Let the record show: I think motion controllers, like the Wii, Sony Move, or Microsoft's Project Natal, are sorta dumb. They simply don't seem to be precise enough for my tastes—I'm far too used to a mouse and keyboard to give that up for the "thrill" of flailing my arms in the arm like the robot from Lost In Space. But it wasn't always like that.

Video: Android hacked in place of Windows Mobile on a Touch Pro2

While a lot of people are pretty pumped about Windows Phone 7, there's are some people who definitely are not: everyone stuck on a now antiquated Windows Mobile 6.5 handset. Microsoft has already confirmed that if your phones running 6.5, it's not going to be running 7 any time soon. If you can't join'em, beat'em, right? There's a new project in the works which aims to breath new life into old Windows Mobile 6.5 phones.. by replacing the whole OS with Android.

Using a foam packing peanut to hold a nail or screw in place is brilliant. I like to think of myself as a pretty mild-tempered person but any time anybody’s asked my wife about the most angry she’s ever seen me, she always tells the story of when we first moved into our apartment here in Boston and I went around the house hanging our window blinds. Shoulda used peanuts.

Totally Unreal: Palm and Epic Games bring Unreal Engine 3 to webOS

Only yesterday we were drooling over the idea that Epic Games had managed to port their draw-droppingly beautiful game engine, Unreal Engine 3, to the iPhone. As it turns out, the iPhone isn't alone - it's heading to webOS, too!

What's it going to take to dethrone World of Warcraft? One of two things, I'd say: one, an asteroid smashing directly into the planet, with Blizzard at the exact location of impact, or two, Blizzard releasing World of Warcraft 2. The asteroid is more likely at this point. So you can imagine the time and money EA is putting into The Old Republic, the only MMO with a chance in hell of taking away even a fraction of WoW's subscribers.

Green Day: Rock Band launching June 8

Harmonix has officially announced that Green Day: Rock Band will hit retail on June 8th of this year. Interestingly enough, Green Day frontman Billy Joe Armstrong confirmed that the band was working on the game in a radio interview back on June 8th of last year. Mind? Blown.

AMD is finally looking to get into the netbook game for real. Forget about the thin-and-light NEO chipset that’s been out for a while—we’re talking about an honest, netbook-specific chipset based on the company’s Fusion initiative that’ll blend power-sipping CPUs with ATI graphics. The platform will draw between 10 and 15 watts of power and will be designed for screens 12 inches and smaller.

Video Demo: Google Reader Play is clearly meant for a tablet computer

We all know that there will be an onslaught of touchscreen computers this year and next. But the Internet really isn't touchscreen friendly. It was designed for a mouse, not finger input. Google Reader Play is one of the early examples of a site redesigned for this sort of navigation with a slideshow-type interface and larger buttons. I loaded up the demo on a Viliv X70 tablet computer and found it works quite well on the 9-inch tablet. The buttons could be a bit larger, but overall it's one of the most touchscreen-friendly websites I've seen. Click through for a quick video demo.

Consumer Reports has a new report on which computer company has the best tech support. Apple wins! That's what happens when the same company controls the hardware as well as the operating system (and several of the most prominent pieces of software). The highest ranking PC manufacturer is Dell for desktops and Lenovo for laptops.

Disney turns its Monorail into huge Tron light cycles

Tron Legacy is nerds wet dream come true. The movie will hopefully invoke the same sort of futuristic imagination as the original. You've watched the trailer, right? Well, anyway, to gear up for the premiere, Disney has skin a couple of its monorails to look like the light cycles. Kind of meta future meets future moment, eh?

I think Gagan is at GDC but he’s clearly not getting the good meetings. Firaxis is showing off Civ V and Kotaku has a nice run down, including a few new features. For starters, your opponents have definite AI based on their strengths and weakness. Ranged weapons can fire from further away – one space [...]

First screenshots of Medal of Honor sure do look familiar…

Fresh from EA, here’s the very first screenshots of Medal of Honor, currently scheduled for release this fall. It’s quite modern, if you catch my drift. The game was on display at the same EA event where Jimin and I played FIFA World Cup 2010 last week. There’s very little point in spending many words [...]

One of the three points I laid out as TiVo's keys to survival was to partner with more content providers. And just like that, Virigin Media announced it will be offering TiVo set-top boxes to its 3.8 million subscribers sometime this year. This move, along with the Conax partnership, makes TiVo a major player in the European DVR market. See, I told you the company didn't deserve the deathwatch label.

OpenGL 4.0 comes out to play

With Microsoft becoming increasingly marginalized in areas like mobile media, DirectX is becoming less of a must-use toolset and more of a gaming-specific one. The other side of the coin is, of course, the increasing relevance of standards like OpenGL, OpenAL, and OpenCL: powerful cross-platform systems for graphics, audio, and parallel processing. You may remember OpenCL from its debut on the Mac in Snow Leopard, and OpenGL ES of course powers the UI on the iPad. OpenAL is still a ways from being brought under the public eye, but it's getting there. In the meantime, OpenGL 4.0 was announced today at GDC, and clearly it has DirectX in its sights.

We featured a so-called leaked video showing MW2's upcoming map pack last week but had no idea when players will get access to the new maps. Activision finally came clean, though, and announced that the DLC will hit PCs first on March 30, with consoles getting it sometime afterwards. Oh, and yeah, it will be named Stimulus Package just like the rumor stated, which is a kind of appropriate name, actually.

CrunchDeals: $88 Nintendo DS Lite

It's not a huge deal - $7 off - but if you're in the market for a new DS, maybe to rock some Pokemon (now with Pokewalkers!™ ) eCost has a rectified DS Lite (not the DSi) for $88.

Fuel cells are on their way into the mainstream, even though the commercially available models are still pretty pricey. But there are companies like Kyoto-based Aquafairy [JP], for example, preparing affordable fuel cells, too. Their four new fuel cells are intended to make gadget fans in particular happy: the micro FC Stick (0.8W), the FC-Stick (2W), the FC-Cube (3W) and the FC-Cube Dual (6W).

CrunchDeals: Futurama: The Complete Collection on DVD for $85

Amazon is selling Futurama: The Complete Collection on DVD for $85, today only. The box set features 18 discs and over 33 hours of content. All your favorite characters are there: Bender, Fry, one-eyed Peg Bundy, you name it.

I can't think of too many use cases for this, but they did it: A team of researchers from the University of Tokyo (Japan's MIT if you will) has developed a technology that makes it possible to "physically" convey emotions from cell phone to cell phone. The key elements of the technology are a sensor and a Peltier device that's attached to the back of the phones.

Verizon officially launches the rugged, text-friendly Casio G’zOne Brigade

Just yesterday we were saying that Casio's built-to-be-beaten G'zOne Brigade would be launching today -- and sure enough, it just went live on Verizon's web site.