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Quick Look: America’s Test Kitchen for Nintendo DS

Posted: 27 Mar 2010 05:00 AM PDT


Here’s a quick look at the crazy cooking title, America’s Test Kitchen: Let’s Get Cooking. It’s essentially a very thorough cookbook with 300 recipes and a lot of very odd features – including voice control – so you can scroll through recipes almost effortlessly. It’s beguilingly strange to “play” a cookbook on the DSi XL.

Weekend Giveaway: An HTC HD2 from T-Mobile

Posted: 27 Mar 2010 05:00 AM PDT

Wakey wakey, eggs and a culturally accepted meat or vegetable product that can be diminutized to rhyme with “wakey!” Have we got a surprise for you. This weekend we’re giving away an HTC HD2 GSM phone for T-Mobile. If you recall, the HD2 is a glorious Windows Mobile 6.5 phone with lots of great things built-in including a huge, beautiful screen, Wi-Fi, and it even comes with two Transformers movies right on the handset. Seriously good stuff. I haven’t been a fan of Windows Mobile since 2000 and even I like it. How do you win?

I need you to comment below with a reason why you, dear sir, deserve this phone. Maybe your current phone is garbage. Maybe you need it for a great uncle who is also a Duke and if you give it to him you will get his hereditary title when he dies. Either way, you need to convince us of this. Extra points go to folks who email contest@crunchgear.com with a picture of themselves with their old, busted phone and a sad, sad face. We’ll pick the best sob story and send them this phone.

Texas Hold ‘em on the Microsoft Surface

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 06:00 PM PDT

Games like this are exactly why Microsoft Surface is going to be a compelling platform. Some students ported Texas Hold ‘em to Surface, but added the ability to look at your cards from a mobile device. Placing a bet is as easy as dragging a chip on to the playing field, and you can even split a chip’s denomination by tapping it. I’d be interested to see what the final version of this product. It’s also good to see Surface gaming used for more then just role playing games.

[via Gizmodo]

iPad App Store Leak II: The Leakening

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 05:25 PM PDT


Oh, iPad leaks. I just wrote up one of you less than an hour ago, and now there’s a better one. The life of a blogger is a hard one, friends. So anyways, it seems that Apple left the door open on the iPad app store screenshot warehouse, because everyone and their dog is now accessing shots of the various pages – I won’t duplicate their content here, just head on over to AppAdvice and check out the new leak.

I don’t think these are final final, because as you can see in the shot above, there are some weird stretch issues going on with the app screenshots. I’m guessing the layout is pretty much set at this point, though.

NVIDIA’s flagship DX11 card drops, and the reviews are… decent

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 05:08 PM PDT


There’s been a lot of buzz about the code-name Fermi series of cards NVIDIA has been cooking up. They’re the company’s first DirectX 11-compatible cards, and rival AMD has had the DX11 58xx series on the market for months now, giving them a definite head start. The hope (among NVIDIA fans) was that the Fermi/GF100 cards would blow AMD’s out of the water despite the delays. That doesn’t seem to be the case: although the new GTX 480 flagship card is competitive with AMD’s best, it doesn’t blow it away by any means, and the feature set ends up being the deciding factor.

Here are some reviews by our favorite hardware sites:

And if you’re crazy, check out Maingear’s triple-SLI setup. Give me a break!

They don’t all agree — HardOCP found nothing to like about the mid-range GTX 470, while PC Perspective thought it a great bargain — so if you’re in the market, it might be worthwhile to wait a month and see what secondary vendors are going to offer in terms of custom clocking, better heat management, and so on. Drivers will also be improved once the cards are out there and bug reports and performance data start streaming in.

The first reviews of major hardware releases like this are always hotly anticipated in case, as was the case with ATI’s 48xx series, they totally serve the competition. That didn’t happen in this case, but depending on your needs and existing setup, the new NVIDIA cards could easily be the hardware for you.

Interesting read: writer recounts his addiction to games and cocaine

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 04:30 PM PDT


There’s still a lot to be said in the “games as art” or even “games as legitimate forms of expression and entertainment” debate, and articles like this will… probably work for both sides. Tom Bissell was a successful and prolific writer, but after a cocaine-fueled run through (ironically) GTA:Vice City, he found himself more and more a slave to the console. He’s battling it as he would any other addiction in some ways, but what makes it different to him (different from, say, his coke habit) is that his experiences aren’t fleeting, chemical fantasies but episodes of true profundity and emotion. It’s an interesting story.

