speed

Running-jumping treasure-hunting game

Temple Run is a treasure-hunting game with shades of a few other popular games thrown in. It installs quickly and launches with a short tutorial that teaches the game mechanics in about 60 seconds. Temple Run is a free download, but you'll want to buy some extra coins to buy upgrades and new capabilities.

Essentially, in Temple Run you need to run through a maze of paths, jumping or sliding over and under obstacles, collecting coins or gems as you go, using different swipes of the screen and by tilting the iDevice. There are power-ups and special abilities (like … Read more

Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier -- again

Chuck Yeager was 24 when he became the first human to break the speed of sound. And to celebrate the 65th anniversary of that history-making event, the 89-year-old former test pilot and now retired Air Force brigadier general did it again, flying in the rear seat of an F-15 that broke the sound barrier at 10:24 a.m. on Sunday.

Yeager, whose exploits were chronicled in the book (and film) "The Right Stuff," gained worldwide notoriety when his Bell X-1 -- a 30 foot, 11 inch plane with a 28-foot wingspan -- reached a speed of 700 … Read more

The 404 1,148: Where we all get a little closer (podcast)

If you're a gamer or at least marginally interested in videogames, today's show is for you. With Justin Yu out of town for the day, Jeff invited gaming industry all-stars Russ Frushtick (Polygon) and Scott Jones (EP Daily) to take on a handful of gaming-related topics. Laughs were had, tears were shed, but at the end of the day we all got a little closer.

Topics from today's show:

- Scott is really digging Fieldrunners 2.

- If there's one thing we're all in agreement on, it's that Dishonored is already a top 3 game of 2012 -- and that Russ' new nickname is "Ghost."

- Will Need For Speed: Most Wanted finally give us the Burnout-esque game we've been asking for?

- What the hell is going to happen with the Wii U?

- Just how Assassin's Creed-y will Assassin's Creed III be?… Read more

How important is PC processor speed, really?

In the old days, choosing a computer was easy: you bought the one with the fastest processor you could afford. And you knew which processor was fastest (more or less) by its numerical clock-speed rating.

These days it's a lot trickier. Only hard-core techies (and those with the patience to search in Google) know the difference between, say, an AMD A4-3305M and an Intel Core i3-2350M.

And even then, does it really matter? There's a strong argument to be made that processor performance, even in low-cost, entry-level PCs, has reached a level that's good enough for most … Read more

How to boost your Steam download speed

Steam defines itself as "the ultimate entertainment platform." Its software, available for PC, Mac, and mobile devices, allows people to "play, connect, [and] create." Its gaming library has more than 2,000 titles and it has approximately 40 million users. If you're one of those 40 million, you know what a pain it can be to wait for a game to update or for a new one to download -- it's not the speediest process.

Here's how to make the wait time a little less painful:

Open the Steam settings page. This can … Read more

Download and convert with SpeedBit Video Downloader

Downloading videos from sites like YouTube, Dailymotion, and other Flash video providers should be easy, but we've encountered all too many downloaders that make this task needlessly complicated. SpeedBit Video Downloader delighted us with its ease of use; there was no trial and error, no need to consult the Help file, no guessing about how to proceed. We simply clicked a few buttons to download and convert our desired content. If you use Firefox or Internet Explorer, downloading Flash videos doesn't get much easier than this.

Once installed, SpeedBit Video Downloader appeared as a toolbar at the top … Read more

Apple's A6 processor appears faster than previously thought

The silicon powering the new iPhone 5 appears to be more powerful than previously thought.

The A6 processor found in Apple's next-generation smartphone has been clocked at 1.3GHz by a new version of iOS benchmarking software Geekbench, faster than the 1.02 GHz previously reported .

The new version of Geekbench, which landed today at the App Store, "features a dramatically improved processor frequency detection algorithm, which consistently reports the A6's frequency as 1.3GHz," Primate Labs John Poole told Engadget.

Earlier results posted by Geekbench suggested the A6 was roughly twice as fast as any chip … Read more

Life beyond JavaScript: Google's abuzz over RoboHornet test

Google last night unveiled an early version of RoboHornet, a general-purpose browser speed test that company engineers hope will shed light on something besides just JavaScript.

But Microsoft, maker of Internet Explorer, has derided the tests as not useful.

There are plenty of JavaScript speed tests, Google's new Octane among them, and for good reason: the programming language is used to turn static Web pages into interactive Web apps. But there's more to fast browsing, and Google hopes others will get involved to flesh out RoboHornet with a full suite of tests.

"It's a living, dynamic … Read more

Play high-quality videos on YouTube and other sites with SpeedBit Video Accelerator

Web browsers and bandwidth feel the pinch as online video formats get better and better (and bigger and bigger, too). SpeedBit's Free Video Accelerator for YouTube is designed to work with your Web browser to improve how it downloads and plays online video, especially high-quality formats streamed over broadband connections. It buffers and smooths audio and video playback and reduces or eliminates freezing, crashing, dropouts, and distortion. It's freeware, though a premium upgrade adds HD playback, iTunes acceleration, and automatic setup.

SpeedBit's setup wizard lets you choose between installing the freeware and the shareware version, which includes … Read more