Gowalla 3.0: All-In-One Check Ins Are Here

Popular location-based network Gowalla announced the 3.0 update of its mobile app, which integrates the service with rival Foursquare.

(More on TIME:Groupon Becomes Social Shopping Network)

With its new congruent app, Gowalla 3 has broken the barriers between the popular geosocial sites– a startling and quite clever campaign to position itself as the most-preferred check-in app. The update is centered on two primary features: a Universal Activity Feed and a check-in broadcaster, which allows you to update your geostatus on sites like Foursquare, Facebook Places, Twitter and Tumblr.

First, the new activity feed streams check-ins from friends via other location platforms (Gowalla, Foursquare, Facebook Places), with the added functionality of accumulating Foursquare badges and Facebook deals though you're not actually logging on via those specific sites/apps. You'll also continue receive Foursquare Tips as you check in, much like the Foursquare app itself. The Universal Activity Feed, an aggregated stream of your multi-platform geosocial participating friends allows you to view cross-site activity on one interface, appealing more to diehards than the casual user, but still, even if you participate in two location-based networks, making the switch is worth it.

(More on TIME:Why Facebook Deals Is Bad For Foursquare)

Additional features include a better display, bookmarking and Notes– a new way to leave messages intended for just one friend as they check into your favorite spots. Gowalla 3.0 is currently available via the iPhone app store, and will be offered for other platforms, including the Android, early next year.

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UK Study Will Find Out if the Wii Can Help Cure Parkinson's

A British doctor has received£35,000 (about $55,000) to find out if the Wii can help increase motor skills and overall well-being of individuals with Parkinson's disease.Parkinson's UKhas funded their first ever Wii study to see if exercise with the gaming console can help with the illness.

(More on TIME.com:Study: Video Games May Be Good for Your Health)

"If the project is successful the benefits could be twofold,"principal investigator on the study Dr. Cathy Craig said. She will be working with a team out of Queen's University, Belfast."It could allow us to develop a simple way to assess Parkinson's symptoms yet provide a safe and effective way for people with the condition to be more active and keep fit."

(More on TIME.com:The Mythology of Mario: Q&A With Nintendo's Legendary Shigeru Miyamoto)

A survey of 100 people completed bycompleted by the organizationin September 2010 found out that the two thirds of the people felt that the Wii helped them manage symptom's better, but the study added that the device can't be used to judge the severity of someone's condition. This news that the Wii might help individuals with this disease isn't exactly new knowledge. In the summer of 2009, Medical College of Georgia tested Wii Sports on 20 people with varying stages of Parkinson's disease for eight weeks. The test subjects played the Wii for one hour a day, three to four times a week.  Across the board by the end of the study, they all had increased motor function, high energy levels and decreased rigidity. Most of all, they were all less depressed, which tends to be a big problem with people with Parkinson's. By the middle of the study, some subjects had regained enough motor skills to beat their opponents in the first round - something doctors had not expecting, according toThe Telegraph.

More on TIME.com:

Could Playing"Call of Duty"Lead To A Successful Career?

Review:"Rock Band Reloaded"Lets You Play Anywhere. But Is That A Good Thing?

Let's Go Retro: Best Computer Games from the '80s

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The Comic Book Club:“Brightest Day”and“Bring the Thunder”

This is what happens when Techland goes to the comic book store: we end up discussing what we picked up. This week, Douglas Wolk, Graeme McMillan and Evan Narcisse talk aboutBrightest DayVol. 1 andBring the Thunder#1.

DOUGLAS:I really wishBrightest Daywere better, in much the same way that I wishedBlackest Nighthad been more carefully structured. I love the idea of a fast-paced, multi-threaded, frequently-published serial in practice--obviously I was a big fan of52. The stumbling blockBrightest Daykeeps running into is that it's got too many threads; this is a series with a ton of major characters, only a few of whom interact with each other to any appreciable extent. (There's the Deadman thread, the Hawkman/Hawkgirl thread, the Firestorm thread, the Aquaman thread, the Martian Manhunter thread...) And even though a lot of the other resurrected characters among the 14 (!) on the front cover of the first collected volume have been offloaded onto other series, they still have to check in with the parent title. Which means that we don't get much of a sense of what this series is even about--the idea that the"white light"is giving them all missions (from the abstract,"balance the darkness,"to the ridiculously concrete,"eat a cheeseburger")--until this volume's almost over.