His game habit has certainly reached the point of interrupting his productive life (at which point is is properly called a pathological addiction), and the persistent stigma on games as junk experiences gives the habit as negative an air as a drug addiction. But it’s worth noting, as he does to some degree but not enough, in my opinion, is show that his time with games is as meaningful to him as, say, a trip to the museum would be to an art lover. If he says he finds meaning and transcendent beauty in things like the skyscrapers of Liberty City, can anyone really contradict him?

One of the consequences of Generation i and Generation X growing up is the implicit acceptance of games next to TV and movies as perfectly acceptable and potentially important creative works. It’s exciting, and while the controversy will rage for years to come, we’ve got smart and introspective writers like Tom on our side, as well as beautiful and intelligent games like Portal and Shadow of the Colossus. Hold the line!

iPad App Store screenshots leaked

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 04:20 PM PDT


It had to happen some time: purported shots of the iPad app store have leaked onto the ol’ webbernet, and they’re pretty much what you’d expect. Big buttons, long vertical scrolling pages, and big versions of apps — the “HD” versions we saw leaked earlier in some cases.

Prices seem to range widely: from 99 cents to $10 for a game, and as you see, OmniGraffle is $50. I think there’ll be some shuffling here as price points are established for quickie games like Solitaire versus bigger releases like Worms HD, which let me tell you I am pumped for.

The full screenshots are here. I guess I was hoping for something more flashy (no pun intended), but this is probably best for the mass market.

Review: WD My Passport Studio external hard drive

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 04:00 PM PDT


Short version: The drive performs as well as any other, and the e-ink display is handy. It’s up to you to judge whether it’s worth the extra cost.

Features:

  • E-ink display shows custom label, free space
  • USB 2.0 or Firewire 800 interface
  • Included Smartware backup software
  • On-drive encryption
  • MSRP: $150/320GB, $180/500GB, $200/640GB

Pros:

  • Bus-powered
  • E-ink display is handy and works great
  • Interface and drive are as speedy as expected

Cons:

  • Slightly ’spensive

Full review:

We’ll keep this one short: the main feature being reviewed here is the e-ink display on this thing, and I may as well just tell you that it works great. I can’t make a call for you on whether it’s worth the slight, but noticeable, premium, but you can rest assured that it’s useful and works well.

The drive is very straightforward, as drives should be, and has both a USB 2.0 interface and a FireWire 800 one. I conducted an informal test of drive speeds by copying files totaling ~1GB on and off the drive, and these were the results:

As you can see, USB 2.0 copies at the expected 20-30MB/s, though multiple small files to the drive does tend to bog it down, as is often the case. FireWire 800 didn’t trip at all, providing a constant 40-50MB/s. The drive comes with nice little short, white cables for both USB and FireWire 800, and thoughtfully includes a FireWire 800 to 400 adapter.

The SmartWare software loads as a virtual disc when the drive is mounted. While I would rather it simply mounted two partitions, like LaCie does, but it didn’t bother me much. You can turn off the VCD but it’ll keep a menu bar or task bar element there for access.

You may have seen the software before, and maybe not; it’s straightforward and backing up is simple and customizable, letting you choose which types of files to back up. It maps your entire drive every time you start it up, which is kind of annoying, but at least you know its information won’t be out of date.

Of course you can also lock the drive; it’s provided with 256-bit encryption accessible through a password program that launches from the virtual CD. Or you can turn it off and it’ll load up instantly.

The SmartWare software is also where you customize the e-ink label. You can put up to 12 characters, anything that fits on a 13-segment display. So no hearts or stars, sorry. If you’ve got the money to get a few of these, this is a great way of keeping track of his and hers, or which is audio backup and which is video backup, that sort of thing. I mean, you can always label a drive with a bit of masking tape and a sharpie, but this is more official, and looks cooler.

Conclusion

The price is a lot to ask if you’re looking for a lot of plain storage: 30 cents/GB for the 640GB version, and you can get drives for as little as 10 cents/GB. But if you want for something sleek and portable, and the e-ink appeals to you, this drive should serve you just fine.

Product page: Western Digital My Passport Studio

Suggestions for CrunchGear’s first game night

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 03:30 PM PDT

Image via A Homegrown Life

We’re toying with the idea of having a weekly or monthly game night. You guys would pick the game and venue, and we’ll provide some sweet-ass prizes. Cool? But we need to know some details up front so click the link below for a four-question survey. Oh, and sorry, none of us have a PS3 so that’s not an option.

Click here for the quick survey.

