Crave

For the better part of a decade the video game landscape remained mostly unchanged, complacent in a sea of sequels, motion controls, and downloadable content.

It's a generation that has lasted longer than any other before it, albeit for generally good reasons. And perhaps most impressive is that though their PC gaming counterparts have long since passed them by, these aging consoles are still able to render great-looking games.

So while the sun begins to set on what will go down as a pivotal generation for video games, we look ahead to see what owning a console will be … Read more

It's not easy being the boss at 1 Infinite Loophole.

Instead of traveling around the world to expand your business and inspire your troops, you go to Washington in order to expand narrow minds and perspire at the absurdity.

You even have to find a polite way to answer Sen. John McCain when he demands to know why he's always having to update his iPhone apps. … Read more

In general, bicycles haven't adopted the same high-tech features as many cars. Turn signals are done by hand, and GPS equates to using good old-fashioned brain power or the information you have on your phone. Helios Bars, a Kickstarter project, can turn a regular bike into a smart bike.

The feature list is a fun read. There are left- and right-turn signals, a headlight, GPS tracking in case someone nabs your ride, proximity lighting that senses your presence, and a visual speedometer with color-changing lights. There is also a turn-by-turn navigation feature. Rear-facing LEDS on the handlebars indicate when a turn is coming up.… Read more

Something our human eyes seem to do, without any prompting, is to pick out shapes and structures that resemble other shapes and structures. Called pareidolia, it's a form of pattern recognition -- and a good example is the way we often see a human face where only a random collection of shapes or shadows exists. This, it is now known, is the reason for the infamous face on Mars.

Our own Earth, as folded and rippled as it is, is also prone to this phenomenon when viewed from above: the Badlands Guardian, discovered on Google Earth in 2006, for example. But we're sure there are many more human-esque faces lurking in strange corners of the Earth.

That is the premise behind Google Faces, a project by Berlin design studio Onformative: can pareidolia be imitated by a machine? Using OpenFrameworks, the studio has created an application that crawls Google Maps, using facial recognition algorithms to seek out areas that look like faces. … Read more

After several high-profile incriminating pictures hitting the Intertubes this year, TMZ reports that Justin Bieber wants all visitors to his Calabasas, Calif., mega mansion to sign a liability waiver restricting any social-media divulge about the goings-on behind closed doors.

The supposed waiver (PDF) isn't the friendliest welcome mat, as anyone with loose lips automatically gets pegged with a $5 million lawsuit -- plus they forfeit a few rights, including the ability to sue Bieber.

"Without in any way limiting the foregoing, under no circumstances will you divulge the details of you entering and being on the Property or engaging in the Activities by any means or through any media whatsoever, including without limitation, through photographs, video, blogging, texting, "tweeting" or posting any such information on any social-media site," says the alleged waiver. … Read more

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- All of CNET's coverage of yesterday's Xbox One event.

- Here's what we know about Xbox One games.

- Microsoft talks Xbox One naming, privacy and more (Q&A).

- Sharon Vaknin and CNET Reviews' John Falcone at last night's Webby Awards.

- Courts turning to UrbanDictionary as an authoritative source on slang. And here's The 404's contribution to UrbanDictionary.… Read more

When you think of the word "crystal," you think, perhaps, of wedges of quartz stone, ice crystals, and salt -- not organic flowing forms or flowers. But by manipulating chemical gradients in a beaker of fluid, Harvard postdoctoral fellow Wim L. Noorduin has managed to control the growth of barium carbonate crystals to form very controlled sculptures of flowers, with petals, stems, and leaves.

How the crystal forms depends on the mixture of chemicals in a solution. As the chemical gradients react, the pH can change, causing the crystals to grow away from or toward the gradient, enabling Noorduin to coax the forms into leaves radiating outward, a ling, thin stem, or the petals of the flower head. … Read more

The other day I told you about an app that lets you order Polaroid-style prints from your iPhone -- for 99 cents apiece.

Today, let's talk quantity. If you snap a lot of photos and frequently hit up, say, Snapfish or Walgreens for big batches of prints, I've got an interesting deal for you.

For a limited time, you can get a free 100-photo flip-book from Groovebook when you apply coupon code CNETGROOVE at checkout. That's a colossal savings of...wait for it...$2.99!

No, seriously. Without that code, a 100-photo flip-book would cost you exactly $2.99. Shipped. What kind of crazy craziness is this? I'll explain.… Read more

Google's top dog for last month was, once again, the pitbull. Having taken the title for most-searched breed away from the bulldog in January, the pit has stayed in the top spot for the past four months, but the German Shepherd is looking to make a move after overtaking the Siberian Husky to advance to the No. 4 position.

At least, this is what I was able to learn from my first five minutes using the just-launched Top Charts feature of Google Trends. An expansion of Google's annual Zeitgeist report of most-searched topics, Top Charts has monthly search data and rankings for dozens of categories from actors (Selena Gomez took No. 1 for April) to businesspeople (Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are both gaining on Oprah) and even whiskeys (Jack Daniel's dominates).… Read more