Desert Moon is an impressive tower defense Time Waster

Desert Moon
If you look at the type of time wasters I normally cover, you'll mostly find physics games, a platformer here and there, and maybe a puzzle or two.

One genre I almost never cover is tower defense games. I guess I normally don't enjoy them all that much - it's purely subjective. But this is one thing that makes Desert Moon all the more remarkable: It's a tower defense game, but I actually had fun playing it.

You're commanding a troop of soldiers stranded on an alien planet for five days. Each day, multiple waves of incoming beasts are going to run at you, and try to get past your defenses. Your job is to place your soldiers before each wave so that their fire pattern (and weapons) effectively cover the surface, and keep the beasts from getting past them.

Once a beast touches one of your soldiers, the soldier dies and there's a gap in your defenses. When enough beasts manage to make it through, you die. Later on in the game, beasts don't have to touch the soldiers - they explode when they're near enough, so you need to start using longer-range weapons to keep the beasts away.

There are six different types of weapons, as well as four types of power-ups you can use during each wave. It's Flash, but it still took a couple of minutes to load on my DSL connection. This is one game you may find yourself spending quite some time with.

Desert Moon is an impressive tower defense Time Waster originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 11 Jan 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/01/11/desert-moon-is-an-impressive-tower-defense-time-waster/

Amanda Peet America Ferrera Amerie MICROSOFT NVIDIA

Carrot is a soothing time-waster featuring bunnies and puppies

Carrot gameSo... you've got a cute pet rabbit, and rabbits like carrots. That makes Carrot rabbit heaven, if there is such a thing: The game takes place on a long, lush lawn, with a line of carrots stretching into the distance, as far as the eye can see. Mmmm, carrots.

But of course, this wouldn't be much of a game if you were just running along, eating carrot after carrot. That wouldn't be very challenging. That's where the dogs come in: For every carrot, you have a puppy running back and forth across the screen.

If your bunny hits a dog, it's going to blink (and that, as we all know, means "ouch"). If it hits too many dogs, you lose. But your bunny can't move left or right, and it can't even move faster or stop!

So what do you do? You leash the dogs, of course. Basically, when you click a dog and drag it, a leash appears and the dogs is drawn to wherever you drag. There's a bit of a lag due to the leash being elastic, but if you're fast enough, you can keep the dogs from touching the rabbit.

There are also neat power-ups: You may notice my bunny has a rotor in the screenshot; the rotor lets it fly smoothly over the dogs, and it still somehow manages to eat the carrots. Of course, it doesn't last forever, and eventually the bunny lands and you have to keep leashing the dogs.

All in all, a very cute game, with a lovely soundtrack to boot.

Carrot is a soothing time-waster featuring bunnies and puppies originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 21 Jan 2011 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/01/21/carrot-is-a-soothing-time-waster-featuring-bunnies-and-puppies/

MILLICOM INTL CELLULAR Avril Lavigne Ana Ivanovi Camilla Belle COMMUNICATIONS HOLDINGS

Kinect socket server hack brings gesture recognition to Flash, Silverlight, and more

Thanks to the clever work of Blitz, a marketing agency, you will soon be able to easily interface any program to Microsoft Kinect. Rather than having to hack at the low-level C++ OpenKinect driver, Blitz's solution is to create a socket server, which other programs -- including Flash and Silverlight websites -- can then interrogate.

The installation process is a bit finickity -- it's a very quick and dirty hack -- but the potential applications are immense. Take a look at the demo video from Blitz (after the break), and then imagine playing all of our Time Wasters with just a few hand gestures...

It should be noted that this doesn't only apply to 'rich' technologies like Flash and Silverlight, either. JavaScript could be used to communicate with the socket server, and without a browser-specific extension, like the one used by DepthJS.

Blitz says that it will release the source code for the project later today, at 8 AM Pacific Time, on its Labs site.

Continue reading Kinect socket server hack brings gesture recognition to Flash, Silverlight, and more

Kinect socket server hack brings gesture recognition to Flash, Silverlight, and more originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 12 Jan 2011 08:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/01/12/kinect-socket-server-hack-brings-gesture-recognition-to-flash-silverlight/

Adrianne Curry Chelsea Handler Carrie Underwood Catherine Bell Christina Milian

TiltShift Generator for iPhone [Video]

iPhone photo apps these days have some sort of setting for "tilt shift," the popular photographic effect that makes scenes look like elaborate (and adorable) sets of miniature models. TiltShift Generator actually lets you control the miniature-making parameters. More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/bx547Te2jSo/tiltshift-generator-for-iphone

ELPIDA MEMORY DIRECTV GROUP NINTENDO AUTODESK Alicia Witt

Verizon Charges $50 More Than AT&T for Off-Contract iPhone 4

According to Verizon’s FAQ, the new iPhone 4 will cost $50 more off-contract than it does from AT&T. While the prices of the handset is the same from both carriers if you sign up for a two-year contract, the unencumbered handset will cost $650 for the 16GB version and $750 for the 32GB model. This [...]

Source: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/01/verizon-charges-50-more-than-att-for-off-contract-iphone-4/

Bridget Moynahan GRUPO IUSACELL Alexis Bledel Anna Paquin Christina Aguilera

Daily Crunch: Bounce Edition

Split Strap Quickly Hits Kickstarter Goal, Still Time To Get In On The Fun SmallWorks BrickCase Lets You Brick Your iPhone. In A Good Way. As In LEGOs Watch This Amazing GE Video Kind Of Explain Regenerative Train Braking NZXT?s Bunker Locks Down Your USB Devices So LAN Rogues Won?t Steal Them Universal Donates 200,000 [...]

Source: http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/01/11/daily-crunch-bounce-edition/

ELPIDA MEMORY DIRECTV GROUP NINTENDO AUTODESK Alicia Witt

Microsoft invites PS3 jailbreak dev to take a crack at Windows Phone 7

20-something firmware magician GeoHot (George Hotz) has already been sued by Sony for jailbreaking the PlayStation 3, and caused a major stir in the iPhone dev community when he released limera1n. So what next for the ambitious young hacker? How about taking a stab at Windows Phone 7?

The invitation has been handed out, with WP7 lead Brandon Watson offering to ship Hotz a device so that he can give it a go. Microsoft, of course, has said that it fully supports "official homebrew" development for WP7 and met recently with the Chevron WP7 team to discuss community and development-related issues.

The exploit used by Chevron WP7 is due to be patched in the January update for Windows Phone 7, so GeoHot will need to look elsewhere. Still, he's done it twice before, so we wouldn't be at all surprised if he can do it again.

Microsoft invites PS3 jailbreak dev to take a crack at Windows Phone 7 originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 21 Jan 2011 07:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/01/21/microsoft-invites-ps3-jailbreak-dev-to-take-a-crack-at-windows-phone-7/

Carol Grow CISCO SYSTEMS Anne Marie Kortright ATandT Ali Campoverdi