Nelson and I took some time on Sunday and made a rough  a “Special edition unedited” Pilot episode of it. Watch it!

Now, if you are reading this you A) need to watch it and then B) write what you want to see done with the show in the comments or shoot me an e-mail at justin@pixelatedgeek.com. This is important because I want to make a show that you the audience would really enjoy and if I don’t know what you want to see I can’t bring it to you. So all comments positive or negative will be thanked. So start clicking them keys!

Look Ma', I'm flying!

Well, have you ever wished you could fly? Not in a plane I mean, fly like Superman? Yeah, I have too. Well I’m afraid that’s impossible, but you can have the next best thing, the Martin jetpack. The jetpack in question is destined to be the first commercially available later this year, and at $86000 it’s not even as much as a fully specced Lambo. This personal flying marvel is powered by a 2L V4 two-stroke engine spinning two carbon-kevlar composite rotors, running on bog standard petrol with a flight time of 30mins. It’s technically not a ‘jetpack’ because there’s no actual jets, but if that doesn’t beat the pants off your mate’s crappy sports car, I don’t know what will.

OO HD Wireless projector concept, looking like something out of Star Wars

You could be forgiven for thinking the OO HD wireless projector, crappy name I know, was some sort of spaceship, perhaps even something out of War of the Worlds. Packing 1080p projection, an SSD, WiFi, Li-ion battery and internal decoders, this concept could be the all-in-one media sensation that you’ve been looking for. Mind you, if it ever materialises into the real world, don’t expect that kind of feature set to come cheap. Beauty and function don’t come at bargain-basement prices.

Downloadable movies, are the future, just not really here yet

Sony’s been busy this week building up the HD content on its Playstation Network with the announcement of all six major movie studios coming on board. 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney, Paramount, Universal, Warner Bros. and Sony’s own Sony Pictures Entertainment have clubed together to make a massive 19 HD movies available for rent or to buy. OK, I might be exaggerating a bit, but it’s a step in the right direction for all those wielding a PS3 right? Currently only available in the US, Sony’s pushing for a UK, France, Germany and Spain release soon.

The Aston Martin Cygnet - Ugly duckling or belle of the ball?

More car news this week from the Geneva Motor Show. Are you an Aston Martin DBS owner, who just wishes he had a smaller Aston for the city run-around? Well for the princely sum of around £30,000 you can have the Aston Martin Cygnet. Packed with features like a fancy iPod dock, leather interior and lots of chrome throughout; the Toyota IQ based Cygnet is your way of giving the finger to all those BMW Mini drivers who think they’re the dogs. If I had that kind of money, I think I’d just stick to the DBS thanks, no matter how impractical.

Porsche 911 GT3R battery free hybrid concept

Having shown the world the incredible faster-than-a-Carrera-GT 918 Spyder Hybrid concept, which we saw last week, Porsche also rolled out the insane looking 911 GT3-R Hybrid concept. Porsche has ditched the battery for a flywheel, which is spun up to 40,000 rpm by the car decelerating. A generator turned by the flywheel, then powers a pair of 60kW electric motors attached to the front wheels. The system incorporates a boost button like that found in the F1 KERS system, adding 160bhp for up to 8 seconds. Finally, a real life turbo boost!

That’s your lot for this week. Check back soon for more Weekly Tech Wrap-ups.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Can’t blame Doritos for trying to be as technologically advanced as Apple by just creating a bigger version of their original product.

Click here to view the embedded video.

[via Vistek]

Check it out for yourselves [iTunes Link] for the not so little £5.99/$9.99.

Thank you twitter for making all our journalistic lives easy.

All of this is almost exciting as Lady Gaga’s DLC. But, not for me. I love Lady Gaga and will challenge all that oppose me.

