legends

Fair warning: reading the title of today's show should be an easy goal to achieve, but this morning's 404 podcast preshow had us all so shaken up we skipped the entire intro altogether. Three grown men squealing about creepy crawlers is a pathetic sight to see, but luckily Mark Licea hops into the studio and gently ushers us back into adulthood. And while we're on the subject of adults, don't fast-forward through our story about a surprisingly coherent drunk e-mail we received from Molly Wood last night. Got a funny drunk text story? Leave us a voicemail at 1-866-404-CNET and tell us about it!

One week ago, Sarah Killen's life painted a picture of the typical Twitter user: a couple of mundane posts a day about morning coffee, Oscar commentary, and her love for peanut butter and gummy dinosaurs. All that changed last Friday when she became the first person to get "followed" by former "Tonight Show" host Conan O'Brien. Conan has more than a half million followers but never followed anyone back; so how did the Lovely Button catch his eye? And how many gummy dinosaurs do we have to eat before we get some love?

We've all eaten our fair share of trashy food, but swallowing a whole USB key might be a little challenging. Florin Necula got into some trouble with the Secret Service, who suspected him of using card readers to steal money from ATM machines. When confronted about the crimes, Florin had no choice but to consume his Kingston USB flash drive that contained incriminating evidence against him. Even more miraculous is that the feds were able to extract the key from his body, intact and still readable! We have our suggestions for what he should have done with the stick, but maybe we'll save that for Thursday.

Plenty of owl-related voice mails as well as a quick discussion on the future of 3D in the home on today's episode of CNET's The 404 Podcast. Thanks for listening!

Today's episode of The 404 Podcast deals with a lot of movies, which makes sense after last night's utterly forgettable Academy Awards ceremony, or so Wilson claims, because he forgot to watch.

The awards committee certainly wasn't lacking a sense of irony after selecting Sandra Bullock for the best female performance in "The Blind Side." The actress also won the Razzie for worst female actor in "All About Steve." Audience members were also surprised to see "Avatar" lose the best picture award to "The Hurt Locker," despite the questionable activity of one of its producers prior to the event. It's also interesting to note how the same movies in the best picture category ranked on BitTorrent, with "District 9" earning the most at more than 12 million downloads since its DVD-quality release last September.

Tim Burton's adaption of "Alice in Wonderland" came out last weekend, and Jeff went to check it out with his fiancee, who festively dressed up as Alice for the showing. Don't get your hopes up though; Jeff sadly left his White Rabbit costume at the dry cleaners. I won't spoil Jeff's personal review of the movie, but let's just say that 91 other movie-goers on Rotten Tomatoes agree with him.

No matter what you think of AIW, we can all agree that Zach Snyder's new movie "Legend of the Guardians" will win next year's Oscar for best comedy. Based on the novel "Guardians of Ga'Hoole," the teaser implies that the movie is about talking owls...fighting in the sky...wearing Elven face masks. Check out these screenshots and join us as we purchase advanced screening tickets live on the show.

All these stories plus some a near-expired batch of Calls From the Public and a news piece about your grandmother DJing Parisian nightclubs, all on today's episode of The 404!

With Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Metroid: Other M already on their way to the Wii console this year, it seems that Nintendo has a full release calendar ahead. But in a recent interview with Wired, published on Thursday, Nintendo Vice President Cammie Dunaway said a new Legend of Zelda title for the Wii might also be released this year.

Dunaway said Nintendo's release calendar for 2010 is "night and day," when compared to its releases in the first half of 2009. "And from some of the things that (Nintendo chief Satoru) Iwata has talked about, … Read more

One handset we've yet to really tackle on Android Atlas is the forthcoming HTC Incredible. Designed like the Nexus One, the Incredible boasts a 3.7-inch display, 256MB RAM, an optical trackpad, and Android 2.1 with HTC's Sense UI. The screen is said to be "very vibrant" and may be AMOLED, like the recently announced Desire and Legend.

