Technology notebook
Published 9:45 pm Saturday, December 15, 2007
‘DC Smackdown’ pits candidates against pundits
If you’re tired of watching Mitt and Mike, Hillary and Rudy, and Colbert and Coulter limit their swipes to words, pick one and go for it in the new video game “DC Smackdown.”
Featuring signature moves like the “Intern Trample,” “Mormon Conversion” and “Barack Your World,” the 17-character game skewers bipartisanly. A pantsless Bill Clinton chases a herd of Monica Lewinskys, Jesse Jackson hurls Hasidic Jews and Ann Coulter has a special “verbal diarrhea” attack.
“It’s a real simple game — we’re talking Street Fighter, circa 1994,” said Dave Holbrook, a freelance producer and former Disney animator who made it, with help from friends, in his spare time.
Now available just for PCs, the game costs $4.99 to download. Holbrook said he initially wanted to charge an extra buck for donation to the customer’s political campaign of choice, but changed his mind because of regulatory paperwork.
Report rates e-commerce sites: Some popular online retailers don’t do enough either to inform customers how their personal information could be used or to give them control over it, according to a public interest research group.
CyberStreetSmart.org, a project of the New York Public Interest Research Group, has issued “screen door” and “steel door” awards to retail Web sites after evaluating their protections for customers’ personal information.
The group reviewed the privacy policies of 484 online retailers in October and November. Disneyshopping.com and homedepot.com received screen door awards, meaning they’re not doing such a good job. Sites that won steel door awards include netflix.com, ralphlauren.com and rocawear.com.
Toshiba offering fast- charging lithium-ion battery: Toshiba plans to make a quick-charging new battery for forklifts, construction machinery and other industrial use.
Toshiba Corp.’s Super Charge ion Battery, to start shipping in March, can recharge to 90 percent of its full capacity in less than five minutes, Toshiba spokeswoman Hiroko Mochida said.
Toshiba, a newcomer in rechargeable batteries, said the new lithium-ion battery, with a life span of 10 years, could be used in hybrid and electric cars by 2010, Mochida said.
The new battery will first be used in electric bicycles, motorcycles, forklifts and construction machinery. It can work in temperatures as low as minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit.
Most lithium-ion batteries in use now, such as those in laptop computers, require hours to recharge to full capacity, with the fastest ones requiring about half an hour.
From Herald news services
