The Week In iPhone Apps: Spore Origins Hands-On Edition [IPhone Apps] newVideoPlayer(”/iphonespore_giz.flv”, 506, 423,”"); I’ve been running around at CEDIA this week, so for today’s installment, on top of a rundown...

Over the course of the past ten years at Ars is proud to have run a ton of technical articles that people keep coming back to for reference and geek edification. Among their most popular articles have been those dedicated to the inner workings of popular game consoles, especially those from Sony and Microsoft. In this inaugural installment of Classic.Ars, a new series aimed at introducing Ars classics to newer readers, they take you deep inside the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360.

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The Bat Segundo Show is a cultural and literary podcast that involves very thorough long-form interviews with contemporary authors and other assorted artists. Standard questions that have been asked of guests over and over are avoided, whenever possible.     The show is updated (ideally) every week and sometimes every two weeks. There are at least five podcasts unveiled to the listening public every month and, more often than not, considerably more.     Bat Segundo is a former radio DJ who currently introduces each installment of the show. (For Segundo scholars, a clip of Mr. Segundo in these happier days was featured in Show #50.) It is believed that he is 49 years old, although he often claims to be younger. Mr. Segundo suffered some unspecified indignity sometime in the 1980s, which is vaguely alluded to within the show's introductions. He spends most of his time living in a Motel 6 room and is very fond of tequila. His peregrinations into the real world are few and far between, in large part because he is known to cause trouble -- largely unintentionally. Nevertheless, if you'd care to take your chances with this volatile personality, Mr. Segundo can be contacted through MySpace and Facebook.

It would be nice if Brad Dourif's legacy could be his Oscar-nominated performance as Billy Bibbit in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but it's far more likely that people will most remember him as the voice of Chucky, the killer doll from the Child's Play movies. So far, Dourif has lent his voice to the doll in five installments, and he's heading for a sixth. According to Bloody-Disgusting.com, who got it straight from the mouth of Child's Play creator Don Mancini, the remake/reboot of the 1988 original (which Scott first told us about a year ago) will feature a slightly redesigned Chucky, but the character will still have the voice of Dourif. The actor will also return in person to re-play serial killer Charles Lee Ray (aka "the Lake Shore Strangler"), who transfers his soul into the plastic body of a "Good Guys" doll.

Mancini also confessed again to Bloody-Disgusting that his reason to restart the franchise is to make Child's Play scary again; he claims the fans pretty much asked for this after seeing the series go too far in absurdly camp directions with the last installment, Seed of Chucky. Well, they didn't necessarily ask for a remake, but Mancini claims the only way to scare the fans again is to begin anew. Or, he could have asked us to forget the horror-comedy sequels and simply title it Child's Play 4. But anyway. The new film will be written and directed by Mancini, who singularly wrote all five of the previous Chucky movies and made his directorial debut with Seed.

Filed under: Horror, Casting, Universal, Remakes and Sequels

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I didn't get it. It had Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld buying shoes, a Conquistador, an ass wiggle in the end and some talk about moist cake. I had to ask myself the following: Is there a hidden message somewhere that I failed to comprehend? Was I not paying attention? Or is this just the first installment of a continuing story?

This week's "One Week Only" installment collects the short films created by director Vincent Moon and producer Chryde of La Blogothèque's "Take Away Show" for Beirut's 2007 album The Flying Club Cup. They follow Zach Condon and his band into corners of Brooklyn both strange and familiar and capture performances from the record in their unique and expressive style.

Small town Mayors and people with determination get things done when big cities only get mired down and surrender. Look at the marina designed by Art Anderson Associates and sculpture gardens transforming Bremerton. Houston man dies after being tasered twice Anheuser-Busch agrees to InBev sale Schwarzenegger: I’ll take Obama’s call when he’s president Politico chief: Troop drawdown ‘an October surprise in July’ Fiorina denies that McCain said economy was in good shape Video: Bush aide caught offering access for donations Obama: ‘little doubt’ U.S. is in recession DHS considering shock bracelet for airline passengers School collects toy soldier for each Iraq casualty Manson prosecutor: Bus This Wednesday at Design Within Reach(ground floor of the Wieden Kennedy building at 1200 NWEverett) brings the fourth installment of ‘Designs on Portland’, a bi-monthly discussion series. This time the guest will be Larry Woodin of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy to discuss Wright’s Gordon House and the legacy of Wright in Oregon. As many may remember, the Gordon House is the only Wright-designedbuilding in Oregon. In 2000 the house was threatened with demolition when a local No tags for this post. Related posts No related posts.

newVideoPlayer("/iphonespore_giz.flv", 506, 423,""); I've been running around at CEDIA this week, so for today's installment, on top of a rundown of our app news from the week, we had a chance to...

