extraction

Plenty of news to talk about, but first we recap our weekends. We all used the holiday weekend differently: Jeff sailed a boat (in the sun!) on the Potomac river; Wilson became the only Asian Agent Double Oh Nothing for Her Majesty's Secret Service, and I had the unfortunate experience of actually laboring at work on Labor Day. Hear all the juicy details on the first half of the show.

Next up, we talk about Google's latest product, a version of the popular Monopoly real estate game that uses Google Maps as a giant playing board! Turns out that this isn't the first role-playing game to incorporate the popular online mapping Web site: users found a way to play RISK using Google Maps when it first debuted in 2005!

Speaking of things to come, we always like taking a look into the future, so this week in time travel, we bring you Boondock Saints 2! Every male born after the year 1970 should be well aware of the original Boondock Saints, which featured two brothers on a mission to cleanse their city of scumbags--classic story, but something about the theatrical gunfights and archetypal characters made it into a cult classic. We're excited about the new one, even though it doesn't feature Willem Dafoe.

Finally, in typical Monday show fashion, we delve off into a trip down memory lane and rediscover our love for Beavis and Butthead, who recently made a short comeback to promote Mike Judge's latest film "Extract." Surprise! Wilson hates it. All that and more on today's episode of The 404!

If your in-box is burdened by too many e-mails, then lighten its load with this handy archiving add-on for Outlook.

Genie Archive for Outlook eases the configuration process by automatically launching a set-up wizard after installation is complete. The wizard leads the user through the simple step-by-step process of tweaking the tool to suit the user's needs, then closes and displays the Genie Archive for Outlook toolbar under Outlook's default toolbar. It steals some real estate, but the toolbar isn't cluttered, and its few buttons are essential items. This package performed very nicely during our tests. We … Read more

While unmanned air vehicles are putting pilots out of business, a new U.S. Army-funded robot could do the same for rescuers and stevedores.

The humanoid BEAR (Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot) can locate victims in a mine shaft, battlefield, toxic spill, or earthquake-damaged structure. And then it can lift them up and then carry them over long distances to safety, according to the manufacturer Vecna Robotics. And it does this without risking any more lives (PDF).

The challenge was to enhance search and rescue while reducing the time military, police, and emergency response personnel have to risk their lives each day. … Read more

Can't find a video file you watched months ago? Not to worry, this nifty little app makes recovering video or audio files from your cache a snap. However, its save function didn't work at all in our tests.

VideoCacheView is a free app that launches a small, one-pane window with a row of icons in a toolbar. It appears unassuming for a few moments, then--quick as a wink--it automatically fills its pane with a list of video and audio files it detects in your Web browser cache. This little app performed alright in our tests: it recovered video, … Read more

A1 Website Analyzer provides users with a way to see how a Web site operates, especially its HTML. Although the program takes a while to compile data, the impressive results are worth it.

This program is not a work of art by any stretch of the imagination thanks to tons of white space and tabs, but the navigation is intuitive. Some of the terminology used will only be familiar to those who have researched computers, so a trip to the Help file is a good idea for novices. The program's functionality was fairly simple, but very slow. Users input … Read more

Icons from File offers users an opportunity to fish through their computer and safely extract any icon imaginable. With a very simple design, this program's best feature is its focus.

This program has an incredibly simple interface that may be a little confusing on your first try and require a trip to the Help file to define what its sparse buttons do. While the program aims at making selecting the folder to search easy, some may be surprised to find several different methods for choosing what icon to extract, using everything from drag-and-drop to file trees. Icons from File … Read more

Who said PS3 and 360 owners get all the M-rated fun? The Wii-only prequel to EA's 2008 sci-fi/survival-horror epic, due September 29, is a shooter set on rails.

The minor quibbles we have with Free YouTube to MP3 Converter have nothing to do with its functionality. This effective freeware is ready to go right out of the box, but can be easily customized by the user.

No effort has been made to dress up the program's utilitarian interface, which consists of seven large buttons, a few fields, and a drop-down menu. A plain text box advises users to paste URLs in the field, and this is all the onscreen guidance you'll need. Once you see the video title in the field, you click Download and the … Read more

Converting PDFs to Word-compatible formats while not paying for the privilege nor getting scammed can feel a bit like herding cats. Free PDF to Word Doc Converter gets a few things wrong, but eventually will land you the DOC output you want.

Impressively, it offers one of the cleanest and most accurate free PDF-to-DOC conversions around. Users can change the output path and name, convert an entire document or just specific pages, and ditch images in the source PDF if need be. From there, it goes a bit downhill. The option to open the output DOC in WordPad didn't … Read more