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Apple today announced the release of Aperture 3, adding over 200 new features to the company’s professional photo editing and management application. The updated version includes the Faces and Places tagging features introduced in iPhoto last year, as well as a new feature called Brushes for making painting image adjustments to photos. Also included are Adjustment Presets, which offer one-click options for applying specific styles or looks to entire images.

“Millions of people love using iPhoto to organize, edit and share their digital photos,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Aperture 3 is designed for both professionals who edit and manage massive libraries of photos and iPhoto users who want to take their photos further with easy-to-use tools such as Brushes and Adjustment Presets.”

Aperture 3, which runs as a 64-bit application on Intel Core 2 Duo Macs running Mac OS X Snow Leopard, is available for a suggested retail price of $199, with existing Aperture users able to upgrade for $99. A downloadable 30-day trial is also available.

The American Adele Peters came up with a new idea for a mouse, it’s still in concept form, but we might have a winner, the Corky. It’s a cork-based mouse that relies on “piezoelectric elements to generate enegry every time you click or move it around on your desk”, what means that nary a battery would ever be used to power it. For those who think this mouse isn’t sustainable enough, it’s made from easily recyclable materials, so you can throw it away with no harm to Mother Earth. Too bad that the design has been trumped forty times over by more ergonomic options, but we haven’t seen v2.0… stay tuned!

The 38-year-old Chinese Zhou Peng Cheng examines his balance on a steel pin in Foshan, in China’s Guangdong province. Zhou is such a stunt in its own words back on a combination of force and respiration, two key elements of “Qigong”, a doctrine to the physical and mental health improvement.

I think everybody enjoys Valentine’s Day. Myself, I’m not into all the buying on this day, but you can make a special diner for your girlfriend/wife. Just a day you can spoil her a little more. Or you can buy her a TomTom Ease. TomTom launched a special red edition of the TomTom Ease. And it looks like it’s beating the regular version to market. The color is especially choosen for Valentine’s Day, but it’s just a different case color. It’s the same 3.5-inch QVGA display with 2Gb of internal memory preloaded with Tele-Altas maps, Map Share / IQ Routes, an integrated battery and a built-in Fold & Go mount. On Amazon.com you can buy this limited red edition for $119. But for those who don’t like the red edition, you can wait, the gray model will be out soon. Stay tuned.

Intel has reportedly told its corporate customers that the Sandy Bridge CPUs with integrated graphics processors due for release at the end of the year will have vastly improved performance. While the chipmaker quotes a doubling of performance, it does not define what it compares it to, though it is most likely the existing Nehalem CPUs. Intel is otherwise being cryptic about the chips’ performance, saying only that the chips have advanced media and graphics capabilities. Read the full story.

Coveting an iPad, but not willing to pay full price? If you happen to live in Austria and don’t mind committing to a two-year data contract, Hutchison’s got you covered. The carrier’s offering a 333 Euro (approximately US $455) discount if you sign up for a 29.90 Euro, 5GB monthly data contract. Sounds great, but frankly we still don’t know how much it’s gonna cost outside of the US — the foreign sites still list American prices, as far as we can tell. The other catch is that instead of offering the integrated 3G version, you’re getting a Huawei i-Mo 3G modem to create a personal WiFi cloud with the iPad. Elegant? Not really, but it’s still quite the deal (short-term, at any rate). No indication when Apple’s device will hit Austria, but we gotta imagine they wouldn’t set up such an offer without a short-term plan.

Dell has sent word that its Precision M6500 pro notebook will get several new features and options. The system will now have the option of Intel’s newer dual-core processors, including both the Core i5 and i7; previously, it was limited to only quad-core i7 models that justified the high $2,749 price. USB 3.0 will also be new and should make the Precision the first PC at Dell to get the 5Gbps ports. Read the full story.

Using solar power is nothing new, we have seen several solar chargers and other gear that can use the power of the sun to charge its batteries and operate. A circuit that can actually power itself using sunlight has been developed by researchers and it could change the technology world someday.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania created the world’s first photovoltaic circuit that could one day be used to power consumer electronics devices and more. The researchers have so far only been able to generate miniscule amounts of power with the circuits. The current power generation capabilities are far from enough to power consumer devices today.

With the current circuits the researchers say that only about 10% of the photovoltaic circuits on a glass slide actually work and increasing the number of working cells would vastly increase the power output. One researcher thinks that eventually the tech will be able to produce one amp with one volt in a piece the diameter of a human hair and only one inch long.

Sling Media on Friday corrected AT&T’s position on the clearance to ship a 3G-capable SlingPlayer for iPhone. While AT&T characterized the remote TV streaming app as “optimized,” the Slingbox creator company’s John Santoro told Ars Technica that Sling “didn’t change anything” in its 3G code, or enter discussions, to satisfy AT&T’s demands. The app has always had dynamic bitrate changes to match available bandwidth. Read the full story.

PVI chairman Scott Liu today told the press that his company will produce some of the earliest fully touchscreen and motion-capable e-paper displays this year. Current screens often need a separate touchscreen layer and are too slow to show video or other animations, but screens with either feature should be ready by the end of 2010. PVI’s touchscreen technique would put the touch underneath the e-paper and eliminate the unintentional dimming of the display, a problem that has affected e-readers from Sony and others. Read the full story.