blaster

Snow Blaster: A Christmas light video game

The creator of the exceptional Christmas light Guitar Hero game from last year is at it again.

Behold Snowball Blaster, a 26,000 LED- and incandescent-bulb Christmas light game by Ric Turner. The 50-year-old programmer, who has gotten nearly 3 million views on his YouTube channel, has become something of an Internet legend for making "video games" out of real Christmas lights. In his latest merriment, you sit in a "electric training sled" wrapped in green and red LEDs. Anyone else think it could be a side car for a Tron bike?

Players sit in the motorized seat and use a game controller to dodge snowballs. It's pretty wild because Turner really has the game instructions (spoken in a funny voice), music, and lights coordinated and played through speakers as shown in the video below. It's even broadcast on FM so people in cars can watch and listen. The audio "does not blast through the neighborhood," according to Turner, but you have to wonder if the neighbors are in agony. … Read more

Become a rag-doll-blasting pro

Ragdoll Blaster 2 Lite is a free 18-level preview of Ragdoll Blaster 2, the much more polished follow-up to physics-based puzzler Ragdoll Blaster.

The interface of Ragdoll Blaster 2 is a lot like its predecessor, but with a brand-new skin. You're still using your touch screen to aim and fire rag dolls from a cannon, but the earlier game's graph-paper-sketch aesthetic has been swapped out for a more realistic, steampunky backdrop, with a cute musical score, cartoony sound effects, and higher production values throughout.

The object of the game is the same: each level has a red-and-white, bullseye … Read more

Creative debuts Wireless Rock Speaker

For those who don't want to go to all the trouble of running wires out to a fancy rock speaker in the garden, Creative has a solution: the $199 Sound Blaster Wireless Rock Speaker.

Creative says the Wireless Rock Speaker is a "high-quality stereo speaker encased in a granite-rock-like exterior," and is designed to "withstand moderate weather conditions so it doesn't have to be brought in every time it rains." In other words, the speaker isn't entirely weather-proof, but it seems to be water-resistant.

Alas, the Wireless Rock is not a Bluetooth speaker … Read more

Fire rag dolls at targets

Ragdoll Blaster 2 Lite is a free 18-level preview of Ragdoll Blaster 2, the much more polished follow-up to physics-based puzzler Ragdoll Blaster.

The interface of Ragdoll Blaster 2 is a lot like its predecessor, but with a brand-new skin. You're still using your touch screen to aim and fire rag dolls from a cannon, but the earlier game's graph-paper-sketch aesthetic has been swapped out for a more realistic, steampunk-like backdrop, with a cute musical score, cartoony sound effects, and higher production values throughout.

The object of the game is the same: each level has a red-and-white, bulls-eye … Read more

Windows cleaner

MRU-Blaster is a freeware utility that does just one thing: it scans your PC for your most recently used (MRU) files as well as cookies, browser caches, and other temporary repositories of potentially compromising information, displays them, and deletes them to your specification.

MRU-Blaster is a fairly powerful and comprehensive utility that can find and delete more than 30,000 files held by everything from Corel presentations to Google's toolbar history. It functions from the simple gray dialog that characterizes so many similar utilities: no frills, all business, and maximum efficiency and usefulness. You can add to its functionality … Read more

Malware remedy

Correction: Although this review was written for Spyware Doctor version 8, a typo misstated the version number as version 7. That has since been corrected.

Spyware Doctor 8 offers users a superb collection of malware prevention and removal tools, but its infamously strict trial restrictions makes it difficult to evaluate. With quick scanning and multiple tools for stopping malware before it infects your computer, the paid version is a solid spyware remover.

Installing the program annoyingly requires you to reboot the computer, but as soon as Windows finishes loading, the program will start scanning for malware. Impressively, the scan took … Read more

Creative wirelessly streams your digital audio with Sound Blaster Wireless for iTunes

Creative released the Sound Blaster Wireless for iTunes ($150) this week , which allows music to be wirelessly streamed from a computer to the wireless adapter, using only USB dongle. According to a press release from Creative, the system works with virtually any music source, not just iTunes, on both Macs and PCs.

The Sound Blaster Wireless looks similar to Logitech's discontinued Wireless Music System for PC in that it enables you to stream audio from your PC using a simple USB transmitter. The transmitter, which appears to be about the size of a thumb drive, promises to work with … Read more

Viruses with trigger dates

Conficker, which was set to activate on April 1 but failed to cause any problems, isn't the first virus to be programmed to take action on a certain date or time. Experts believe that worms with a trigger date can lead to panic and hype. Here are some others:

Jerusalem One of the first known viruses, dubbed Jerusalem, was first detected in the Israeli city in October 1987 and targeted at DOS systems. It was programmed to delete programs on Friday 13th, except in the year 1987.

Michelangelo The Michelangelo virus, first discovered in 1991, was triggered to launch … Read more

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