Crave

(Credit: Joi Ito, via Flickr)

There are a handful of topics guaranteed to get readers all ginned up and at each others' throats in the comments section of any Web site. While PS3 vs. Xbox or AT&T vs. Verizon are solid go-to choices, anything that gives Apple and Microsoft fans a chance to vent at each other is on another level entirely.

Not that we don't love enjoy pouring a little lighter fluid on the fire occasionally, but in the spirit of the holiday season, we have a proposal for peace between PC and Mac laptop users--or at least finding some middle ground both sides can agree with.

With that in mind, we offer the following modest proposal for a détente in the war between Mac and PC fanboys.

>PC Makers will agree:
To adopt the large multitouch touchpad that has become so popular on MacBook laptops. Once you get the hang of using two fingers to scroll down a page or flipping four fingers up to hide all your active windows, there's really no going back.

Yes, we acknowledge that many Windows laptops now support some kind of multitouch gestures. But we have yet to find a single PC that implements them particularly well--the worst offenders being touchpads that require your fingers to be lined up on a mathematically precise plane to activate simple two-finger scrolling. Even worse, they shoehorn gestures into the same tiny touchpads we've been cramping our fingers on for years.

Additionally, when you close the lid on a MacBook, it goes into a low-power sleep state, and then wakes up in a few seconds when you open the lid. It works the same every time, like clockwork. No matter what kind of sleep, hibernate, or other lid-close function we set up on a Windows laptop, the result is always a roll of the dice--yes, even in Windows 7. We particularly like the one where the machine wakes up, but the screen doesn't, requiring us to open the close the lid repeatedly until it randomly starts working.

Therefore, PC makers will agree to work with Microsoft to come up with a sleep mode that actually works the same way every single time.

>Apple will agree:
To turn touchpad tapping and click-dragging on by default, and not make us dig around in the menus for this very basic functionality. Secondly, Apple will agree to finally acknowledge the concept of two mouse buttons once and for all. That means second buttons on all mice (although the two-finger touchpad tap really works quite well), and no more pretending to be a one-button OS while actually including right-click functions for just about everything.

Finally, Apple will agree to ditch (or augment) its mini-DVI ports with plain old HDMI. It carries HD video, plus audio, and it's built into pretty much every other A/V device known to man. Heaven forbid we should want to watch HD iTunes videos on a TV by plugging our laptops directly in, instead of buying an Apple TV unit.

(Credit: Screenshot by Leslie Katz/CNET)

If orangutans can post photos to Facebook, then toddlers can certainly Twitter.

And now they have a prototype gadget for doing that--the Twoddler, a tricked-out Fisher Price Activity Center with pictures of family members and friends attached and an Arduino board inside.

When a child presses a certain picture for a select amount of time, software captures sensor data from the activity center and selects and sends a predefined text related to that data.

For example, when Bobby plays with Mom's picture for more than three minutes, a Twitter message will post to Bobby's personal Twitter account saying, "@mommy_bobby Bobby misses mommy and looks forward playing with her this evening" (or as the messages get more refined and personalized: "@mommy_bobby Bobby is having a temper tantrum and wants mommy home now."

Twittering toddlers can also communicate with their social-networking peers by pushing buttons that generate effects, such as colored, blinking lights, on their friends' Twoddlers (a scenario that could easily turn day-care into a disco). Twoddler is connected to the Internet and to other activity centers using the home area networking standard ZigBee.

Twoddler emerged from a course on mobile and pervasive computing at Belgium's Hasselt University. Earlier this year, Twoddler beat out around 40 submissions for the top prize at the 09 Innovative and Creative Applications competition, where judges called it a "good, well-implemented idea, with a lot of potential that allows people/children that are not capable of verbal communication to communicate through an inventive combination of hardware and software."

As we mentioned, Twoddler is just a prototype for now, so don't expect to get an endless stream of tweets from your overexcited 3-year-old just yet.

INCA Award 2009 WINNER: Twoddler from IBBT on Vimeo.

(Via Engadget)

DARPA says the balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roads.

(Credit: DARPA)

Update at 10:56 p.m. PST: The MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team (PDF) has won the competition.

You may have heard about that DARPA balloon challenge, where the first team to identify the latitudes and longitudes of 10 moored weather balloons across the continental U.S. wins $40,000? Well, as of Saturday, the balloons are up in the air. If you don't have a team yet, here are some places to report a sighting.

What's cool is how most of the balloon-hunting communities I've found are working toward selfless goals. Both DARPABalloon.com and this MIT group are proposing to gather a huge number of participants, and rather than give each contributor a measly cut, the 40 grand will be donated to charity.

DARPA is holding its Network Challenge to mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet. The competition is meant to explore the roles the Internet and social networking play in the timely communication, wide-area team-building, and urgent mobilization required to solve broad-scope, time-critical problems.

So, good luck to everyone involved. If you happen to stumble across one this weekend, consider reporting it to a group that's playing for charity. Just make sure it's not a red balloon some kid let go of first.

This story originally appeared on Gizmodo.

Stock up on free holiday music (for kids and adults alike) from Amazon.

(Credit: Amazon)

Those of us who celebrate Chanukah may get eight nights of presents, but you X-mas folks get all the good music.

Thanks to Mrs. Cheapskate, who tinsels with the best of 'em, I've really come to enjoy Christmas songs over the years. Consequently, I'm always on the lookout for new (and cheap, natch) tunes to add to the holiday playlist.

Amazon has quite a bounty this year. For starters, check out these 29 free holiday tunes from artists like Tori Amos, Lady GaGa, and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.