The Incredible appears headed soon for Verizon. We've already seen it in the carrier's inventory system and handsets rarely appear there unless a release is around the corner. With CTIA coming up next month, perhaps … Read more

T-Mobile kicks off the second day of Mobile World Congress 2010 with the announcement that they'll be bringing the highly coveted HTC HD2 to the U.S. market. This Windows Mobile smartphone is equipped with a 4.3-inch WVGA multitouch screen, a 1 GHz Snapdragon processor, Wi-Fi, and plenty of other goodies like compatibility with Blockbuster's OnDemand video app, a Barnes & Noble eReader app, MobiTV, and six months of free in-flight Wi-Fi courtesy of Gogo Inflight Internet. T-Mobile says it expects to ship the HD2 in Spring 2010. T-Mobile also announced its plans to roll out HSPA+ … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--The HTC Legend is legen- ... wait for it, wait for it ... dary. Any "How I Met Your Mother" fans out there? No? OK, fine. What we're trying to say here is that the HTC Legend is pretty awesome.

Announced Tuesday morning at Mobile World Congress, the Legend is the next evolution of the HTC Hero and really brings some nice design improvements and enhancements to the HTC Sense user interface.

Though we had to run to another meeting after HTC's news conference, we stopped by its booth afterward for some brief hands-on time with the … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--On Tuesday, HTC announced three new smartphones at Mobile World Congress 2010: the HTC Legend, the HTC Desire, and the HTC HD Mini. The trio represents some of the first devices that really showcase the efforts of San Francisco-based design firm One & Co since it was acquired by HTC back in December 2008. In addition, they offer an enhanced Sense experience and expand HTC's Android and Windows Mobile offerings. Let's meet each of them, shall we?

HTC Desire Previously known as the HTC Bravo, the Desire is essentially the Nexus One with HTC Sense. The sleek … Read more

For some, the words "El Dorado" represent something magical, a place where untold riches and beauty are there for the taking.

For others, the words represent a much underrated album by the Electric Light Orchestra from 1974.

Still, it is the former that has interested historians, archaeologists, and greedy people for many centuries. There are many legends, some more plausible than others. Yet many seem to have located this wondrous place in Colombia.

But these speculators didn't have satellite technology, did they? So I was delighted, and only slightly skeptical, to read a New Yorker article that … Read more

While plenty of people are still readily awaiting a sequel to Mario Kart DS or New Super Mario Bros., it didn't take Nintendo much time at all to shoot off a follow-up to its 2007 Nintendo DS Zelda adventure, The Phantom Hourglass.

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, set 100 years after Phantom Hourglass and set in a very similar cell-shaded cartoonish universe, at first looks like it might be a pale shadow of the first touch-screen DS game, swapping out train travel for long boat voyages. We were a little surprised and skeptical when the game was first announced, especially since train travel sounds a lot more passive than sailing. After riding around with Link for a weekend, did our opinion change?

Scott: I admit, I was originally dubious about Zelda: Spirit Tracks' ability to be as good as its predecessor, Phantom Hourglass. However, to my pleasant surprise, Spirit Tracks is not only a true sequel to Phantom Hourglass, it's also equally good. In fact, in some ways it's even better.

To address first: the trains in this game are set on tracks that traverse a series of small towns and other locations, and pulling up at destinations is essentially the same as docking your boat in Phantom Hourglass. Actually, the train controls are a bit simpler to operate on the go. The rest of the game, including its focus on a central mega-dungeon that unlocks secrets throughout, is very reminiscent of the first DS Zelda. That's not so bad, though--we'd take more of Phantom Hourglass and less of many other crappy DS games any day of the week.

The storyline, which features evil trains, floating towers, and a floating Zelda spirit that helps haunt statues to do your bidding in co-op puzzle solving, is both bizarre and clever, and is closest to the N64 cult classic Majora's Mask in terms of how it feels thematically. Nintendo's greatest achievement is how it adopts charming dialogue and characters to sell us this absurd tale and not have it feel stale or stilted--it's what makes the Zelda games more approachable to a newcomer than some of Square Enix's numerous RPGs.

After a few hours of play, the train riding aspect fades into the background, and Spirit Tracks is about the things all Zelda games are about: finding small towns, unlocking side quests, getting weapons, conquering dungeon puzzles. It's as classic as any Zelda game before it.… Read more