2k

Ten years after Y2K, the folks over at Sony still can't seem to remember to set their clocks right. The major firmware bug that shut down (almost) everyone's PlayStation 3s over the weekend turned out to a glitch in the "clock functionality incorporated in the system," according to Patrick Seybold, Sony's senior director of corporate communications and social media.

Despite the company's claims that the glitch has been fixed, we're still harboring some serious doubts that Sony did anything to fix it and probably just waited until March 1 in hopes that the bug would fix itself, which thankfully it did. So go ahead and stop caressing your consoles and return the drums of apple sauce you bought to survive the Armageddon, and...turns out the Mayan calendar ended two years earlier, and much less severely than predicted.

In less serious news, a new iPhone app called TigerText will hopefully help you succeed where Tiger failed. The application acts as a third-party call center for your text messages and erases your texts after a given period of time that you specify. Your options for lifespan go from 30 days all the way down to just one minute, depending on the NSFW-ness of your texts.

Both parties must pay for the service ($2.49 per month), and the app is only available for the iPhone for now (BlackBerry and Android support coming soon), but that's a small price to pay for the freedom to send those "Hey...you awake?" texts at 3 a.m. on a Saturday night.

Finally, we're happy to report that despite accusations of child labor abuse, Wilson G. Tang is still happily riding the Apple train, except that this time we're actually right there with him.

Apple recently released a report that exposed three facilities in China that employed underage workers to build its products. Apple subsequently terminated all of its contracts with that factory, but certain outlets continues to blow the story out of proportion, when in fact Apple independently investigated a situation that they had no legal responsibility to address, which deserves commendation in our book. You win this round, Tang...

All this plus a face-melting psychoanalysis Calls From the Public segment you won't want to miss on today's episode of CNET's The 404 Podcast!

Every couple of times a season, it seems, we're due for another well-crafted downloadable indie gaming sensation on either Xbox Live Arcade, PSN or Nintendo's WiiWare. Last year saw quite a few memorable download-only games, many of them inventive and weird enough to simply be unbankable as a disc-based release. The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom is just such a game, available now on Xbox Live Arcade for the MS Points equivalent of $10.

Long discussed at indie gaming events such as GDC, the Odd Gentlemen-developed game has been published by 2K Games, makers of normally far more … Read more

This week on preGAME, we're joined by CNET editor Scott Stein as we jump into a LIVE demo of Heavy Rain for PlayStation 3 a whole two weeks before the game hits stores! Joining us over the phone to talk us through the demo is Petro Piaseckyj, the game's managing producer.

Before we fire up our Heavy Rain demo, we discuss the reputation dogging movies adapted from video games. We thought the Prince of Persia Super Bowl ad looked decent, but we remain skeptical.

Want a first look at the new Fallout game? We've got the brand new trailer for Fallout: New Vegas. Watch with us as we examine it live!

Want to be a part of our live taping? Make sure you head to http://cnet.com/live/pregame every Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern. If you missed any of the stories we talk about on today's preGAME, make sure to check out our links below.

As any real baseball fan knows, there is a very small group of accomplishments that are held above all others as the rarest in the game, and therefore worthy of being remembered forever.

A no-hitter is rare, indeed, but not in that group. Neither is hitting for the cycle. On the other hand, there's the unassisted triple play. Just 15 players have turned one in in the entire history of the game. And hitting four home runs in a single game. That's been done by just 15 sluggers.

Then there's the perfect game. This extreme rarity, in … Read more

Film critics have decried the disease of sequel-itis since the Hollywood blockbuster era began more than 30 years ago. They bemoan the lack of originality, the reliance on popular themes and characters, and the sheeplike masses who flock to repeated installments of their favorite franchises. Video games have been onboard with the idea of sequels almost from the very start (remember Ms. Pac-Man?), but the idea of creating cash-generating franchises has taken on new importance in an increasingly hit-driven environment.

So, it's only natural for some industry watchers to bemoan the likes of Mass Effect 2, Halo 3, BioShock 2, Assassin's Creed 2, and others. But, judging from recent experience, the real problem is not that these games share too much with movie sequels, it's that they're not enough alike.

Having played nearly every notable recent and upcoming video game sequel, it's clear that the hubris of game developers and publishers is having a potentially audience-sapping effect--their unquestioned assumption is that you not only played the original game a new sequel is based on, but also finished it, and can clearly remember every plot twist up to two years later. This blindness to anything but the uber-fan audience is a disservice to the very mainstream game buyers who keep the entire industry afloat. … Read more

DualAlign's I2K Quickage Pro provides the tools for stitching together several similar pictures to create a photomontage. This surprising program performed its tasks with excellent results.

The program's interface has a professional layout that is simple to operate, since it only offers the most minimal options throughout. We did need the Help file to understand our panorama options, however. We easily sorted through our collection of photos and selected a few that were very similar, with both images focused on the same subject but taken from slightly different perspectives. The program was slow to stitch together even two … Read more

With the NBA season in full swing, we thought we'd take a moment to check out this year's offering of digital hoops games, which really boils down to 2K Sports' NBA 2K10 vs. EA Sports' NBA Live 10.

Last year, the contest wasn't even close, with 2K9 trouncing Live in a blowout that made it easy to choose which game to buy. However, this year EA Sports' Canada-based development team delivered a much more compelling game. At the same time, while 2K10's developer Visual Concepts has definitely made some improvements, including a new My Player mode and the usual upgrades to player models and animations, this year's installment hasn't introduced anything truly eye-opening. The net-net is you have two solid games that are hard to choose between.

Here's the skinny: … Read more

One of the first applications built to find and remove malware and spyware, Ad-Aware's reputation is well-justified. The latest version continues the publisher's tradition of adroitly addressing user concerns, but isn't yet perfect.

Building on the improvements made in version 8, former Ad-Aware users should be glad to hear that the program installs faster than it used to. Without a doubt, though, this version of Ad-Aware improves greatly on what has come before. It loads faster during your boot cycle, and scans are faster. Empirical tests noted that while the Quick Scan finished in less than 10 … Read more

Even the most wired among us still need to send "snail mail," and a good addressing program can help. Home Plan Software's Easy Mail fits the bill. It won't actually write your letters for you, but it will handle virtually all of your paper correspondence tasks, including composing, printing, and addressing. Professional-looking labels, letters, and envelopes of all sizes are a breeze to print. It will even fax documents and import address book information.

Easy Mail's 30-day trial version is fully functional; registering removes the nag screen. At a mere 1.26MB, it downloads and … Read more