sense

Straight from the No-Brainer Department comes a list of games that parents should not buy their children this holiday season. The New York Times has republished a collection of 10 titles deemed totally uncool for kids to play by the media watchdog group Common Sense Media.

While we're all for educating parents about the naughty video games their children want to play, we can't help but slap our foreheads at how obvious some of them are. Besides, all a responsible parent needs to do is stray away from the big fat "Rated M for Mature" logo on the box art of such titles.

We wouldn't disagree with any title on the list, but some of the suggested alternatives for these titles are a bit suspect. For example, replacing Modern Warfare 2 with Battlefield: Bad Company only brings the blood level down a bit--the war combat and violence are still present in Bad Company. We absolutely loved Uncharted 2, but there's plenty of gunplay and headshots in the T-rated blockbuster as well.

Ideally, we'd love to see parents become more involved in their child's gaming habits. The only way to make sure a game is right for the younger ones is to have Mom or Dad sit in on a few sessions.

Click over for the full Common Sense Media list of unfriendly titles along with their alternatives.… Read more

Google Friend Connect is adding a few features that make it easier for Web site publishers to build their own social networks.

Visitors to Web sites that use Google Friend Connect will soon have the option of filling out a profile on that site that can connect them to like-minded individuals who frequent those sites. They can then search for other profiles on that site with matching tags, introduce themselves to those users through the site without having to post an e-mail address, and see content on the site tailored to their interests, said Mussie Shore, product manager for Google … Read more

Google updated AdSense this week, adding desktop-style ad support for high-end smartphones like the iPhone 3GS. The change led to Google's insertion of advertisements, alongside search results, into the iPhone Maps application.

Local iPhone map searches now display sponsored listings in the view and list modes of the Maps app.

We discovered examples of these ads on Monday, while searching for a Verizon Wireless store. We should also note that this is the first time ads have appeared within one of the iPhone's default apps, rather than in something we've downloaded for free or purchased from the App Store. Our search for "Verizon" resulted in the following list view:

Tapping the white arrow in the top blue circle brought us to the "Sponsored Link" screen, which contained some additional information about the business under its name emphasized in italics, such as phone number, Web address, and physical address. In addition, there are options to get directions to or from the business, add it to one's contacts, share it with others, or bookmark it.

… Read more

The march of the ads from the PC to the smartphone took another step Monday with the launch of Google AdSense for high-end phones.

Web publishers can now design AdSense ads--groups of Google AdWords text ads displayed by third-party publishers on their Web sites--with the HTML browsers used by smartphones in mind, Google announced Monday in a blog post. Advertisers had been able to run smaller mobile ads that older mobile phone browsers could handle, but they'll now have an option of showing a more sophisticated ad on a more sophisticated browser like those used by the iPhone, the … Read more

Gordon Bell may well be a slightly peculiar man.

On the other hand, he may simply be the world's first e-philanthropist.

Bell, a researcher at Microsoft, has decided that it is, indeed, in the interests of science for him to commit every single nano-second of his brain's functions to a digital resting place, so that those in future times might see just what human life was like in our woeful, wobbling era.

According to CNN, Bell is just a little enthusiastic about this project. (Click here for a Q & A with Bell from February conducted by ZD … Read more

A new, slimmer PlayStation 3 wasn't the only news to come out of the Sony press conference at Gamescom in Germany Tuesday. There were also plenty of announcements about the PSP and PlayStation Network that weren't completely expected.

First, the PlayStation Network will get an overhaul beginning September 1. New features and a more logical navigation are among the updates. A "What's New" tab highlighting new PlayStation Store releases will also be accessible directly via the XMB (cross media bar).

There was also a lot of news regarding the PSP. Along with the PSP Go, … Read more

Editor's note: This post was amended to reflect a later release date for this app. My6Sense for the iPhone was originally expected to be on the app store Thursday morning, although it remains in Apple's approval process. For the purpose of this review I was using the same version which was installed using a testing provision.

My6Sense, a company that previewed its RSS recommendation technology at the Under the Radar Mobility conference back in late November, is finally ready to get its tools into the hands of users. The company soon plans to release its first native application for mobile phones (currently for the iPhone only), which pulls in RSS feeds and adjusts what it presents based on your reading habits.

To make those adjustments, the product revolves around a machine learning algorithm called "digital intuition." As you read, it slowly builds a profile for recommendations on other items you should check out, and ranks them accordingly.

There are six levels of digital intuition in all. Any time you check for recommendations it updates a small bar that tells you how far along its cold, robot brain is to knowing your deepest reading desires. In the hour or two I spent with the app, I nearly got to level three. Apparently it takes much more browsing than I was willing to give it before it could offer expert recommendations. Nonetheless, after just that short amount of time it was doing a pretty good job pointing me toward articles I did, in fact, want to read.

Feeding frenzy Finding feeds to begin with is quite easy. You can enter URLs manually, download packs of RSS links that have been curated by My6Sense, or import the news feed from places like Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, and Flickr. It's also got a tool for grabbing your feed collection from other RSS services like Google Reader, My Yahoo, NewsGator, and Netvibes. I just used my feed collection from Google Reader, which was as simple as plugging in the credentials for my Google account. My6Sense was even nice enough to keep all my folders and meticulous feed organization intact.

Now the real heart of the app is feed reading. My6Sense wants you to give up using any other readers, and do everything inside of its app, since that's what makes its recommendation engine tick. This would be fine, except for the fact that the app can get intolerably slow when it comes to loading headlines.

Over a healthy 3G connection it took around 12 seconds to load up a list of just 10 stories. It took even longer to pull in an additional 10 results. And this was just the text--images don't load until you open up a story to read. In comparison, Google Reader in Safari is not… Read more

Two months worth of Twilight talk has resulted in this homage that we lovingly refer to as "goth-lite." Take a walk on the dark side with the Gadgettes and special guest Natali Del Conte.

Skull phone shows just how wild and crazy you are

Report: U.S. military developing robots that eat human flesh

Gory intercom system a savagely funny concept

Meet the black Wii

iKey's AK-39 wearable keyboard is about as weapon-like as it sounds

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters… Read more

HTC unveiled its Hero at an event two days back, and the highlight of the launch, without a doubt, was not so much the physical features of the smartphone but its custom Android interface.

According to Pocket-lint, CEO Peter Chou confirmed that the new HTC Sense user interface "will be available on some other existing devices." This will give added capabilities such as an expanded Home screen with unique HTC widgets and tighter integration with social-networking tools like Twitter and Facebook. There's no word on which devices exactly will get this, but it's likely to be … Read more