Tag: SPACE

Space-shooters are usually a fairly fiery affair, with many types of guns, weapon upgrades, power-ups and more. Dodge does away with all of that, while keeping the very essence of a space shooter: Dark background, fast action, and stuff blowing up all over the place. Your vector-looking spacecraft is the fastest thing on the screen, most of the time. And as the header implies, you have ...

Google, with the aid of some weather balloons and Nexus S handsets, has successfully launched the Android OS into the stratosphere, all in the name of science. Well, ostensibly in the same of science. Yes, there were some interesting findings -- the Nexus S only works below 60,000 ft (18km) and above -50C -- but really it was all about the photos and videos. There's a Picasa album with a bunch ...

Filler 2 is a simple time-waster. You click and hold the mouse to start creating a bubble. While your bubble inflates, it may not touch any of the red bubbles that are floating around the screen. As soon as you let go of the mouse button, your bubble becomes solid and floats down the screen; the red bubbles can no longer harm it. Your goal is to fill two-thirds of the screen space with your ...

In what must surely be the worst (and best) case of reverse, shoehorned acronym (or 'backronym'), NASA has just released the first 3D images of the sun taken by its STEREO (no I'm not making this up) spacecraft. The Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatories -- there are two of them, of course! -- work together to produce 3D imagery that will be used to further understand the structure, ...

The Windows 7 Personalization Gallery is packed with good looking themes, and there's something for everyone -- from dog and cat lovers to high-end auto enthusiasts. Today, a stunning new theme has arrived and it's packed with gorgeous images from the Spitzer Space Telescope. In all, there are 14 images in the theme. Quality might be an issue for some users: at 7MB for the whole pack, each ...

If you love space shooters with tons of customization and upgrades, Enigmata is for you. You start out with one of three ship types and you can build out from there -- upgrading your shields, weaponry, and even the ship itself. As you unlock more achievements, new sections of the store open up, further fueling the addictive upgrade madness. As for gameplay itself, it's not that challenging if ...

OS X's Spaces feature is a nice implementation of virtual desktops, but I find it can be awkward to move between spaces sometimes. As much as I'm a keyboard shortcut kind of guy, and enjoy the ability to use the keyboard to switch spaces, often times when I want to switch between spaces my hand is already on my mouse. Yes, you can switch spaces by clicking the spaces icon in the menu bar, but ...

You've probably heard of shoot-em-up games, but what the heck is a "barge-em-up?" Instead of shooting enemies, you smash into them to destroy them and score points. Perpetual Blaze is the first barge-em-up I've played, and it's a lot of fun. Aside from the barging, it's pretty standard space action, you play as a fireball against an array of different ships. And, while you can only smash them, ...

I absolutely love the iPhone version of Galcon, and the couple of weeks when I played it obsessively on the subway were worth the cost of the app. The object of the game is to defeat your opponent by sending ships from your planets to enemy planets and overwhelming them with your number, while your opponent tries to do the same to you. Galcon's fast pace and multiplayer mode add to the fun. Now, ...

It seems a bit odd to call Rayhound a shooter when your ship doesn't actually have a single gun, but that's the best single-word description I can offer. Your opponents, however, have lots of firepower and they're not shy about using it. How exactly do you go about defending yourself? Use your enemies' strength against them. Use the mouse to control your ship's movement and left-click to engage ...

The single greatest procristination tool I've run across in the past couple of months is an iPhone game called Galcon. It's a deviously simple space battle that can take anywhere from 9 seconds to 5 minutes. The object is to send ships from your home planet out into the galaxy to conquer your opponent's planets. The number on each planet tells you how many ships you need to conquer it, and the ...

Maybe you are quite the organized individual and have managed to clean up some valuable space in your closet, basement or garage. Now you can either jam it up with stuff over time, or rent that space out now. StoreAtMyHouse connects people willing to rent out the extra space they have at their apartment, house or condo, matching them up with people who require some extra storage areas. Whether ...

Exactly as its name implies, the Tiny Menu extension allows you to compress your entire Firefox menu bar into one item. And, thanks to a recent update, that item is now even smaller. Setting up Tiny Menu isn't entirely intuitive, so I'll outline the steps to save you a bit of time: Download and install Tiny Menu (don't forget to restart Firefox) Click your 'new' menu (the M) and then ...

The online storage biz sure is heating up, what with Xdrive and Files-Upload being two of the most recent and spacious notables. Now Joyent, providers of other online services like TextDrive and Connector (web-based apps for small business), is entering the space with Bingo!, a WebDAV storage solution with some handy perks. For starters, let's get the storage space and price points out of the way: ...

Did Google buy SpaceshipOne? Michael Arrington has a scoop that Google has acquired the ship and is planning on storing it in building 43 at the Googleplex. The Ship is rumored to be still in the Smithsonian museum, since it won the $10 million X prize in 2004, but could be on the way to Mountain View California. We all know that Google can afford it with their sizable bank account, especially ...