(More on Techland:Decoding DC's Brightest Day Teaser Image)

GRAEME:This is, I think, a place where the original, serialized run ofBrightest Daywins out over the collected edition. The next issue after the last one contained here--for which there was only a two-week gap in original release, not the probably six-month one we'll have between collections - felt like, if it didn't explain the missions, then at least let the characters share in the readers'"What the what?"reactions. I can see the reasoning for ending the collection where it ends - it's the best cliffhanger in the series to that point, and also a sense that there is SOME point to all the stories that're unraveling - but I kind of wish they'd included something more from what was to come.

That said, am I the only person who thinks that the scene where the White Lantern Power tells the Reverse Flash"Mission Completed. Life Returned"feels very videogame-ish? It's as if Geoff Johns and Peter Tomasi are already thinking in terms of either ripping offScott Pilgrimor making multimedia tie-ins already.

DOUGLAS:The whole thing's videogame-ish. The violence is videogame violence; half the plot-advancing scenes here feel like cut scenes.

(More on Techland:Weekly Comics Column: More Weekly Comics, Please!)

EVAN:I resemble that remark, Douglas! And you, too, Graeme. But I do agree with what you're getting at. The plot feels objective-driven and not character-driven, and any dialogue just kills time between the set pieces.

What I was hoping for was a fusion of Tomasi's strong skill with modulating tone to complement Johns' penchant for finding good angles with DCU characters. Instead, everything feels like it's being pushed along a roadmap. Of the various character threads, I was really looking forward to the Firestorm one and the Aquaman one, but I feel like they both take such hackneyed turns. Well, of course, Ronnie and Jason don't get along. And Mera's an assassin who fell in love with her prey? You don't say! The characters don't actually feel like they're moving forward.

The bigger problem with such plot turns is that it perpetuates this continuity re-invention that' become such a fetish lately. And when the characters graduate to their next stages–be it in solo books or as part of a cast–the stuff fromBrightest Daywill just be more baggage for them and other writers to deal with.

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Rock Band Reloaded Makes You A Singing Sensation, But That's Not Always A Good Thing

Most of us have had delusions of grandeur where we were in a world-famous rock band, jamming on stage with our closest friends. The truth is, most of us lack the talent to pick up the guitar or drums, or even open our mouths and exercise our vocal chords. The Rock Bandvideo game series has at least let us pretend that we had some skill (and we could work on improving in the comfort of our own homes). But now the new iPhone version ofRock Bandlets users take the game on the go.

(More on TIME.com:Rock Band 3 Review: You Might Accidentally Learn an Instrument)

Rock Band Reloadedis the revamped version of that game for iPad and iPhone, allowing more multiplayer aspects and corrects some of the gaming console glitches that seemed to always shut down the song when you were most in the groove. In addition to the upgraded graphics and ability to brag about your scores to your friends more easily, you can actually play the vocal part this time, singing into your device instead of using the track pad tapping option. (Although that option is still available if you don't want to bother those riding on the subway with you with your nasal voice.) Gameplay is now horizontal instead of vertical, so you don't have to squeeze your fingers into impossible positions to hit all those notes. Plus with an additional expert mode, there's tons more to master. It's Harmonix's highest production value to date: With the characters moving to the music, it almost seems like you're playing the console game... on a much smaller screen. The iPad version allows a dueling banjo mode where you literally face off with a friend on either side of an iPad on the same song. You can also play on the same team however on the same device and connect with other iPhones and iPads that may want to join your virtual band. But, don't fret if all the changes won't make you loose all those hours of practice on the original Rock Band:It's basically the same game, just with a easier to use interface.

(More on TIME.com:Learn How to Play the Fiddle on Your iPad)

There are some downsides, including the fact that you can't bring the songs from the originalRock Bandmobile phone game to the new one, so they act as separate entities. The worst part of the game though: The singing function may encourage you to bust your pipes out in public, and that's not always appreciated by everyone else around you. Trying to sing"Hungry Like the Wolf"on the street will get you more stares than applause. Plus, for some reason, the meter seems to go up when you're NOT singing. Whether that's because of the vocal talent of the tester or a game glitch, we'll never know.

