Are you ready for Brutal Legend?

(Credit: Brutal Gamer)

Get ready to have your faces melted, because Brutal Legend finally comes out today for XBox 360 and the PS3. To quote Jeff, the game is a "metal fan's absolute fantasy come true." It stars Jack Black as the voice of Eddie Riggs, a roadie for a metal band that must fight off metal-infused demons to save the world. Unfortunately, Jeff has some criticism about the game that might influence your buying decision.

Speaking of video games, though, it just so happens that Uncharted 2 also comes out today exclusive to Playstation 3, although it's already garnering excellent reviews from critics, including our own Dan Ackerman. The game is essentially the male-centric version of Tomb Raider, a take on the Indiana Jones adventure-style franchise. The antihero of the story, Nathan Drake, acts as a treasure hunter and art thief for hire, and it's up to you to navigate him across the world as he battles through firefights and explores virtually limitless environments that add to the overall realism of the game. Can't decide between Brutal Legend and Uncharted 2? Jeff's got your answer on today's show!

Jon Heder likes Raisinhill...isn't it time you did too?

(Credit: MySpace/Raisinhill)

Big congratulations goes out to Natali Del Conte for making onto Manolith's list of the 12 hottest geeky girls in tech! NDC joins the ranks of other Internet hotties like Jade Raymond, Jessica Chobot, Morgan Webb, and more, so be sure to take a peek at the list and let us know who YOU think is missing! Don't even think about nominating Wilson...he's booked solid for the next decade.

Finally, it's my turn to choose the Beck's Beer Semi-Weekly Audio Draft Pick! Today's band is Raisinhill, a couple of talented chums hailing from Redding, Conn., who play a modernized version of up-tempo jazz/rock fusion. The trio are all classically trained and use their wide range of talents to create their dancey jams.

We understand that today's generation probably isn't running to record stores to pick up jazz CDs, so we're hoping you'll keep an open mind with Raisinhill and appreciate their instrumental talents. Besides, any band endorsed by Mr. Belding, Ron Jeremy, and Napoleon Dynamite HAS to be pretty good. The songs of the day are called "Nameless" and "The Ridge." You can listen to both songs on their MySpace page. If you like what you hear, you can buy their self-titled album as well. Enjoy!

Today's guest on The 404 Podcast is The Paper Raincoat, a local band of the "experimental rock ambition" genre, as Jeff calls it. Amber Rubarth and Alex Wong have both garnered musical recognition for their individual acts, but only recently came together to form The Paper Raincoat. The release of their first EP, Safe in the Sound, ushered in an international fan following and an impressive list of accomplishments, including the iTunes Indie Artist Spotlight. We're very excited to have them in the studio with us today, and they come bearing instruments for a live acoustic show!

(Credit: The Paper Raincoat)

As we talk to more bands, we're starting to understand the long process of dreaming, writing, playing, and touring with your music in the current music business scene. With outlets like Facebook, Myspace, Last.FM, and many more, artists can easily cast a wide net over an audience that would normally require a major label contract to reach. We talk with The Paper Raincoat about the naming of the band, their recording process, their fantastic DIY album art, and their upcoming tour.

In case you haven't figured it out by now, there are a million places to stream their music live, but the best thing you can do to show your support is to preorder a CD. One-hundred percent of the preorder money will go to printing the record, and you can pick between three packages, the highest of which lands you a limited edition CD, two signed posters, a T-shirt, and a custom USB wristband drive with a personalized video "thank you" and exclusive video content from the band. In the meantime, you can also follow the band on Twitter, attend their CD release party at Joe's Pub in NYC, and download their brand new song, "Right Angles."

EPISODE 434

Dell has partnered with Nickelodeon and Whyville.net to give life to its latest version of the Mini10v. According to Dell, the kids' Netbook has been designed with safe computing, education, and entertainment in mind. At a glance, Dell is only trying to reach another market (children), but if you look a little closer, the Netbook may represent a change in the way the next generation of preteens and children will learn to socialize and develop their decision-making skills.

(Credit: Dell)

The Netbook comes with desktop animations which link to Whyville.net, a virtual world where kids of all ages chat, shop, and visit places in town that engage them in science, nutrition, art, and business activities.

One of the most interesting locations is the cafeteria, where Whyvillians can pick a food item, view its nutritional facts, and select a meal based on an educated decision. If their character eats more fattening, high-calorie items, the cartoon character will see the effects as it becomes fatter and unhealthy. Likewise, if the character doesn't eat enough, he will become frail and sickly. A lack of vitamin C will cause scurvy sores, and a lack of calcium will cause weak bones and a bandaged head. As a result, the child may be advised that his Whyvillian should see the Whyville nutritionist.

Adam Hirsch, COO of Mashable, joins the show today to talk about something that we thought would never happen: social networking for doing actual good in the world.

Adam before he descends into madness.

(Credit: Justin Yu/CNET)

Yeah, instead of flash mobs or sending NSFW pictures to your buddy, Adam has started the Summer of Social Good, which harnesses the power of social media to actually do some charity work in the world. You can donate a minimum of $10 to the organization, and it will split the donation evenly between The Humane Society, LIVESTRONG, Oxfam America, and WWF--not the World Wrestling Federation. We also chat a bit about the future of social networks, especially given the election of Barack Obama and the on-going Iranian election controversy. There is even a city in America that now asks for your Facebook log-in when you apply for a job in its government!

