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Cookie Rush: Save villagers from a giant cookie

If you fondly remember the famous boulder scene from "Raiders of the Lost Ark," you'll probably enjoy Cookie Rush--a run-for-your-life side-scroller from Mobjoy.

The premise is simple--help the villagers escape the giant, smiling cookie by skillfully placing jump markers along their path. Obstacles appear along the way like big, mean dogs, water traps, and milk carton barriers.

Players collect points by getting villagers into hot air rescue balloons and keeping people alive for as long as possible. But don't use your jump markers too fast or the cookie will catch up and it'll be game … Read more

Fixing malfunctioning Web sites with cookie resets

In addition to having multimedia and other rich content, Web sites are becoming a lot more interactive and have areas where people can sign in to user accounts for access to settings, discussion forums, and numerous other options. Though these features are beneficial, periodically they may not work. For instance, if you try logging in to a Web site you may find the browser giving you an error that the page was not found, or it may return you to the main page without logging you in.

Recently this type of problem happened to me upon visiting the Apple discussion … Read more

Google the vote

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded:

Google launches search tools to help Americans vote

Sophos unveils free antivirus software for Mac users

T-Mobile announces a $10 Android phone

Hotmail now works with other e-mail accounts, even Gmail

Google blurs images of homes and faces in Germany on Street View maps

Ubisoft's Michael Jackson Experience game will come with a free sparkly glove if you preorder the Wii version

Martha Stewart launches an iPad app to help you make the best holiday cookies on the block

CCleaner 3 delivers nuanced drive wiper

CCleaner hasn't seen many major revisions since Piriform launched it in 2004, but debuting today, CCleaner 3 includes some extremely useful new features that make it worth the upgrade.

One of the biggest is a drive-wiping tool that can wipe all the data from your hard drive, but can also scrub only the available free space. As with many of the tools in CCleaner, it's fairly nuanced and allows for a simple one-pass overwrite and three levels of secure deletion. These include a Department of Defense-level three-pass option, a National Security Administration-level seven-pass cleaning, and a 35-pass Gutmann-level … Read more

Chrome moves to version 7 on schedule

Google recently adopted an accelerated release cycle for its Chrome browser, pushing out a new stable release every six weeks. Google Chrome 7.0.517.41 for Windows, Mac, and Linux introduces the majority of Chrome users to features that have been available to beta and developer's build users for several months, as well as fixing hundreds of bugs that affected the browser's stability.

The list of new features that have been added to Chrome 7 stable is a short one. The HTML5 parser has been updated, and the stable branch finally received the HTML5 file application programming … Read more

The best Internet Explorer security add-ons

Big things are brewing in the browser industry, which is good news for all Web denizens, regardless of your browser preference. At the same time, your current browser can probably be made safer through the proper application of the right security add-ons.

Top browsers in a state of continuous enhancement Google's Chrome browser continues to garner much of the attention of the computer press two years after its release--and for good reason. Frequent, automatic updates and a clutter-free interface are two of the many features that set Chrome apart from the competition, as Stephen Shankland describes in his DeepTech blog.… Read more

Two simple ways to thwart Web spies

Some Web sites just won't take "no" for an answer. You tell them you don't want their tracking cookies, and they continue to figure out new methods for keeping tabs on your Web activities anyway.

CNET's Greg Sandoval reported last month that several big-name sites have been sued in the U.S. District Court for using Flash cookies to spy on adults and children. At the center of this and similar suits are ad networks Clearspring Technologies and Quantcast that track your online activities even if you set your browser to block standard Web cookies.… Read more

Suit alleges Disney, other top sites spied on users

A lawsuit filed in federal court last week alleges that a group of well-known Web sites, including those owned by Disney, Warner Bros. Records, and Demand Media, broke the law by secretly tracking the Web movements of their users, including children.

Attorneys representing a group of minors and their parents filed the suit Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, records show. The suit alleges that Clearspring Technologies, a software company that creates widgets and also offers a way to serve ads via widgets, is at the center of the wrongdoing.

Web site operators … Read more

Cookie headset: Do we smell the future of sweets?

We are now messing with things that mankind has no business messing with: confectionary treats.

"Meta Cookie" is an "interactive gustatory display" by Takuji Narumi of the University of Tokyo meant to test how computers can manipulate the way people perceive taste.

The mad scientist has created a helmet with goggles that connect to a camera. Wearing the headgear, the subject sees video images of a variety of cookie types and chooses the one that appeals.

Once a cookie flavor is selected, the goggles use augmented reality to make a plain old cookie look like the … Read more