shipping

Spam may be down but malware marches merrily on.

That's the message from the "November Threat Landscape Report" released yesterday by security vendor Fortinet.

Global spam levels ultimately fell 12 percent in November after Dutch authorities took down a large Bredolab network made up of 140 different servers. The Bredolab botnet was typically used by cybercriminals to send out spam selling fake drugs, according to Fortinet. Spam had actually fallen as much as 26 percent the week after the network was dismantled but was able to stage a bit of a recovery afterward.

The ever-present Koobface botnet, … Read more

Super Laser: The Alien Fighter is a fast-paced, vertically scrolling 2D shooter in the spirit of arcade classics like Raiden, Xevious, and 1942.

You pilot a small ship that never stops shooting, maneuvering through tight formations of enemies that attack throughout the game's seven frenetic levels--all of which end in boss battles of increasing epic-ness. The game gives you four different choices for controlling your ship: Touch (you just place and move your finger wherever you want your ship), Relative (like Touch, but you can place your finger anywhere on the screen, e.g., beside your ship), Joypad (a … Read more

Links from Friday's episode of Loaded:

Facebook plans an announcement for Monday in which it may announce a "Gmail killer"

Viacom is selling off Harmonix, maker of Rock Band

Apple teams up with Twitter to promote its music social network, Ping

YouTube claims to have 35 hours of video uploaded to the site every minute

Walmart.com will ship for free this holiday season with no minimum purchase

Microsoft receives a patent for foot computing

Hustler releases an app for Android

The Apple event on Wednesday was largely about the next iteration of Mac OS X (appropriately named Lion). But an interesting development came when Steve Jobs introduced the new Mac App Store, which will become available to Snow Leopard users in about 90 days.

Much like the iTunes App Store, the Mac App Store will let you purchase Mac apps and install them quickly on your computers. And as it does with the iTunes App Store, Apple will take a 30-percent cut of the sale price, leaving developers 70 percent. But Jobs was careful to point out that the Mac App Store will not mimic the closed system of the iTunes App Store--it will simply be another option to bring apps to your Mac. But do we really believe him?

It seems to me that creating the Mac App Store is Apple's way of testing whether the market will tolerate Apple getting a piece of the action on software developed for the Mac, just like it does with iPhone apps. We can be pretty sure that several developers will submit their apps right off the bat, if for no other reason than for the exposure that an iTunes-like experience can provide. But what Apple might be banking on is that once the software submissions gain momentum, the larger players may no longer have a choice but to submit their software to the new system. Am I just being paranoid?

While we certainly can't be sure what Apple hopes to achieve with the Mac App Store, this sort of soft launch makes me think there's something more going on here. Let me know what you think in the comments.

This week's apps include a 3D third-person soccer game and a new arcade space flier with a fun single-player mode.… Read more

Buganoids is a free arcade game with 8-bit graphics, old-school sound and gameplay, and a circular range of movement reminiscent of classic stand-up tube-shooters like Tempest and Gyruss.

Buganoids' schtick is simple and addictive: you move clockwise or counterclockwise around the "surface" of a planet, shooting into the interior to take out advancing enemy bad guys--in this case, menacing little bees, birds, turtles, and centipede-type creatures, which emerge from holes in the planet's surface. The game's interface is explicitly styled after a stand-up arcade game: under the main screen, you press photo-realistic buttons to rotate left … Read more

Apple is now shipping the iPad within 24 hours after an order is placed.

The new, speedier processing contrasts with the shipping times that followed the tablet's April launch in which orders typically took at least a week to fill.

Swamped by a huge number of preorders and initial sales, Apple had trouble keeping up with customer demand. On the first day, the company sold 300,000 of the tablets. That initial surge depleted the stock of iPads, forcing Apple to push back the 3G version by a week and the international debut by a month.

The lack of … Read more

WASHINGTON, D.C.--If you walk around the Air & Space Museum here, as I did Sunday, you can't help be struck by how much of the most important events and aircraft in aviation history are from decades ago.

This is the museum, after all, where you can find the plane the Wright Brothers used in humanity's first-ever powered flight, in Kitty Hawk, N.C., in 1903. And the capsule from John Glenn's first American manned orbit of the Earth. And the Apollo 11 capsule. And so on.

Then again, right above you when you come in … Read more

Pirates Lite is a fun three-level preview of Pirates: Sea Battle 2, a nautical-combat arcade game in which you fight enemy ships with cannons and boarding parties.

The game has an easy-to-learn, two-thumb touch-screen interface: you move and steer your ship with a spinning steering wheel under your right thumb, while firing cannons with your left thumb. To fire on an enemy ship, you want to turn around to broadsides (so the side of your ship is facing your target), then press the cannon button to fire some or all of your guns. Status meters on each ship--including your own--show … Read more

Battle of Midway is a one-player iPhone adaptation of the popular "Battleship" guessing game (and the iconic Milton Bradley game of the same name).

Gameplay closely mirrors the analog version, with you and an opponent (an enemy AI, in this case) secretly placing rectangular ships on a 10-by-10 grid, which you can do manually or automatically. You then take turns guessing the location of each other's ships by firing at specific squares, and Battle of Midway has both "volley" and "salvo" modes (either fire until you miss or fire once for each of … Read more