vector

With this exciting game, even couch potatoes can find their inner free-runner. Vector is chock-full of exciting parkour moves and dozens of levels. It's a ton of fun if you like side-scrolling chase games, but most of its content requires a ton of play or cash to unlock.

At first, it's very difficult to find the small settings button to turn off the game's blaring music. That's the only knock on the game's appearance, though. The graphics are very smooth and run without a hitch, even on phones with outdated processors. Vector doesn't start … Read more

Canvas 14 from ACD Systems is an enterprise-class technical illustration program. With it, you can create, refine, and publish sophisticated illustrations, animations, and documents.

It combines the drawing and illustrating features of a premium graphics app, the 3D modeling and drafting capabilities of CAD, and the collaborative capabilities of a productivity suite in one surprisingly intuitive package. A quick-start guide, copious documentation, and a helpful sidebar called the Canvas Assistant made getting to know this capable but complex software easier than we expected.

To try Canvas 14 for free, you must select that option during installation and complete the process … Read more

Pandemic, the first game in this duo, was released for Web browsers back in 2007. The object of the game was to infect a person with a disease you created, then manage the outbreak and evolve the disease to create the most worldwide damage. I agree that the game's subject is morbid, but the huge popularity of Pandemic showed that the actual content doesn't make it any less addictive.

At the beginning of last month, Pandemic 2.5 was released for iOS and quickly shot up the App Store's most-popular lists probably based on the Flash version's popularity. But at the end of May, a very similar game was released that might even be better than the original.

In testing these games, I infected most of the world with my various diseases, but never had one that destroyed all of humankind. Those who have played Pandemic in the past might guess that Madagascar was my downfall (it's a joke among Web gamers that Madagascar is always the one to close its shipyards at the first whiff of danger), but it was Iceland that put a stop to the deadly Parkerism.… Read more

With a focus on both the occasional graphics user and the professional, CorelDraw Graphics Suite X6 (download) hits the market toting a wealth of tools that make manipulating graphics much simpler than before. Hobbyists can check it out to make newsletters, calendars, or banners, while business users can use it to make simple marketing collateral or sales presentations. And of course, designers can use it design things as well.

The new version of the Suite, X6, comes with native 64-bit and multicore processor support, which bumps up the speed of this program noticeably. This means less waiting when exporting, printing, … Read more

No matter how big or small your computer is, there is at least one internal drive to host its operating system and programs. This drive is almost always a standard internal drive, which comes in the form of a regular hard drive (HDD) or a solid-state drive (SSD). The former is affordable and offers lots of storage space, while the latter is generally more expensive but superfast. The good news is, 2012 marked the time SSDs became more and more popular, thanks to the reduced costs and the increased number of vendors joining the storage market of this type.

That … Read more

If you're a fan of Valve video games, you'll probably think this is the coolest thing you've ever seen (or be super jealous that your parents aren't as awesome as this kid's).

Welcome to Vector Farr's own personal Portal-themed bedroom, complete with a red button rug, plush weighted companion cubes, and a GLaDOS replica on the wall.

Vector is the son of comic book writer and artist James Farr, who's most famous for his Xombie series.

For those who aren't familiar with the first-person puzzle-platform video game, Portal introduces gamers to Aperture Laboratories, the handy portal device it developed, and GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System), the lovably masochistic artificial intelligence.

As an Aperture test subject, it's the player's task to successfully navigate a series of physics-based puzzles while enduring hilariously negative reinforcement from GLaDOS as she monitors your progress from one test chamber to the next.… Read more

GeoDefense Swarm is the follow-up to GeoDefense, and is an extremely challenging open-path tower-defense game. Like its predecessor, GeoDefense Swarm stands out for a unique play style that mixes frantic arcade action with bang-your-head-against-a-wall puzzle-solving. Aside from the new open-path format, GeoDefense Swarm has much in common with the original GeoDefense, from its psychedelic vector graphics to its drag-and-drop interface and the same selection of upgradeable towers (GeoDefense Swarm adds a sixth tower, the Thumper, which deals damage in a wide area). You're still destroying a set number of waves of geometric "creeps," all with differing health … Read more

GeoGebra, the free, open-source mathematics software is designed for math classrooms in secondary schools, but anyone who uses geometry, algebra, or calculus should check it out. It combines a flexible, easy-to-use geometry tool with direct input of equations and coordinates. It can create points, vectors, lines, segments, conic sections, and more using preconfigured tools and handle variables for vectors, numbers, and points. It's available in many languages and is supported by a community of users and developers as well as a useful Web-based Help file, a forum, and a wiki. It requires the Java Runtime Environment.

GeoGebra's default … Read more

A technical document posted recently on an Intel software blog drops some hints about its "Haswell" chip due in 2013. The upshot, watch your back Nvidia.

Here's what we already know about Haswell, per a conversation I had last month with Intel marketing chief Tom Kilroy: The mobile version of Haswell will be Intel's first system-on-a-chip designed for the mainstream laptop market, according to Kilroy.

A system-on-a-chip, or SoC, is the de rigueur design for smartphones and tablets. All of the system's core processing silicon--typically comprised of two or more separate chips in a PC--is … Read more