(More on TIME.com:Axl Rose Sues Activision Because Slash Is In"Guitar Hero 3")

Song List

AVAILABLE TODAY WITH PURCHASE OF THE GAME

Tracks Included In Initial Download:

3 Doors Down- Kryptonite

Alice in Chains- Your Decision

Beastie Boys -So What'cha Want

Billy Idol- White Wedding

Drowning Pool- Bodies

Duran Duran- Hungry Like The Wolf

Evanescence- Call Me When You're Sober

Megadeth- Peace Sells

Nine Inch Nails- The Perfect Drug

Nirvana- In Bloom

No Doubt- Hella Good

Pat Benatar- Heartbreaker

Seether- Remedy

Steve Miller Band- Rockn' Me

Vampire weekend- A-Punk

Additional tracks available free today in the Music Store:

Anarchy Club– Blood Doll

Anarchy Club– Get Clean

Bang Camaro– Night Lies

Bank Camaro– Pleasure (Pleasure)

The Main Drag– A Jagged Gorgeous

Death of the Cool– Can't Let Go

Additional tracks available through In App Purchase today:

Roy Orbison– Mean Woman Blues

Roy Orbison– You Got It

Flogging Molly– Drunken Lullabies

Flogging Molly– Requiem For A Dying Song

COMING SOON THROUGH IN APP PURCHASE

The Pretenders–Blue Christmas

Billy Squier– Christmas Is The Time To Say I Love You

The All American Rejects– Dirty Little Secret

The All American Rejects– Real World

Third Eye Blind– Never Let You Go ‘09

Third Eye Blind– Semi-Charmed Kind of Life ‘09

No Doubt– Underneath It All

No Doubt– Don't Speak

Blink-182– What's My Age Again

Blink-182– Adam's Song

COMING SOON FREE TRACKS IN MUSIC STORE

Honest Bob and The Factory To Dealer Incentives– I Get By

Honest Bob and The Factory To Dealer Incentives– Entangled

Little Fish– Am I Crazy

Picture Me Broken– Dearest (I'm So Sorry)

Megasus– Megasus

Tribe– Outside

Tijuana Sweetheart– Seven

The Acro-Brats– Day Late, Dollar Short

MeTalkPretty– Wake Up

Cate Sparks– Whatever Happened To You

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What Went Viral This Week: December 3, 2010

December 3, 2010 -

Student Googles Himself, Finds Out He's Wanted For Murder

I'm surprised no one is askingwhy he googled himself. Then again, we're all so vain we've done it at least once... a week.

Guess Who? Answer Is Below.

Puppy Plays With Doorstop

We understand this must be the winner of all time wasters this week, but this puppy is so adorable.

Mario and Luigi in Real Life

Prince Peach was getting coffee at the Starbucks down the road, while Wario was gleefully distributing parking tickets to cars parked at expired meters.

(More on TIME.com: YouTubeIncreases Upload Length To 15 Minutes)

Conan Gets Exclusive Preview of Spiderman Musical

Sadly, this song is catchier than the U2 song they previewed a few months ago.

The Best Harry Potter Pickup Lines

Favorites?"I'm just like Oliver Wood, baby… I'm a keeper!,""Did you say“Wingardium Leviosa”? Cause you've got me rising, baby,"and"Did you survive Avada Kedavra? 'Cause you're drop dead gorgeous."

Tweeting @ God

Hmm I wouldn't blame God. What about the Buffalo Bills 2-9 record, Stevie Johnson? Maybe you guys just suck?

Julia Roberts Gets A Huge Payday For Keeping Quiet

This smile was worth a $1.5 million check. Seriously. Time for us to quit our day jobs.

More on TIME.com:

Top 5 Viral Videos of the Week

Poll: Were Utah Attorney General's Live-Tweets Of An Execution TMI?

What Went Viral This Week - November 26, 2010

What Went Viral This Week - November 19, 2010

Guess Who?: It's Stephen Colbert.

