rowing

It may have been fair to call Volition's first Saints Row game a Grand Theft Auto clone back in 2006, but since then the series has evolved into something that goes way beyond an attempt to emulate Rockstar Games' flagship franchise.

Saints Row has solidified its place in the gaming landscape by redefining what it means to be considered over the top. With Saints Row: The Third, Volition has presented its best chaos simulator to date.

The Saints have conquered their previous home city of Stilwater, and with the realization that their gang's brand has tremendous value, are now moving on to bigger and better things in the town of Steelport. Cops are the least of your worries here--it's the rival gangs you'll need to constantly deal with.… Read more

HOLLYWOOD, Calif.--Saint's Row: The Third, the new crime- and mayhem-based video game from THQ, was the centerpiece of a big premiere party and media event last week at Supperclub here, drawing a few B-list celebrities and serving up all the rail drinks the L.A. professional party crowd could stomach.

I came to the shindig hoping to give you more information than that, but the party had about as much to do with the criminal syndicate/gang violence-themed video game as it did the lingerie shop across The Walk of Fame. There were pole dancers. There were contortionists. … Read more

After five months at sea, British adventurer and environmental advocate Roz Savage made landfall this morning in Mauritius, completing her solo row across the Indian Ocean and becoming the first woman to row solo across the "big three": the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian.

Savage, 43, set off from Australia five months ago in her 23-foot rowboat. After rowing more than 4,000 miles, she arrived in Grand Baie, Mauritius, today.

In total, she has rowed about 15,000 miles and spent more than 500 days at sea. She completed the Atlantic row in 2005, and then went on … Read more

One of the features that Apple removed from OS X with the release of Lion is the Front Row feature, which allowed Macs to be used as media stations for viewing movies, photos, TV shows, and listening to music through a uniform full-screen media-browser interface. While Apple may have removed this feature from lack of use, a number of people have complained on the Apple Discussion Boards about it being missing from Lion. If you have used Front Row and are dissatisfied with it being missing in Lion, luckily there is a way to get it back.

First you will … Read more

Not too long ago Barnes & Noble added free Chess and Sudoko games to its Nook e-reader and now Amazon has followed suit with a couple of free Kindle games.

Amazon's games, Every Word and Shuffled Row, are word games that are sort of versions of single-player speed Scrabble. Though they're more brainy than action-oriented due to the sluggish nature of E-ink screens, both have timed modes that raise the level of intensity (you use the Kindle's built-in keyboard to input words).

To add the titles to your Kindle, you simply purchase them in the Kindle Store … Read more

PORTLAND, Ore.--After rowing solo across the Atlantic Ocean and a good stretch of the Pacific for more than 8,400 miles so far, Roz Savage is getting better at finding pleasure in it.

"I won't say that I positively enjoy it. It's more like enjoying not banging your head against a brick wall anymore," Savage said in a recent interview. "Some people love it out there on the ocean. I'm a land creature."

So what's a land creature like her doing in a place like that on a 23-foot row boat?

Partly, to challenge herself. But mostly, to inspire people to take better care of the planet. This week, the ocean rower and environmental campaigner is temporarily trading her boat for a much bigger one, the National Geographic Endeavour, where she will speak at an ocean-themed TED Prize conference in the Galapagos. Next week, if conditions are right, she plans to set off on the final leg of a three-stage trip in her attempt to become the first woman to row solo across the Pacific.

Savage admits she does not fit the description of your typical adventurer of old. As she puts it in her book "Rowing the Atlantic," she doesn't sport "a frost-encrusted beard," nor is she tall. She is just under 5'4" and blonde. Savage, 42, was born to Methodist preachers in Cheshire, England, and attended Oxford University, where she first took up rowing. For more than a decade, she worked as a management consultant and project manager. While she may not be a Shackleton or a Cook, she does have a name fitting of an explorer. (A student asked her during a recent visit to a San Francisco Bay Area school, "How did you come up with your stage name of Roz Savage?") … Read more

We've been hearing a few sneaky tips from folks within earshot of the Boston, Mass., set of "The Social Network," the Columbia Pictures movie about the contested origins of Facebook. This week, the film crew has been on the Charles River working on scenes in which Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the identical twins who had a lawsuit against Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, are depicted at a Harvard crew practice.

That Boston Globe report about the Harvard heavyweight crew team getting cast in the background? Not quite.

Ivy League athletic restrictions bar current athletes from being film extras, … Read more

Now, these are some guys you don't see at the average Silicon Valley hackathon: The Harvard heavyweight crew team is filming scenes for "The Social Network," according to a Boston Globe gossip column on Tuesday. Film crews have been on the Charles River in Boston recently, the column reports.

That's because two of the main characters in the juicy, David Fincher-directed tell-all about the origins of Facebook are Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, would-be social-network entrepreneurs who claimed that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg stole the code and business plan for their project, ConnectU. The identical twin Winklevosses … Read more

The power and features that make Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet the business world's standard can be daunting to new and infrequent users. EZ-Format for Excel makes Excel easy by separating data formatting, maintenance, and analysis tasks. It automates the task of formatting worksheets, enables improved, modifiable totaling, and simplifies common tasks such as splitting worksheets and applying row color. The program bundles the maker's EZ-Subtotal and EZ-Split add-ins as well, and it includes the functionality of the EZ-Stat statistical analysis software.

EZ-Format for Excel integrates seamlessly with Excel, appearing in the Add-Ins Ribbon on the Toolbar. An extensive … Read more