Despite what the Internet said a few weeks ago, Microsoft tapped Family Guy to advertise Windows 7. The first one aired last weekend, but the video above and the one after the jump have just been posted to YouTube proving the partnership isn’t dead after all. Watch and enjoy, but don’t expect anything edgy and hip.

[via Gizmodo]

Interrupting your Thanksgiving Day weekend (and my Team Fortress 2 Sniper marathon) with a quick deal that will appeal to many of you (I should hope). You know Steam, right, Valve’s digital distribution deal? There’s a crazy, multi-day Black Friday sale going on right now that includes Left 4 Dead 2 at $37.99 (25 percent off the regular price) and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for $2.49 (75 percent off the regular price). A vanilla bullshit at Starbucks costs more than that.

Keep in mind that this is a multi-day sale. It started yesterday, and will continue for a few more days. My advice is to check the Steam site every morning for the next couple of days lest they sell, I don’t know, Half-Life Source for 75 cents or something.

There’s probably a million and one such deals online. I recommend you keep your eyes on a site like cheapassgamer.com for Black Friday/Cyber Sunday/Cyber Monday deals.

Back to sniping.

Official plot:
The last surviving descendants of three legendary clans are continuously transported to other dimensions to test their martial arts skills against an evil force that seeks to invade and infect the real world.

The movie (whose official site doesn’t work for me) is scheduled for release next year in the US and this is a one-minute promo trailer that features the music from Dark Knight of all movies. Maggie Q (the evil woman in Die Hard 4) plays Mai Shiranui.

Via Worst Previews

Machinima.com has become quite the growing viral attraction in the last year. They hover around 60 million monthly video views spread across their network, up from just 20 million a year ago, with most of the views coming from their hilarious YouTube channel and the website itself. Machinima’s makes their own content, as well as showcasing the content of private contractors, and has many popular series including Halo’s “Red vs. Blue.”

This announcement comes just before Machinima’s Inside Gaming Awards, which will air on December 15th. Nominations for the Inside Gaming Awards, which include 18 categories such as Game of the Year, Best Weapon, and Best Multiplayer, will open on November 27th.

I’ve never hidden my disdain for Metacritic (and GameRankings, but mostly Metacritic), the Web site that aggregates review scores for video games (and movies and so forth). It’s an insane concept: let’s round up all of these ostensibly separate opinions, throw ‘em in a blender, and come up with a single, solitary number that conveys a game’s entire worth. Balderdash, I say. Review scores aren’t a standardized measurement—a 9.2 over at IGN doesn’t mean a 9.2 at Edge, or an A over at 1UP.

This latest news pleases me. The Cowen Group (one of those fancy research companies whose analysts are always quoted in news stories) has released the details of a study that shows, plainly, that a game’s review score is the least important barometer that people pay attention to when shopping for games. That is to say, whether a game gets an 8 or higher (or lower!) matters very, very little to a person when they’re at Wal-Mart or Best Buy, or cruising the latest releases on Amazon or Steam.

The study found that people pay attention to the following items, in order of most important to least important, when shopping for video games: genre; whether or not it’s a familiar game series; price; word-of-mouth; advertising; publisher reputation; and, lastly, Metacritic score.

Let’s look at this.

• Genre Obviously. If you don’t like FPSs, odds are you’re not going to like Modern Warfare 2 or BioShock or Left 4 Dead 2. If you are a fan of the genre, then it’s pretty much guaranteed that you’ll derive some entertainment out of said games.

• Familiarity This helps explain why all the big games for the past few years have all been sequels. If you liked Left 4 Dead 1, you can pretty safely assume you’ll enjoy Left 4 Dead 2. Well, unless you’re one of the boycotters. It’s merely more of the same. New Zelda? Sign me up. Final Fantasy XXXIV? I loved the other thirty-three!

• Price Well, yeah. How many people enjoyed all those Guitar Hero games, but then bailed out when it became a yearly $150+ affair? (Not that you have to re-buy the instruments every year, no, but you play one of these games and you’ve played them all.) Remember when PlayStation games were $40?

