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HTC has been launching massive amounts of phones the past year, and even more has "leaked" through the Internet. AT&T is the only carrier seemingly lost in the smartphone market. Sure they have the iPhone, but they're making sure that it's experience won't be very good for long.

Today, however, AT&T may be looking a little brighter. Photos leaked on TJCrew shows a rather curious entry in "The Shacks" inventory--The HTC Intruder. No one particularly knows what the Intruder is, but there is some great speculation as to it's destiny.

Previously leaked Android phone HTC Aria was to be the first AT&T Android smartphone. Then another phones leaked from HTC, the Liberty. Many are suggesting that the HTC Aria and Liberty are one in the same. Both are buffing the same screen size, resolution, specs, and basically look identical. Priced at $129.99 on contract, and MSRP of $699.99.

AndroidCentral has leaked a rendering of what is said to be the HTC Liberty.However it is a possibility that the Liberty will actually be a completely different device, and the Intruder will be the second confirmed device that is to launch. The Liberty is described to be exactly the same as the Aria, simply just another codename. It's also described as a lower spec HTC Incredible.

UnwiredView seems to think the HTC Intruder will be AT&T's name for the HTC Aria/Liberty. Of course, you can take all this with a grain of salt, as nothing has been officially confirmed.

When it comes to smartphones, HTC is no stranger. HTC cranks out some of the most powerful, and creative smartphones on the market. HTC makes just about any kind of mobile device, mobiles such as the HTC HD2 is what gives them their reputation. HTC is also the manufacturer of the Google Nexus phone, which is currently one of Androids flagship smartphones.

Today we learn that Android Spin found details leading to the newest Android phone--the HTC Scorpion. An anonymous tipster left Android Spin with build files that contains information of an HTC Scorpion. The data indicates that the Scorpion runs Android 2.2 and is power by a 1.5GHz Snapdragon processor. Not only would it have the most powerful CPU for this class of devices, it reportedly also supports WiMAX.

This was an anonymous tip to another site, therefore we can't confirm the validity of the post. However it's safe to say that HTC is working on a horde of new devices. Of which, many have leaked and have been confirmed. I wouldn't put it past HTC to create a device like this, it's within their grasps. The HTC Scorpion is said to resemble closely with the HTC Supersonic, which previously reported was supposed to be the most powerful HTC Android device.

Well, it appears that there's been yet another Windows Live Messenger screenshot leak, this time coming from Russian enthusiast site winreview.ru. This leak--showing off build 15.3.2640.0304--doesn't show us much about Messenger beyond the login screen.

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This is because winreview.ru have obtained the build unofficially and are unauthorized testers. And, just as we saw with the leak of the Windows Live Essentials Milestone 2, Microsoft has restricted login access to a handful of authorized personnel who are supposed to have the build to begin with. However, despite the inability to log on to this build, they did discover something interesting; submenus within the "File" menu that revealed an array of tests Microsoft are using to test Messenger internally.

Below are some screenshots of the test functions in this build:

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Microsoft recently acknowledged the development of Windows Live Wave 4 after a long air of silence from the company despite the barrage of leaks. A private beta can be expected soon of the services, followed by a public release. A recent milestone pegs these dates as:

April 28th - select testers will gain access to latest dogfood builds

May 18th - Windows Live Essentials 2010 reaches Milestone 3, is released to web

June 3rd - Microsoft announces Windows Live Wave 4

June 7th - Microsoft releases a public beta of the Windows Live Essentials with a few, "main" languages

June 7th - Messenger for iPhone released in "main" languages

August 25th - Additional languages for Messenger on iPhone, and Windows Live Essentials Wave 4 RTWs, is also released in additional languages

The Zune HD is a multimedia power house, the only things it lacks is applications. When you go and buy an MP3 player you look for what has the most features. The iPod Touch has decent hardware specs, the biggest application database, a touch-efficient UI, and great quality sound. The Zune HD has some very beefy specs, such as an OLED touch screen, NVIDIA Tegra chipset, and a very fluid GUI.

Considering usability, the iPod Touch trumps all. However recently a group of hackers have "unlocked" the Zune HD's potential and have created a home-brew development kit called OpenZDK. The difference between OpenZDK and Microsoft's XNA developer studio is full hardware support. The Zune HD's Tegra platform supports OpenGL ES 2.0 and custom shaders--none of which are supported on Microsoft's XNA studio.

