The Need For Speed franchise has always been a hit amongst gamers, that was until the last one or two releases.

Games such as Grid and Forza set new standards in the racing market, and Need For Speed just kept with their arcade style driving losing a few gamers that hindered for that real driving experience.

The latest edition to the Need For Speed franchise is Shift and it is up for some serious competition later this year from the likes of Forza Motorsport 3, but if the trailer bellow is what we can go by I’m sure they will start regain the gamers they lost.

Imagine a racing game built by racers for racers and you’ll have a good idea of what to expect with Need for Speed SHIFT. It’ll introduce gamers into a level of realism never before seen in a Need for Speed title, offering an incredible authentic and immersive driving experience. Need for Speed SHIFT has been designed to replicate the true feeling of racing high-end performance cars and features a stunningly realistic first-person cockpit viewpoint and an all-new crash engine which offers an unrivaled sensation of racing at high speed.

The game is being developed using a collaborative model with some of the best racing game talent from around the world. Some key names behind the game are Michael Mann (executive producer at Black Box), Patrick Soderlund (senior vp of EA Games) and Slightly Mad Studios in London. SMS, or to give them their former name, Blimey, should be well-known to the racing crowd as the developers behind such classic racing games as GT Legends and GTR 2.

Need For Speed: Shift will be available later this year. It will be available on PS3, Xbox 360, PC and PSP.

Security personnel stationed at Tuynhuys, the Cape Town office of The Presidency, today received a suspicious parcel. Following preliminary investigations by security personnel and the bomb disposal unit of the SA Police Service, the parcel was detonated.

It was then discovered that the parcel contained a coffee machine, which was sent by a Cape Town company as a surprise birthday gift to Mr A. Kathrada, Advisor to President Mandela.

Following the detonation, the bomb experts have confirmed that the parcel did not contain any bomb or explosive device. Their actions however were justified in the context of the uncertainty around the content of the parcel; and the detonation was necessary as a precautionary measure.

For more images visit News24

Is social networking just a fad? Or is it the biggest shift since the industrial revolution?

An excelent youtube video on social networking.

Heavy rain, extreme cold tempratures and strong winds have been forecast for the Western Cape.

Sutherland, Ceres and almost all of the Boland mountains would get snow today or Wednesday, along with freezing cold conditions.

The weather is expected to lift by the weekend.

So I’m always attracked to anything geeky like the cupcakes I posted a while back. And now this, although I’m not that a big starwars junkie this is still very geeky and a must have for any Star Wars diehard fan.

The toaster prints a nice Darth Vader burnmark on the bread on both sides. The Darth Vader Star Wars toaster is obtainable from StarWarsShop for $54.99 thats about R449.

G-Connect is the latest company with its mind set on driving broadband prices to the ground in South Africa. G-Connect enterend the market a few months back first with their wireless offerings, and recently introduced G-Connect ADSL at the cheapest rate for unshaped prepaid ADSL in South Africa.

Sure there are other cheap offers on the market now, like FNB Connect and Edgars Club Connect, the thing with those packages are that there is catches. FNB Connect asks a R69 activation while the Edgars offer is only R29 it only applies to the first gig there after prices is sky high.

G-Connect ADSL connectivity is available at only 4.5c per MB during Happy Hour and 4.9c per MB during normal hours, that equates to R50.17 for 1GB worth of data that is unshaped and has carry-over. Some other great news is that G-Connect will soon launch prepaid vouchers obtainable from various outlets, something similiar like Axxess is doing.

What are the benefits of G-Connect ADSL?

• It’s fast.
• It’s cheap.
• It’s awesome.
• One account.
• Prepaid.
• Free Connection Manager Software.
• Data rollover.
• 24/7 Customer Support.
• No Sign Up and Activation Fee.
• Unshaped

For more information on G-Connect’s great offering visit their website here.

Facebook will be launching a brand new simplified version of their Facebook platform called Facebook Lite. This news come only one day after Facebook acuired FriendFeed and rolled out the real-time Facebook search.

Facebook Lites looks like something that is a direct shot at Twitter, a simplified micro blogging platform.

Now you are asking what is Facebook Lite?

To put it simple its a complete stripped down version of the Facebook platform, almost something like a Twitter stream. You can see your most recent status updates and the updates of your friends. There is a left-hand navigation with four main categories: Wall, Info, Friends, and Photos & Videos.

Here is a screenshot snapped by a user from Hacker News

By the looks of thing its still has too many menu items and options to directly compete with Twitter, I still prefer the shortness of doing thing on Twitter with simple keywords/letters. Maybe this will just help make Facebook junkies used to a Twitter like environment.

Not sure how the weather was in Cape Town this weekend as I was away to Jefferys Bay, where the weather was fabulous, if I may add. According to KFM Cape Town also had some lovely weather this weekend, unfortunately all good things must come to an end.

For those of us already out of bed and at the office may have noticed a wet Cape Town this morning, this wil continue throughout the week with some heavy showers hitting us tommorrow. Tempratures throughout the week will be below 20°c so remember not to pack away that extra blanket yet.

If you love the cold weather then this is going to be your week, otherwise if you need your sun hang on its almost time for the warm to hit Cape Town again.