gun

Before we get into today's Cyber Monday madness, we're taking a moment to pay tribute to Leslie Nielsen, who passed away yesterday at age 84 from pneumonia complications. His repertoire includes some of our favorites, like the "Naked Gun" series and of course "Airplane"--RIP to one of the most influential comedians of our time.

Today is Cyber Monday, the magical post-Thanksgiving day when online stores slash their virtual prices to give shoppers a hint of what happened in person on Black Friday.

According to Coremetrics, online sales on Black Friday went up 15.9 percent from last year, thanks to social-networking Web sites spreading the instant word on shopping tips and real-time inventory updates. The company also noticed a rise in "surgical shopping," with people focusing on specific products instead of randomly browsing.

Check out CNET's Cyber Monday Gift Guide to stay updated on today's best deals, including $89 Amazon Kindle e-Readers, console and computer games starting at 90 cents, and more.

Wilson also surprises us with a 4Loko that he picked up this morning for breakfast. The FDA actually banned all eight flavors as of this week after several kids died from alcohol poisoning, also called the Four Loko "aftereffects." Think we're kidding? Check out what happens to the dude who goes on a 24-hour Four Loko Diet.

Plenty of voice mails to play today, with special thanks to Blake Stevenson for making us this poster featuring MC TerrorByte and the Yu Tang Clan! Blake became the unofficial 404 artist after winning our 404 logo competition, so be sure to add him on Twitter and fan him up on Facebook!

Does gaming, some wonder, turn teens into psychopaths? Or are all teens, perhaps, just a little bit, you know, someplace else?

During my regular reading of the journal Pediatrics, I happened to come across a study that sought to begin to answer some of these torrid questions.

Researchers at Yale decided that it was about time someone tried to establish concrete data around the notion that gaming affects (or doesn't) the growing mind in a stunting kind of way.

So they anonymously surveyed more than 4,000 teens and asked them about their gaming habits and other aspects of … Read more

Tune in this week to get a glimpse at the biggest iPhone you've ever seen, as well as a sun-demanding keyboard that may scare away gamers but lures Donald with promises of UV-ray disinfection. Also on deck: an old-fashioned camera fitting of shelf space at the fictional Hipster Depot; some "Tron" wallpaper that won't scare away girls quite as quickly as satin black sheets (according to Jasmine, anyway); and a lamp concept the NRA is sure to get behind. Plus, we get up close and personal with an itty-bitty boombox and speak our piece on some cheapo but neato Star Wars earbuds. Finally, don't miss out on the ooey, gooey orange cheesy dish that's clogging arteries this week. (Also: Go Giants!)

Aftermath is a challenging, top-down, zombie-themed arcade shooter with innovative dual-stick controls and a dread-inducing atmosphere.

Similar to other dual-stick shooters, you move around and fire with two touch-screen virtual joysticks, one under each thumb. What Aftermath does differently (and which greatly contributes to the game's tense, anxious feel) is that the left joystick controls movement while the right joystick just turns you left and right, letting you light up the otherwise dark, urban terrain with your handheld flashlight--and automatically using the weapon you're holding to "light up" any zombies in the field of your flashlight. … Read more

If you've been checking out the most popular list at the iTunes App Store recently, you might have noticed that a new game has reached the top of the charts--even unseating the mega-popular Angry Birds. It's called Cut the Rope and it challenges you to feed candy to a hungry little monster named Om Nom by cutting various ropes to direct the candy to his waiting mouth. It's a little hard to describe here, so check out Rick Broida's coverage of Cut the Rope here.

Beating out Angry Birds at the top of the charts is no small feat (it's been sitting pretty there for months), so it got me thinking about what type of game reaches the top of the iTunes App Store.

It seems you must have polish--both games were obviously painstakingly produced. From the main characters down to the menus and even the design of the buttons, the whole experience captures the ambiance the developers are trying to convey making the game more immersive. Both games have extremely cute characters; each of the different birds are adorable in their anger, and the little green monster Om Nom couldn't be cuter when he opens wide for the candy. Both games have simple controls that can be played by anyone--this seems to be the biggest factor. Just about anyone from any age group can grasp the simple controls, but the games are still plenty challenging.

Finally, you need airtight audio, with little nuanced and silly additions like the muttering birds in Angry Birds, or the sigh of sadness when the candy misses Om Nom's mouth. Judging from these games' success, it seems as though the combination of these ingredients casts the widest net for capturing most iPhone gamers' hearts.

So what will the next big iPhone game be? My bet is \it will include all of these ingredients. You can be sure there are developers working right now to capture that perfect combination that makes a hit at the App Store. The only question is, what's the next big hit?

This week's apps include a cloud-synced to-do list manager and an excellent sequel to one of the best first-person shooters on the iPhone.… Read more

MadMaks is a promising robot-combat arcade game with chunky old-school graphics, fun controls, and a short solo campaign.

You start the game controlling a maneuverable but relatively wimpy tank--a "Frogamo Mak"--and you can opt for good accelerometer controls (tilting left and right to steer, and forward and back to move) or a somewhat clunkier virtual directional-pad. You change weapons and shoot using touch-screen buttons, as you travel across a 3D sandbox terrain, destroying and defending various targets (all as cute as your Mak, with similar cartoony eyes) to accomplish varying objectives over 10 unlockable levels. As you … Read more

To some Americans, guns don't exist in order to kill other people, they exist as an expression of freedom.

Nothing explains this better than the news that hunters in Oregon have been using Google for target practice. Let me be clear, I have no firm knowledge that they know their targets belong to those heady liberals from the Bay Area. However, who could not conjecture whether the reported shooting of Google's fiber across this fair state may have something to do with political freedom?

According to IT News, Google has been driven underground by the highly accurate shooting … Read more

On today's show, apparently someone left the God particle in a bar or something, it's always sunny in Chile, and how to be "that guy" by bringing your 27-inch monitor to a coffee shop. Oh, and Isaiah Mustafa, otherwise known as the Old Spice guy, is now making custom videos for Twitter people. Without his shirt, of course. Thank goodness.

Mere weeks after the Guitar Hero series finally made its way onto the iPhone, UltimateGuitar.com has a fresh competitor for the popular rhythm game. The guitar enthusiast Web site just launched Slash Arcade Rocker, and as the name suggests, the game requires a love for Slash and his music.

As a fan of pretty much any rhythm game on any in-house video game system, I jumped at the chance to try out Slash Arcade Rocker slightly ahead of schedule. Although I haven't had any hands-on time with Guitar Hero for the iPhone, I can say based on the … Read more