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ESPN Reports People Aren't Forgoing Cable For Streaming TV

Though some are concerned that Netflix, online streaming, Google TV and other similar services might become the death knell for cable television, a new study conducted by ESPN says that not that many people are getting rid of their paid channels. A survey conducted from the same pool of people who Nielsen uses for their television show viewership ratings shows that a measly 0.28 percent of households have cut the cord on their cable bills the last three months, reports theNY Times.

(More on TIME.com:Will Influx of Netflix Instant Streaming Break The Internet?)

"We got a little worn out reading headline after headline saying, 'Cord-cutting, it's a disaster; young people are abandoning TV.' For our strategic purposes, we needed to know what was really going on,"VP for integrated media research for ESPN Glenn Enoch said to theTimes.

(More on TIME.com:Is Comcast Extorting Netflix Instant Streaming?)

Before you say that the results were biased - after all ESPN is a cable channel - the survey results were confirmed by Nielsen. ESPN also reported that 0.17 percent of people who subscribed to Internet services upgraded to add cable plans to their households. Overall, the cable companies are still losing customers but the percentage is so small it's not much to be concerned about. Data from the research firm SNL Kagan from earlier this year echoed ESPN's study. It showed that 119,000 customers dropped their cable or satellite subscriptions in the third quarter of this year out of 100 million subscriptions nationwide. AlthoughHollywood Reporterreported that people are consistently ending their service, SVP for Planning, Policy and Analysis at Nielsen Pat McDonough said that most people are opting to change cable providers than get rid of them completely. As for sports cable channels, which can be hard to find streaming online, Enoch said there was “zero cord-cutting” among customers.

More on TIME.com:

Microsoft Looking to Undercut Cable Companies with Xbox TV?

Is Netflix Making Cable Obsolete?

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Facebook: Cartoon Pics Not Linked To Pedophiles

Pedophiles are not behind a viral Facebook campaign tochange profile photosto cartoon characters, Facebook spokesman Simon Axten toldFox Newstoday.

(More on Techland:New Facebook Profile: Keep Calm& Carry On)

The campaign, urging people to upload a photo from their favorite childhood cartoon as their profile picture, aimed to curb child abuse by triggering fond childhood memories from Facebook users. Though it was a trivial form of advocacy,the campaign pagegarnered more than 90,000“Likes” – until a rumor connecting the campaign with pedophilia hit the web via a story in theDaily Mail.“Rumors are now sweeping the net that the campaign is actually a smokescreen for pedophiles hoping to narrow down which users are children,” the article said, hitting the digital panic button.

The claim came out of reports that the UK's National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children denied any connection to the campaign, sparking the pedophile-related rumors, which Axten denies.“"This rumor is false,"he told FoxNews."Thousands of people have taken up the campaign, none of whom can be identified as either young or old based on the profile picture chosen."

Set to expire today, the campaign has come to a muddied end over the rumors, which (though properly characteristic of the Internet) have been completely overblown. In other news: Gay marriage legislation is likely behind today's Tumblr outage.

More on Techland:

Gowalla 3.0: All-In-One Check Ins Are Here

Facebook Alum Starts"Jumo"Social Network for Charities

News Corp.: We Don't Know What To Do With MySpace

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Let's Go Retro: The 5 Best 8-Bit Video Game Songs Ever

Long beforeAxl Rose was suing his former bandmates overGuitar Hero, or professional orchestras performed live overtures fromFinal Fantasy, all gamers had to listen to were chiptunes— video game music composed from 8 bits.

Which isn't to say that they weren't any good. Quite the contrary, actually. This might just be nostalgia settling in, but in retrospect it's amazing how 8-bit composers were able to draw out so much working with so little. (More on Time.com:Let's Go Retro: Best Computer Games from the '80s)

Without further ado, here are five of the best tracks from back in the day, placing emphasis on how listenable the track still is, and staying away from the ones already deeply embedded in our subconsciouses. (In other words, noMario,Zelda, orTetristhemes— we all know what they sound like, anyway.)

What were your folks' favorite 8-bit tunes? Love this list? Hate it? Anything we missed?