Also today, the iPhone 3G S launched this morning. It wasn't nearly as mad crazy as it was last year or for the original iPhone launch. Mostly, we think it's because there aren't that many new great features aside from faster speed, bigger capacity, and a faster processor. Also, we think that AT&T might have been a little too harsh with its upgrade policy. But if you really, really want the new iPhone 3G S and you have an older iPhone, check out YouRenew.com. For this week, it will buy your old cell phone and give you back some hard cash. Owners of the iPhone 3G 8GB can get $200!

Episode 33 of the Digital City, where we discuss Facebook's and Twitter's exploding traffic, Intel's billion-dollar fine, and some good and bad news for the video game industry. There are two versions of the show available now, the traditional audio stream, and our exciting, new video version -- check out both below.

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"Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" by the lovely Beyonce turns out to be Justin's ringtone. Find out how we found out on The 404 today. It's in the same vein of how we discovered about his obsession with Disney music and Alvin and the Chipmunks.

(Credit: Gizmodo)

On today's show we talk about video games, and no, Justin doesn't tune out. EA is pushing the iPhone/iPod touch platform pretty hard with releases of Madden NFL and the venerable Wolfenstein. We hopes it's the updated version and not the sprite-based classic Wolfenstein 3D, though killing Nazis on the subway train does sound like a lot of fun. Also in gaming news, a company called OnLive has announced a new "streaming video game service." Cool, except we don't want to wait two seconds for Chun-li to land a punch on Baraka.

(Credit: Gamespot)

Jeff flips out when the NHL announced it will stream hockey games live with multiple camera angles. Only catch is that it will cost you 20 BUCKS A DAY. In reference to our phone book story yesterday, "boxed water" is now in. Anyone ever hear about tap water? And FOX News has announced it will launch a new social network dedicated to "fair play and fair speech".

Win a chance to win a copy of Wheelman for the Xbox 360, starring Vin Diesel, if you enter our caption contest for this photo of our beloved Justin Yu. Feel free to make fun of his glasses, face, the Lexmark printer behind him, or that lumberjack flannel shirt. Funniest caption will get a copy of the video game and major props on the show.

Social-media company Moblyng is offering music fans a way to keep up to date with their favorite artists. That is, if their favorite artists are a part of the company's new Moblyze Me campaign.

Currently artists participating in the campaign include Metro Station, Lucy Schwartz, Black Tide, and Gym Class Heroes. Moblyng has added a "Moblyze Me" button to each of the artist's MySpace profiles. Once you click on the button for your favorite artist, content concerning that artist will be sent to your cell phone--provided you enter your number.

You'll be able to "moblyze" video, slide shows, links to an artist's ringtone store, tour dates, and news.

For certain artists, you'll be able to enter a customized WAP environment and access their IVR line. Yes, I had to look up both of those acronyms.

Moblyng plans to introduce more artists from "major and independent" record labels. While the bands currently on the list don't intrigue me, if implemented well this could be a useful service if you're really into a certain artist.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET Networks)

One of the cool features of the iPhone is its ability to handle photos in a way that allows you to flip through the images very easily or view them as a simple slide show. However, after a while it gets mundane.

For this reason, I was excited that Moblyng announced on Thursday its slide show application for the Apple iPhone. Being an amateur photographer, I decided to try it out. And it delivered!

Almost immediately I appreciated its improvement over the phone's built-in photo-managing tool. It was very easy to pick either existing photos or take new ones with the phone's camera to make a new slide show or add to an existing one.

The app offers five ways (themes) for you to run a slide show. One of the themes is called "Antique" that makes all images appear in black and white, which is really cool. You can also change the speed and choose different skins.

I didn't try sharing my slide shows with any social networks, as I don't have an account with either Friendster or MySpace, the two networks the app supports. However, when I tried to share it with a different phone number, the app crashed. I hope this will be fixed with later updates of the app.

Nonetheless, Moblyng Slide Shows is a very fun app, and best of all, it can be downloaded from the App Store for free. It's definitely worth a try. Other smartphones users can also try a similar app at Moblyng's mobile site: m.moblyng.com.

Together with the application, Moblyng also announced today that it received more than 1 million monthly unique visitors to its mobile site in September. This number is rather significant as the site was launched just a month earlier, in August.

(Credit: MySpace)

Last Friday, days before the official launch of the Google Android-based phone, the T-Mobile G1, MySpace announced the availability of its MySpace Mobile application for the phone.

The company said that the the app has been live for those who already have an Android phone and will be made "officially" available on Wednesday to all users when the device is launched.

The MySpace app for Android's features include:

* Instant photo uploading from Android to a MySpace profile

* Check out tour schedules on band profiles

* View and comment on photos, profiles, and bulletins

* Search and add new friends

* Send and read messages

* Update and view mood and status

The app is also integrated with Shazam, a music discovering engine that allows users to identify music and connect to the artist's MySpace page.

This is the third major platform that MySpace has developed applications for, apart from the Sidekick and the iPhone. The company says that it's currently developing a similar application for the Blackberry.