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Back when I was a young pup, I dropped more quarters than I care to admit into an arcade game called Super Off Road. It was a top-down dirt-track racer--and one of my all-time favorite coin-ops.

EA's Reckless Racing just rekindled my love affair. It's a top-down dirt-track racer that delivers all the same freewheeling fun--with vastly superior graphics and online multiplayer!

Seriously, I can't remember the last time I fell in love with a game so quickly. Reckless Racing (which should really be called "Redneck" Racing, as that's the clear motif here) is crazy fun, to the point where I keep interrupting my review so I can go back for just one more race.

The game delivers on two major counts: graphics and controls. Reckless Racing is absolutely dazzling, with vibrantly colored cars and tracks that are just shy of photorealistic. And you get to choose from five different control schemes--everything from basic left/right-gas/brake buttons to an onscreen steering wheel ("half" or "full") to accelerometer steering. I'm partial to the buttons, but I am also enamored with "tank" mode (in which your car just goes flat-out the entire time--all you do is steer).

Whatever control option you choose, you'll find absolutely perfect arcade physics. Cars skid and slide and screech around corners (in varying amounts depending on whether you're on gravel or asphalt). If you like drift, you'll love RR.… Read more

Feeling the need for speed? Feeling the need for a permanent ban on the phrase, "feeling the need for speed"? Wishing I'd quit with the lame jokes and just get to the deal already? Got you covered, peeps.

From now until October 13 (aw, they're ending on my birthday), Microsoft is offering the off-road racing gem Dirt 2 (PC) for just $9.99. That's a whopping 75 percent off the original list price of $39.99.

The game will get delivered to you via Microsoft's Games for Windows Live client--meaning it's a download. … Read more

I like watches. I'm wearing a particularly attractive watch right now. It's great because it tells time, and it looks good doing it. Then my editor sent me this Off-Axis Watch designed by Eric Janssen for Areaware and now I want to throw my computer out the window.

It's not that it's not an attractive watch--it's minimalism is quite stunning, actually--it's that the twelve o'clock position is not where I'm used to seeing the twelve o'clock position. Nor is the one at the usual one spot or the nine at the … Read more

Whereas many Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs are trying to cook up the next Facebook or cool iPhone app, a group of San Francisco entrepreneurs is designing a brick-shaped battery for poor people.

"Social venture" Fenix International officially launched yesterday with the opening of its Web site, which describes its plans to sell off-grid power systems for people in developing countries.

It plans to start manufacturing its battery pack this fall and is now negotiating with potential distributors in Africa, India, Bangladesh, and Latin America, company executives said today. It plans to first launch its products in four African countries first.

Fenix International, a for-profit company, is trying to reach the 1.6 billion people who live without regular access to electrical power, explained CEO Mike Lin, a former Apple employee and environmental engineering lecturer at Stanford University, who started the company almost two years ago.

The company's core product is a 12-volt lead acid battery designed specifically for frequent charges from a variety of sources, including a solar panel, bicycle generator, the power grid, or eventually hydro and small-wind turbines.

The battery, called the Fenix ReadySet, includes two cigarette-lighter and two USB ports for charging mobile phones, LED lights, fans, or other small electronics. Company engineers created a custom formulation of lead acid battery so it can last for years and adapt to different power sources.

Demand for electric power is soaring in "frontier countries" because of mobile phones, explained Lin. There are now 500 million off-grid mobile phone subscribers around the world right now but growth is being limited because of no power or unreliable power, he said.

The company's strategy is to sell its ReadySet batteries--priced at about $150 with a power source, such as a solar panel--through phone distributors, which are losing potential revenue because customers can't keep phones on. … Read more

Plenty of knock-off iPhones have surfaced over the years, but here's a fresh look at a model that's being sold today in the Philippines under the name i9 iPhone. According to CNET reader Samuel Sandoval, who shot a short video of the phone (Facebook sign-in required), it costs around $75 and has dual-SIM slots, which means you can be on two different carriers at the same time. There's even a nice Apple logo on the back of the phone.

It's hard to tell exactly what OS the i9 runs. Though it looks like the iPhone OS … Read more

A solar-charged light might seem like just another green gadget to the average American, but for families in rural Africa, it could prove revolutionary.

Product design consultancy Plus Minus Design is vying to replace unsustainable and potentially dangerous lanterns in the homes of off-grid Africans with the Solar Pebble. Engineered with the economic constraints of developing-world citizens in mind, the Solar Pebble will provide one hour of LED light for every two hours of charge, and will cost only $2.70 to manufacture.

Plus Minus Design, based in Leeds, U.K., was founded by three undergraduate students at the University of Leeds. While studying product design and engineering, Adam Robinson, Henry James, and Tom Eales were given the opportunity to work with SolarAid, a charity in the U.K.

SolarAid, which works to fight poverty and climate change, worked with the students to develop a solar-powered alternative to kerosene lanterns. Those lanterns, commonly used in rural Africa, draw 20 percent of an average Malawian family's income, SolarAid said, and pose respiratory health problems, as well as create fire hazards. … Read more

There's nothing like living off-grid for a while to make you aware of your environmental and energy footprint. During a family vacation to Belize last week, I got a flavor for what's needed to function, albeit at a leisurely pace, when you're far beyond the reach of power lines.

This was a special trip, mostly paid for by my wife's company as a gift for 20 years of work. So we made the most of it, traveling to some seriously nice spots with an eye toward experiencing the great natural resources of this small Central American … Read more

Have you ever found yourself waiting for your computer to finish a process so you could shut it down? Or do you find yourself leaving your computer on all the time, even though you know a healthy system needs to be restarted periodically? Auto Shutdown is a simple utility that allows users to schedule times for their computers to shut down or restart automatically. It's nothing fancy, but it's easy to use, and the scheduling is surprisingly customizable.

The program's interface is quite plain and intuitive, with a couple of tabs containing drop-down menus. Users simply select … Read more

Updated: February 17, 2010 at 11:40 a.m. PT. Google has changed the disabling procedure for Google Buzz. You can read about the change here. February 11, 2010 at 12:15 p.m. PT to share a new rollout that Google implemented to better manage (and block) contacts. Also added a note about profile privacy.

My colleague Molly Wood called it a privacy nightmare, but to many, Google's new social-networking tool Buzz is at its root an unwanted, unasked for pest. The way some of us see it, we didn't opt in to some newfangled Twitter system and we don't particularly want to see updates from contacts we never asked to follow creep up in our Buzz in-box. Call us what you will, but for curmudgeonly types like us, Buzz isn't so much social networking as it is socially awkward networking. We tried it, we didn't like it, and now it has to go.… Read more