We'd love to hear your favorites down below.

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Top 10 Failed Gaming Consoles

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Weekly Comics Column: Adam Hines' Duncan the Wonder Dog

Now that it's December, it's safe to anoint the best debut graphic novel of the year. Adam Hines'Xeric Grant-winningDuncan the Wonder Dog: Show Oneis an incredible piece of work--a frantic science-fictional meditation on the relationship between people and animals, and a virtuosic display of Hines' range and power as a cartoonist. (There's a preview of ithere.) It's a densely packed 400-page slab of a book, planned as the first of a nine-volume series; this one's almost entirely devoted to building up the world where the rest of the story will happen. (The title character doesn't actually appear in this volume, although he'll apparently turn up later.)

Duncanstarts with a simple what-if premise--what would the world be like if animals could talk?--and extends that into a grand conflict of world-views as they manifest themselves in philosophy and language and visual perception. The plot of the book, at its core, involves the events around a terroristic animal-rights group led by a macaque named Pompeii, who's prone to bursts of violent rage and psychotic monologues (or maybe the way she talks is just because she's a macaque)."You give each othernamesyou give everythingnames--to assert yourplace,"she rants to John in the copy of the Bible she's reading."But we have names too. We take theformof what brought us here--and we take thenameof what we killed to stay."

(More on Techland:Emanata: Bad Alchemy)

Pompeii's group has bombed a university, a couple of human agents are on their trail, and everything else seems to revolve around that--although there are red herrings and false paths all over the book, with dozens of characters introduced for sequences just a few pages long. But every scene, one way or another, touches on the relationships between the humans who believe the world belongs to them by rights, and the animals who aren't so sure about that. And although the animals talk, they aren't quite anthropomorphic, either: as in Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely'sWe3, with which it shares a touch of DNA, the animals inDuncanareanimalsrather than furry people, and their perceptions and concerns and desires are often so alien not only to humans but to other species that they can't make themselves understood even in a shared tongue.

Hines is 26 years old, according tothis fascinating interviewwith him; he says that this volume was put together over the course of about six years, and estimates that the rest ofDuncanis going to take him another 25 years to finish. That's an incredibly ambitious plan: occasionally young cartoonists will come up with some kind of epic, closed-ended project that's going to take them decades to complete, and very few Anglophone cartoonists have actually pulled it off. (Dave Sim spent more than 26 years completingCerebus, and beyond that, the closest anyone's come is Jeff Smith's 14 years ofBone.)

One thing Hines has going for him, though, is that he's well past the stage of juvenilia.Duncanis named after the comic book he drew about his family dog beginning when he was six years old (yes: there was a dog named Duncan Hines, apparently), but this is the work of a fully formed artist and writer--which is remarkable for a first book. You can see some of his stylistic points of reference in his artwork (Chris Ware, Dave McKean, Ben Katchor, maybe Paul Hornschemeier), but he's absorbed them into his own deliberate, design-rich aesthetic. He's still finding his way as a writer--there's a lot of mannered free association, and a few direct tributes to other writers' styles (a scene near the end riffs on the"Ithaca"sequence of James Joyce'sUlysses, for instance). But he's got a terrific ear for dialogue that says a lot about his characters, even when we only get to read fragments of it.

(More on Techland:Emanata: The Final Eight)

Fragmentation and noise, in fact, are not just the central style of the book, they're its point. (Which is why it demands much more careful reading than most graphic novels of comparable length.) Visually, it's very murky, entirely in grayscale and thickly layered with textures and images that are tough to make out. One scene of exposition happens in a snow storm that obscures its pages with speckles; another collages together"realistic"representations, a Beatrix Potter-ish storybook about its (gruesome) events, and torn-out bits of line drawings of birds commenting on what's going on in abstract poetry, all obscuring each other.

Having to puzzle out what's real and what's relevant--filtering all the beautiful static out to be confronted with the terrible picture at its core--is exactly whatDuncanis about: the clash of world-views that are incompatible with one another. Even Hines' pictures and words often seem to be struggling against each other, to emphasize the idea that every character in his enormous, sprawling story is experiencing it differently on every level, from what's important at any particular moment to what life is ultimately about.

