For the last few weeks retailers have fought for more media attention in hopes of getting more customers next week on Black Friday, but with the big event just around the corner it was about time to get our eyes on some serious deals. Well it looks like Best Buy is trying to get ahead of others and although it’s not Black Friday related, it’s a hell of a deal in the HDTV department that we just couldn’t pass on.

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British Intelligence wants you… so you can work for them, that is. British Intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (or GCHQ) is the Signals Intelligence branch of the British intelligence community, and have begun placing adverts on the Xbox Live Dashboard to try and recruit gamers to positions within their organization.

The ad campaign to recruit gamers will run six weeks and is being handled by a third-party advertising agency. This isn’t the first time that GCHQ has run ads in the video gaming domain, as in 2007, the GCHQ ran ads in Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Double Agent for the PC, also trying to recruit gamers.

Xbox Live’s key demographic is 18- to 34- year old men, which is also the GCHQ’s key recruiting demographic. The GCHQ recruiting website point-blankly states that “you have to be a British citizen to for GCHQ. There are no exceptions.” The United Kingdom is one of 26 countries where Xbox Live is legally available. No current data is publicly on how many of  Xbox Live’s users live in the UK.

GCHQ is not MI6. Its mission is intelligence analysis, so it’s doubtful that Call of Duty addicts will be infiltrating foreign governments and wooing accented women anytime soon. A spokeswoman for GCHQ told The Guardian that it looks for in an employee is “reflected in game-play experiences on Xbox, such as quick thinking, problem solving and team work”. She added that GCHQ is responsible for dealing with communication and cyber threats to England, and that gamers may inherently be inclined to know more about these fields.

Targeting gamers for employment is nothing new. In addition to GCHQ’s earlier attempts, the US Army spends $10 million annually in continually developing America’s Army, a free PC shooter that has players playing the role of American soldiers.

Just when we thought that the PS3 firmware 3.10, which brings Facebook integration among other goodies, was Sony’s latest attempt to get some attention and possibly new customers, a late night report came in stating that the company’s next firmware upgrade is going to bring 3D stereoscopic capabilities for the games played on their consoles.

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With the Essen Motor Show just around the corner, the German tuners from 9ff have just announced they’ve been working on their second independent complete vehicle. Paying homage to the Porsche 356 Speedster, the new 9ff Speed9 has added a bunch of mods to the already powerful Porsche 997 Turbo, that help bring more power and improved handling.

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Back in September Alex gave you an initial heads up concerning the beautifully retro styled Leica M9 Rangefinder Digital Camera and now two months down the line the Leica M9 is now available to order from B&H in the US.
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Richard Schaeffer is the NSA official who said before the Senate’s Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security that the National Security Agency has been working closely with Microsoft to enhance Windows 7’s security guide, igniting fear that the software giant has deliberately coded a backdoor into the newly announced operating system. But given Microsoft’s announcement today, it’s all speculation, as they have “not and will not put ‘backdoors’ into Windows”.

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Motorola has announced a new touchscreen phone, and this time it’s not an Android device. And this time it is not coming from one of the big four carriers in the USA. The Crush, that’s the name of it, has been officially announced and it will be available from US Cellular by the end of the year for an undisclosed yet price.
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Software developers who want to come up with their own software for Microsoft’s touch-based Surface technology can now do so for free, as the Microsoft Surface SDK is now free for all at the Microsoft Download Center.

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If you wanted to get your hands on a Barnes & Noble Nook eBook reader but didn’t order one yet and decided to get a better price during the holiday season, we have some bad news. Apparently the pre-orders for the Nook have exceeded all expectations (who would’ve thought) and the Kindle-competitor has now run out of stock with forthcoming models being promised to ship only next year, around January 4th.

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Super hero-themed MMORPG Champions Online is having its second free-play weekend, after only being released two months ago and having its first free-play weekend one month ago. The upcoming free-play weekend, which will be based around Thanksgiving, will coincide with an in-game content update called ‘Nemesis Confrontation’, and will feature new player costumes and quests.

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Just when we thought the OpenOffice Mouse debacle and the Sony Vaio X “dead rat” are going to be the most popular models this month, we laid our eyes a new mouse introduced by the folks from Smartfish Technologies. The Smartfish Ergomotion mouse functions like any other run-of-the-mill wireless laser mouse, with some pretty large left and right buttons and a big scroll wheel.

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AT&T has a brand new phone for us and this time it’s coming from Pantech. The Impact will be available starting this Sunday, November 22, and it will cost $99.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate when purchased with a new 2-year contract.
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If the BlackBerry Pearl lineup has been lacking media attention as of late because RIM has been more interested in their QWERTY mobiles, apparently the Canadian manufacturer has been working behind the scenes and plan to revive it with the new BlackBerry Pearl 9100.

