moves

Today's episode is a bit games industry heavy, but that's because the Game Developers Conference is in full swing right now in San Francisco. We talk Sony's new motion controller, Twitter blocking malicious links, and Bill Gates now being only the second richest person on earth--according to Forbes at least. Tune in to find out more about these stories, and all the ones linked below.

Today's stories:

Sony unveils Move, its PS3 motion controller

Twitter to block malicious links

Apple tops Consumer Reports' tech support survey

Attention shoppers: Target offers mobile coupons

Dolby bringing 3D voice chat to consoles, Mac… Read more

As we predicted before the start of the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Sony used its press conference to formally announce the PS3 motion controller. Officially called the PlayStation Move, this wand-and-cam system, briefly demoed at the Electronic Entertainment Expo last year, is the latest move by a video game console maker into the realm of motion control.

While the Nintendo Wii has had this segment of the market cornered for some time, Microsoft is developing a camera-only motion control system for the Xbox 360 called Project Natal (still a working title), and is now officially joined by Sony in the console gesture control arms race.

As Microsoft demoed Project Natal for us in New York recently, and we've just had a chance to play with the PlayStation Move, we can now bring you our initial hands-on impressions of both systems.

PlayStation Move The PlayStation Move requires a combination of a Sony PlayStation Eye Web cam (an existing peripheral), plus one or more PlayStation Move wands. A secondary controller similar to the Nintendo Wii nunchuck, with the unfortunate name of the "subcontroller," is an optional accessory for some games.

We tried several games using the main Move controller (see the video above), and the experience was generally very close to what we're used to from the Nintendo Wii, albeit with a much greater sense of precision--even better than using the Wii Motion Plus. There was much less of the jittery movement to the onscreen cursor we're used to from the Wii.

At the same time, the experience was clearly a work in progress. We played a rail shooter called The Shoot, and while the aiming and shooting worked fairly well, we kept accidentally resetting the level because of overly sensitive pop-up menus. We also played Move Party, a collection of competitive mini-games for up to four players. Most of the mini-games worked well, from swatting flies to painting shapes on the screen, but the entire package felt too much like a retread of the original PlayStation EyeToy Webcam peripheral and games. A fighting game, using two Move controllers, had just enough input lag to feel sluggish.

Of course, these were all early demo versions of games, and they can be expected to undergo additional polishing before release. Our biggest concern is actually the hardware and how it will be sold.… Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Sony on Wednesday unveiled Move, its motion-sensitive controller.

A small device that looks like a microphone--but with something on top of it that looks like a ping pong ball with an LED inside--Move is Sony's bid to gain control over the motion controller wars that are currently led by Nintendo, with its Wii controller, and which many think will be dominated by Microsoft and its Project Natal controller system.

To Sony, releasing the Move is an obvious move for the PlayStation, given it believes it started the motion controller era with its Eye Toy. Sony held its press … Read more

Software maker Nero is known for its media tools. Nero Move It is a multimedia utility that can share, synch, and transfer image, music, and video files between more than 200 mobile devices. It also automatically converts media files into compatible types for each supported device, which greatly simplifies transferring files to several different devices. It works with cell phones, MP3 players, Apple iPhones and iPods, PDAs and Blackberries, digital cameras, and many other gizmos. It's fully optimized for Nvidia GPU video acceleration, which greatly improves performance and reduces the drain on system resources, especially for high-definition content, if … Read more

SmackBots is a button-mashing robot-fighting game that's more than a little reminiscent of the classic childrens' game "Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots."

The interface makes great use of the iPhone and iPod Touch: you tap on the right side of the screen to swing your right fist, the left for your left, and both sides to block, and you tilt your device to move left or right. You fight against one other robot at a time, in two-minute rounds (best two out of three), and you choose your difficulty, either "Just Smacking Around" or "… Read more

Limagito Lite occupies an odd position in the world of automated move/copy/delete utilities. Its many features and customization opportunities, including the ability to execute external commands, make it ideal for power users with complex file management needs. But this Lite version is limited in many ways--it supports only a single rule, for example, and does not support encryption or external scripts--making it an unlikely option for such users.

Still, as a complex advertisement for its single ($59.95) and corporate licenses (starting at $300), Limagito Lite does tantalize with visions of automating complex file-naming and management tasks across … Read more

We've moved! As you've probably noticed, the site looks somewhat different today. We've officially moved over to a new home in CNET that will allow us greater flexibility and give us access to an amazing new pool of Mac content and resources.… Read more

FaceFighter is a fairly simple, comically violent fighting game with a goofy twist: you create your own opponents, using pictures from your iPhone camera or photo albums--so that means you can bruise and brawl with just about anyone, whether your boss, your best friend, or a celebrity from a magazine. FaceFighter's foe-creation interface is intuitive and easy: you start with a pic, scale and rotate to line up the eyes and mouth, and then scale and rotate again to determine the face's borders. FaceFighter comes with two built-in enemies (Big Ben and Enemy Mime), but you'll quickly … Read more

Funny Cursor is a cursor customization that allows users to have a cursor that changes directions with the movement of their mouse. There's not much to this program, but it works as it's supposed to and the effect is kind of neat.

The program's interface is sparse and there is no Help file, but it's not hard to figure out what to do. Users can choose between the default cursor size or a smaller one. The cursor is transformed into an arrows--the small one is slightly larger than the standard cursor--that then changes direction as the … Read more