spirit

One of NASA's seemingly immortal Mars rovers might soon be at the end of its days.

The Spirit rover had been cruising around the Red Planet, along with its companion, Opportunity, since they both arrived six years ago this month. (Spirit landed on January 3, 2004, while Opportunity landed on January 24 of that year.) Their mission to send back photos and data about the Martian surface was expected to last a mere 90 days. Instead, the two traveling research bots blew away all expectations, continuing their treks year after year.

However, scientists warn that Spirit's most recent … Read more

While plenty of people are still readily awaiting a sequel to Mario Kart DS or New Super Mario Bros., it didn't take Nintendo much time at all to shoot off a follow-up to its 2007 Nintendo DS Zelda adventure, The Phantom Hourglass.

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, set 100 years after Phantom Hourglass and set in a very similar cell-shaded cartoonish universe, at first looks like it might be a pale shadow of the first touch-screen DS game, swapping out train travel for long boat voyages. We were a little surprised and skeptical when the game was first announced, especially since train travel sounds a lot more passive than sailing. After riding around with Link for a weekend, did our opinion change?

Scott: I admit, I was originally dubious about Zelda: Spirit Tracks' ability to be as good as its predecessor, Phantom Hourglass. However, to my pleasant surprise, Spirit Tracks is not only a true sequel to Phantom Hourglass, it's also equally good. In fact, in some ways it's even better.

To address first: the trains in this game are set on tracks that traverse a series of small towns and other locations, and pulling up at destinations is essentially the same as docking your boat in Phantom Hourglass. Actually, the train controls are a bit simpler to operate on the go. The rest of the game, including its focus on a central mega-dungeon that unlocks secrets throughout, is very reminiscent of the first DS Zelda. That's not so bad, though--we'd take more of Phantom Hourglass and less of many other crappy DS games any day of the week.

The storyline, which features evil trains, floating towers, and a floating Zelda spirit that helps haunt statues to do your bidding in co-op puzzle solving, is both bizarre and clever, and is closest to the N64 cult classic Majora's Mask in terms of how it feels thematically. Nintendo's greatest achievement is how it adopts charming dialogue and characters to sell us this absurd tale and not have it feel stale or stilted--it's what makes the Zelda games more approachable to a newcomer than some of Square Enix's numerous RPGs.

After a few hours of play, the train riding aspect fades into the background, and Spirit Tracks is about the things all Zelda games are about: finding small towns, unlocking side quests, getting weapons, conquering dungeon puzzles. It's as classic as any Zelda game before it.… Read more

MB Psychic Color Test allows users to test and develop their psychic abilities by trying to predict which color the program has selected from a group of colored rectangles. If ones assumes that psychic abilities do exist, we suppose that this program could be a useful tool, although it's hard to gauge whether the program actually works the way the publisher says it does.

The interface is simple, though cluttered with ads for the publisher, Mystic Board. Users select from beginner, intermediate, or expert levels, with the number of color choices increasing with the difficulty. The program displays a … Read more

MB Guardian Angel allows users to find their guardian angels based on their day of birth, month of birth, and sun sign. What exactly this is based on, we don't know, but the program does provide the angels and their descriptions.

The interface, like many that of many programs from Mystic Board, is devoted in part to advertising; users are encouraged to contact Mystic Board to find out how they can "co-brand" and have their own advertising information appear within the software. Beyond that, the interface is tolerable, with a place for users to enter their name, … Read more

Wednesday's Nintendo press conference at this year's GDC 2009 shed some light on various details about the company's ambitions. We now know about the Wii storage solution and the pricing structure and details surrounding DSiWare. While we would have liked to see a new Wii title announced, instead we were treated to a taste of a brand-new Zelda title for the Nintendo DS.

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks will be the latest adventure in the Zelda franchise exclusively for the Nintendo DS. There's not much information on the title, but it seems this adventure will … Read more

The world is awash in free and shareware Web browsers. Certainly, the fact that programmers can take the rendering engines of the big two and integrate them into their software is largely responsible. But users want choices, and programmers do not disappoint. Since the most important bits are within the rendering engines, the choices basically come down to packaging, tweaks, optimization, and bundled themes, plug-ins, and extensions.

Internet Spirit's default theme and layout is good if you don't mind five rows of toolbars and some icons that don't quite make sense. Many preference settings require a restart … Read more

Preshow report: Jeff challenges my manhood, so I do what any Manchild would do and drop trou to prove my point (literally). Shortly after, I blacked out for a bit and it's unclear what happened next. Did Ustream see my Super Soaker and kill the stream? Did Wilson secretly stop the broadcast out of respect for our underage viewers? No one is 100 percent sure at this point-all we know is that the camera cut out for awhile. Thankfully, we resolved the technical issues and started the show on time plus 15 minutes.

Since I'm the only one … Read more

Forget about those updated boomboxes and cassette MP3 players. If you really want retro, this is the way to go.

This system from the Spirit of St. Louis Collection is designed to look like a World War II-era radio, like other models in the line, but this one has an iPod dock, CD player, and stereo speakers. And Chip Chick notes that it does have a working three-band radio as well, so it isn't totally artificial.

Concerned about what your customers say about you online? Well, you should be.

You probably think you have your bases covered by allowing product reviews and client testimonials through your Web site, but the truth is that the blogosphere can make (or break) you as a company if Google includes a customer's blog post in the SERPs (search engine results pages).

Prominently positioned customer blog posts in the SERPs that either love you or hate you can be more powerful than product reviews for several reasons, the most obvious one being that many blogs act as word-of-mouth advertising when … Read more