challenge

Piloting the 2013 Dodge Challenger SRT8 392 Special Edition in heavy traffic on a damp road, I began to list all the other cars I would rather be driving at that moment. The Challenger looks good and justifies its retro-muscle-car status with a massive engine, but wouldn't be my first choice for making a quick trip out to the grocery store.

The 392 badges on the fenders make a historical reference to an earlier version of Dodge's Hemi engine and recall a time when we used cubic inches instead of metric liters to measure engine displacement. However, those … Read more

Some games are challenging. Others are grueling. Other still are a special blend of the two, pitting you against your own physical limitations but offering a clear reward when you successfully complete the puzzle. Such is the case with Challenge Your Eyes Free, a simple-to-play but tough-to-defeat game that forces you to find pinpoint differences between Chinese characters on 140 tiles.

The game is very simple in its layout. You start with access to only one puzzle. Every time you complete one, another unlocks. During each puzzle, you are shown a Chinese character. This character is hidden somewhere among 139 … Read more

The Room is an intensely challenging puzzle game with beautiful 3D graphics where the object is to unravel a mystery by opening steampunk-style boxes.

Though "opening boxes" may sound boring, with The Room, each box has several hidden secrets and clues that keep you engrossed, trying to find the right sequence of actions to open the box. There are dials to turn, complex safe combinations to figure out, hidden compartments that contain keys, and much more. You also have an inventory on the left where you store the various keys and other items you find as you search … Read more

We're not quite sure what a next-generation condom would look like (gesture control? a tiny touch screen?), but we may find out sooner rather than later if the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation succeeds in its new quest.

The foundation is seeking new ideas that improve on condom design, which it describes as having seen "very little technological improvement in the last 50 years." The winning proposal gets a cool $100,000, and could potentially earn more in additional funding.

The foundation suggests that if a redesigned condom could enhance a sexual experience and not detract from it, more men would use one, therefore reducing disease transmission, unwanted pregnancies, and so on. The request also seeks ideas "that increase ease-of-use for male and female condoms, for example better packaging or designs that are easier to properly apply. In addition, attributes that address and overcome cultural barriers are also desired." … Read more

Would your average Galaxy S3 owner trade in their phone for a Nokia Lumia 920? That's Microsoft's angle for its latest promotional spot.

The new Windows Phone Challenge ad finds Ben Rudolph, Microsoft's director for Windows Phone Experiential Marketing, aka Ben the PC Guy, trying to convince "Brittany" that the Lumia 920 can take a better photo than can her Galaxy S3. If she prefers her phone, she gets $100.

Naturally, the photo snapped by the Lumia shows a bright, clear, crisp image, while the one taken by the S3 is dark and blurry. And … Read more

The State Department today unveiled three winners in its inaugural Innovation in Arms Control Challenge, a contest that tasked the public with coming up with new ideas for how to tackle arms control issues around the world.

During a Google Hangout moderated by CNET's Daniel Terdiman, Acting Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Rose Gottemoeller introduced the winners and unveiled their three projects (see video below).

In August, the State Department launched the challenge, asking the public to answer the question, "How Can the Crowd Support Arms Control Transparency Efforts?" The competition was the … Read more

Many people remember the bowling game, popular on the old bar-style Nokia devices, as the first game they played on a cellular telephone. Today the graphics are significantly better and the gameplay is incredibly realistic, but bowling games are still available. PBA Bowling Challenge is fun, easy to play, and perhaps kind of nostalgic.

The download time for this app seems quite long, but the reason is apparent once you begin to play the game. The graphics for PBA Bowling Challenge are not cheap. They are sharp, detailed, and realistic. The animation flows smoothly and the game itself is perfectly … Read more

Since September 11, 2001, the American security apparatus has been focused largely on stopping terrorists from striking again. But some feel a more pressing danger may be that of cyber attacks, digital hacks that disable critical infrastructure and bring society to a crawl.

As the U.S. government has tried to shape its approach to such attacks, President Obama and the secretary of defense have relied on contributions from a number of people in the Pentagon and elsewhere for ideas on how to stop bad actors, be they from national governments or small terrorist groups. Among them was Assistant Secretary … Read more

Stunt Car Challenge is a free Android game that lets you take the wheel of a muscle car and try to win coins while performing death-defying stunts. The more coins you win, the more you can do to your car. More power. More durability. And more action. We tried Hyperkani's Stunt Car Challenge in Android Ice Cream Sandwich.

The first thing you're prompted to do when pressing Play is select your Air Control Method, which lets you control your car's angle in midair simply by tilting your device. The choice is either Sensor Controls Air Flips (Recommended) … Read more