Crave

(Credit: ESRB)

Straight from the No-Brainer Department comes a list of games that parents should not buy their children this holiday season. The New York Times has republished a collection of 10 titles deemed totally uncool for kids to play by the media watchdog group Common Sense Media.

While we're all for educating parents about the naughty video games their children want to play, we can't help but slap our foreheads at how obvious some of them are. Besides, all a responsible parent needs to do is stray away from the big fat "Rated M for Mature" logo on the box art of such titles.

We wouldn't disagree with any title on the list, but some of the suggested alternatives for these titles are a bit suspect. For example, replacing Modern Warfare 2 with Battlefield: Bad Company only brings the blood level down a bit--the war combat and violence are still present in Bad Company. We absolutely loved Uncharted 2, but there's plenty of gunplay and headshots in the T-rated blockbuster as well.

Ideally, we'd love to see parents become more involved in their child's gaming habits. The only way to make sure a game is right for the younger ones is to have Mom or Dad sit in on a few sessions.

Click over for the full Common Sense Media list of unfriendly titles along with their alternatives.... Read more

It's fair to say that so far Synology is the NAS maker with the fewest misses. Ever since the company joined the network storage arena in early 2008, it has earned three CNET Editors' Choice awards, with the newest one being the DS409Slim.

The new DS410j NAS server from Synology supports Time Machine.

(Credit: Synology)

Synology NAS servers offer a vast number of features; signature among those are the advanced surveillance system, sophisticated photo sharing/managing capability, and a robust user interface. And now Synolgoy has overcome one of its only former missteps: by adding support for Apple's Time Machine.

The company announced Wednesday the launch of its new four-bay NAS server, the DS410j. This new NAS server carries all the features of other Synolgoy NAS servers and, on top of that, support for Apple's popular backup solution. For the first time ever, Mac users can use Time Machine (available in Mac OS 10.5 and later) with a Synology NAS server. Currently, very few NAS servers on the market support this feature.

Beyond that update, according to Synology, the DS410j is designed for busy home networks and entry-level businesses. It can house four 3.5-inch SATA hard drives of up to 2TB each, making the total storage up to 8TB. Like other models, the DS410j supports multiple RAID configurations when used with two or more hard drives. It also comes with automated backup, remote file sharing, and multimedia streaming features and is fully DNLA-compliant.

The DS410j is available now both with and without hard drives. Its price varies depending on the configuration; however, like other Synogloy NAS servers, it will not be cheap. It seems that affordability is something that Synolgoy will continue to miss for a while.

Doom Classic brings the ancient, pixelated first-person shooter to the iPhone.

Welcome to today's episode of Recycling Old PC Games for Fun and Profit. Our first contestant: Doom Classic, the first-person shooter that spawned a thousand imitators, several hundred ports, and one horrendous movie.

Next up: Command & Conquer Red Alert, the real-time strategy classic responsible for a massive drop in global productivity.

In my youth I was a tremendous fan of both games, so it stands to reason that I'd welcome them to my iPhone. However, neither is getting a permanent home.

Let's start with Doom. While id Software's official port offers a pixel-perfect recreation, the game is 16 years old--and it shows.

Indeed, juxtaposed with Doom Resurrection, a made-for-iPhone game with 21st century graphics, Doom Classic looks positively ancient. It plays that way, too: You can't even jump.

Part of this is personal bias: I don't think FPS games work well on small screens, especially when touch controls are involved. For me, Doom Classic feels cramped, confined, and seriously out of date.

Adobe Systems released the first Lightroom 3.0 beta only last week, but already people are adapting the software for their own ends. In Sean McCormack's case, time-lapse video.

Time-lapse photography, for those unfamiliar with it, compresses a sequence of still images into a movie that appears to speed up the passage of time. It's how nature documentaries get those clouds scudding over the mountains and the sun racing across the sky.

Most of us use just a small fraction of what our software can do, but McCormack is one of those people at the other end of the spectrum who figures out how to push software well beyond the built-in feature set. In Lightroom's case he took advantage of its ability to export a sequence of shots as a video, a feature designed to let photographers create easily shared slideshows.

"I'll give you two guesses as to this product's identity. Is it the Base Station or Time Capsule? Only the astute among you will know for sure.

(Credit: Apple)

Along with the major Apple announcements that took place Tuesday, Apple also--quite stealthily, I might add--announced upgraded performance, specs, and support for both its Time Capsule and Airport Extreme Base Station.

Time Capsule received the most updates, with Apple claiming that with the new technologies and refinements added to both Time Capsule and the Time Machine software, backing up using Snow Leopard is up to "60 percent faster than before."

That number is based on internal testing done by Apple comparing a new preproduction (unreleased) Time Capsule with the version released earlier this year.

Apple also claims that by using the latest 802.11n wireless technology, you'll see "up to five times the Wi-Fi performance and up to twice the range of 802.11g wireless networks."

This, also based on Apple testing comparing both Time Capsule and the Airport Extreme Base Station to "Apple's 802.11g products." The company doesn't specify which products it compares them to, however.

Finally, Apple claims that improvements to both Time Capsule's and the Airport Extreme Base Station's antenna design can give "up to 50 percent better performance and up to 25 percent better range than with the previous-generation Time Capsule and Airport Extreme base Station."

This performance is based on Apple testing comparing the Time Capsule and Airport based Station to "Apple's 802.11n products." Again, although we can safely assume they're basing the comparison on apples to apples test results on the previous versions of the versions of the same hardware, we can't be certain.