Over at Dealnews you can find 11 more holiday freebies from Amazon, including the kid-friendly "Christmas with a Monkey" and funk-tastic "Boogaloo Santa Claus."

Finally, you can download a free audio book of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" from Learn Out Loud.

Got a few bucks to spare? For my money there's no better holiday album on the planet than Vince Guaraldi's "A Charlie Brown Christmas," which Amazon sells for $5.99 (two bucks less than iTunes).

If you listen to music over your iPod or computer, it's safe to say you're listening in stereo.

Cars are a different story; they can have speakers in all sorts of places, so I'll grant that music in the car may not be in stereo.

But the music itself at least started out as stereo; MP3s and CDs are strictly stereo, so unless you listen to a lot of 5.1 channel SACDs or DVD-Audio discs, stereo is where it's at.

For around the same money, which sounds better?

Most, but not all post-1980 films are available in 5.1. So if you have a 5.1-channel home theater, surround is where it's at. But there's a catch; most people, I'm guessing at least 75 percent, listen to movies with the speakers built into their TVs. Which are, after all, stereo speakers.

So again, stereo wins the popularity contest. And if you're watching movies on a portable device or computer, yup, you're listening to stereo.

The movie companies are certainly aware that once their film leaves theaters most folks will be listening to the stereo mix. They make sure it sounds great.

My personal home theater is a 2.0 (no subwoofer) system. I'm no fan of special-effects-driven films; I go for dramas and concert films. What can I say? Stereo fits my lifestyle/aesthetic perfectly.

I'm not claiming 5.1-, 6.1-, or 7.1-multichannel sound is "bad"; not at all. In fact, I think the quality of movie surround mixes has steadily improved over the years. I listen to them when I'm reviewing gear all the time, but I don't need to hear surround at home. For me film is about the quality of the story, acting, and cinematography. The sound? Sure, it's extremely important, but it's there to support the picture.

How about you? Do you listen to movies in stereo?

The economy may seem bleak, but the game lineup in 2010 looks promising.

Say what you will about the gaming industry in 2009. Yeah, it was a little rough, with consumers tightening their belts and only a few megahits. However, we did see price drops for all the major consoles, a gazillion new iPhone games, and a smattering of amazing titles, some of which we're still playing.

But forget about the past, it's time to look ahead and search out the most anticipated games of next year. Our list nearly doubles 2009's, so there is a lot to get excited about.

While most of the titles on our list are scheduled for a 2010 release (and yes, several were supposed to come out in 2009), needless to say some release dates are more iffy than others. Check out our slideshow to see if your picks match up with ours.

Click on an image to start the slideshow. (Titles are listed in order of release date.)

The 30 most anticipated video games of 2010 (photos)

Don't see the game you're looking forward to in 2010? Make sure you let yourself be heard by mentioning it in the comments section.

My GQ pose would be more convincing if I was wearing a watch.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

I've been told more than once that skills learned from video games don't really translate to the real world. To those who have told me this, I can only say: neener-neener-neener.

More and more companies are offering customers the choice to customize the products they buy. Vans, among others, allows you to create your own shoes. Heck, I've even seen a build-your-own-toy-lightsaber kit that I really wanted to buy for my son.

But this is a new wrinkle to me.

(Pause for inevitable laughter.)

The folks at ShirtsMyWay have set up a process in which for about $75 and a few minutes of your day, you can design your own men's dress shirt. Why is this thrilling, exactly? I'll tell you why. Have you ever noticed that roughly 99 percent (anecdotal research on my part) of all clothing stores are devoted to women's apparel?

Seriously, if you're a guy, you've got like maybe four colors and two styles of dress shirt to choose from. I'm not quite the average male, I suppose, but I know I would be more inclined to wear a dress shirt without the threat of death if I got to have some say about what my shirt looked like.

This is where those video game skills come in handy. The process goes roughly like this: you go to the ShirtsMyWay site, and you choose from 25 different fabrics. That's just the first part. Via the site's very user-friendly interface, you will then decide on just about every aspect of your shirt's creation.

It reminded me a lot of playing The Sims. ... Read more

Too busy rejoicing in your Cyber Monday purchases to stay on top of Crave this week? Our weekly roundup is here to save the day. A few of the stories you may have missed:

• CrunchPad: Hello, goodbye, hello again?

Star Trek Online is one of our 30 most-anticipated games of 2010.

(Credit: Cryptic Studios)

• Gmail got its own keyboard.

• Flip videos made it to the big(ger) screen.

• Games we can hardly wait for.

• An iPhone orchestra: What would Beethoven say?

• These iPhone cases really mean business.

• Why Zune HD is a no-brainer for gaming.

• Samsung Blu-ray players: Point, counterpoint.

• A digicam gun so won't go over well with airport security.

Got a great gadget tip? Write to us at crave at cnet dot com.

The Porsche Boxster Spyder borrows design elements from a bygone era.

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

The fastest and the fittest: Sport cars in Los Angeles (photos)

Sport car companies enjoy the luxury of pushing design to the extreme, putting issues such as passenger comfort and cargo area aside. At the Los Angeles Auto Show we found a selection of new car designs that are as beautiful as they are impractical. Porsche showed up with a convertible that makes it more difficult to lower the top than in its other models. Lotus' newest car may be more accessible than its previous models, but you will still need the moves of a break-dancer to get inside. And the second generation of the Spyker C8 Aileron takes car design into the world of art.

Check out all these cars, and a special eco convertible, in our slideshow.