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Quarter of investors: Thumbs-down to Michael Dell

Investor frustration with Dell has now hit its founder and CEO.

Twenty-five percent of Dell stockholders voted to withhold support for Michael Dell to serve on the board of directors at a Dell investor meeting on Thursday. The figure represented 377.8 million of 1.5 billion votes.

Though 75 percent approved retaining Dell as chairman, the "protest" vote was a clear signal sent by unhappy shareholders to the company, according to Patrick McGurn, special counsel for ISS, a proxy-advisory firm.

McGurn told The Wall Street Journal that any withhold vote over 20 percent is "something that … Read more

Report: Hurd short-circuited HP board's probe

Hewlett-Packard's board of directors felt that Mark Hurd's settlement of a sexual harassment claim impeded its probe into allegations against its former chief executive's behavior, according to a Wall Street Journal report that cited people familiar with the matter.

The settlement between Hurd and Jodie Fisher, a former marketing contractor and sometime actress, was made without the board's knowledge and increased mistrust among board members who felt Hurd wasn't cooperating fully with their investigation into Fisher's claims, one source told the Journal.

However, a person described as being familiar with Hurd's thinking said … Read more

Turn a corner into a cutting board

The corners of a counter tend to seem useless: I have some jars and spices sitting in mine because the corner is just too deep for me to be able to use the area effectively. But the John Boos Corner Cutting Board sits on the corner of a counter top, turning the space into a prep station. The cutting board extends out over the edges of the corner, with a lip that fits snugly into the corner and holds the cutting board in place on any 90 degree corner. The lip extends only far enough to hold the cutting board … Read more

Risk for iPhone: Global conquest in the palm of your hand

When I think of Risk, the board game, I think of sitting around a table with a bunch of buddies, arguing loudly, cursing dice-rolls, and just generally being aggravated for several hours.

Risk: The Official Game for iPhone, iPod, and iPad offers a wholly different experience--and that's not at all a bad thing.

For one thing, it gives you the opportunity to play solo, something you can't do with the board game. You can declare war on two-five AI opponents and choose between three difficulty levels.

On the multiplayer side, Risk lets you "pass and play" … Read more

Board game alert: Carcassonne comes to iPhone

Far be it from me to normally get tremendously excited about specific iPhone games, but Carcassonne suddenly popped up in the App Store after months of anticipation (at least on my part).

In my board game collection (the physical one, not the iPhone one), Carcassonne sits right next to Settlers of Catan as one my favorites. The Xbox 360 has a pretty good version of Carcassonne in its Live Arcade, but the nature of the game--lay down tiles to connect cities, roads, and fields, and settle your little wooden men for points--is a natural for a touch interface, more so … Read more

Skateboarding on the iPhone

Skate It is the handheld version of the popular EA game Skate that most will recognize from console versions. On the iPhone, your control system includes using the accelerometer to turn your skater, a couple of buttons for kicking and grabs, and various swipes of your finger to pull off tricks. Having played the console games quite a bit on the Xbox 360, we were amazed at how many of the original locations are available on the iPhone version. The graphics are predictably not as good as on console versions of Skate, and older 3G iPhones may struggle to keep … Read more

Become a snowboarding master

iStunt Reloaded is an improved and expanded version of iStunt, a physics-based, 2D arcade snowboarding game.

iStunt Reloaded's graphics have gotten slightly more sophisticated, but its gameplay remains the same: you tilt your device left and right to rotate the angle of your snowboard (when you're in midair, this is how you perform flips), you jump with a quick swipe up, and you crouch (to pick up speed) by swiping down. Each of the game's 30 levels challenges you with a stunt-filled course (with checkpoints to save progress), from straightforward jumps and flips to much more convoluted … Read more

Obama keeps privacy oversight board on ice

As a U.S. senator and presidential candidate, Barack Obama pledged (PDF) to "strengthen privacy protections for the digital age."

But after 16 months as president, Obama has failed to appoint anyone to a privacy oversight body charged with ensuring Americans' civil liberties are not violated.

Rep. Jane Harman, the California Democrat who heads the Homeland Security committee, on Thursday called on the administration "to appoint the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which is mandated by the 2004 intelligence reform law, and which has not been filled."

The 2007 law expanding the board's responsibilities … Read more

Blokus makes the leap from board game to app

The board game Blokus has long been a family favorite in the Broida household, but there's just one problem with it: to really enjoy the game as it's meant to be played, you need four players. Consequently, either everyone plays, or no one does.

Blokus for iPhone adds AI to the mix, meaning you can finally go it alone if you choose. But virtual opponents are just the tip of the gameplay iceberg: you can also play against other iPhone/iPod/iPad users, either locally (via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi) or online.

In case you're not familiar with the game, Blokus could best be described as four-player Tetris--except that instead of trying to nestle various block shapes together, you link your like-colored blocks by their corners. The object is to place as many of your own blocks as you can while blocking the other players from laying theirs.

It's a snap to learn, and endlessly fun to play because the outcome is always different. The actual board game does offer two- and even three-player variants, but they're just not the same as squaring off with a foursome.

Interestingly, the app offers similar variants--some of which are a little confusing. For example, "Classic 4" is the standard game, though you're the only human player. Same goes for "Classic 2," in which you take on the role of a second human player. "Duo," its name notwithstanding, is another single-player exercise, but played on a smaller board with just two colors instead of four.… Read more