Games

If you work with a computer, temptation is all around. Just think how often you've lost yourself in a "quick" game when you ought to be analyzing that report. Uh-huh. We thought that might ring a bell. Give yourself one Slacker Point for each of these notorious time-sucks that makes mincemeat of your productivity.

Demanding a better-than-average processor, a 1024x768 screen resolution, a boatload of RAM, and a strong video card just to take part, it's hard to believe that Second Life, the virtual world developed by Linden Lab (download for Windows and Mac), could ever survive on a mobile phone.

Yet on Tuesday, Vollee, a 3G streaming services provider, began offering the free, open beta version of Second Life for 40 Wi-Fi-enabled and 3G cell phones with more handset compatibility coming soon. That means you, iPhone.

In Second Life Mobile, users will be able to fly and teleport all over the virtual … Read more

As unexotic as it may sound, I really do enjoy a good game of digital solitaire from time to time. But once you've got the basics down, doesn't it get old? Probably not if SolSuite Solitaire is laying down the deck. A list of games nearing 500 tests luck and skill, and ranges from easy to difficult play. The game has a fair amount of customization, as well as automated tutors and ways to look up rules. High scores are also posted from around the globe. SolSuite Solitaire is thick with statistics that track how many points you … Read more

Taking an old-school tack to an ages-old computer problem, the PortableApps Suite approach to mobile computing feels more Web 0.5 than 2.0. Instead of hosting programs online, PortableApps is a comprehensive application suite that fits onto and runs from almost any thumbdrive with at least 512MB of space, and can be shrunk down even further if need be.

The suite's flexibility is impressive. It manages some of the best freeware applications from a taskbar menu that runs instantly when clicked on. User-favorites Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird are here, as well as the entire OpenOffice.org office suite, … Read more

Got a few minutes to kill? Sure, you could flip through your tunes, but when the same songs get old, and when you tire of your headphones winding from your ears like some extraterrestrial umbilical cord, check out the worlds of communication, learning, and game-playing applications to discover beyond the beats. Or, dare we say, while listening to them. Check out your burgeoning options for cell phone entertainment in the slide show.

On the first day of the new quarter, it's a good time to take a look back at the first three months of 2008 and expose some of the coolest software downloads that you might not know about. From innovative new games for your PC or mobile devices to creative accounting tools and invaluable utilities for Windows Vista 64-bit users, there's something in this list for all of you friendly PC users.

Onto the six best new downloads of 2008 ...

Wait For It

Tired of multiplayer first-person shooter games that reward 14-year-old punks with itchy trigger fingers? Put … Read more

Why didn't anybody think of this before? Grand Theft Auto franchise developer Rockstar Games has teamed up with Amazon.com in an interesting joint promotion.

When GTA IV comes out on April 29 and you are cruising around inside doing whatever evil deeds come to mind, you might like a particular song playing on one of the radio stations in the game. Well, you will be able dial a number on your in-game virtual cellphone and receive a text message with artist and title information. And if you've signed up to be part of Rockstar's upcoming social … Read more

There's little doubt that this new free Sudoku game sports an atrociously decorated interface, bedecked with smileys and butterflies. However, the game play itself in Free Sudoku 2008 is unimpaired, and the three levels of difficulty and timer actually make this a reasonable experience if you're looking to fret over number patterns for a while.

The game provides the timer, the difficulty level, a solution checker, and an "I-give-up" option on the right-hand side of the panel. The main panel is taken up by the game board, and has an interesting feature: players can enter up … Read more

It's the big dilemma for the fantasy NCAA basketball tournament pool manager: paper brackets or digital? Whichever option you choose, I've got you covered.

When I was a kid, the announcement of the teams and seedings in the NCAA men's basketball tournament was always accompanied by furious scribbling as I tried to manually create an instant tournament bracket. I just couldn't wait until the newspaper arrived the next morning to start making my picks.

The advent of the VCR reduced the furious scribbling, and the Web eliminated the need to write down teams at all. Now … Read more