“I was on the brakes pretty healthy,” Sikes said. “It wasn’t stopping, it wasn’t doing anything to it, just kept speeding up, just kept going, and I called 911 right away, and they were trying to tell me what to do, but I couldn’t hold the phone and the steering wheel properly at the same time, so I just kept trying my methods, dropped the phone and it just kept going faster. I just stayed on the brakes as much as I could until finally they started smelling really bad and I had metal sounds coming in the car.”

I, myself, am an owner of a 2007 Prius.  When first hearing about these incidents, I googled for ways to stop th car if this should ever happen to me. So, here’s a PSA for all you Prius owners. HOLD DOWN THE POWER BUTTON FOR 3 SECONDS. It will shut off your car and put it into neutral.  From there, you can hold your brakes down and stop the car. Need an actual video example of this? Go past the break.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Yes, I know this a scary thing to hear about, but try this when you are going at slow speeds at an open area so you can practice this. Stay safe out there.

[via NBCSanDiego]

I’d like to preface this review with the admission that I have zero artistic talent and that the best I can do is something a 5 year old manages with crayons. With that out of the way, lets get down to business with the Wacom Bamboo Pen.

Wacom is known for it’s high quality, precision pen tablets like the Intous4 which come with an equally high price tag with the smallest of the bunch weighing in at €225. The Bamboo line of tablets is Wacom’s way of introducing those who don’t need a pen tablet for work, but would like a little more control over photoshop, hand writing recognition or just want something to digitally sign away their life on. The Bamboo range includes finger touch pads, pen and finger touch pads, as well as a range of pen only tablets in varying sizes and kick off at a retail price of €50. Certainly a more palatable proposition if you’re just starting out in your tablet using life.

Today I’m going to take a look at where I think the sweet spot of price to functionality is, the Bamboo Pen. So what do you get in the box for your £50? Well you don’t actually get a whole lot, if you’re looking for bells and whistles I’m afraid you’re barking up the wrong tree, but what you do get is a quality looking and feeling tablet and a solid pressure sensitive pen. You also get a set of replacement pen tips for when they wear out, which if you use the tablet regularly they’ll undoubtedly will, but if it’s just for occasional use I can’t see you getting through the four they provide you with. Wacom have even included a simple ring clamp thing for removing and replacing the tip; simple yet very effective. Also in the box Wacom includes a driver disc, although for the most part the Bamboo is plug and play, as well as a download codes for ArtRage, a painting and drawing package, Bamboo Minis, a collection of mini applications that allow you to leverage the power of the tablet with things like twitter and Facebook, as well as some hand writing recognition software.

The tablet itself is a 8.5mm thick black rectangle measuring 248mm by 176mm with rounded corners at one end and a flat edge at the other holding the USB cable. The side with the rounded corners also has a fabric loop that neatly holds the pen when you’re not using it, keeping it out of the way and relatively securely fastened, an improvement on the simple surface clip of some of the other tablets. The active area is about A6 size, measuring 147mm by 92mm, with a ratio of 16:10, which matches up well with the current go-to ratio for widescreen monitors. The tablet can be orientated for left or right-handedness, although all that means is that the USB lead is on the other side of your body from your hand preference. There’s also a small strip illuminated by a white LED to indicate that the tablet is plugged in and working, glowing stronger when the pen is put to the surface of the tablet. The surface of the tablet has what Wacom calls a ‘paper-like feel’, which means it’s not as smooth and slippery as some tablets. It provides a reasonable friction that might put some people off, but I’ve found it nice to use and a bit more precise than the easier gliding tablet surfaces. I think in the end the feel of the tablet is something of personal preference, although it doesn’t actually feel like paper to me.

The pen is of the pretty basic variety, battery-free, replaceable pressure sensitive tip, two buttons but no eraser end, which might be a bummer for anyone who’s used to it but for someone who’s just starting out or is a keyboard jockey it’s not an issue. It weighs about 14g and feels light but well weighted in your hand. It’s quite chunky too, which for someone like me with quite big hands is an absolute blessing feeling comfortable to use for an extended period of time. In fact I wish I could find a real pen with the dimensions and weight of the Bamboo pen, but that’s another story.