PAX East 2010: In which we talk to a dude wearing a WWE belt for some reason

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 03:00 PM PDT

OK, so PAX may be crawling with people dressed as Chris Redfield and, um, Generic Skimpy Outfit Female, but it takes a certain kind of geek to walk around with a WWE championship belt. I use the word "geek" with all due respect, of course: we’re all geeks here at PAX.

He brings up a good point: while PAX in Seattle may be the "original" home of the show, it took a trip to the east coast for the show to really come alive.

Left for today (that I’m aware of): Nvidia announces something, and a "Is PC gaming dead?" panel discussion. That one I’m looking forward to probably more than any other talk.

PAX East 2010: Clearly Rockstar is a popular company

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 02:00 PM PDT

Rockstar wins the early "which publisher has the biggest line?" award here at PAX. I think they get a free pizza party at the end of the day as a result.

They’ve got Red Dead Redemption in there, so people have been queuing way around the block. Thankfully it’s only 900 degrees in the convention center, so people should be in high spirits for the duration of the show.


What’s the deal with these Microsoft Seinfeld ads?

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 01:37 PM PDT

I’m not quite sure what this was important to someone, but Todd Bishop of TechFlash sat down with Microsoft to discuss those crazy Seinfeld ads from way back in ought-8. He essentially asked Microsoft “What were you thinking?” and got some interesting replies.

Essentially, Microsoft wanted to introduce Windows 7 in a big way but they weren’t sure how to go about it. Their marketing execs wanted an icebreaker to invite the world back into the mind of Microsoft. The result? Some of the craziest commercials the company ever released.

But the truth is, we actually hadn’t been doing that for a while. So we were a little worried about just having a cold start into that process, just jumping in with some Windows ads around features, and speeds and feeds. We thought we needed an icebreaker.
Because at that moment, our biggest fear — and this is the part that I would say you would be right to say was laughable — would be that we would run ads and nobody would notice. That somehow, we would have a party and nobody would come. Now, knowing the level of scrutiny that every slight twitch that we have gets at this point, that was an incorrect assumption, certainly on my part, that anybody would fail to notice that we had started running a new ad campaign. So the idea that we came up with was, what if we sort of eased into this, not with a hard sales pitch on one of our products, but with something that said, hey, I’m getting back in touch with consumers, I’m going on this journey as a company to get back into having a consumer conversation with people. Let’s try to find an icebreaker.

Ultimately, these commercials were the precursor to the humanizing “I’m a PC” and “Laptop Hunter” ads that came later. So think of Jerry and Bill as sort of a nice sherbet before the real meat.

PAX East 2010: It’s a 3D world, and we’re just living in it

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 01:00 PM PDT

So yeah, we’re living in the age of 3D. I just made a quick run inside the main PAX East (henceforth know as PAX), and Nvidia has 3D games all over the place. There’s no escaping it~!

Shooters, racing games, even World of Warcraft. Of course, I left my Authenticator in the hotel home, so I couldn’t play. Hopefully tomorrow, friends.

Also, word on the street is that Nvidia will announce something fairly substantial in a few hours. I’ll see what’s up.

CTIA 2010 Wrap-up: Android, Android, Android

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 12:05 PM PDT

Bags have been packed, poker chips have been cashed, and planes have been boarded – and with that, the mobile-focused CTIA 2010 convention in Las Vegas has come to a close.

Each time an event like this blows through town, tech heads do their best to distract themselves from their hangovers by writing monstrous posts on which platform or technology “won” the show. When it comes to CTIA 2010, the winner is clear cut and undisputed: Android. They could have called this year’s show “Android Week” and no one would have questioned it.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

CrunchGear visits the Tsukumo Robot Kingdom in Akihabara (photo report)

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 10:41 AM PDT

It’s been over four months since I last paid a visit to a robot store in Akihabara/Tokyo, namely the Vstone flagship store. But I have to say the Tsukumo Robot Kingdom [JP] is much cooler, mainly because the shop is larger and offers more robots than its rival. The Robot Kingdom is located on the 4th floor of the Tsukumo PC Store II in central Akihabara.

Just like the Vstone store, the Tsukumo counterpart offers a plethora of different parts and bits for your robot pleasure:

The humanoid on the left costs the equivalent of $1,100, while the right one sells for $1,300:

No robot store without one of the most popular humanoids out there, Robovie-X (pictured below in the middle, price: $1,600):

The humanoid on the left costs the equivalent of $1,000, while the one on the right is priced at $1,050:

KHR-3 HV costs $1,300:

$1,100, that’s the price for this cool Hello Kitty robot:

Here’s a short video showing the store/kingdom (not made by me):

We’re at Penny Arcade Expo East 2010: Pax Nerdicana

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 10:30 AM PDT

Greetings, fellow gamers. I’m in Boston for PAX East. It’s all the fun of the Penny Arcade Expo, but done east coast hip-hop style. It’s just me and I have no idea what I’m doing, but expect a steady stream of video game goodness in the next two days. Any requests—specific game you want to see or whatever? Pick a fight with a certain publisher? Let me know!


Confirmed: Xbox 360 USB mass storage coming April 6th

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 10:23 AM PDT


Quick note as the headline pretty much says everything you need to know, but Major Nelson announced that Xbox 360 is getting USB mass storage support April 6th just like we thought. You can bring your own flash drive to the party but the service will only support up to 16GB and the 360 will format your drive the first time. Official drives will come from SanDisk sometime down the road, too. Anyway, April 6th, kids.

A quick look at Netflix on the Wii

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 09:40 AM PDT

The disc required to get Netflix up and running on the Wii should hit subscribers mailboxes sometime today. Here’s a quick look at the Wii-ish interface and controls. Nifty, eh? Too bad there’s no HD content on the Wii version. [via Download Squad]

RadioShack looking for a buyer, possibly Best Buy

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 09:00 AM PDT

We could be looking at the end of RadioShack, boys and girls. The company is said to be exploring a strategic partnership, or outright sale, possibly to Best Buy. I don’t see why Best Buy would be interested: what does RadioShack sell that’s either A) not already available or B) entirely too niche for its Wal-Mart approach to selling consumer electronics?

JPMorgan Chase is supposedly in charge of figuring out how to handle the merger or sale or whatever it ends up being.

The only reason why Best Buy might be interested is because of RadioShack’s success in the cellphone business. I guess RadioShack does a fairly OK job of selling phones and accessories and whatnot, and its small stores could play into Best Buy’s "we need more, smaller stores in malls, people!" modus operandi.

Or, and this is a twist, perhaps rather than selling to Best Buy (or someone else), perhaps RadioShack could use some of the money it has on hand—$900 million—to gobble up some other store! Now that would be unexpected.

I’m trying to think the last time I bought something from RadioShack… it might have been solder for when I hacked my Xbox1 in 2003. So yeah, it’s been a little while. The store always seemed sorta dingy to me, like the lighting was messed up.

Wiki’d

iPad games we’d love to see

Posted: 26 Mar 2010 08:09 AM PDT

After news of the HD and XL iPad versions of some of our favorite games are on their way – Flight Control being one of my personal obsessions – we thought it would be fun to ponder what other boardgames would make for a fun iPad experience. Here’s our list. What would you guys like to see?


Carcassonne – If you’ve never split a few bottles of wine (or tequila) and played Carcassonne, you haven’t lived. To be able to play this with a few people on the iPad would be amazing and you wouldn’t have to carry all those cards around.

The game is pretty simple – you put down random cards to build cities, roads, and farms. You place a knight on a card to claim it and get the knight back when you’ve completed a feature. However, it’s amazingly addictive and an iPad version would be great.


Sim City – This game is already out on the iPhone but a version on a larger, more readable screen would be great.

Civilization V – While I could spend most of my life playing Civ Rev on the iPhone, why not go nuts and rebuild Civ V for the iPad? I would totally pay a few dozen dollars for this.

Burnout iPad Edition – My son and I have been playing Burnout Paradise like fiends lately and a big-screen, motion aware version of Burnout would make us both happy.

Monopoly – This next set of games are boardgame classics. First up – Monopoly. It’s a no brainer.

Connect 4 – There are only knock off versions of Connect 4 on the App Store right now, but a big screen version would be great.

Battleship – The current version if iPhone Battleship looks great but why not buy two iPads so you can recreate Battleship in all it’s “You sunk my…” glory? Then again, maybe not.

Air Hockey – This is totes magotes one of my favorites. The iPhone version is great for two players and an iPad version would be even better.


Incredible Machine – Remember this insanity? The Incredible Machine was a 1990s Rube Goldberg video game dedicated to teaching kids how to make things work together. I haven’t played it in years but a 3D, Enigmo-esque version would be great.

Planetfall – One of the original Infocom classics. Listen: the iPad has a usable keyboard and can support external keyboards. Why not slap together an Infocom pack for $2 and sell some imagination to these whippersnappers. Who’s with me?
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