• Word-of-mouth You’re at the store with your friends, “Oh, don’t buy that, I heard it sucks.” Or, “Dude, did you buy Game yet? The multi-player is wicked awesome.”

• Advertising I readily admit to being susceptible to advertising. I had zero interest in buying Assassin’s Creed II until I saw that slick Justice trailer on TV. A few days later, and I’m jumping around the rooftops of Renaissance Italy.

• Publisher reputation Remember a few years ago when everyone hated EA? You know, ea_spouse and all that. (By the way, what publisher do we all hate now? My guess is Activision.) I’m going to assume that only the “hardcore” gamers give a turkey what company publishes (or develops) a video game. Why haven’t I bought Call of Duty: World at War? Because it was developed by “the other guys,” Treyarch, and not good ol’ Infinity Ward.

• Score Who honestly walks through a Best Buy and says, “You know, I was going to buy Game 2: The Sequel, but IGN (or whomever) only gave it a 7.3”? The number itself is meaningless, and if you’re even remotely interested in a game you’d do well read every single review you can stomach. And by read the review I really do mean sit there and absorb what the writer is trying to convey; don’t just skim it and say, “eh, looks neat.”

In conclusion, review scores are dumb; aggregating review scores is monumentally dumb.

I’m a big fan of people who do fun stuff with computers and so I am a big fan of this. These guys programmed 20 computers to play one note over and over. The resulting cacophony turns out to be a beep-boop version of the Tetris theme.

The project is simple, using the internal speaker of each computer in the class to play a different channel (instrument) of the tetris theme.
All computers are linked with the upd protocol, so not all the computers are synchronised, but for now it will be good!

I remember when Android was the cool hip new thing. Well, it still is, but the Behold II marks the end of when Android phones are unique. Every feature on this phone has already been done the same or better by someone else.

Let’s start with the body. The phone is a bit heavier than my HTC Hero, but for some reason it feels cheaper. It’s just a hair taller and about the same width and thickness. You have 6 dedicated function buttons on the front, along with a 8-way directional selector. The left side has a volume rocker, and the right holds two buttons. One for the camera and one attached to the screen lock. The top holds the microUSB port and headphone jack. An expandable microSD slot is behind the battery door, and there is no physical keyboard.

The interface was nothing to get excited about. You get three customizable home screens and a Google search bar. But the tab to access your apps is that arrow on the left side of the screen. It takes some deft maneuvering not the hit that when you’re trying to go the left screen. Perhaps the most unique feature on this device is the Cube. I’ll just let that sink in for a moment. The Cube is, as you might have guessed, a cube with a different multimedia function on each face. With a flick of a finger you can spin the cube and select the function you wish to activate. You can’t customize it however, so you’re stuck with YouTube, the Amazon MP3 store, Facebook, your photo folder,  your audio player, and the video player. About the funnest thing you can do is swing the phone, and since the Cube is tied to the accelerometer, it’ll spin. Good for maybe two minutes of chuckles.

So at the end of it all, its just another Android phone under T-mobile’s belt. It hit stores last week if you want to go grab one, but why when you can get the Droid for cheaper? The Behold II is $229.99 with a two-year contract.

Well, that was quick. We just wrote about this thing today and suddenly it arrives at the house. I installed it and was quite impressed. The depth of the music improved immediately with plenty of bass and a richer sound. Turning it off makes the music almost tinny, which is odd.

I was quite impressed. It may be worth the $80 if you listen to a lot of music out of your laptop.

Product Page

If we applied Moore’s law to the art of DJing, we would probably get something like Amidio’s Touch DJ app. Gone are the software DJ’s who replaced the original vinyl DJ’s. Now you can spin beats on your iPhone or iPod touch without listening to them. Wait, what?

