The idea is that this new Gamepad API will allow developers to make better games using the Firefox browser. Check out the video to watch some guy lovingly play with his controller as he watches the results onscreen. Riveting stuff.

Now you can play browser-based games with a real controller, not just your keyboard and mouse. This could change online web gaming for good. For more info hit up the Mozilla website.

[via Ubergizmo via Geeky-Gadgets]

Users can add their own people to block on the list, but there is a default one included which has most of the big ones, including the recently added Charlie Sheen. Gesture Theory is behind this add-on and they plan on improving it so that it can block the headlines from any website. The first image shows how sites look without the blocker on. The second image below shows what happens when Lindsay Lohan is on the ‘gag’ list. Poof! She’s gone.

You can download Silence of the Celebs to try it out for yourself. If you’re suffering from Charlie Sheen or Lindsay Lohan overload, this might be swell for you.

[via Michael Surtees]

The thinking behind this is to shave some pixels off the height of the non-browsing parts of the browser. The new mockups that we’ve seen include Classic, Compact, Sidetab, and Touch versions. The Sidetab capability has actually been hiding in Chrome for a few months now, but the Compact version would do away with the URL bar, hiding navigation inside the tabs themselves. This means more vertical pixels and less scrolling.

Since Chrome currently has only somewhere around 15% of the browsing market, you might think that this doesn’t really matter, but anything that the big G does can have an impact on interface standards. I personally use the URL bar all the time, so I hope that Google doesn’t make this the default mode.

[Conceivably Tech via DVice]

The test pits the Optimus 2X and its zippy dual-core Tegra 2 processor against the iPhone 4 and its 6+ month old A4 CPU. I’m not sure if the page rendering improvements in the Optimus 2X come from the faster CPU or the GPU differences, but either way, it’s clearly much faster at rendering web pages. See for yourself:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Never mind the fact that the LG phone is running Flash 10.1, so Apple’s position that Flash would weigh down the iPhone really is a little questionable, IMHO. I’m still convinced it’s just due to a political battle between Apple and Adobe.

I expect to get my hands on LG’s new mobile handsets at CES this week, and will let you guys know how things perform up close and personal.

[via Phone Arena]

The app’s popularity recently exploded, causing Skyfire’s servers to be overwhelmed. The company had no choice but to temporarily declare the browser as “Sold Out”. It’s now back on the App Store, being sold in batches.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Aside from transcoding Flash videos, the browser also features one-click sharing to Facebook and Twitter, private browsing, and user agent switching. It’s currently available at the App Store for only $2.99 (USD). As I said, the app is being sold in batches, so if it’s not available when you go to the App Store, just check back later. The browser is also available in other platforms, including Android and Windows Mobile. Check out Skyfire Labs’ website for more info.

[via Lifehacker]

I don’t even know who made this game, but even if I did, I don’t know whether to thank or hate that person. Now excuse me, I have a digital ball to drop.

If your browser has the HTML5 chops, follow me at your own risk.

[via the bbps]

As you’ll see in the screenshots below, there’s plenty to do in the world of Boring RPG (which apparently is Middle Earth). You can chat, set up a shop, manage your inventory. The cooldown of the click increases after each click; anyone familiar with online games will realize that here’s where the site makes money – you can buy tokens for more clicks. Prices start at 8 tokens for a $1(USD), all the way to 2,500 tokens for $100. You can also find tokens as you adventure, and if you don’t want ‘em you can sell them to other players.

Bored? Sign up and get clicking. The developers of this game should make a mobile version. I’m actually surprised that these fun clicking RPGs don’t have iOS/Android apps yet. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a button to click. I hope I run into that blind falcon again.

[via reddit]

Drag it to your bookmarks bar, surf to your desired battlefield and commence your attack. Use the arrow keys to control your ship, and press the space bar to shoot. It may just be because my laptop is old, but I recommend you not mash the space bar too much, because when I did that Firefox didn’t like it and became sluggish.

Practice your evil laugh and destroy some websites!

[via Download Squad]

The Revolving Internet was made by Constant Dullaart, as a response to Chris Collins’ Uneven Google, which is Google but is tilted by 1 degree. I’m not sure why Collins made Uneven Google, and why Constant Dullaart felt it warranted a response. But they both did, and here we are.