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FCC Wants Broadcasters to Take“Value Tests”to Stay on the Air

What if broadcasters had to prove that they provided value to the public in order to keep their licenses? That'san idea being proposed by Michael Copps, one of the five commissioners on the FCC, who told an audience at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism yesterday that the current licensing system in the US should be replaced by what he calls a"public value test,"administered every four years.

Arguing that such a test would return us to"the original licensing bargain between broadcasters and the people: in return for free use of airwaves that belong exclusively to the people, licensees agree to serve the public interest as good stewards of a precious national resource,"Copps outlined what he would want to see tested: A substantial amount - ideally 25%, he said - of localized programming, which would result in what he called"a lot less streamed-in homogenization and monotonous nationalized music at the expense of local and regional talent,"as well as"meaningful commitments"to news and public affairs programming, which would include non-partisan political content, as well as evidence of a broadcast plan in the case of an emergency or disaster.

Copps did not say whether he had presented his ideas to the other FCC commissioners, not whether they were under review.

More On Techland:

FCC Pushing To Allow You To Text 911

FCC To Step In Over Cable Provider/Broadcaster Disputes

Verizon to Pay $77 Million in FCC 'Mystery Fees' Investigation

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LivingSocial Announces $175 Million Investment From Amazon

Online shopping powerhouse Amazon has invested $175 million into daily deal site LivingSocial.com, the company announced Thursday.

(More On TIME:Groupon Becomes Social Shopping Network)

While we wait to hear about the possible purchase of competitor Groupon by Google via arumored $6 billion deal, it appears Amazon and LivingSocial have also tied the professional knot. WhileTech Crunchreports that LivingSocial is on track to bring in $500 million next year, it only commands 8% of the group buying market (even with more than 10 million subscribers), whereas Groupon, the unquestionable favorite, controls 79%. So whereas Groupon could stall a large-company acquisition, Amazon's investment is LivingSocial's greatest opportunity to encroach on more of Groupon's empire.

“To be the biggest player in the local commerce space there is no one better to work with than Amazon,” CEO of LivingSocial Tim O'Shaughnessy said inpress release.“As the social shopping space continues to heat up, LivingSocial is committed to staying focused on providing the high level of quality that consumers and merchants have come to expect when working with us.”

(More On Time:5 Online Scams To Avoid This Year)

The race for daily deal domination has come again. But can Amazon and LivingSocial cook up a scheme that will trump Groupon's newly announced social shopping network? It seems unlikely, even with Amazon's natural e-commerce appeal– though one Amazon.com-centric deal could put the company on a very nice path.

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Super Tofu Boy: Super Meat Boy Gets Politically Correct Vegan Courtesy of PETA

Super Meat Boyis getting a reprieve from the butcher block. The game, which won the Pax 10 at Penny Arcade Expo 2010 and Game of the Show by Destructiod, has got a vegan-friendly version, thanks to some folks at PETA.Super Tofu Boyis almost the same puzzle game, and it's free to play online or download. Plus, as PETA reminds us, he doesn't scream when he gets cut. Tofu Boy is trying to save Bandage Girl from Meat Boy's bloody, jealous (yet super tasty) rage.

(More on TIME.com:Super Meat Boy Debuts with Sale on Xbox Live)

"Meat Boy is a vengeful, bloody cube of rotting animal flesh,"the game description reads."And he smells. After a short-lived fling with Bandage Girl (sympathy dates, really), he became enraged when he was dumped for the tasty and satisfying Tofu Boy. Once Bandage Girl slept with Tofu Boy and saw all that he had to offer, it was bye-bye beef, hello bean curd. Enraged by his loss and lack of ability to compete with the badass that is Tofu Boy, Meat Boy snapped and kidnapped Bandage Girl—because if he can't have her, no one will."

(More on TIME.com:The Loadout for October 19, 2010: New Games to Attack Your Week With featuringSuper Meat Boy)

In this battle of Meat versus Tofu, who will reign supreme?

More on TIME.com:

Rumor: Remake of the First"Halo"Game Coming Next Year?

Of Mice and Mean: Disney's"Epic Mickey"for Wii Review

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