Touch DJ utilizes a innovative new method of mixing that they call visual mixing. Essentially, the app displays the waveforms of the two tracks side by side, and separates the bass pulses from the rest of the track. This way, you can see where the beat lands and sync your songs without having to hear them beforehand.

You get everything else you would want from DJ software, live sampling, looping, pitch bending, tempo control, etc. It has a separate MP3 / M4A library from iTunes, meaning you have to import your tracks into the app before you can use them. But Touch DJ equally sets the volume level across each of them based on RMS power. It’s available now from the iTunes store.

Seth at PopMech went wild and started dipping a bunch of phones in liquid nitrogen. The resulting -55 degree bath cause phones to freeze, LCDs to dim, and buttons to stop. But, interestingly, it was hard to completely destroy a cellphone in liquid nitrogen.

What you see above is the Moto KRZR taking a dunk while recording video. It survived just long enough to record some bubbling and then shut off. But, most important, it came back on and the video was safe.

Their conclusion? It’s really hard to break phones with cold.

Amazingly, the Motorola phone survived multiple dips in the coolant. The sub-sub-sub-zero swims caused its battery to shut down, but once the phone was warmed up, it came back to life with no visible damage. We even dropped the frozen phone to the floor from hip height. And although we expected it to shatter, the fall barely caused any damage. In fact, it wasn’t until we dunked the Krzr in the liquid nitrogen four times, and then forcibly threw it to the ground, that it finally called it quits. Even then, the screen still turned on when the phone was plugged in (although it was unreadable), and, amazingly, the audio still worked. Some keys even appeared to produce a response.

The results were reassuring, if not astonishing. The bottom line: Alaska residents might endure some screen problems or short-lived batteries on cold days, but nothing a warm room couldn’t cure. And if our phone can handle repeated swims in one of the coldest liquids on earth, yours can surely survive a day on the slopes without worry.

Right now there isn’t many good ways to control a PC from your couch. Full size keyboards are a pain, standard mice are awkward, and those waving-through-the-air gyro mice are overrated. This little controller with a touchpad up top and a keyboard on the bottom seems to have just about everything I need for my media center PC. It’s controlled via a wireless USB dongle and only costs $62 at USB Geek. Forget Santa, I can’t wait that long. Sold.

[via technabob]

Go ahead and take that second helping of bacon-broasted mashed potatoes and high-fat gravy this Thursday, friends, because even if your tummy gets big and round like a steamed black bean bun, there’s an app for that.

Fitness apps for all!
iPhone fitness apps have come a long way since Nike+iPod. The addition of GPS opened entirely new vistas for running and biking enthusiasts and the iPhone’s video and audio capabilities made it fun to use the iPhone in the gym. Here are a few of my favorites.

PumpOne FitnessBuilder

FitnessBuilder offers [$9.99] 500 little workouts for you and allows you to stick to them by forcing you to record and possibly report them to friends when you’re done. You open the app, select a work out – there are a number of sets for various workouts including shorter sets for busy folks – and then you can record your reps and weight for posterity.

If you’re ripped like me you don’t need all 5,000 of the pictures and videos then you can just use the app to figure out what to do between hits of Muscle Milk. However, if you need some help in the gym this is definitely the way to go. One of my favorites and well worth the investment.

iFitness

iFitness [$1.99] is one of the first workout programs for the
iPhone and includes a method for creating your own workouts as well as a list of ready-made workouts for the lazy.

The app is less visually attractive than FitBuilder but it is considerably cheaper than the PumpOne offering.

Trimble AllSport GPS

Do you like to do all sorts of things? Running? Dancing? Hiking? Hang-gliding? Space walking? The Trimble AllSport GPS [$4.99] has you covered. The app allows you to select multiple activities including hiking, biking, skiing, and even driving. When you start a run it will map your exercise as you go and even allows for basic music control inside the app.

RunKeeper Pro

RunKeeper Pro is one of the first apps to use the iPhone’s GPS capabilities to track your runs. To use it, you start it up and press start. Then you run or bike. That’s it. You can then view your workouts online and share your runs with friends.

