Entertainment

Excuse our lack of productivity today--we've got a hedgehog in the office. Sonic the Hedgehog, that is. Sega's 16-bit classic has made its way onto the iPod games section of iTunes (link) this morning and can be had for a mere $4.99. In comparison, the Wii version of the title, which launched just a month ago runs nearly twice as much at 800 Wii points ($8).

The controls use the circular iPod touch wheel as a four-way d-pad, with the center button acting just like the original ABC buttons from the first Genesis controller. They take a … Read more

Now in its 19th season, The Simpsons is definitely past its prime. But every once in a while, the show will send me into hysterics. Last night, after Homer's sisters-in-law (and nemeses) Patty and Selma pushed him from a bridge, the past 39 years of Homer's life flash before his eyes. I recognized it right away as a very sharp parody of a popular YouTube video posted last year where Noah Kalima took a picture of himself every day for six years.

As Homer ages, gains weight, and loses his hair you'll see the various events of … Read more

Los Angeles--Imagine my surprise to see John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco Systems, immortalized with a star on Hollywood Boulevard. Right near Levar Burton no less.

What did they give it to him for? For his fine performance of the "Are you ready?" speech he used to give during the Internet heyday. Chambers gave this speech once every few days, it seemed, between 1996 and 2000. It was rousing, until the third time you heard it. (And it turned out the answer to the question was: "For the dot.com implosion? No.")

Was it for his … Read more

A San Francisco nightclub installed on Monday what it's promoting as the city's first vertical garden. Several plant-filled boxes turned on their sides and bolted outside near the entrance are the first step in the Zen Compound's plans to cover the facade of the building in greenery.

"The hope is to have a living building," said Mike Zuckerman, director of sustainability at the 40,000 square foot complex. He spotted a butterfly hovering near native licorice ferns on Tuesday.

Green rooftops are in vogue in cities around the country. Hanging, wall-mounted gardens, on the other … Read more

The writers strike might have put the kibosh on many sitcoms and dramas, but reality shows are still going strong. January 3 will see the return of Donald Trump's entrepreneurial reality show The Apprentice in the form of The Celebrity Apprentice. This time the apprentices are celebrities vying for a quarter million dollars to donate to their favorite charity.

Of course, that isn't the big news in this technology-focused blog. This time Kodak is going to be a company for one of the episodes, when contestants will work on producing and marketing a Kodak printing station in New … Read more

For those interested in checking whether their favorite professional baseball player is a cheat, Major League Baseball has posted a report on steroid use among current and former players.

The 304-page report can be found at mlb.com/mitchrpt.pdf (PDF). The document is the result of an investigation conducted by former Senator George Mitchell, who is scheduled to hold a press conference this morning.

MLB executives hired Mitchell in 2006.

Mitchell rounded up the usual suspects in his report, such as Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Gary Sheffield, and the brothers, Jason and Jeremy Giambi. But among the surprise players … Read more

An extended outage at RealNetworks' Rhapsody music service has locked out an unknown number of users for the second time since March.

While the earlier problem prevented some customers from accessing the site for up to two weeks, this time executives don't know when the problem will be corrected. A handful of Rhapsody users complained on the company's message boards this week that they haven't been able to log on since Friday.

"It's a known issue," said Justine Navaja, a company spokesperson. "We don't know yet when it will be fixed, but … Read more

I'm holding a ticket to Baghdad in my hand. I just booked the flight at a kiosk in a storefront travel agency in San Francisco's hipster heart, the Mission District.

From speakers in the room, a woman's soothing voice calls out some of the highlights there, like restaurants that are never crowded. Televisions spell out more urgent tips for travelers: "No skirts. No photos. No children."

Brochures in English, Spanish, and Arabic provide more details: "All the beautiful places that you might have read about have either been destroyed or looted."

The boarding … Read more

To use the worst of bad plays on words, YouTube has thrown itself into the Ocean: Youth-oriented mobile carrier Helio announced Wednesday that it has souped up the YouTube video offerings for its Ocean handset.

Owners of the double-keyboard smartphone are now able to upload videos to the Google-owned service more easily, fill in various criteria for them (privacy settings, tags, descriptions, categories) and "geotag" them thanks to the handset's GPS capability. Additionally, the Ocean YouTube application facilitates access to some of the social-networking features previously unavailable to most mobile versions of YouTube--rating, commenting, and access to … Read more