Powerpoint Books for Dummies

Asus is no stranger to smartphones; check out its Asus P527.

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CBS Interactive)

Asus has tried its hand at smartphones before. Take for instance, the Asus P527, a feature-rich Windows Mobile device that simply didn’t deliver in the performance department and certainly wasn’t worth the …

Donald and Jasmine discuss Pandora 2.0 and the new Slacker app for the iPhone and the iPod Touch. Also on deck: a bit of info from the NAMM show and a little good-natured ribbing at Haier America’s expense. Oh, and we poke some serious fun at Microsoft…prepare for your ears to bleed a little first, though.

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Originally posted at MP3 Insider

Boost Mobile

(Credit: Boost Mobile)

Just in time for this troubled economy, Boost Mobile (one of the few MVNOs still standing), has announced a new unlimited monthly plan.

It costs a flat rate of $50 a month, and it includes unlimited daytime, evening, and weekend calls; unlimited texts; unlimited wireless …

Kiss your blistered fingers and headaches goodbye–tangled cords are a problem of the past as long as you use Flexicords. If you’re someone who sets up and breaks down your television, home theater kit, laptop, or desktop computer, Flexicords’ coiled design eliminates the need to measure exactly how much cable you’ll need to hook up your gear.

The cables come curly and extend out up to 10 feet, ensuring that you have just enough slack without any excess clutter.

Flexicord offers cables for just about any application, including USB, phono jacks, S-video, networking cables, and HDMI. Once extended, the coils retain their shape thanks to a thick pipe cleaner that bends alongside the cable itself.

Finally, each wire comes with its own “recoiling tool,” aka an inanimate plastic rod that helps you coil it back up. Prices vary depending on size and maximum length, but they all generally cost around $20, with the exception of the 10-foot HDMI cable that goes for $34.

More pictures after the jump!

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(Credit: Northrop Grumman)

Remember how Tom Cruise’s flyboy character in Top Gun seemed as at home riding the roadways on a motorcycle as he was jockeying an F-14 in the air?

Maverick is probably the kind of guy Northrop Grumman had in mind when it came up with the “…

Doom: The trend-setting franchise

(Credit: Id Software)

Id Software, the video game developer behind Doom, announced Thursday that it has tapped British author Graham Joyce to write Doom 4. The fantasy novelist has won numerous awards for many of his 14 novels and 26 short stories.

“I can say that Id has hired me to help develop the storyline potential,” Joyce said in an interview with CVG. He chose not to offer any more comments about the pending release of Doom 4.

Regardless, I’m looking forward to Doom 4 even though Id first announced the game back in 2007 and has made no mention of it since. The original Doom became an iconic franchise that helped start this whole anti- video-game-violence nonsense, but more importantly, it set the tone for gaming today. It brought first-person shooters to the mainstream and left an indelible mark on the entire industry.

Doom was an important part of my formative years, as well. Maybe that’s why my love for Doom, even through rough patches (I’m looking at you, Doom 3), has ever diminished.

Remember when Doom first hit store shelves in 1993? It wasn’t like any other game on the market. It included off-color remarks, a gun named BFG (the “F” stood for… you can guess that yourself), and unprecedented violence. Unfortunately, it was that violence that got all the media attention.

But for the rest of us, Doom was something special. It was the graphical king of its time and we marveled at Id’s ability to bring it to life. More importantly, it led to the 1990s gaming boom that changed the industry (and its consumers) forever.

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Originally posted at The Digital Home

The new cloak with the bump, left, and the prototype, right.

(Credit: Duke University)

That cloaking device we’ve been dreaming of appears to be one step closer to actual cloakdom, so start pondering the mischievous possibilities.

Scientists from Duke University have improved on their earlier efforts at producing an invisibility cloak, coming up with a new type of device they say is significantly more sophisticated at cloaking an object (and eventually a person?) from visible light.

The device is made from a light-bending composite material that can detour electromagnetic waves around an object and reconnect them on the other side. That creates an effect similar to a distant mirage you’d see hovering above a road on a hot day.

In Duke’s latest experiments, a beam of microwaves aimed through the cloaking device at a “bump” on a flat mirror surface bounced off the surface at the same angle, as if the bump wasn’t there. Additionally, the device prevented the formation of scattered beams that would normally be expected from such a perturbation. (The team details its findings in far more technical terms than I ever could in the latest issue of Science magazine.)

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