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8-Bit Eclectic Method Mixtape Mashes Up Classics, 'Angry Birds' Lands on Android

8-Bit Eclectic Method Mash-Up
There's a load of great tech news happening out there every day, and, unfortunately, we just can't cover it all. Here are a few of the other noteworthy things we saw today on our never-ending journey through the wild, wild Web.
  • Vimeo user Eclectic Method takes the Girl Talk approach to mixing up the visuals and music from classic 8-bit games like 'Tetris,' 'Duck Hunt' and 'Super Mario Bros.' [From: Vimeo]
  • Android users can now waste an inordinate amount of time playing games on their phones now that 'Angry Birds' has finally landed in the Marketplace. [From: TechRadar]
  • Magnum photographer Martin Parr offers tips for improving your holiday photographs. [From: Guardian.co.uk]
  • Apples in Stereo's frontman Robert Schneider hooked his brain up to a Moog MG-1 synthesizer via a hacked version of Mattel's EEG-reading MindFlex toy. The results were certainly better than expected. [From: Wired.co.uk]
Got a tip? Want to talk to us? In need of more choice links like these? Drop us a line on Twitter and check out our Tumblr blog.

'Duke Nukem Forever' Back in Development. Seriously.

Like cats, apparently 'Duke Nukem Forever' has nine lives. The title -- which has been in a constant state of development since 1997 -- was officially terminated in May of 2009, but it took till December for anyone to notice. We all thought that the saga was finally over for our catch-phrase-stealing, woman-objectifying, swear-word-spewing alien killer. But it appears that in 2011, the most infamous unreleased game of all time can reclaim its rightful place at the top of Wired's annual vaporware list.

After the original developer, 3D Realms, closed its doors last year, Gearbox, the company behind 'Borderlands', picked up the unfinished product and decided to complete the game. Now Gearbox and publisher 2K are promising to release 'Duke Nukem Forever' either later this year or in early 2011. Randy Pitchford, CEO of Gearbox Software, told the Wall Street Journal that the company was in the "polishing phase" of production. Given its history, though, you'll have to forgive us: no matter how many booths at expos you set up, we refuse to believe this product will actually ship. In fact, your author is so confident this will continue to be vaporware, he promises to purchase a copy and eat it for dinner (packaging and all) if it actually hits store shelves before the end of the year. [Ed. Note: All opinions, statements and plastic consumed by our writers do not reflect the Switched.com community as a whole. We in no way condone Terrence's promise to ingest any amount of video game materials, Duke Nukem-related or not.]

Update: Amazingly, footage actually exists (check it out after the break), and don't miss the impressions from our friends over at Joystiq.

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Inventive Inmates Smuggle Cell Phones With Bows and Arrows

archer with iphoneThere are plenty of ways to get a cell phone into prison, and not all of them involve shoving them in uncomfortable places. Inventive Brazilian inmates have already trained pigeons to sneak the mobile devices through the bars, but the latest innovation in cell phone smuggling is by far the most badass... and dangerous. According to the AP, criminal associates on the outside have started strapping phones to arrows and firing them over prison walls with bows. A 17-year-old was caught when one of the arrows he launched into a Brazilian penitentiary struck an officer in the back. Luckily, the officer wasn't seriously injured, because the cell phone was inexplicably attached to the tip of arrow, blunting the impact. The youth was apparently able to get at least four phones into the prison before he was caught. We bet American prisoners with sore rectums are wondering why they didn't think of this one.

'Doom': Lock and Load on This Free, Pixelated Reboot

Doom Screenshot
As much as we love new gaming experiences, sometimes we hanker for the classic games of our distant youth. Luckily, many of these can be revisited in browser-based iterations. This week, we'll take a look at timeless classics -- like Monday's 'Pac-Man', Tuesday's 'Lemmings', Wednesday's 'Duke Nukem' and yesterday's 'Civilization' -- that are always worth wasted productivity. If you haven't played these in a few years, or if (heaven forbid) you've never undertaken them, then what are you waiting for?

What can we say about 'Doom' that does it justice? It's one of the most addictive games ever made, it revolutionized how we play (essentially cementing the First-Person Shooter as the most popular genre in gaming), and its first person run-and-gun gameplay makes it the perfect healthy outlet for workplace aggression. The controls in the first episode of this Flash version are similar to the original PC iteration; you use the arrow keys for movement, the space bar for shooting, R for opening doors and the tab key for accessing the game's auto-map. The only thing missing is the pumping MIDI soundtrack, although the lack of background music does make the screams of our dying enemies all the more satisfying.