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Just yesterday we showed you the first leaked picture of the upcoming Motorola Motus Android phone and today we already have more details for you. Motorola hasn’t announced the handset yet but it looks like the full specs and features have been also leaked.
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Cloud Engines has announced today the second generation Pogoplug. That’s all fine and dandy but what’s a Pogoplug most people will ask. A Pogoplug is an interesting device that will let you access all the content you want from your USB drives over the Internet. That means you don’t have to carry with you portable hard drives anymore. Instead just get a Pogoplug and access everything on those USB drives from anywhere in the world. It’s like setting up your own cloud.
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Google have officially confirmed that they have revamped their Google News for Mobile service for the iPhone, Palm Pre and Android phones which, according to Google, “provides the same richness and personalization on your phone as Google News provides on desktop”.
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Verizon Wireless are doing everything humanly possible to rake in the best smartphone carrier title for this year. Although officially introduced in North America last month by Bell, it looks like Big Red is also interested in carrying their own version of the new Samsung Omnia II, with the handset debuting on their network weeks ahead of Christmas — around December 2nd,”in all channels” (telesales, online, and in-store).

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Whilst I’m less then enamoured with the iPhone’s camera and the quality of its imagery, if you regularly use your iPhone 3G/3GS’s camera and you hanker after a little more reach, you may be interested in this zoom lens developed specifically for the iPhone 3G/3GS which offers up to 8x zoom.
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Microsoft have officially confirmed that, by way of celebrating the integration of new Xbox Live services such as the Xbox Live Facebook and Twitter functionality, they are offering up a free upgrade to their Xbox Live service for Silver members in all Xbox Live regions expect for us Europeans (quite why Europeans are excluded is not explained but that’s sure to get a few people’s back up, and understandably so).
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The AT&T – Verizon war keeps on going no matter what. After today’s truth about the 3G ads, we caught wind that there’s a race for netbooks, too. If last month we found out that Big Red has announced availability for the new HP Mini 110 netbook, today AT&T has done the same announcing that they’ll add to their range of 3G mobile broadband equipped netbooks with the new Mini 110.

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Microsoft is no stranger to the inside of a court room in its 34-year history, and another is potentially coming what with Law firm Abington Law having announced that they are investigating a Class Action Lawsuit against the software giant, representing people who have been unfairly banned by the Xbox Live service.
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Mercedes Benz owners that dream of an iPhone/BlackBerry application to control some of the stuff that have cost them dearly, should be delighted to hear that the German car maker has partnered with Hughes Telematics and have announced a new telematics system dubbed mbrace, that brings “unprecedented connectivity and customization options for drivers” who’re looking to change the in-vehicle experiences to fit their daily needs.

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Logic3 have now released their new iStationGO Portable Speaker System which, aside from offering a particularly compact design that’ll easily fit into all but the smallest of bags, thanks to utilising line-in input, will work with just about any audio equipment that offers up a 3.5mm headphone socket – so you can factor in iPods, the iPhone, music cell phones, the PSP, et al.
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Those who have been lucky enough to escape being killed by the wife after spending a huge load of money on photo gear (oh I bet you know who you are), should know that they can take their chances once again as the Germans from Hasselblad have officially announced that their High-detail H3DII-50 Multi-Shot camera has become available starting today.

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If up until now the much anticipated Android-powered Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 has done a great job in teasing us with its amazing specs and the far away February 2010 release date, today we finally found out what the handset is expected to retail for, and we can confirm that that the high-end smartphone won’t come in cheap.

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Verizon Wireless have officially announced the immediate availability of a new ultra durable phone in their line-up in the form of the Casio G’zOne Rock – pronounced Jeez_wun, incidentally, in case you were wondering – which conforms to military standards in terms of durability (specifically MIL-STD-810F) whilst offering a host of features aimed to appeal to the outdoors type.
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Better late than never right? That’s how the saying goes and it looks like Sony clearly qualifies for that. The company has realized that Apple’s iTunes idea is a goldmine and therefore it’s preparing to launch its own iTunes version which will sell music, movie and books to its customers. Mobile applications could also be included in the future Sony Online Service but let’s not get ahead of ourselves!
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When it comes to immortalizing a yet to be released mobile phone, spy photographers have their own way of taking a picture. There’s no flash, no autofocus, extremely low light and seems like their hands are trembling, as most of the times we get to look at blurry images that lack details and won’t disclose and specs. That’s the case with this image of a Motorola CLIQ-alike smartphone, that could actually be the new Motorola Motus.

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Imation are now shipping their M-Class SSD Upgrade Kits which is aimed specifically at users looking for an all-in-one SSD upgrade solution for those wishing to swap out their HHDs for SSDs with the minimum of fuss.
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Despite the large shadow of censorship looming over the Chinese internet, the iPhone and it’s library of apps have become very popular in the People’s Republic. Backing that up, mobile application company 9thQ has reported that this year the legitimate Chinese iPhone apps have accounted for about $1 million, with projects to hit $6 million USD next year.

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