tower

With its hilly terrain, dense urban population, and plenty of government red tape, San Francisco already is a difficult place for cell phone carriers to build new antennas. But that process could become even more complicated if the city approves new aesthetics restrictions for antenna installation on public property.

Under the Personal Wireless Service Facility Site Permits Ordinance (PDF), introduced Tuesday by SF Supervisor John Avalos, antenna applicants would have to consider the visual impact of any new installations. The city could also reject applications based on that factor alone.

Jonas Ionin, senior planner for the San Francisco Planning Department, … Read more

Trenches is a fun and challenging World War I-themed trench-warfare arcade game with strong elements of real-time strategy and unit and resource management.

With its killer combination of winning art direction, well-designed gameplay, and a shallow but steady learning curve, Trenches is hard to put down. You control British troops advancing from trench to trench, left to right, across a long, scrolling map (which you can tilt to scroll, or touch and drag the skyline to move). You touch and drag units to determine their path, and you can use a two-finger motion to direct all onscreen units to retreat, … Read more

Five words that may make your day: Star Wars meets Tower Defense.

That's Star Wars: Battle for Hoth in a nutshell. The game combines obvious elements of Tower Defense with one of the franchise's all-time greatest action sequences.

In other words, it's up to you to defend Echo Base against endless hordes of droids, snow troopers, Imperial AT-ATs, and the like.

To do that, you'll deploy infantry, towers, snow speeders, and even X-Wings.

The game spans 15 levels and offers two modes of play: Classic and Fortress. It also treats you to clips, music, and sound … Read more

Last year, Dyson attracted a lot of attention with a couple of blade-free fans that used something called Air Multiplier technology to blow a nice, even stream of air to cool you down. Those 10 and 12-inch models aren't exactly cheap, costing $299.99 and $329. But instead of making more affordable fans, Dyson is coming out with two larger higher-end models that will cost $450.

The AM02 Tower (pictured left), available in iron, blue and silver, or just silver, stands 1m tall and measures 19cm wide, whereas the AM03 Pedestal fan is even larger and pumps out more … Read more

BioDefense: Zombie Outbreak is a one-player zombie-survival game that mixes elements of real-time strategy with an open-map tower-defense game.

The core of BioDefense is a survival mode, in which you protect your base from random waves of zombies. You have to juggle several interdependent factors as you construct and defend your base: you have to build collectors on top of "toxium" deposits (toxium is the game's currency, and a finite resource on the map), but you can only build where you have light--so you also need to build spotlights. Predictably, spotlights are fragile, so you need to … Read more

Pew Pew Land is a cartoony tower-defense game with fairly conventional gameplay but cool two-player capabilities over Bluetooth.

Fans of the tower-defense genre will quickly pick up Pew Pew Land's touch-screen interface and fast-paced tactics: you have to defeat a fixed number of enemy waves on each level, strategically placing a variety of upgradable towers (eight types in all, from simple shooters to rockets and lasers) along a fixed path with an entrance and exit. If you let too many enemies get by, the level ends. The game's help is scant but adequate, and Pew Pew Land's … Read more

Like many people, my parents are in the market for a new PC to replace an aging Windows XP desktop. Today's Woot.com deal looks just about perfect: a refurbished eMachines ET1331G-05W dual-core tower for $319.99, plus $5 for shipping.

Like all Woot deals, this one is available today only, and there's always a chance it'll sell out. (The site's nearly as popular as this one ;). Thus, let's get right to the highlights and lowlights.

For an everyday home user, I think the ET1331G-05W (wow, that just rolls off the tongue) packs more than … Read more

I check the iPad apps lists every day in the hope to uncover new gems. Though the frequency of apps coming into the app store is probably better described as a trickle rather than a flood, there's already been a few keepers that I've spent a lot of time with. One new addition to my iPad is a strategy game like no other I've seen so far and I think it has just the right elements to keep strategy gaming fans coming back for more.

Space Station: Frontier HD ($4.99) takes elements from tower-defense-type games and … Read more

Commodore 64 is an app that emulates the iconic '80s home computer of the same name, giving you access to some free games as well as an in-game store to buy more.

The interface looks lovely, with a nostalgia-inducing splash screen and a slick, faux-wooden shelf for your games. The app comes preloaded with several titles (although even if you owned a C64, you might not have heard of them), and by choosing the "Shop" tab, you can browse through more than 30 other games, including quite a few free ones. Each game has screenshots and a short … Read more