So what’s the Bamboo Pen tablet actually like to use and why would I want one? Well, if you’ve ever tried to paint anything on a computer with a mouse, be it a photo, diagram or sketch, you’ll know how hard it is. For those who have no experience of a drawing tablet, what it essentially does is replace a mouse for the pointing device. Hovering close to the surface of the active area allows you to move the cursor, only starting to draw, select or click something when you touch the pen to the tablet. The active surface is also mapped 1:1 with the area of the screen meaning that there’s no dragging and re-dragging needed. If you want to move to the corner of your screen, you just put the pen in the corner of the tablet. Mice and touch pads don’t work like that so it can take a little while to get used to, but within an hour you’ll be right at home. Therefore, using the Bamboo it instantly becomes possible not only to sketch like you would with a pen or pencil, but to also emulate the levels of pressure you might put on a brush, varying the amount of paint or ink you put down and the thickness of your stroke. Now, that’s extremely useful if you’ve got some sort of artistic talent, something I totally lack, but there is also something much easier about using a pen over a mouse for other things too. For instance, I do a lot of cutting out of images from backgrounds in Photoshop. It can be extremely tedious to sit there, tracing around the outside of the image you want, a car for example, with a mouse, having to be extremely precise. With the pen you can accomplish the same task with more accuracy, more easily and within about half the time. It becomes easy to bend and erase edges as well as touch up reflections and transparencies. Now those of you who are seasoned mousers might laugh at this, but for those who don’t spend their lives mouse in hand drawing with it, using a pen on a tablet is much, much easier. Of course this ease of use was rather hard to justify when the tablet cost in excess of £100, but at £50 it’s the cost of a decent mouse.

So is the Bamboo Pen a good choice? The short answer, given the price, if you’ve ever fancied trying a pen tablet or do a lot a retouching or image editing, then go and buy one, you won’t be disappointed. The Bamboo pen is a simple, well built, quality tablet that’s missing only a few bells and whistles, but who’s function is impeccable. The long answer is, it depends how much drawing you’ll want to do and how much cash you have available. Wacom has aimed the Bamboo line of tablets at non-professionals and people who aren’t going to be using a tablet all the time and that’s precisely why it’s great. I wouldn’t buy a Bamboo if I was using a pen tablet all day, every day. I’d certainly want a larger area and the luxuries of the Intous4. But for everyone else who will occasionally, or even daily for short periods, bust out the Bamboo to make that instant masterpiece, it’s a great piece of hardware. It lacks the programmable buttons and zoom ring of it’s more expensive brethren but you can easily overcome that shortfall with keyboard shortcuts and a scroll wheel. After all, the Bamboo tablet isn’t going to replace your mouse or track pad any time soon, apart from maybe the Bamboo Pen and Touch, or just Touch, which effectively tack a multi-touch track pad onto the pen tablet form factor.

Why buy the Bamboo Pen over the other Bamboo models like the Pen and Touch? Well I don’t know about you but I’ve got a perfectly decent multi-touch track pad on my MacBook Pro already, and when I’m using my PC I’ve got a Logitech MX series laser mouse, I just don’t need another track pad. Therefore for the £30 extra, I feel that the Pen and Touch just isn’t worth it over the Pen. There’s very little you can do with the multi-touch track pad of the Pen and Touch that you can’t do with the pen. Selecting tools, moving around the document actually using the tools in Photoshop are all really easy with the pen alone. In fact if you were considering the Wacom Pen and Touch specifically, then I would consider the Bamboo Fun Pen and Touch small, because it’s about the same price and comes with a more buttons and more software.

Overall, the Wacom Bamboo Pen tablet is a basic, well built and easy to use pen tablet that excels at one thing, letting you input with a pen rather than a mouse. At £50 you can’t go far wrong and the Bamboo Pen doesn’t disappoint.