OpenZDK is promising developers the ability to use the Zune HD's hardware to the fullest and hopefully get a good line-up of homebrew applications. Hopefully if things catch one, Microsoft will do something about their "app crysis". I don't think Microsoft wants the embarrassment of "jailbreaking" on their consciences for long.

Among things, the OpenZDK developer kit will allow developers to write applications and take advantage of the Tegra's 3D capabilities. You'll still need to install Microsoft's developer tools to use the homebrew apps and your won't be on the Zune Marketplace anytime soon.

Cliff Bleszinski, Design Director of Epic Games was the featured guest today on Jimmy Fallon's late night television show. Not only did we learn some personal things about Bleszinski, but we learned that he has played a big role in the development of Gears of War 3, just as he did for Gears of War 2. The world-wise premier trail is called, "Ashes to Ashes"--featuring incredible graphics and gameplay. The amount of detail and particles in the trailer is just amazing.

Gears of War 3 is expected to be unleashed April 8th, 2011. There are many updates, of which few are known--some include a woman character, and a new mutating creature. The trailer shows us an ash-world, where the battle continues between the Locust and Marcus Fenix with his squad. Heron Blue by "Sun Kil Moon" is the charming theme song to the trailer, a bit more of a sad tune than most war games, but who's complaining.

Visit GeekSmack to see some screenshots and Vids.

It seems that the inevitable has finally happened. Windows 7 SP1 has finally leaked and should be available in the usual areas soon for anyone who wants to give it a try. I have gotten my hands on this build of SP1 and will show off a few shots for your viewing pleasure.

First off, this build is very recent, with a compile date of March 27th. The full build string is as follows:
6.1.7601.16537.amd64fre.win7.100327-0053

The install process is much of what you would expect from a service pack installer, but one thing I noticed is the installation is MUCH faster than the install process for service packs on Vista was, which is a very welcome change. Below are some screenshots from the installation process of Windows 7 SP1:

While many people were get accustomed to the "Windows Phone 7 Series" name, Microsoft announced today via the @windowsphone Twitter account that they would be removing the "Series" at the end of the product name, making it easier for customers to understand and say.

For those who haven't really been paying attention to the set of Windows Phone 7 announcements, or are just tuning into the Windows Phone ecosystem, after the launch of Windows Mobile 6.5, Microsoft began work on the next generation version of what was then Windows Mobile 7, and now known as Windows Phone 7. The OS was going to build upon the codebase of that in 6.5, but as time went by, and the team that was working on the Mobile OS were re-shuffled, the strategy for Windows Mobile began to take shape. If you're familiar with the Zune HD, you will find that Windows Phone 7 is very much like that, with some variations in the design and how Microsoft approached the UI.

We've covered quite a bit on Windows Phone 7, including the announcements made at Mobile World Congress as well as MIX `10 and the unlocking of the Windows Phone 7 emulator.

There is no doubt NVIDIA offers some of the best mobile media solutions. From Tegra to ION--their lineup of ultra-small, yet powerful platforms set the industry standard. In recent years more and more applications have been taking advantage of the power of the GPU. Applications use the term, "GPU-Acceleration", which in turn means that the application will run far better, typically with a discrete GPU. Until recently that was true, now NVIDIA's Tegra and ION chipsets offer comparable performance to discrete GPU solutions, while taking up very little space.

Microsoft recently launched the Internet Explorer 9 developer preview which benefits from GPU-acceleration. Microsoft's Internet Explorer team is working furiously the make IE9 catch up with the rest of the pack, such as Firefox and Chrome, and are implementing features such as GPU-acceleration to make IE9 stand out from the crowd. NVIDIA's Chris Pederson shows off (below) what the NVIDIA ION platform can accomplish with IE9.

One oddity I find from the vide, is the fact that the "standard" netbook is using Windows 7's Basic visual style, while the ION powered netbook is using the Windows Classic visual style. I don't know about you, but that does look a tad fishy. I have no doubts that the ION would out perform the standard chipset, however I hope this isn't a marketing ploy just to get a few extra fps in rendering.