marble

Google Maps lets users explore NASA's 'Black Marble'

Google Maps is now letting users explore Earth's far-reaching lands filled with flickering lights using imagery from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's "Black Marble."

The Web giant announced the launch of its own Earth at Night today, which is a global view and animation of the images taken from NASA and NOAA's jointly operated Suomi NPP satellite. These series of images show what the Earth looks like from space once the sun sets.

"It took 312 orbits to get a clear shot of every parcel of Earth's land surface and … Read more

Crave giveaway: Puzzle package from Marbles brain store

First off, congrats to Andrew P. of Ann Arbor, Mich., for winning a Zoom Q3HD HD video recorder in our last giveaway. Now, get your gray matter in gear. This week, we're giving away a bundle of fun from Marbles: The Brain Store, a purveyor of games, puzzles, books, and software aimed at strengthening your brain. (If you happen to live in the Los Angeles area, Marbles opens its first West Coast store tomorrow at the Westfield Topanga Mall in Canoga Park.)

The giveaway package will include The GeekBox, a collection of wooden puzzles that employ your memory, visual perception, and strategic thinking skills.; Mindstein, "a trivia game where it pays to be a know-it-all"; and daVinci's Catapult, a build-it-yourself throwing machine perfect for ambushing pesky siblings or co-workers.

You'll also get a Daily Brain Perpetual Calendar, which offers 365 puzzles.

Normally, this package of brain-teasing entertainment would cost you about $110, but you have a chance to get it gratis.How? There are a few rules, so please put down The Astrophysical Journal for a moment, brainiacs, and listen up. … Read more

Marble Portable is a fast, lightweight virtual globe and atlas

Marble Portable is a free 3D globe and atlas program. It's similar to Google Earth, but much more compact, and it's also totally portable, which makes it a great choice for students, travelers, and anyone who needs a fast, lightweight atlas program.

Of course, Marble is far more than an atlas. Its virtual globe lets you zoom in from a planetary view to state level, but not street level. Clicking on any place name opens its Wikipedia article for more information. Marble has standard flat and Mercator maps and Earth, Moon, and celestial globes. You can apply various … Read more

Marble Blast is a unique bubble-based puzzler

Similar to probably a hundred other games in the Android Market, Marble Blast requires you to shoot monochromatic bubbles at other monochromatic bubbles. Create a cluster of three or more, and all of them pop and disappear. The object, of course, is to clear your screen of all of them.

What makes Marble Blast unique, however, is that the bubbles, or marbles, actually travel around your screen in a single-file line. They aren't stationary targets anchored to the top of your screen as they are in other bubble-based games like Bubble Blast 2. Your job in Marble Blast is … Read more

Google Earth 6.2 seamlessly stitches over mismatched patchwork

Google has released Google Earth 6.2 to smooth over earlier versions' unsightly patchwork caused by stitching together widely varying satellite photographs.

The result is a more realistic and less distracting (though still optimistically cloudless) view of the planet. Update: It turns out that by turning on the weather layer, you can dispel Google Earth's sunny optimism and see if it's really cloudy by showing live weather data.

Google Earth offers a terrific interactive view of the planet, complete with 3D buildings in some parts of the world. But I have to say, though, that I was more … Read more

Swipe to roll through fanciful worlds

Gears is a fun ball-rolling game with a steampunky feel, excellent 3D graphics, and both swipe and tilt control schemes (the former much easier to use than the latter).

The game has 27 levels spread across three worlds, and in each level you're trying to safely roll your ball from the top of the level to the bottom without falling off, while picking up as many points as possible along the way. You roll down ramps, over rotating gears, through gates and past blowers, trampolines, and an increasingly diverse array of obstacles--and you also have to choose between alternating … Read more

Marble rolling done right

Dark Nebula Episode 1 is the first entry in the Dark Nebula series, an innovative, motion-based arcade game in which you pilot a fast-moving disk through short, obstacle-filled levels.

The interface relies entirely on your accelerometer: you tilt your device in the direction you want to move, and the more you tilt, the faster you go. That's it, as you traverse your way up scrolling, vertical levels. You can also touch the screen with two fingers to "calibrate" your device, if you don't want to hold it parallel to the ground.

What separates Dark Nebula from … Read more

Mediocre marbles

We review a fair number of computer games, and it often seems that we see variations on the same handful of games over and over again. So it goes with Exploding Marbles. This Bejeweled-inspired game is fun to play, just like its predecessors, but we can't say there's anything about it that particularly impressed us.

The program's interface is basic and maybe a touch amateurish. A grid of colored balls is arranged over a busy background image, giving the playing area a slightly cluttered look. Playing the game entails simply dragging balls to create lines of three … Read more

Tilt and roll to the goal

Manic Marble Free is a free preview of the first two levels in Manic Marble, a tilting rolling, 3D arcade game in which you guide a fast-moving marble through a narrow, winding path full of ramps and obstacles. The intuitive, motion-based interface will be familiar to fans of similar games, as you tilt your iPhone or iPod Touch forward or back to accelerate or brake, and then left and right to steer (which also shifts your camera angle correspondingly). You can pause games in progress and recalibrate the accelerometer settings, and beating the "par" time on a level … Read more