invasion

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Cell phone towers disguised as trees are a puzzling attempt at aesthetics.

- You know you're rich when you have the luxury of turning down an iPad.

Bathroom break video: ASMR keyboard raindrops… Read more

Anomaly Warzone Earth takes a different tack with the tower defense genre by having you play as the invading force, completing missions on a (somewhat) fixed path against a number of deadly turrets. Your heavily armored squad of vehicles and units has guns of its own, but as with every tower defense game, the more turrets you're up against, the harder it will be to stay healthy and reach your goal.

Fortunately, as you progress through the game, you'll gain abilities that will repair your vehicles and make it harder for enemies to hit you. You'll be … Read more

Augmented reality, which brings together the physical and digital worlds, holds much promise for gaming. So why do most augmented-reality games suck? Here's the key: Most aren't true augmented reality. They're little more than animations overlaid on a video feed.

Enter Ball Invasion, a game from Swedish software developer 13th Lab. The iPad 2 game is a leap forward. It's also simple: Shoot a stream of round black bullets at the colorful balls that emerge on your screen. Unlike other augmented-reality games, however, you can bounce your animated bullets off the real walls around you. Check out the video below.

Here's what goes on under the hood. Ball Invasion uses Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) to build and continuously update a 3D digital representation of the physical space in the iPad camera's field of view. This is the technology many robots, including NASA planetary rovers, use to get a sense of where they are.… Read more

On today's show, we fall in love with Lytro, the game-changing photo technology that we can't wait to get our hands on. Get in line, geeks. Also, will Yahoo buy Hulu? And can we call it Ya-Hulu if they do-do? Plus, Apple scores the broadest patent ever, which makes us wonder if the patent office is even trying anymore, and Shazam is coming to your TV.

Super Mega Worm is the Mac version of the retro-looking iOS arcade game of the same name, in which you control a giant bloodthirsty worm that's out to wreak some (cartoonishly) gory eco-vengeance.

You control your mega worm ("Wojira," in classic megamonster-movie style) as you navigate back and forth across a horizontally scrolling landscape, burrowing into the earth and then emerging to feast on eco-unfriendly humanity (pressing Z to pick up speed, or to spit acid when you're above ground). Your game ends when your ever-shrinking energy bar is depleted, so you have to keep eating … Read more

Super Mega Worm Lite is a free, five-level preview of Super Mega Worm, a retro-looking arcade game in which you control a giant bloodthirsty worm that's out to wreak some (cartoonishly) gory eco-vengeance.

Thanks to the addition of new directional-pad controls and the option to continue your game, Super Mega Worm has gotten much better (and easier) in recent updates--although the game also has a Hard difficulty setting (in addition to Normal) and the original tilt and touch slider controls for more hardcore gamers. You control your mega worm ("Wojira," in classic mega-monster-movie style), navigating back and … Read more

When it comes to whimsy, there's no doubt that the concept of a "bristlebot," a combination robot and toothbrush, is dripping with it.

But there's little whimsy going on right now over a controversy that has arisen with the appearance at the recent Toy Fair in New York of a book from Klutz publishing called "Invasion of the Bristlebots."

That's because in December 2007, the inventors at Evil Mad Scientist posted a how-to entry on the Make blog about something they called "BristleBots," a combination of a robot and a toothbrush: … Read more

The Sanrio Empire may have seemed unusually subdued of late, but its campaign for world domination is still very much in high gear. In fact, the threat is more sever than ever, as it continues to target our natural resources.

Hello Kitty has already made her mark, so to speak, on the planet's heat sources and water supply. And now, acknowledging the green trend's growing momentum, the diabolical feline is now trying to seize control of solar energy as well.

The "Hello Kitty Solar-Power Charger" can juice up pretty much any handheld device, according to Chip … Read more

The invasion is upon us. It started innocuously enough, with a sighting or two, but then they got bigger and even began to float above us. And now, just like the nest scene in Aliens, they have multiplied and are ready to conquer the universe.

The "Sphericles" speakers pictured here are only the latest and most prolific example of the alien eyeball speaker invasion we've been warning about for months. This surround system is part of a DIY project by designer Darren Kuzma, which includes a Tang Band 3-inch bamboo cone driver and 1-inch Titanium dome tweeter.… Read more