Reviews

Auditorium is a casual ambient Flash game you can play in your browser without installing anything (other than Flash itself). Many things set Auditorium apart from most in-browser Flash game. For one, its free version is billed as a demo, and you can buy the full version for $10 for over 70 levels and some extra features. There is also a version for the iPhone. However, the free Flash version is very playable, and could keep you engaged for hours.

Auditorium combines a dark background with a flow of radiant, colorful particles for a striking look.At the beginning of a level, Auditorium presents you with a dark playing field on which you can see one or more containers, several controls, and a flow of radiant particles emanating from somewhere in a straight line. There is no sound. The controls impact the direction of the flow, and you need to slide them around using the mouse so that the flow shifts and fills up the containers. Once a container begins filling up, it starts playing a loop of music. If there are several containers, they each play a different part of the same overarching tune. This way, once they all fill up, you get to enjoy the complete soundscape for the level. In other words, you are creating the game's soundtrack as you go along--"playing" in both senses of the word.

You are a small blue elephant, with a penchant for running, jumping, and earning achievements. Okay, maybe not in real life, but that's who you are in Achievement Unlocked 2, a Flash-based platformer (and a sequel to Achievement Unlocked) where almost every action counts for something.

Achievement Unlocked is played vertically, through six levels packed with spikes, teleporters, and other goodies.Achievement Unlocked 2 keeps the graphics simple. There are no color gradients, and there are very few shapes other than rectangles. But don't let the simple looks fool you: This is a game with a great deal of detail and depth. It takes the concept of achievements to its extreme logical conclusion, where just about anything you do is an achievement. In fact, even things you don't do are achievements: Inactive for ten seconds? Hurray, you've just unlocked the Inactivity achievement! Managed to stay alive for 20 seconds? You've just earned the Survival achievement! Did you die? No problem, you respawn instantly, and get a "See Ya" achievement for your trouble. And if you die repeatedly, over and over again… you guessed it--more achievements! You can unlock every achievement just once, but there are 250 different ones.

If you have an office or a retail store, you may also have a security system that to alert you and the police in case of a break-in--or a webcam set up to monitor your business in your absence. But the capabilities of security systems go much further than they did even a few years ago, letting you monitor your business from a smartphone or tablet.

Here's a quick look at some of the highest-rated apps by customers for surveillance in the Apple App Store and the Android Market, as well as an offering from ADT, one of America's largest commercial security companies. Some cameras sold for surveillance purposes come with their own homegrown smartphone apps, such as those made by Swann.

Finding Twitter a bit overwhelming? Can't seem to figure out what's hot, and what's not? Twitscoop is here to offer help: This free, cloud-based service is designed to help you dig through the din of Twitter noise in order to find out what's hot now. How well it works is debatable, though.

Twitscoop's tag cloud is designed to alert you to topics that are "buzzing right now," but I found its results questionable.TwitScoop is a free service that runs in your browser or on your iPhone, and it features an interface that is reminiscent of Twitter's own, albeit one that's a bit less refined, and with more annoying ads. If you connect the service to your Twitter account (a quick and easy process), you'll see your own Twitter timeline appear on its home page. But its Twitter management features are limited. While you can switch the view to see Direct Messages and Replies, Twitscoop is curiously missing other options, such as the ability to view a list of your own Tweets.

Ready to do your taxes while on the go? Elsewhere we discuss online tax programs for the 2011 tax year, but here we'll focus on tax apps optimized for phone and tablets. Apps for creating and e-filing your income taxes on your phone aren't a new concept: A year ago, Intuit introduced SnapTax, an iPhone app designed to handle filing very simple returns (1040EZ only). But developers have seen the handwriting on the wall, and most services are now working to ensure that you can do your taxes on tablets--especially iPads--regardless of how complex your return may be.

TurboTax Fit for a Tablet

It uses the same design elements as the desktop and Web versions of TurboTax, but TurboTax for IPad has such iOS-specific features as the left navigation bar shown here.The most useful offering is Intuit's TurboTax for the iPad, a snazzy-looking version of the same software you'd get on the Web, with the same data import capabilities and unlimited access to tax experts. Like TurboTax Online, the iPad version is free to try; you pay only when you print or file, at which point the price is based on the features you use. The original download is the Deluxe version of TurboTax, but you can opt instead to unlock the Premier edition or the Home and Business edition (and pay the same price you would for the equivalent Web service).

FuzeBox has just released a new iPad app that promises to turn that tablet into a powerful videoconferencing machine.

FuzeMeeting ( Macworld rated 4 out of 5 mice ) is just one of several Web services-including Webex ( Macworld rated 4 out of 5 mice ), GoToMeeting ( Macworld rated 3 out of 5 mice ), and others-that enable you to participate in online meetings, via phone or video, from your Mac. You've also been able to participate in such meetings from your iPad, using iOS clients and the tablet's built-in camera and microphone. But those clients have been hobbled compared to their OS X counterparts. This new Fuze Meeting HD app for the iPad narrows the gap considerably.

Recently I spent some time rescuing my sister-in-law's laptop from some seriously nasty malware. Even after running utilities like Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, then using UnHide to restore the system's missing icons and folders, something was hijacking the Web browsers. Whenever I'd click a link in Internet Explorer or Firefox (the latest versions of both, FYI), some malicious bit of code would redirect the browser to a phishing site. That's hijacking in a nutshell, and it's extremely frustrating.

Kaspersky TDSSKiller removes TDSS and other tenacious rootkits.Because it was happening in both browsers, I knew there was a deeper problem than just a rogue plug-in or toolbar. Best guess: a rootkit, a form of malware that can hide itself from normal methods of detection. And, sure enough, it was the notorious TDSS, which, as reported just the other day by IDG News, is now being distributed by some WordPress-powered blogs. This laptop might have gotten infected just from visiting a seemingly harmless Web site.

Interlocked is a free Flash game, and a new take on a very old idea: mechanical puzzles. In Interlocked, you are presented with a three-dimensional shape composed of several interlocking parts (hence the name). You need to take the shape apart, piece by piece, by sliding the pieces around in the correct sequence.

3D graphics are at the heart of Interlocked, and you must rotate the puzzle and pull it apart to win.The puzzle floats in the center of the screen. You can click and drag anywhere with your mouse to rotate it in any direction, but you can't zoom in or out. It just about fills the screen, but I found myself wishing for a zoom feature that would let me take a closer look at how two parts interlock.

Packing a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and what was (at the time) the most recent version of Android, the original Motorola Droid stood for everything the iPhone wasn't. But Motorola’s interest in QWERTY Android phones has slackened with each new model. The Motorola Droid 4 ($200 with a two-year contract on Verizon; price as of February 13, 2012) is the latest keyboard-toting phone in the Droid series. Unfortunately, this model lacks the excitement that the original Droid sparked: A blurry screen and a poor camera overshadow the phone's excellent keyboard and zippy processor.

Design