Earlier on today we visited the VIA Technologies headquarters here in Taipei where we got our first up, close and personal look at 3D printing.

VIA had a demo of its 3D printing station earlier this month at Computex, but we didn't have enough time at this stage to stick around and see a full print. We were invited back to the VIA offices today where we got our first look at 3D printing. Although not a new technology, guys were first messing around with 3D printing back in the 1980's, it's our first time to see it in person, and for me personally, I'm impressed.

VIA hooked up one of their VE-900 Mini-ITX motherboards to a MakerBot Thing-O-Matic 3D printer along with a customised VIA user interface all displayed on a touch-screen panel. We are told the VIA user interface here is much more advanced than the standard 3D printing interfaces and it provides advanced ability such as providing Dropbox connectivity and more. It's a nice interface to use too with clear menus and information provided on screen such as the device temperatures and so forth.

Ever wished there were a reality show that wasn't based on this planet? Well, just wait another decade and your wish might just come true. A Dutch company is determined to establish a permanent colony on Mars, and is looking to spend $6 billion doing so.

The plans for a reality show is grandiose, with the project dubbed 'Mars One', and will drop four astronauts on Mars in April 2023, with none of them ever returning to Earth. In order to pony up $6 billion for this venture, the project is set to stage a media spectacle like the world has never, ever seen previously. An interplanetary reality show, along the lines of Big Brother.

Theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Gerard 't Hooft, an ambassador for Mars One, has said in an introductory video posted on the company's website:

Music discovery and streaming service, Spotify, has a source close to them claiming that they are the second largest revenue generator for major music labels. Last month saw 23 million people use the service, and the only one to topple Spotify right now is Apple's iTunes, according to the Business Insider.

Business Insider estimates that iTunes paid around $3.2 billion to record labels last year, so with Spotify in second place we can only imagine the figure they're shelling out to record labels is much lower than the behemoth that is Apple, but being second place is nothing to scoff at, either. Considering that the service only launched in the US last year.

Sean Parker, founder of Napster and early investor in Spotify says that if the service continues to grow at the current rate, they should overtake iTunes with regards to contributions to artists in under two years. Spotify is currently in the process of raising $220 million based on a $4 billion valuation, which includes $100 million from Goldman Sachs.

The Canadian studio that were behind games such as The Darkness II and the multiplayer side of BioShock 2, Digital Extremes, has unveiled and released the first look at their upcoming free-to-play co-op first-person shooter, Warframe.

Warframe is said to provide fast-paced PvE (player versus environment) co-op action, where it lets you bash through the game with up to three friends. There's also an endless tree of improvements to build upon your abilities and character in Warframe, an ancient exo-skeletal technology, as well as other weapons while raiding new areas of space seeking exotic Warframe augmentations and other gear.

Warframe continuously randomizes raids, so it should offer some pretty killer replay value and grinding. Digital Extremes CEO James Schmalz, has said:

Over the last few months Apple have been getting hit with negative press over their OS' security, with hackers and the such gaining access to user files in less than thirty seconds, which is a concern as Apple used to always push that their operating system never got PC viruses.

But, Apple continued to run with the "I'm a Mac and I'm a PC" campaign, where they focused on the "fact" that Windows-based systems got viruses, while OS X-based systems couldn't. But now that we know that is complete BS, Apple have done what they do best, marketing and using its legal system to remove any proof so that potential liability for the company is wiped away.

As you can see in the picture above, Apple used to state that a "Mac isn't susceptible to the thousands of viruses plaguing Windows-based computers. That's thanks to built-in defences in Mac OS X that keep you safe, without any work on your part". So Apple more or less said that you just run the OS and you're protected, but for years we've known this isn't true.

After showing these bad boys off at CES in January, Samsung have finally confirmed that their Series 9 monitors will hit the US come June 29th. This will follow a brief "prelaunch" period with Newegg.

The Samsung S27B970D is a 27-inch IPS-based screen with a resolution of 2560x1440, HDMI, DVI and USB ports, an all glass and metal enclosure, a height-adjustable stand, and a contrast ratio of 1000:1. What makes these monitors stand out is that each screen is calibrated and undergoes an expert, hour-long adjustment process before it is sent to you, ensuring you get the highest-quality images directly out of the box.

The screens will retail for $1,199 and would look great in a three-screen setup for gamers, or as a single- or multi-monitor setup for video, audio or general work. I think I prefer the gaming option.

SMART Storage Systems has announced their newest entry into their Enterprise SSD family, the Optimus Ultra+. The 'Ultra' part of the name comes from two central facets of performance, speed and endurance. This SAS 6/Gb/s SSD sports some impressive numbers, with 100,000 random read IOPS and 60,000 random write IOPS. The SSD also supports dual-port SAS, which allows the throughput to climb to an unheard of 1GB/s.

The real story here is the endurance however. The Optimus Ultra+ is rated for 50 Drive Writes Per Day (DWPD) for five years. This means that the capacity of the drive can be written and deleted 50 times every day for five years.

The Optimus family of SSDs all centers around one philosophy; providing SLC-like endurance with MLC pricing. The attraction of MLC over SLC is simple; SLC commands ridiculously high prices while MLC is becoming garden-variety. Even in the consumer market we are now seeing MLC drop below the dollar per GB threshold. This low price level will always be welcome in any market, but creating Enterprise-class MLC is not an easy task.

The third outing in the Far Cry universe, Far Cry 3, was due out on September 4, but Ubisoft have just announced that the release date for Far Cry 3 has been pushed back by three months, until December 4.

The official release date for Far Cry 3 on PC, Xbox 360, and the PlayStation 3 is now early-December. Ubisoft does state that the game will reach Europe, the Middle East and Africa a few days earlier on November 29.

There's been no explanation for the delay, as the last time we saw the game was in a five-minute video which highlighted some of the multiplayer side of things. It was very Call of Duty, featuring experience points, levels, kill cams, and carpet-bombing air support. More news on Far Cry 3 as it comes.

Yammer is just four years old, but they've just been scooped up by Microsoft for a tidy $1.2 billion. Yammer has been dubbed "Facebook for the workplace" and is the latest in many steps for Microsoft's bid to shield their Office products from Google's constant challenges.

Yammer claims to have more than 5 million corporate users with companies such as Ford, Shell, Deloitte and eBay. Just twelve months ago Microsoft whipped out their acquisition credit card on Skype and paid $8.5 billion for the video-calling firm, so Microsoft are not shy, nor poor.

Yammer was started back in 2008 by PalPal founder David Sacks, where they raised around $142 million in funding since they began, it was backed by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, who also invested in Facebook. Sacks said:

9to5Mac have done some digging through the previously-obtained hardware code dump for Apple's next-gen iPhone prototypes and have discovered a very juicy detail in the code that references hardware components supporting near field communication (NFC) capabilities:

We've previously been able to pull data from PreEVT iPhone 5,1 and iPhone 5,2 prototypes codenamed N41AP (5,1) and N42AP (5,2), which leads us to believe that the new iPhone will have a bigger 1136×640 display. We also detailed a lot of the hardware here but forgot one very important little bit. Further investigation into this hardware code dump leads us to believe that these iPhones also have Near Field Communication (NFC) controllers directly connected to the power management unit (PMU).

Apple haven't talked about NFC much, even at their Worldwide Developers Conference earlier in the month, but they did announce Passbook, a new digital wallet app that suggests the company is moving toward NFC services. Passbook is a time- and location-aware app that stores digital tickets, coupons, loyalty cards, and more: