SHIFT: Freedom! is a fun, intelligent platformer -- Time Waster

Creating a good casual game is not a simple task: On the one hand, people want to "get" the game instantly, and just start playing without having to read lengthy tutorials or figure out complex controls. On the other hand, you don't want the game to be too one-dimensional.

And really, the first thing I noticed about SHIFT: Freedom! is that learning how to play was fun. The built-in tutorial walks you through a couple of levels, but you still have to think a little bit, and it's very fast.

As you might have gathered from the title, this is one platformer that doesn't emphasize crazy speed and agility. It's more cerebral - you have to figure your way out of every level using just what you see on the screen (no extra "tools" or anything like that).

It's a lot of fun to play, and due to the way it "teaches" you, you keep finding out new things you can do during the first few levels. And by the time you're done with those, you might just be hooked!

SHIFT: Freedom! is a fun, intelligent platformer -- Time Waster originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 26 Jan 2011 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/01/26/shift-freedom-is-a-fun-intelligent-platformer-time-waster/

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Berzerk Ball is a nerd-flinging Time Waster

What you see in the screenshot above is a geek hurtling through the edge of space, so fast and so high that it looks as though he's re-entering the atmosphere on his way back to earth. That shot, by the way, ended up being around the 30,000' mark.

And yes, that's what you do on Berzerk Ball. The protagonist is a very pretty lady with a very large bat, and her job is to fling geeks as high and far into space as humanly possible.

And when I say "geeks" I mean "a geek", really, because it appears to be the same one over and over again - once he lands, he just starts walking back, muttering inane comments culled from actual blogs along the way.

Basic controls are elementary: You just click the mouse twice - once for controlling the angle, and again for controlling the power of the shot. Once the geek is airborne, you can exert a bit of influence over his trajectory using the left and right arrow keys. That may come in handy, because there are power-ups you can collect along the way, and robots you can land on (who then toss you ever farther on your merry way).

As you get better you can level up and buy different bats and power-ups to fling your geek ever farther. I'm not sure how long this game can stay interesting, but it might keep you amused during a phone call with a particularly irritating nerd.

Berzerk Ball is a nerd-flinging Time Waster originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 25 Jan 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/01/25/berzerk-ball-is-a-nerd-flinging-time-waster/

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Firefox 4's best restartless add-ons

Unless you've been sleeping under a rock, or in a tent outside the Googleplex with an "I LOVE SCHMIDT" banner, you hopefully know that Firefox 4 supports restartless add-ons, or in developerese: bootstrapped extensions.

Unfortunately, however, the process of converting an existing add-on into a restartless wonder is far from simple. A few months ago, back when the Firefox 4 beta machine really got into the swing of things, the developer of the world's most popular add-on, Adblock Plus, described his laborious and infuriating attempt at making his add-on restartless -- and today, just a few days away from the final Firefox beta, there still isn't a single big-name restartless add-on to be found.

On the flip side, writing new restartless add-ons is a little easier. Uptake amongst developers still seems to be very slow, though. Add-ons for Firefox (AMO) only has about 80 add-ons tagged with 'restartless', and even less with the restartless add-on's SDK, 'jetpack'.

Then, of course, only a few of those add-ons are actually worth using! Read on for our pick of the best Firefox 4 restartless add-ons.

Continue reading Firefox 4's best restartless add-ons

Firefox 4's best restartless add-ons originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 18 Feb 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/02/18/firefox-4-best-restartless-add-ons/

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Work Begins On World's Largest Antimatter Containment Unit [Weird Science]

When matter touches antimatter, bad things happen. Getting the two to play well together, or at least store antimatter in a way that keeps it separate from matter, could yield an amazing energy source. Substantial work began this week to do just that. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/Kl9NlmtPk0Y/work-begins-on-worlds-largest-antimatter-containment-unit

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Investigating Apple

Word is the US federal government, and the always eager European Union, are looking into Apple’s new in-app subscription service. Last year, following complaints from Adobe, they looked into Apple’s ban on cross-compilers for iOS and policies on competing advertisers like Google’s AdMob. Apple ultimately reversed their decision on cross-compilers and Apple may well alter [...]

Investigating Apple is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/t6JwQ7_9k1w/

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US Air Force raises concerns over LightSquared's LTE network messing with GPS

Following a navigation system's instructions without driving into a ravine is hard enough as it is -- can you even imagine how hard it'd be if you kept losing GPS reception every time you drove within range of an LTE tower? There have been a few anecdotal concerns raised over the last several weeks that LightSquared's proposed LTE network -- which would repurpose L-band spectrum formerly used for satellite -- is too close to the spectrum used by the Global Positioning System, leading to unintentional jamming when the towers overpower the much weaker GPS signals. Things have gotten a little more interesting, though, now that the US Air Force Space Command has officially piped in. General William Shelton has gone on record saying that "a leading GPS receiver manufacturer just ... has concluded that within 3 to 5 miles on the ground and within about 12 miles in the air GPS is jammed by those towers," calling the situation "unbelievable" and saying he's "hopeful the FCC does the right thing."

Presumably, the USAF thinks that "the right thing" would involve pulling LightSquared's license, but for its part, the company says it believes Shelton is referring to a test conducted by Garmin (possibly explaining that recent outage in the Southeastern US?) using simulated interference filters -- not the actual filters that it has spent several million dollars developing and perfecting. Regardless of how effective the filters might be, the idea that the only thing standing between a functional GPS system and a constellation of space-borne paperweights is a private company's privately-developed, privately-operated filtering equipment... but then again, we love LTE. Decisions!

[Thanks, Brian]

US Air Force raises concerns over LightSquared's LTE network messing with GPS originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 19 Feb 2011 22:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/i1KISvBF-WQ/

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Carrot is a soothing time-waster featuring bunnies and puppies

So... you've got a cute pet rabbit, and rabbits like carrots. That makes Carrot rabbit heaven, if there is such a thing: The game takes place on a long, lush lawn, with a line of carrots stretching into the distance, as far as the eye can see. Mmmm, carrots.

But of course, this wouldn't be much of a game if you were just running along, eating carrot after carrot. That wouldn't be very challenging. That's where the dogs come in: For every carrot, you have a puppy running back and forth across the screen.

If your bunny hits a dog, it's going to blink (and that, as we all know, means "ouch"). If it hits too many dogs, you lose. But your bunny can't move left or right, and it can't even move faster or stop!

So what do you do? You leash the dogs, of course. Basically, when you click a dog and drag it, a leash appears and the dogs is drawn to wherever you drag. There's a bit of a lag due to the leash being elastic, but if you're fast enough, you can keep the dogs from touching the rabbit.

There are also neat power-ups: You may notice my bunny has a rotor in the screenshot; the rotor lets it fly smoothly over the dogs, and it still somehow manages to eat the carrots. Of course, it doesn't last forever, and eventually the bunny lands and you have to keep leashing the dogs.

All in all, a very cute game, with a lovely soundtrack to boot.

Carrot is a soothing time-waster featuring bunnies and puppies originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 21 Jan 2011 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/01/21/carrot-is-a-soothing-time-waster-featuring-bunnies-and-puppies/

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The Engadget Podcast, live at 4:15PM EST!

MWC was insanely insane, and we're going to spend this week's podcast hour just trying to count all the Android phones that were launched. If you're aware of any good whole numbers, we'd love to enlist your help! Check out the live stream and chat after the break.

P.S. And don't forget that Ustream has Android and iPhone clients as well, if you're out and about and you can't join in on the Flash-based fun below.

Continue reading The Engadget Podcast, live at 4:15PM EST!

The Engadget Podcast, live at 4:15PM EST! originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 Feb 2011 15:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/XBbqBgDXC0o/

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Motorola Atrix 4G already rooted, and it's not even out yet

If you thought the lack of root on the Atrix 4G was going to save you a couple hundred bucks next week... well, we hate to break the bad news, but you're going to need to find another excuse not to buy it (more on that in a second). Long story short, the phone's already been rooted by a gentleman over on the ever-resourceful xda-developers forums, which means you can do all the normal things that require root access like enabling the standard Froyo mobile hotspot feature, using root apps like Titanium Backup (pictured above), and generally looking 1337 compared to your friends locked up in their walled gardens. Now, the bad news: the bootloader remains firmly locked and presumably encrypted given Moto's track record, so custom kernels are still just a dream -- but hey, where there's a will, there's a way. Keep the faith!

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Motorola Atrix 4G already rooted, and it's not even out yet originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 19 Feb 2011 13:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/19/motorola-atrix-4g-already-rooted-and-its-not-even-out-yet/

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2011 F1 testing day 11: Barcelona | 2011 F1 testing

The final day of testing is at the Circuit de Catalunya today. See here for details.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/f1fanatic/~3/7pBO0u9ri4Y/

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TwelveSouth Magic Wand brings your keyboard and Magic Trackpad closer together

Kind of crazy that we haven't seen more accessories that combine the Apple Bluetooth keyboard with the Magic Trackpad yet, but TwelveSouth has it covered with the Magic Wand, a simple aluminum half-tube that takes your two Apple wireless peripherals and joins them as one. Cute. Of course you're still stuck with duplicate sets of batteries, and you'll have to somehow deal with the fact that you just spent $30 on a piece of metal that creates a godless keyboard chimera monster, but if you can get past that the Magic Wand is shipping now. Video after the break.

Continue reading TwelveSouth Magic Wand brings your keyboard and Magic Trackpad closer together

TwelveSouth Magic Wand brings your keyboard and Magic Trackpad closer together originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 19 Feb 2011 00:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/19/twelvesouth-magic-wand-brings-your-keyboard-and-magic-trackpad-c/

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Hacking for the U.S. Government [Security]

Backdoor installers, malware loaders and social media propaganda bots.These are all tools the U.S. Government contracts IT security firms to develop for them in order to fight enemies. Check out the full story over at [Ars Technica]. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/LNKIbMyzWGQ/hacking-for-the-us-government

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Another Moto2 Mutation: Wargala, Not Talmacsi, To Replace Nieto

Polish motorcycle racing is clearly looking up. After many years of almost total absence from the world stage, Poland now has not one but two racers active in World Championships, as well as a Polish-backed team. In the World Supersport class, the Bogdanka PTR team will be fielding Pawel Szkopek alongside veteran British rider James Ellison. And on Saturday, it was announced that Lukasz Wargala would be contesting the 2011 Moto2 championships, riding alongside Rafaelle de Rosa in the G22 team.

The signing of Wargala is something of a surprise. When Fonsi Nieto announced he would be retiring from racing, it was widely expected that his seat would go to Gabor Talmacsi, the Hungarian still being highly regarded in the paddock. Instead, adding a Polish rider to the grid appears to have been more important to Dorna, to help cement the TV deal with Polish broadcaster SportKlub. The deal will have been at least partially motivated by funding, as it was believed that the G22 squad was short of funds, which was one factor behind Nieto's retirement. The G22 team needed a rider who could help pay his way, and it seems likely that Wargala was better able to do that than Talmacsi.

Below is the press release from Wargala's management:

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Lukasz Wargala and G22 join forces in Moto2

read more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MotoGPMatters/~3/MxUaOnUorYw/another_moto2_mutation_wargala_not_talma.html

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