Check out the The Revolving Internet for the full, nauseating experience.

[via today and tomorrow]

According to Comex, “Frash can currently run most Flash programs natively in the MobileSafari browser. Frash currently only runs on the iPad, but support for other devices (3GS+ only due to technical restrictions) is planned, as well as support for iOS 4.”

Frash is also neat in that it that it works like the tabs in Chrome; if the plugin crashes, MobileSafari will not be affected. The program is not yet stable though, and currently cannot play video or accept keyboard input. Comex says the latter is a simple task; unfortunately, video playback “will require major reverse engineering of the video decoding frameworks on the iPhone.” Damn… To cheer you up, watch as Comex burninates on the iPad:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Comex has posted the source code at GitHub, in the hope that developers would pitch in with Frash.  I don’t think there’s any chance that Apple would approve Frash as an app, so if it’s ever released, I’m pretty sure iPad users will have to jailbreak their tablet and get Frash from Cydia. Good luck Comex!

[via MacStories]

Don’t bother squinting, there’s really nothing to see. This can be resolved in two ways: Either Apple starts supporting Flash, web developers stop being so overdependent on Flash, or at least offer an alternative version for devices like the iPad. Do you think the iPhone, iPad and similar devices will be popular enough to convince developers to ditch Flash? Or is really just a matter of time before Adobe’s software becomes extinct?

[via Daring Fireball]

The example above shows an Armenian-friendly keyboard. Check out the official Google blog for the full list of countries with the virtual keyboard enabled. It’s a great feature, but I think you can only access a specific virtual keyboard if you’re on the corresponding version of Google. For example, to use the Armenian keyboard you’ll have to go to http://www.google.am. Maybe it’s just me, but wouldn’t it be more convenient to have the whole set of virtual keyboards available on all versions of Google? Not all Armenians are in Armenia, if you know what I mean.

[via Ubergizmo]

Let this be said: I enjoyed playing Robot Unicorn Attack more than I do playing/watching Final Fantasy XIII.

[via Boing Boing]

Co-founder Dave Perry says that Gaikai wants to work closely with game publishers, whereas Onlive’s marketing strategy is to go up against the console makers. OnLive recently revealed their pricing scheme: $15 a month, aside from the cost of purchasing games. Perry thinks that OnLive will kill itself. Gaikai on the other hand, seems to be more of a way for publishers to let customers try their games using as little equipment as possible –  an internet connection, a browser and Flash. Watch Dean Takahashi interview Perry as the latter fiddles with Gaikai (very weird name by the way).

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

So what is Gaikai’s push? Perry revealed a bit of the company’s plans in an interview with Eurogamer. The plan is for Nintendo, Sony et al to leverage Gaikai’s technology to let users try games for free, again using only a browser and Flash: “Say you’re going to Nintendo.com. We’ll actually look at your geographical location, see we’ve got a server near you, and pop up a button that says ‘play Mario Kart now’. You click the button, up pops Mario Kart and you can play it… Our objective is to make you fall in love with Nintendo and have a great time playing Mario Kart. And this is the big difference. We’re not running the games, it’s the publishers running the games. We supply the service to them to let them do this.” But at the same time, as you can clearly see in this demo, Gaikai is also considering something very similar to what OnLive is offering:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

So… it seems that Gaikai offers a much simpler interface than OnLive and that the company is offering their tech to game publishers. But the question here is: will there be a dedicated Gaikai service for gamers similar to what was shown above, or will the tech be found embedded in publisher’s websites? Or will it be both? And if there will be a Gaikai service what then makes it different, marketing wise, from OnLive? So many questions.

Check out the full list at Critical Distance. Actually Hyde’s article is a timewaster in itself; with titles like “Post-I.T. Shooter”, “Evidence of Everything Exploding”, or “The Thing With 40 Eyes Girl”, instead of actually playing the games he specified, you could spend hours just imagining what a given game would be like based on its title alone.

[via Kotaku, image via The NES Player]

On the other hand, the generator is a fun timewaster (see above picture). And actually it does have a couple of good ideas.

So maybe you already have a bunch of New Year’s resolutions, but the New Year’s Resolution Generator may make you add one or two items to your list. Especially if you’ve never eaten a mango.

