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CBS recently crossed into a new fan frontier with its first-ever booth and extensive presence at Comic-Con. For the uninitiated, Comic-Con is a wildly popular comic-book convention that's been drawing huge crowds for decades. In recent years, the four-day consumer event in San Diego has broadened its offering to also include horror, sci-fi, movies, television, and online entertainment.

People from everywhere flock to see the coolest comics and costumes, to sample movie and TV previews, to snag exclusive giveaways, and to get a glimpse of their favorite stars. Attendees are passionate entertainment lovers in the truest sense: they spend … Read more

If you were hoping that the right software could make you smarter, you may be out of luck.

Brain training software, such as Nintendo's Brain Age, are often touted as a way to improve your smarts. But 11,430 people who played such games for several weeks didn't seem to be any brighter at the end, according to the results of a study conducted by the BBC and released Tuesday.

The investigation launched by the BBC last September challenged viewers of the BBC One science TV show "Bang Goes the Theory" to use a series of … Read more

DETROIT--At the 2010 Detroit auto show, we got a hands-on, and ears-on, demonstration of the 2011 Audi A8. As the A8 is Audi's flagship luxury sedan, it showcases the company's latest technologies. This latest model uses a touchpad for character recognition, making destination input much easier, gets an updated Bang & Olufsen audio system that reproduces music with near perfect staging, and later this year will also feature a UMTS data connection for Google map searches.

Audi has been steadily updating its Multimedia Interface (MMI) over the years, and introduced a third-generation MMI last year. Although Audi still … Read more

Looking to break away from the standard rules of laptop design, Asus has teamed with a subsidiary of Danish consumer electronics maker Bang & Olufsen (called Bang & Olufsen ICEpower) to create a multimedia system with some pretty unique features.

Designed by award-winning B&O chief designer David Lewis, through his David Lewis Designers studio, the Asus NX90 features a polished aluminum exterior and palm rest, contrasting nicely with a matte-black keyboard and twin touch pads.

If you're scratching your head at that last detail, the NX90 actually has two separate touch pads, and neither one is located in the traditional wrist rest location. Instead, the twin touch pads are situated on either side of the keyboard, representing another break from the typical laptop.

Of his design, Lewis says, "The customer wants a bigger laptop good enough to enter the living room and take the central position. The user cares about what he has in his house and does want to have quality items. Also, he may not be afraid to stand out a little from the crowd."

The concept is that you would use the two touch pads, one with each hand, to control the laptop in new ways. Asus says the touch pads "provide users with an intuitive DJ-like control," and work with Microsoft's Windows 7 multitouch gesture controls. Asus has a software suite it calls Rotation Desktop Control, which provides two-handed control for music and other media. … Read more

We have a very special guest this week, Mr. Jeff Sparkman. Jeff gained notoriety previously by being named CNET's nerdiest employee. Soon after, it was a fast life of drugs, women, and comic books. We discuss at least one of those subjects with him.

Also in this episode, we talk about fighting with the Vulcan nerve pinch, Dong getting beat up by a girl, and Eric crying like a baby while watching "The Lord of the Rings."

Tech this week, we take a look at Lucid's soon-to-be-released tech. Also, Dong schools us on using Windows Media … Read more

Last year I reported on the Lucid Hydra 100. For details on what Hydra is and how it works, check that post.

This week Lucid is announcing an upgraded solution, the Hydra 200. Hydra allows two video cards to simultaneously be used in a single system.

Before clicking the Back button, yes I know Nvidia and ATI have been doing this for years with their SLI and Crossfire solutions, respectively.

The twist here is that the Lucid technology will allow you to mix and match both ATI and Nvidia cards. According to Lucid, you'll even be able to use … Read more

We're back live! Or as live as we ever get, which is about three days old actually. So, yeah, LIVE!

First off, we get into an impromptu conversation about Bing, the past tense of Bing and how such tense is rife with comic possibilities. What follows is our attempt to exploit this.

After that, we discuss the movie "Idiocracy." I finally got a chance to see it and promptly perched myself upon my soapbox. That's fair warning to you and your loved ones.

For technology this week, we're all over Windows 7 64-bit. Dong holds … Read more