Cube Touch for the Nokia N900 emulates a 3-D mechanical puzzle with realistic animation effects. Each face of the cube is covered by 9 squares among six solid colours: white, red, blue, orange, green, and yellow. Once mixed, solve the puzzle as quickly as possible so that each face is a solid colour. Examine the cube by rotating it around either horizontally or vertically. The fastest time is saved as a high score.
[Source: Daily Mobile]
They’re not PC gaming’s usual suspects, but just because you may not have heard of them doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be on your radar.
The new year has begun, so what’s coming exclusively to PC gamers in 2009? Sequels, prequels and plenty of stuff you’ve been hearing about for ages ("The Sims 3," "StarCraft 2" and "Diablo 3," oh my!). So how about a few you maybe haven’t?
![C5633D813CC5E618D2A86FF682A46C[1]](http://feedurmind.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/c5633d813cc5e618d2a86ff682a46c1.jpg "C5633D813CC5E618D2A86FF682A46C[1]")
"Anno 1404." I’m a sucker for the "Anno" games. Have been since "1602 A.D." (the game, that is). They’re slow-bake real-time strategy puzzlers as colorful as a bag of Skittles, with piles of rustic medieval (i.e. lovingly romanticized) European charm. Think hornpipes and dulcimers, ringing smithy hammers and waves smacking against trade wharfs as you pore over interdependent trade chains and poke around conifer-carpeted landscapes for ore, salt and metal mines. Anno 1404 shuffles things over to the Orient circa the early 15th century, promising all the coffee, mosaics and carpets you can cram into your Hanseatic or Chinese river ships, along with bigger islands (ergo bigger cities), a sandbox goof-off mode and "dozens of embellishing objects," plus "new customizable elements" to "express [your] vision and … shape the character of [your] cities." ETA: March 2009.
"Drakensang: The Dark Eye." It’s the sequel you haven’t been waiting for to a beloved role-playing game series you probably don’t remember, but you’ll want to keep an eye on this one anyway, even you "Dragon Age-Diablo 3-Star Trek Online" nuts. "Drakensang" already has the visual chops, but it’s little wrinkles like experience points you can spend on the fly and tinker-friendly tactical combat that may clear away the same-old-same-old combat cobwebs. I’ve been playing the final version for the last few week (watch for my review in February) and I’m having a blast. ETA: February 2009.
"Hearts of Iron III." God help us, the world’s only macro-socio-military-economic-real-time World War II simulator is about to get even more complex. Iteration No. 3 promises to bump the last game’s total provinces (around 2,600) up to around 14,500 and drill down on battlefields to "make it easier for the player to manage the battle rather than just march big stacks at each other." Sounds like grog-heaven for WW II buffs (that would include me). The upside of Paradox’s design MO is that the developer listens intently to savvy player feedback and runs a lively post-release patch factory with hundreds of fix-ups issued almost monthly. The downside’s that digesting the game’s already encyclopedic mechanics can feel a bit like sussing the edges of a maze that’s perpetually in flux. ETA: Q3 2009.
"Machinarium." I’ve got a thing for oddball point-and-click adventure games from indie code-fiddlers, and "Machinarium" qualifies as first-rate peculiar. It’s from the guy responsible for "Samorost," a "surrealist organic" adventure/puzzle game that won a bunch of awards in 2007 (it more than earned every one). According to Czech developer Jakub Dvorsky, his follow-up, "Machinarium," is "a strange rusty metallic place populated by robots." You play one of those robots, a diminutive metal dude unfairly chucked for scrap, but resilient enough to pick yourself up, sneak back into town, chase down the bad guys and eventually save the robot girl. While everyone else is after Jane Jensen’s "gothic romantic" "Gray Matter," you’ll probably find me playing this instead. ETA: Early 2009.
"Storm of War: Battle of Britain." The upside to working in a once-towering genre (look up "flight simulation" circa the early 1990s) is that you can set your schedule without apologies. "IL-2 Sturmovik" fans may be miffed this uber-WW II flight sim has taken a couple of extra years, but all signs indicate 2009 is when Oleg Maddox’s attempt to replicate the Battle of Britain finally gets it marching papers. If the game is anything like 1C’s "IL-2" series, it’ll probably rival DCS’s stunning "Black Shark" for ridiculously realistic mechanical fidelity. Between this, the latter helo sim, and DCS’ A10-Warthog expansion, 2009 may well be the sweetest yet for aviation/avionics wonks. ETA: When Oleg Maddox makes it so, 2009.
Source: PC World
For those who haven’t read/visited N-Gage Blog.
The NEW N-GAGE Application is ready for Download!
Now available for the N81, N81 8GB, N82, N95, and N95 8GB models.
:: See more Nokia Models that will support N-Gage 2.0 here ::
NEW YORK – Netscape Navigator, the world’s first commercial Web browser and the launch pad of the Internet boom, will be pulled off life support Feb. 1 after a 13-year run.
Its current caretakers, Time Warner Inc.’s AOL, decided to kill further development and technical support to focus on growing the company as an advertising business. Netscape’s usage dwindled with Microsoft Corp.’s entry into the browser business, and Netscape all but faded away following the birth of its open-source cousin, Firefox.
“While internal groups within AOL have invested a great deal of time and energy in attempting to revive Netscape Navigator, these efforts have not been successful in gaining market share from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer,” Netscape Director Tom Drapeau wrote in a blog entry Friday.
In recent years, Netscape has been little more than a repackaged version of the more popular Firefox, which commands about 10 percent of the Web browser market, with almost all of the rest going to Internet Explorer.
People will still be able to download and use the Netscape browser indefinitely, but AOL will stop releasing security and other updates on Feb. 1. Drapeau recommended that the small pool of Netscape users download Firefox instead.
A separate Netscape Web portal, which has had several incarnations in recent years, will continue to operate.
The World Wide Web was but a few years old when in April 1993 a team at the University of Illinois’ National Center for Supercomputing Applications released Mosaic, the first Web browser to integrate images and sound with words. Before Mosaic, access to the Internet and the Web was largely limited to text, with any graphics displayed in separate windows.
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A new spin on the Need for Speed franchise, ProStreet thrusts players into a head-to-head competition against the best street racers in a multitude of racing showdowns. The game is a true taste of raw adrenaline and racing with consequences. Every dent, every scratch and every crumpled body panel is a battle scar, proof of your commitment and competitive mettle. With an aggressive and skilled AI system, you become immersed in an unmatched believable race experience. Add in a revolutionary online mode that will redefine the meaning of competitive social play, and Need for Speed ProStreet is the ultimate formula for an emotionally charged street racing showdown. It also pushes the “Autosculpt” technology to a new level, allowing you to directly impact your car’s performance for the first time as well as personalize its appearance.