[via The Presurfer]

Unless the weather conditions constantly change in your area, it will always be associated with the same Star Wars planet, so there’s not much sense in checking the website out more than once. Especially in my case, as it’s kinda depressing being told that it’s like Bespin where I live. And that Lando is going to betray me, even if I don’t know anyone named Lando. Yet.

[via The Presurfer]

As you can see, my days are freakin’ packed. I mean, I just cannot possibly do more than what I’m doing now. PES 2010, NBA 2K10 and poker all on one night? Whew. You can also see that there’s a “Someday” portion, which again I assume is self-explanatory. As for the other aspects of TeuxDeux, watch this video:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The app’s clean interface and appropriately limited functionality makes it easy to use, but more importantly, it looks good enough to be your homepage, which I think is the only way TeuxDeux can actually help you get things done. Because let’s face it, it really doesn’t matter where or how you make a list of tasks. What matters is that you’re regularly confronted by it so that you actually remember what you’re supposed to do (and hopefully have enough self-discipline/guilt/need for money to accomplish your tasks). So if you’re going to use TeuxDeux, do yourself a favor – set it as your homepage and make your browser open it whenever you open a new tab. Otherwise sooner or later you’re either going to forget about it or you’re going to be too lazy to log-in and check it.

Fusion Garage CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan today showed off the JooJoo in a web-based video conference. During the conference, Chandra attempted to set the record straight, insisting that Arrington never delivered on promises of VC funding connections and marketing, and that there was never a contract. Now the simple fact that TechCrunch and CrunchGear built such buzz around the CrunchPad name should be proof enough that they did their part from a marketing perspective. But I’ll leave that to the lawyers. Anywho, back to JooJoo. I hate that name already.

For starters, the JooJoo won’t be priced in the $200 to $300 (USD) range that the CrunchPad was expected at, and instead it will sell for $500 bucks. But I never really believed that pricing would be realistic, given the technological promises made. Speaking of technology, the JooJoo will have a 12-inch capacitive touchscreen, and runs a proprietary Web browser that runs all its apps in the cloud (ala Chrome OS). No OS here, just web apps and a local cache.

It’s expected to also sport Wi-Fi, an accelerometer and 4GB of internal SSD storage for caching apps and content. Battery life is said to be 5 hours, and Chandra claims the JooJoo will boot in a zippy 9 seconds. He also says the green screens shown during the video conference were an artifact of the cameras, and the hands-on video and stills below from cnet should allay any fear about any such green screen of death…

If you’re not one of the masses who think Fusion gave Crunch the shaft, you can start pre-ordering your CrunchPad JooJoo this Friday (12/11) over on their website. Again, you’re looking at $500 bones for one of these, which seems like a heckuva lot for something that’s only “killer app” is a web browser.

Me? I’ll keep waiting for the Apple Tablet.

[via Gizmodo and cnet]

For those who aren’t familiar with the CrunchPad, it was (it was! oh the tragedy) basically a touchscreen computer that runs only Firefox and Skype, with data entry facilitated by an “iPhone-like touchscreen keyboard”. It all began last year, July 21, 2008, when Arrington outlined his (quite specific) ideas for a web tablet that would sell for about $200 (USD). There. Now you’re as pissed off as us about this whole thing.

Shown above is the concept drawing for the CrunchPad, made even before the name was coined. It’s quite close to the prototype “demo-ware” we’ve seen floating on the Internet, shown below. Arrington blames Chandra Rathakrishnan, CEO of Fusion Garage, which was supposed to be the manufacturing arm of the CrunchPad project. Says Arrington,“Bizarrely, we were being notified that we were no longer involved with the project. Our project. Chandra said that based on pressure from his shareholders he had decided to move forward and sell the device directly through Fusion Garage, without our involvement. Err, what? This is the equivalent of Foxconn, who build the iPhone, notifying Apple a couple of days before launch that they’d be moving ahead and selling the iPhone directly without any involvement from Apple.” Err, what indeed.

You can read the Arrington’s full eulogy/rant at TechCrunch. But before you do, check out Phillip Torrone’s article at MAKE, because he posted a question for Arrington that’s yet to be answered: the CrunchPad’s software and hardware were supposed to be open source; where are the specs for both?

It’s a valid question, because even if Arrington’s deal fell apart the CrunchPad doesn’t have to die… IF the hardware specs and software are released to the public. And that’s the something awesome I was talking about.