Doom

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Meat Master Delivers Text Messaging Smoker Just in Time for Fall Football

Peter Rauch's SMS meat smoker
Barbecue connoisseurs will attest that, despite the seemingly exorbitant prices, fancy smokers present the most tantalizing and mouth-watering option for slow-cooking meat. The devices also inevitably prompt lame BBQ attendees to offer a played-out, sigh-inducing, "With that price, does it cook the meat for you and tell you when it's ready?"

Well, Peter Rauch has created a DIY smoker that enables BBQ hosts to provide an emphatic and gratifying, "yes" to that question, and without draining the bank. Rauch hooked up a power modulator, a heating element, a touch-screen control panel and two temperature sensors to create a self-cooking, SMS-ing smoker. Users simply specify the preferred temperature for their cut of meat, and then wait for a text telling them it's ready. The smoker even maintains the set temperature to prevent overcooking and drying. Of course, some lazy folks may just want buy similar, existing products to accomplish these tasks, but -- if you don't want $1,000 going up in smoke -- Rauch's gift to geeky grillers serves as prime tech for tailgating season.

Snoop Dogg Lends His Name to Norton's 'Hack is Wack' Rap Contest

snoop doggUnlike some other aging gangsta rap icons, Snoop Dogg continues to prove himself both a prolific musician and a complacent corporate shill. (We're thinking of his recent collaborations with the TV show 'True Blood' and fembot Katy Perry, and even his contribution as a celebrity voice for TomTom GPS -- "Turn rizzle at the next intersizzle"?) And now Norton, the global computer security giant, is bankrolling Snoop to promote its 'Hack is Wack' campaign, a contest that asks unlikely MCs to pen a rap about the perils of the Internet.

If you think that you can spit a golden anti-cybercrime rhyme in under two minutes, record yourself and enter the contest. (Sadly, entries "may not contain obscene, lewd or inappropriate images or text." What kind of sh•• is that?) The grand prize includes a paid trip to LA to see Snoop in concert, a Toshiba laptop and the chance "to meet with select members of Snoop Dogg's management team." Oh goody! So even if your nerd skillz are fresh enough to land you the top spot, you won't be given the opportunity to embarrass yourself in front of the Dogg. (And, if these two submissions are any indication, you won't have to try too hard.)

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The Week in Design: Dynamic Learning Tech and the Back of the Design Class

a selection of this week's concepts
The Web is teeming with the unrealized ideas of both students and established designers who set out to produce astonishing renderings and prototypes for unusual products. Unfortunately, due to the lack of time, money, or technology, many of those products never progress from the planning stages to the mass market. But that doesn't mean we can't salivate over them, nevertheless.

As our knowledge grows, so must our learning tools. We found three fantastic designs this week that meet the challenges of an increasingly digital life headlong, incorporating new interfaces in objects that seem as familiar as they are new. But some designers just won't learn, and -- despite their good intentions -- end up flunking our critique this week.

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Personal Data Hacked from New German ID Cards Live on Public TV

an example of the new german id cards
The same, privacy-conscious German government that threatened Google with legal action over its "invasive" Street View feature is now facing its very own security crisis, after a group of hackers recently demonstrated how to easily extract private information from government-issued ID cards. The hackers, who are part of the so-called 'Chaos Computer Club,' recently appeared on the German TV show 'Plusminus' to show the world how easily data can be harvested from the cards. As the Local reports, a person's fingerprints and unique six-digit PIN code can both be gathered from the cards, with the help of an at-home card scanner that the German government will begin distributing soon.

The at-home scanners were originally intended to allow Germans to more easily process their personal information for business or online shopping. Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière, however, insists that there isn't an immediately apparent reason to take corrective action. The Federal Office for Information Security, moreover, firmly defended the security of the RFID chips implanted within the ID cards, claiming that both the chip and the unique PIN offer a "significant security improvement compared to today's standard process of user name and password." That may very well be true, but the fact that a group of hackers managed to access sensitive personal information with government-issued devices probably won't sit well with a population that's already proven to be particularly paranoid when it comes to privacy rights.

