parties

Wii Preview: Super Paper Mario, Mario Party 8, and Mario Woods. Tiger! Er, Tiger Woods.

Nintendo threw a little shindig last night, and I went to sample the company's upcoming wares. The games Nintendo showed off included Super Paper Mario, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07, and Mario Party 8. Frankly, all three games look darn good.

I spent the most time on Super Paper Mario, sequel to the excellent GameCube RPG Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, and it's even weirder than its predecessor. Unlike the straight role-playing in previous Paper Mario games, Super Paper Mario is a puzzle-filled platform game with some loose RPG elements. The titular 2D plumber gets the power to … Read more

Foonz: Free conference bridge for consumers

Here's a handy tool for close groups of friends and for families: Foonz, a free conference call service.

On the Foonz Web site, you set up your calling groups. For each name, enter a cell phone number or an IM address (or both). Place your contacts in groups (e.g., "Beer buddies," and so on) and when you want to talk to everybody in a group at once, you call the Foonz service and select one of your groups from voice prompts.

Foonz then sends SMS or IM messages containing dial-in numbers to your contacts. People calling … Read more

Hey Readers: Tell us your Super Bowl party gadget picks

With Super Bowl Sunday just days away, plenty of tech blogs are highlighting the party gadgetry that they're recommending for the big event. Here at Crave, we're going to ask you: what are your recommendations for the ultimate Super Bowl party gadget? You can go with the obvious (um, an HDTV), the supplementary (a margarita mixer), or the downright ridiculous (does anybody out there make a Peyton Manning USB bobblehead?) Yes, it has to be a real gadget. Leave your picks in the comments.

We'll post your suggestions on Friday, so that you can spend Saturday waiting … Read more

MyStrands updates, adds party hosting features, Napster integration

MyStrands provides event goers with an easy way to interact with their surroundings using their mobile phones. The derivative of PartyStrands got a substantial update this week. The service (which we covered in November) has rolled out a few new tools for users to host similar features in their own homes.

MyStrands now lets you pull from Napster's music library to host music for parties. Users can browse through Napster tracks using the MyStrands app and play any full song for free up to three times, without actually having to use Napster. There's also an indie-artist radio player, … Read more

Das ist ein Wunderbar!

(NOTE: Yes, I am aware that this post's headline probably makes no sense.)

By now, it's clear that "user-generated content" is going to be one of the big tech buzz-phrases of 2006. Most of the time, it refers to the antics of AJAX-filled Web apps with cutesy names and cutesier logos, or to grainy YouTube videos of kids breaking TV screens with Wiimotes. But clearly, user-generated content goes beyond the series of tubes and into other niches of 21st-century lifestyle. Boozing, for example. A while ago, we wrote about the WinePod, which lets oenophiles with a … Read more

Zoodango: all too literal social networking

Just what you were looking for: another social networking site! If you've tired of the purely social scene that is Facebook or MySpace, LinkedIn is just too buttoned down for you, and you want your social networking to happen in the real world, then welcome to Zoodango. (Ok, first things first: Zoodango?)

The deal with Zoodango is it will attempt to combine the over-sharing personal elements of MySpace or Facebook ("lifestyle information"), the impressive-credential listing and resume jargon ("professional information") of LinkedIn, and the time-honored coffee-shop get-together. Yes, Zoodango has a fairly novel approach to … Read more

Planypus, a good service for organizing outings

Planypus is a new service that lets you set up a group event or outing without knowing all the details. For example, you can create a "Drinks tonight" plan and send it to a bunch of friends with several different places and times to meet. Your friends pick the options that work for them. You, as the organizer, select the one combination that's best for the group (or for you, depending), and when you press Finalize, everybody gets an update with the plans, which they can import into their calendars.

It's the social counterpart to the … Read more

How to throw a Kim Jong Il Party

It's been all over the news and blogs today. Rather than launching a preemptive strike against North Korea (unless that's their next step), the U.S. government has decided to hit Kim Jong Il where it really hurts: they're cutting off his party-toy and gadget supply. Now that's a major ouch.

Of greater interest to tech-loving Crave readers, however may be the extensive list of Kim Jong Il's luxury preferences listed in the original Associated Press story. This is one dictator who really knows how to get the party started. In fact, I'm guessing … Read more

Party time: Wired opens gadget store

So here's the deal: Wired magazine has handpicked its choices for the hottest gadgetry of the 2006 holiday season, rented out a cool space in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood (the same space where Sony held its PlayStation 3 press preview a few weeks ago), and filled it with those gadgets--which ranged from a $19.95 Zero Blaster toy gun to an Infiniti G35 sport sedan.

Plus, Wired's publicity crew threw a reception Thursday night so that members of the press could check out the selection and enjoy refreshments courtesy of Budweiser and Yellow Tail. Here are a few … Read more