I've been running around at CEDIA this week, so for today's installment, on top of a rundown of our app news from the week, we had a chance to give Spore Origins for the iPhone a spin before it drops (hopefully) this Sunday.

As we saw at E3 and WWDC, the iPhone version of Spore is Spore Origins, which is limited to the "primordial ooze" stage you see here, with a limited version of the Creature Creator thrown in for tweaking your bug cosmetically. On the plus side, it's simple and a quick diversion, and it's fun combo-ing your way through 35 increasingly difficult levels of munching little floaties. You can also import photos from your iPhone camera to texture-map on your creatures (Benny's Michigan Fab 5 tee).

But on the downside, the game suffers from the same control awkwardness that all of the accelerometer-only games do—as you can see in our video, the camera had a tough time keeping focus because you're always dramatically moving the phone to try to reign in your creature. A training stage featured a level-like bubble for each axis that showed you when you were at the zero-point, which was incredibly helpful—too bad it disappeared after training.

And most disappointingly, Spore for iPhone does not connect with the greater Spore hive in any way, meaning you won't see any procedurally generated creatures made by real other players of the game via Spore's central server. Kind of a weird choice for such a connected phone, and most confusingly, EA says the simpler Java based game for most other cellphones does in fact have connectivity to the greater spore world.

There's still some vagueness with release date (EA's site still only says "sometime in September") but all other Spore platforms launch in the US this Sunday. Look for it then or soon thereafter in the App Store for a price that'll probably be in the $10 and below range.

This week's app coverage on Giz:

• Remember what it was like to buy a CD? Apple's plans to include lyrics and additional album art via an app download for certain albums will help you remember.
• Continunig to carry the torch for political apps is Election '08 - a $1 app that collects poll data, electoral vote projections, and tons of other election data.
• And at CEDIA, all of the home automation systems are racing each other to release remote control applications, turning your iPhone into a capable touchscreen control surface for opening the blinds from across the street or jacking up the AC if your cat gets hot.

For even more apps: see what you missed last week and check our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.

Just minutes after viewing the first installment of Microsoft's new $300 million TV ad campaign featuring comedian Jerry Seinfeld and Chairman Bill Gates, BetaNews' Tim Conneally filed this video to record his first thoughts.

This morning we got our hands on the official UK quad for Lionsgate's Saw V, which hits the US and UK on October 24th. In the fifth installment of the popular SAW franchise, Hoffman is seemingly the last person alive to carry on the Jigsaw legacy. But when his secret is threatened, Hoffman must go on the hunt to eliminate all loose ends.

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

By now you've probably watched the Bill Gates / Jerry Seinfeld Microsoft ad a dozen or so times (if not, get to it). If you're like us, you've got a healthy conversation happening about what the new campaign means, and whether or not you actually like the thing. According to a leaked internal email from Redmond's senior vice president Bill Veghte, this first installment in what will be a series of commercials is meant to function as an "Icebreaker to reintroduce Microsoft to viewers in a consumer context." It seems that the company is following the path they've stamped out with their previous media burst, the Mojave Experiment, which appears to be less concerned with changing the product (Windows), and more concerned with changing consumers' perception of the product. In Veghte's words, "Telling our story means making significant investments to improve the way consumers experience Windows." So here's our question to you: is Microsoft on the right track here? Let us know in the poll below! (You can also read the full text of the email after the break)

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Continue reading Poll: Is Microsoft's new ad working?

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VELVET REVOLVER/ex-GUNS N' ROSES bassist Duff McKagan has penned the latest installment of his weeky column, which appears every Thursday on Reverb at SeattleWeekly.com.