Facebook 'Subscribe to' Feature Lets You Follow Your Friend's Every Move

Facebook's testing 'Subscribe To' Facebook is testing a new feature that lets you subscribe to a specific user's content. In practice, this means receiving a notification every time that user updates their status, posts a new photo, link, video or note, and Mashable aptly dubs it the 'Stalker Button.' Taken at face value, this would appear to be a direct answer to the ability to "follow" a user on Twitter, and may prove more useful for pages of celebrities and businesses than everyday users. We're sure that, outside of the ex you're stalking, you probably don't need to be notified of your friends' every move.

Facebook confirmed to All Facebook that it was indeed testing the new 'Subscribe' feature with a very small pool of users, so expect to see it start popping up for you soon. We just want to give Zuck and crew a little advice: not all of us want to set off alarms every time we comment on someone's page. Give us the option to block users from following us (even if they're our friends) or turn the feature off entirely. Thanks.

Apple's Ping Is 'Drowning' in Spam and Plagued With Celebrity Imitators

Ping Spam
"Ping is drowning in scams and spams." Or, at least that's the claim from security firm Sophos, which has been monitoring Apple's new social network closely since it launched on Wednesday. According to Sophos, Ping has no spam or URL filtering tools in place, giving ne'er-do-wells free reign of the service. The only requirement for joining Ping is an iTunes account, which has no screening in place and doesn't require a credit card to sign up. Oddly, Apple is filtering user photos, though it's apparently using a manual approval process to keep offensive images out of the mix.

Links to surveys promising free iPads are just part of the problem. Like Twitter in its early days, Ping has already been inundated with fake celebrity accounts, including ones for Ben Folds and Mark Zuckerberg. If Apple hopes to keep Ping from turning into a wasteland of the Web's undesirables, it's going to have to institute some form of verification (especially since celebrity participation is one of its selling points) and institute some form of filtering. Perhaps Apple wasn't prepared for the harsh reality of running its own social network. Next time, maybe Jobs will just decide to play nice with Zuck.

GameStop Bans 'Medal of Honor' From Military Base Stores Over Taliban Depiction

Video game playing soldiers looking forward to the upcoming 'Medal of Honor' will have to go elsewhere for a dose of non-lethal action. The game has been banned from all GameStop stores located on military facilities, due to its inclusion of Taliban forces as playable characters in multiplayer shoot-outs. The ban has been enforced by the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, which operates ... Read more »

Apple and Facebook Tangle Over Ping

The key to ensuring our computing future is a pleasant one is based on interoperability and cooperation between varying platforms and products. But, rather than come together (right now), it seems that companies are intent on further fragmenting our digital existence. Facebook is battling Google, Google is at war with Apple and everyone is throwing rocks at the throne of Microsoft. So you'd think ... Read more »

Consumer Watchdog Plants Gargantuan Anti-Google Ad in Times Square

After Google inadvertently gathered personal information from its Street View cars and rendered Gmail addresses more visible with the ill-conceived launch of Google Buzz, the company soon found itself under fire from governments and consumer advocacy groups. Few critics, however, have been as vocal as Consumer Watchdog, which has now placed an enormous anti-Google ad in the middle of Times Square. ... Read more »

Skype 5.0 Beta Adds 10-Way Video Calling, Adult Texting on the Rise

Highlights from this morning's big tech headlines... The new Skype 5.0 beta for Windows introduces 10-way video calling, for awkward and impromptu digital family reunions. [From: Engadget] A new study reveals that adults are finally catching on to this whole texting thing, with over 72-percent reporting that they're texting daily. [From: Pew Internet & American Life Project] ... Read more »

Tweeting Texan First to Be Charged With Web Harassment Under New Law

A San Antonio man could become the first Texan prosecuted under a new state law protecting people against online harassment. According to The San Antonio Express-News, Mike Lavender, a former sports announcer, was recently charged with one count of online harassment for using a fake Twitter account to bother a 33-year-old reporter. He alleged via Twitter that the unnamed woman was having an affair ... Read more »

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astronaut Douglas Wheelock (@Astro_Wheels) tweeting amazing hurricane earl photos http://bit.ly/arkTym

Terrence O'Brien

Wrote a ton today, now off to school to get my learn on, and if the weather holds out I'll go for a bike ride later. #epicproductivity

Joshua Fruhlinger

Engadget is totally podcasting, and stuff: http://bit.ly/aJIK6C

Joshua Fruhlinger

I run around like a teenager hiding things when my parents are about to visit me as if I'm still 16.