challenger

Everything was fine in Android-land until the Gingerbread update. Well, then again, "fine" might be a little strong.

I'd been through an original Motorola Droid, which was a nice little keyboard wrapped in a seriously slow-performing phone with a terrible camera and no end of software update woes.

I went from that to the Samsung Fascinate, wooed by its sleek looks, great camera, and big, beautiful screen. Sadly, the Fascinate was loaded down with carrier crapware, including the staggering inclusion of Bing instead of Google as the default system search. It was so crippled you couldn't … Read more

Minesweeper is right up there with solitaire as a classic time waster. But if you think you mastered Minesweeper in middle school, think again; Minefield 6D takes the popular strategy game and adds several more dimensions. Although it uses the same basic gameplay as traditional Minesweeper, it takes a while to wrap your head around it, and it will challenge you in a way that Minesweeper never has.

The game's interface is plain, looking quite similar to the original Minesweeper with a slightly different color scheme. Since we weren't sure exactly how Minefield 6D worked, we started with … Read more

This is episode 21 of CNET Roadside Assistance for Thursday, the 14th of July 2011, the show were the Car Tech guys take a moment to field your questions and listen to your comments. We tackle a Skoda question, Antuan's love affair with a 1st Generation Miata, mounting your Droid X, and debate who likes the convertible Nissan Murano.

• LOLcars (photos)

The White House hopes the application-developer community will answer its call for help in preventing sexual assault and dating violence.

Vice President Joe Biden and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced such a technology challenge to the development community today. Both have been advocates for the prevention of sexual assault and dating violence among young adults.

The challenge is part of the broader use of technology by the White House to get the public involved with larger government issues. White House Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra said there are 80 such challenges on the Web site Challenge.gov, … Read more

General Electric and five venture capital companies today said they will invest $63 million in 10 green-tech start-ups working in home energy, bringing them both money and credibility.

GE will also give five $100,000 grants to less-developed companies creating products around household energy efficiency and solar power. The three areas of investment are solar, communications and software, and energy efficiency, said Ecomagination Challenge director Tore Land.

The funding is part of GE's $200 million Ecomagination Challenge program launched last year to solicit ideas to improve the electric grid. GE and its venture capital partners invested in smart-grid and … Read more

A Virginia Tech University engineering team on Thursday won first place in the EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge with an 82-mile-per-gallon, extended-range electric vehicle (EREV) using E85 (ethanol).

The results of the three-year EcoCAR competition were announced on L'Enfant Plaza, in Washington, D.C. United States Secretary of Energy Steven Chu congratulated the team at an award ceremony. A total of 16 teams participated in the competition that was co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors (GM).

A student team from Ohio State University took second place with an E85 EREV. Third place went to a … Read more

Every now and then we find amusing details in OS X that Apple's programmers have included in the OS. One that we discussed a while ago was the letter to someone named "Kate" from "John Appleseed" that praising the Apple community and Mac users that is in the TextEdit icon, but there are others in other locations of the OS. Take a look at the following text to see if you can locate it somewhere in OS X:

A fatal exception 0E has occurred at 00:28:C0011E36 in VXD VMMM(01) . 00010E36. The current … Read more

T-Mobile "Under $80 Challenge" Sweepstakes

Official Sweepstakes Rules

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. MUST BE LEGAL RESIDENT OF ONE OF THE 50 UNITED STATES OR D.C., 18 YEARS OF AGE AND OLDER AND AGE OF MAJORITY IN YOUR STATE OF RESIDENCE AT DATE OF ENTRY INTO SWEEPSTAKES. VOID IN PUERTO RICO, ALL U.S. TERRITORIES AND POSSESSIONS AND WHERE PROHIBITED BY LAW.

Sponsor, Administrator & Prize Provider: CBS Interactive Inc. ("CBSI"), 1401 W. Cypress Creek Road, Suite 200, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33309

Sweepstakes Entities: CBSI and T-Mobile USA, Inc., 12920 SE 38th Street, … Read more

A group of students is preparing to launch an autonomous boat that will sail more than 3,000 miles across the Atlantic from Rhode Island to Spain in what it calls the first robo-boat crossing of its kind.

Built by four college students in the U.S. and Spain, Scout is an 8-foot-long propeller-driven foam shell coated with carbon fiber and Kevlar to withstand punishing conditions at sea.

Run by microcontrollers, it's equipped with a GPS system and digital compass for navigation and tracking as well as a solar-powered battery system that can operate the craft for at least … Read more