shipping

To my thinking, the most interesting aspect of Amazon.com's new Kindle Fire tablet is not the hardware, nor even the price. It's Amazon Prime, the $79-per-year service that delivers, among other things, video and e-book content to the device.

That $79 outlay may seem like a lot, but let's crunch the numbers a bit.… Read more

Galaxy on Fire is a 3D space combat and exploration game that was a lot of fun at its release in early 2009, but has since been eclipsed by other games in performance--especially its super-polished (and super-fun) sequel, Galaxy on Fire 2, which delivers exponentially on the promise of this original game.

The core of Galaxy on Fire 3D is space combat, and the game excels at providing an immersive, responsive aerial shooter (almost as good as its sequel), in which you can use touch or tilt controls to weave through pitched outer-space dogfights. The game also has some light … Read more

A Space Shooter brings whimsy and comic-book-style graphics to the crowded touch-driven shoot-'em-up category. You play as Commander P. Jefferson, a Buzz Lightyear-like character whose sole purpose is to protect the galaxy. With your double-barrel spacecraft, you get to hunt down aliens, destroy asteroids, and tangle with enemy ships. While the game's story may be somewhat confusing and disjointed, it doesn't take any of the fun out of the straightforward missions.

A Space Shooter's interface is as simple as it gets. Just touch the screen and drag in the direction you want your ship to fly. … Read more

With the shuttle program retired, NASA is turning to Virgin Galactic to hitch rides to the edge of space.

Richard Branson's private venture, which aims to be the first commercial space carrier, said it has signed a deal to give the agency up to three charter flights on SpaceShipTwo. The contract could be worth as much as $4.5 million.

The space plane, whose assembly hangar at the Mojave Air and Space Port was unveiled last month, will carry at least one science mission with a flight test engineer to monitor experiments. … Read more

Backstab is a loosely pirate-themed third-person action-adventure game with promising potential but frustratingly flawed execution given its price.

Backstab advertises an "unprecedented story" and a "blockbuster production with the best graphics." Unfortunately, the story is highly precedented (and told unevenly, with spotty voice acting and wooden animations) and the graphics--while somewhat impressive for a mobile device, especially given the game's limited sandbox environment--are far from the best. Backstab evokes derivative late '90s console games, although with more-frustrating controls: what should be an intuitive camera system (you swipe the screen to rotate the camera) is anything … Read more

MOJAVE, Calif.--"We build spaceships."

That's the motto--perhaps the coolest ever?--of The Spaceship Company, the partnership between Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites, builder of the X-Prize-winning SpaceShip One and its younger sister ship, SpaceShip Two.

And on Monday, The Spaceship Company (TSC) formally opened what it calls FAITH, the final assembly facility for SpaceShip Two and the aircraft on which it piggybacks, WhiteKnight Two. At the celebration, Virgin Galactic showed off, for the first time at a public event, a replica of SpaceShipOne, as well as the actual WhiteKnightOne, SpaceShipTwo, and WhiteKnightTwo (… Read more

R-Type for Android takes you way back to the '80s with its classic humans-versus-aliens storyline and retro shoot-'em-up style of game play. Because it's more or less unchanged from its arcade predecessor, R-Type is sure to keep you hooked for hours at a time, just as it did when you were younger.

While there is a rich plot that drives R-Type, its details are relatively inconsequential. All you need to know is that you are piloting a futuristic star ship, and your primary objective is to kill aliens...lots and lots of aliens.

To begin, your ship is … Read more

For the first time since launching in March, Apple seems to have caught up to online demand for the iPad 2 in its online store in both the U.S. and Canada.

Ship times for all 18 models of the second-generation Apple tablet now sit at 24 hours, down from a high of "four to five" months just days after launch. It's the quickest Apple's offered to get the device out to buyers since first making it available. By comparison, it took Apple just under four months to hit the 24-hour milestone with the first-generation model.… Read more

Japanese shipping giant Kawasaki Kisen is building a next-generation car carrier that will run on liquefied natural gas (LNG) instead of fuel oil, cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 40 percent.

The carrier is set to be about 156 yards long, with a capacity of 5,000 tons, capable of carrying up to about 2,000 cars. Kawasaki Heavy Industries will supply the gas engines, and its nitrogen oxide emissions profile will be up to 90 percent lower than those of vessels using conventional diesel engines.

Kawasaki Kisen, whose K Line containers are a common sight in ports, made the plan … Read more