The app comes in two versions, Free and Pro [$9.99] and the Pro version includes voice prompts as well as photo and status updates from the road. The Pro version also allows you to set a special iPod playlist for your workout.

My Therapy Exercise

My Therapy Exercise [$19.99] might not be for everyone but it is an interesting addition to the fitness canon. The app includes 170 exercises for folks who may need to take things a bit slower due to injuries or illness. The system allows you to work on your therapy exercises at home and then email a trainer or doctor tour results.

It’s a bit pricey but it’s a very specific tool for a very specific purpose.

Is saying “I play Modern Warfare 2 for the single-player” the new “I read Playboy for the articles”? It might as well be. But get this: I play Modern Warfare 2 for the single-player. I stink at multi-player, so why even bother? That said, I know that many of you bought the game merely to play the multi-player, and thus have no idea what the single-player’s story is about. Thank God for this video, then.

It’s a 60-second recap of the game’s single-player storyline, such as it is.

Red Dawn was more plausible, yes.

Using the Gas Cubby iPhone app to increase your fuel economy and keep your vehicle properly maintained can save you money and help the environment… but, if you’ve learned anything from CrunchGear, it’s that saving money isn’t much fun unless you can blow it on something cool and completely over the top. Well, one lucky CrunchGear reader gets to have their cake and eat it too. App Cubby, the developer of Gas Cubby, is giving away a Viper SmartStart kit to one lucky CrunchGear reader. If you own a car and an iPhone, surely you’ve heard about and have been lusting after Viper’s new technology that allows you to lock/unlock, open the trunk, and even start your car right from your iPhone.

And for those still behind the curve on using your iPhone to improve fuel economy and keep track of maintenance, Gas Cubby will be on sale for only $4.99 until Cyber Monday.

To enter, leave a comment below with your vision of “car 2.0.” How can mobile apps better integrate with vehicles to make your driving experience more fun, safe, efficient, and economical?

Note: CrunchGear and App Cubby will be awarding the winner a $500 gift certificate (the retail price of Viper’s SmartStart kit) to Best Buy. The winner will be have to handle compatibility, installation, etc.

We’ll pick a winner on Wednesday.

While I would totally go out with Princess Peach (provided all the parts are really there, and they must be because those Mario Brothers have been after her for years), I find this story to be quite disturbing. A Japanese man married Nene Anegasaki in a church in Guam and is going to be streaming their honeymoon live.

Now this is either a media hoax or proof that Japan’s birth rate will soon drop precipitously but either way I do not want to see this boy’s DS after the consummates the marriage.

via Technabob

Sharper eyes than mine have spotted this little easter egg in the Google Chrome OS Demo video that Google published yesterday. (Or were you completely off the grid yesterday, and didn’t know that Google hosted members of the media to demonstrate Google Chrome OS?) Big Boss? An e-mail from Yoji, asking you to be on time today? Snaaaaake!

So yeah, apparently someone on the development team is a big Metal Gear fan. (Yoji Shinkawa is a character designer at Konami, and Big Boss hopefully needs no explanation.) Google instantly wins, like, 10 Awesome Points for the references.

And that’s all there is to say.

What’s happening is there’s a solar cell in there that charges a small battery. When the battery achieves a certain level of power, it discharges, driving the wheels and rolling the ball. A clever layout of rods and rollers inside ensures that the solar panel is always pointing upwards.

It serves as little purpose as anything I’ve ever seen, yet now I can’t imagine a happy world without it. And I love the fact that if suddenly all humans were eliminated from the earth, these little guys would keep on rolling until the sun exploded.

Like a ’70s cop team – one is the goodie two shoes and the other one is the drunk – the DuinoTagger and Talcapult allow you to shoot things and make smoke appear. The gun uses an Arduino board to control a tiny catapult that blows out a little puff of smoke.

The instructions are pretty detailed but you can see how it works here if you’re so inclined.