penny

Star Apps: Penny Arcade's Tycho

As one of the longest-running and most successful Web comics of all time, Penny Arcade has garnered an enormous and devoted fanbase who lives for the topical, no-holds-barred commentary of gamer characters John "Gabe" Gabriel and Tycho Brahe. The Web comic has also spawned the annual gaming convention PAX (Penny Arcade Expo) and multiple video games.

In a recent e-mail interview with Download.com, Penny Arcade's co-creator and writer Jerry Holkins, the man behind Tycho, discussed, among other things, his experiences developing games, current gaming trends, and his top five mobile game apps.

When is On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness … Read more

Canadian penny bites the dust. Is the nickel next?

We Canadians love innovating our money. We're printing plastic banknotes and chucking out useless coins.

Last March I said I wouldn't mourn the passing of the Canadian penny.

And yet today, as the Royal Canadian Mint officially stopped distributing the cent to banks, I have mixed feelings. I saw the Google.ca animated doodle honoring the coin and felt a tad nostalgic.

So I fished out a few pennies from my pockets and considered the brazen image of Queen Elizabeth and the maple leaf. … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1490: Generate odor at will (Podcast)

CNET's Declan McCullagh reports that Google's access point sniffing ways may also be slurping up Mac address information on mobile phones and laptops ... and can be used to track your information. This is sewious. Also, Pandora's IPO is bubblicious, we go deep inside the psychology of Apple's retail experience, and smell-o-vision coming to a TV near you. Geez, Tong, what are you eating!?

Hulu backer/Apple antagonist Zucker leaving NBC

Jeff Zucker, chief of NBC Universal and the man who helped start video portal Hulu, will leave the company once Comcast's pending acquisition of NBC Universal receives government approval, according a company internal document obtained by CNET.

Zucker's departure is worth noting because of his often hard-line stand towards negotiations with technology companies, most notably Apple. On Thursday, at the Goldman Sachs investor conference, Zucker was skeptical of whether Apple's plan to offer 99-cent video rentals on TV shows was right for his company.

"We do not think 99 cents is the right price point for … Read more

The 404 148: Where MTI is livid and covered in toilet paper

Mark is finally back from his 10 year sabbatical, so we have him on as a guest on today's show to talk about the much deserved practical joke we pulled on him (see post below). He also gives a shout out to Papa Licea and tells us a few stories about his trip. The rest of us get into a rather heated discussion about RoboCop and Batman, give a public service announcement on child abuse, reminisce about a time not so long ago when we worked for pennies, and daydream out loud about all the sinister things we could … Read more

Sidesplitting tech comics

Whoever said geeks have no sense of humor was wrong--laughably so. Some of the funniest comics out there are Web comics (or those rendered for the Web,) written by techies, for the techies who love them. Here's a bushel of geeky favorites, in no particular order.

1. xkcd Randall Monroe, physicist, cartoonist, and at-heart romantic, is behind xkcd, a Web comic whose name curiously holds no mathematically obscure meaning. In his own words, Monroe's stick-figure style "occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors)." See? Funny.… Read more