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If you've played Persuasive Games' past titles such as Bacteria Salad, Oil God, or Airport Security, chances are you'll get the idea behind its latest Flash diversion, Xtreme Xmas Shopping. On the surface, you play a shopper with a demanding wish list to satisfy. If an item on your list runs out of stock before you can purchase it, you lose, presumably having ruined Christmas. As with most of Persuasive Games' titles, though, Xtreme Xmas Shopping attempts to engage players in thinking about a broader social issue--in this case, rabid holiday consumerism--in a participatory kind of way.

While … Read more

There are some pretty lame ripoffs, spinoffs and ostensible updates of the classic Swiss army knife on the market, but this isn't one of them. The "Cyber Snipa Dog Tag" combines the most essential of the knife's features--including our personal favorite, the scissors--with 21st century elements such as an ultra-bright LED flashlight and a removable 512MB USB drive, according to Slashgear. (Why a USB key? We have no idea, but we've already demonstrated a demand for them in rugged terrain.) All this in a package that capitalizes on the dog tag trend.

Like the Onion's Jackie Harvey, we incorrectly referred to AMD's quad-core desktop platform as " Socket 4x4" when we first learned about it, mostly because we couldn't get confirmation of the name of the thing during the investor phone conference in which it was announced. Our bad on that. But with AMD's unveiling today of Quad FX, aka simply "4x4," we can finally address the whole package with a little more clarity.

Aimed strictly at PC enthusiasts, AMD's answer to the Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 is a bit more convoluted than … Read more

We've known for a while that Sony was going to be updating the firmware on the PSP, so its handheld game console could link better with the PS3 and play downloadable PSone titles. Well, that day has finally arrived, and here's the message you get when you actually go to download the update:

"This update includes the following changes: > Revisions to strengthen security have been added. > Playstation Network titles are now supported under [Game]. > [Remote Play] has been added as a feature under [Network]. > [Online Instruction Manuals] has been added as a feature … Read more

If you've ever tried to build your own desktop, you know that matching all of the parts can be a tricky proposition. Building a PC with a pair of high-end 3D cards presents an even greater challenge, what with ensuring you have enough power, a compatible motherboard, etc. If you know what you're doing, you can go on over to NewEgg, ZipZoomFly, or elsewhere (even CNET) and hunt around for the right components, but that still involves a lot of rooting through search results. Enter the SLI Marketplace, a new section on Nvidia's SLI Zone Web page … Read more

It may not quite qualify as a new low in tech-blog posting, but gaming blog Kotaku has linked to a Flickr photo of a cat to scale with the Wii, the Xbox 360, and the PS3. Well, a little inside information for you: that cat belongs to none other than CNET Senior Editor Dan Ackerman, and those are his game consoles--or actually, his wife's (she's a gaming journalist).

Ackerman says the cat's name is Nano, because "he was small when we got him," but he's thinking of changing the cat's name to Zune … Read more

Snapping digital pictures while snorkeling has been a reality for some time with underwater casings for cameras, but what about being able to listen to music while surfing?

H2 Audio has made underwater casings for the iPod available for $90 from Jack's Surfboards.com or directly from H2 Audio. That's pretty reasonable considering an underwater casing for a point and shoot camera starts at around $200.

The H2 Audio casings (Click here for CNET review) come in sizes for the iPod video, the Nano, the original Shuffle, the iPod mini and the iPod 4G. H2 Audio does not … Read more

We're not sure if Alienware's decision to offer Phantom Entertainment's Lapboard gives the home theater PC input mash-up any credibility, but it definitely means that Phantom Entertainment, nee Infinium Labs, has remarkable staying power.

In brief, way back in 2004, Phantom Entertainment/Infinium Labs announced a Phantom Console designed to bring PC gaming to the living room by pairing it with an online delivery service. Infinium even got so far as to lure former Xbox co-creator Kevin Bachus into its ranks as CEO. Then reports surfaced questioning the legitimacy of the company. The console never materialized, Bachus quit, … Read more

While the general public has taken kindly to the Xbox 360's dashboard, nothing inspires change more than last-minute panic. Perhaps sensing big things on the way from the Sony PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft has an pretty hefty UI update (85 new features) ready to deploy today.

The biggest new feature on the way is the addition of the ability to output 1080p--we'll have to fish out our VGA adaptor to test this when it hits, as most HDTVs can't output 1080p via component. Besides providing a higher output for games, the Xbox 360 will … Read more