We'll of course be conducting our own testing as soon as we get these updated versions of the products in for review. It'll be interesting to see how close our performance numbers match up with theirs.

According to Apple's site, both new versions of the hardware are shipping now.

DisplayMate's testing lab during the LCD evaluation.

(Credit: DisplayMate)

I've been testing LCD monitors consistently for the past two years. In that time, I've run various tests designed to evaluate a monitor's response time. I've used games, movies, and the occasional scientific test to confirm if a manufacturer's claimed response time is accurate.

To be perfectly honest, I have a very difficult time seeing motion blur in movies and games. In fact, I'm not sure I've seen it any repeatable evidence of it on a modern monitor during a game or movie.

So it should go without saying that DisplayMate's recent findings on LCD response times come as no big shock to me. The findings come via an article by DisplayMate founder Raymond Soneira.

Here are Soneira's major conclusions based on tests conducted by DisplayMate on LCDs from major manufacturers.

1. A manufacturer's claimed response time specifications are not a scientifically accurate or a meaningful indicator of picture blur.

The motion blur DisplayMate measured on the HDTVs tested was more than 40 milliseconds. According to the article, this is more than a factor of 10 greater than the manufacturer's published specifications.

2. LCD manufacturers have made a big deal about refresh rates in the last couple of years with the jump from 60Hz to 120Hz and now 240Hz. CNET's own David Katzmaier suspected that benefits with the jump to 240Hz were dubious already, but here's more evidence to back it up.

As a Time Warner Cable customer, I've experienced rather annoying issues with the Scientific Atlanta 8300HDC digital video recorder (DVR). I've been forced to replace it on several occasions. Other times, it would simply stop working, requiring me to unplug it from the wall to reboot.

It had become such a problem that I finally decided I'd had enough last week and that I'd ditch Time Warner Cable's HD DVR for a TiVo HD. For $239.99 at Best Buy (the company was offering it on sale--the TiVo HD usually retails for $299.99), it was a great deal. I also paid $129 to get one full year of TiVo service.

My new toy.

(Credit: TiVo)

With the TiVo HD in hand last Monday, I was ready to enjoy my new toy. I contacted Time Warner Cable to get all the details I needed to get set up.

Training anyone?
When I called Time Warner Cable last Monday, I was extremely displeased by the company's customer service. No one quite understood what I was talking about when I told them that I wanted to switch from my HD DVR to the TiVo HD. I asked them what the set-up process was. I wanted to know if I lost any channels.

After waiting for about five minutes for the customer-service representative to find information on the TiVo ("Sorry, we don't get many of these requests," she told me), she finally read to me, verbatim, what it said on her sheet.

According to the technician, I would need to have a multichannel CableCARD installed to get my programming. Unfortunately, I would lose several channels even with the CableCARD. I was told by the agent that I would need a Switched Digital Video adapter in addition to the CableCARD to retrieve those channels. An SDV adapter is basically a black set-top box that connects to the TiVo HD, allowing you to watch switched digital video channels. It's a fancy term for saying that Time Warner Cable is trying to save bandwidth.

Somewhat satisfied by the information, I told the agent that I wanted to schedule an appointment for a Time Warner Cable technician to come to my house and install both the CableCARD (you're not allowed to install it yourself) and the SDV adapter. No luck. The agent told me that I would first need to go to the Time Warner Cable Web site and fill out an online form. Upon doing so, I was put in line to receive an SDV adapter.

One of my biggest complaints about flat-fee GPS apps for the iPhone is the lack of real-time traffic updates. That's about to change.

Navigon AG, the developer of the Navigon MobileNavigator app, announced Wednesday that live traffic capability, called Traffic Live, for its GPS phone application is coming soon. This feature will be available in October for the North American version of the application.

The new Traffic Live feature offers real-time traffic updates for the GPS app.

(Credit: Navigon)

This is going to be the third major update for the app. The first and the second updates added the capability to dial up a point of interest from within the app and also added a text-to-speech feature. When available, this third update will make the application the most complete GPS navigation app for the iPhone.

However, there's a catch. As expected, this upcoming update will not be free, rather it will cost another $25 via an in-app purchase, on top of the current $90 price tag for the app itself. (For the first four weeks after its release, however, the Traffic Live feature will be available for an introductory price of $20.) The good news is it's a one-time fee, meaning you won't have to continue to pay to use this feature.

The other GPS application that also offers real-time traffic is the AT&T Navigator,, which doesn't have built-in maps (meaning you will need to have a live cellular data connection to download maps in real time, which can be unreliable) and costs a monthly fee of $10.

According to Navigon, the new Traffic Live feature will provide precise traffic information by using real-time speed data from over 1 million drivers across North America, including commercial fleets such as trucks and taxis, as well as regular drivers with GPS systems. The feature also uses information from traffic cameras, speed sensors, and conventional traffic messages coming through a radio network.

When the new feature is available, the Navigon GPS app will automatically include the traffic information when calculating a route, and provide onscreen alerts indicating new incidents and congestion along the current route.

This is going to be the most exciting update for the app so far. Make sure to check back in October, as I will do another road test of the app to see how this Traffic Live feature pans out.

Episode 47 of the Digital City, where we install Apple's new Snow Leopard OS update; discuss the current round of game console price cuts; check out some Netbooks with HD displays; and find out why Time Warner Cable's new "Mystro" cable box firmware update makes us want to give up on TV altogether.

Related links:
>>All things Snow Leopard
>>New price cuts upend console value landscape
>>Rise of the high-def Netbooks

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