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Fans of the Legend of Zelda games who happen to leave the house once in awhile don’t need to be told that today marks the newest installment of portable Zelda games, as The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks hits store shelves for the Nintendo DS and DSi for $34.99. Our favorite protagonist, Link, will have a traveling companion this time around. Princess Zelda, herself, will accompany Link “on an original quest to save Hyrule from ruin.” What’s not really talked about is that this is also a test of their relationship

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The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks available today on Nintendo DS/DSi

Whenever companies do something inexplicable, the nerd in me always comes back to that scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind when Richard Dreyfus keeps building models of a mountain, culminating in a huge, muddy mess in his kitchen. Throughout it all he keeps saying “This means something.” Well, the latest molehill into a mountain is the move by Time Inc. and Conde Nast , among others, to build a tablet-based interface for their flagship titles

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“This means something:” Why the magazine industry is suddenly crowing about tablets

This particular issue is far from settled, since it is a fact that certain levels of radiation lead to transcription errors and such, but at the very least, studies like this one reinforce the idea that we’re not all of us going to drop dead in a couple years. The study, performed by the Danish Cancer Society and documented in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, studied brain cancer rates in Scandinavian countries over a period of 30 years.

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Huge Scandinavian study suggests no link between mobiles and brain cancer (so relax)

The folks over at Astro Gaming wanted to share some holiday cheer and are giving us one of their new Astro A40 BxR SE Audio Systems to hand out to one lucky CrunchGear enthusiast. The new BxR system comes with a headset, in either red, blue or military green (we’re giving the green one away), and a MixAmp. This headset comes with 5.1 Dolby Digital Sound, allowing you to hear everything around you in any game that supports it, and a noise-canceling microphone.

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Weekend Giveaway: Astro A40 BxR Special Edition Audio System

What you’re looking at is an installation by Gebhard Sengmüller called “A Parallel Image.” Technically, it’s art, but it’s more of an interesting deconstruction of technology than anything else. Instead of transmitting a video signal digitally via HDMI or VGA, this contraption does it in analog: 2500 photoconductors in an array, individually wired to 2500 bulbs on the other side

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“A Parallel Image”: a novel way of transmitting a video signal

Short Version: Gunnar’s “MLG Legend” glasses are a good choice for gamers and workers alike who suffer from eye problems created from staring at a screen for long periods of time. While the thought of wearing specialty glasses with amber lenses in front of a computer or TV screen may seem pretentious to some, the benefits of these glasses outweigh the possibility of any social backlash. The price point of $99.00 is reasonable, and the durability of these glasses is remarkable given their lightweight design.

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Review: Gunnar ‘MLG Legend’ Glasses

While Verizon might not be shoving the HTC Droid Eris down our throats the same way they are with its Motorola-made sibling, the Droid, the Eris is still one slick little piece of mobile kit. What it lacks in form factor (that is, a physical keyboard), it makes up with its drop-dead-gorgeous Sense UI. The only real shortcoming, as I see it, is that it’s still stuck on Android v1.5 while the Droid is touting around 2.0

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Verizon announces software update for Droid Eris coming in 2010

Here’s the right thing for all audio freaks out there who happen to be ready to shell out a lot of cash for a very unique product: Japan-based tech company BifrösTec (what a name) is selling egg-shaped speakers [JP] that are priced at $3,580 for a pair. The so-called D’Egg TGA-2R1 is sized at 140×140×235mm and weighs 2.6kg (including the stand that’s included in the price). The 30W speakers feature 70Hz〜20kHz frequency response, 4Ω impedance and 80 dB/W/M sensitivity.

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D’Egg: Egg-shaped speakers for $3,580

Gadget Lab reader Michael Lowdermilk writes: Hi Charlie, Since you’re a power junkie I wanted to get your feedback on what you think about adding USB ports to power outlets. By “power junkie”, Michael isn’t referring to my constant attempts to wrest control of the Gadget Lab from its esteemed editor (damn your physical fitness and level-headed approach, Tweney — I’ll get you one day). Instead, Michael is talking about my weakness for cleverly designed wall-warts, of which his is one

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Clever Power Outlet Incorporates Dual USB Chargers

Call me dorky, but for me the perfect game is one where you also learn something. It may have something to do with the Great British Pub Quiz, which long ago replaced the formal academic examination in UK schools and universities because a) attendance runs to almost 100% and b) you get to drink beer. So if you, too, prefer to read a how-to article on the web than kill five minutes on yet another tower-defense game, try out Stuff to Rattle Your Brain , a trivia quiz game from the good folks at How Stuff Works .

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Brain Drain: ‘How Stuff Works’ Trivia Game for iPhone

‘Tis the season for building systems — well, ’tis always that season, but right now you’ve got a pretty nice spread of components to pick from, whether you’re into the AMD or Intel flavor of things. Of course, if you’re feeling really spendy, or just want to have a different top-end processor from the guy next to you at the LAN party, then sometimes you have to get creative. eBay, as always, is the place for semi-shady transactions like that

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Core i7 not hot enough for you? Pick up your prototype Core i9 on eBay

Devin recently reviewed the ContourHD 1080p , a wearable HD camcorder designed to be worn during activities that would cause other camcorders to self-destruct. One thing it couldn’t do, however, was go into the water (though it resisted some splashing). It’s not designed to be waterproof out of the box, which definitely could be a problem for divers, rafters, or other water-sport enthusiasts.

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Wearable ContourHD cam gets lens kit and waterproof housing accessories

Not a day goes by without coming across one or more stories related to The Pirate Bay . Today is no different, with OpenBitTorrent (a tracker that Hollywood has accused of being The Pirate Bay’s spiritual successor, serving some 550,000 “works”) being given a new lease on life by a Swedish court. The gist is, Hollywood wanted the tracker shut down, but said Swedish court denied the action

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Targeted by Hollywood, OpenBitTorrent lives to fight another day

There’s a bit of a tizzy this week about Sprint allowing police officials to read up to 8 million “pings” on its network in order to track felons. Sprint made it considerably easier for police to do this by adding a special “portal,” probably a phone number-based dump of GPS data for phones over time, to the service they offer upon receiving a court order or a subpoena. I wonder, however, if this 8 million number isn’t far too high to be within the realm of sanity and/or if this number should make us concerned.

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Is Sprint letting the police follow us around?

Tokyo-based Kenko-Tokina , normally known for its camera accessories, has announced a cute Disney-themed digital camera [JP] for the Japanese market today. Spec-wise, this 8MP point-and-shoot camera isn’t anything special, but that’s what you’d expect from a camera whose case shows Mickey Mouse giving Minnie a bucket of hearts. You’ll get a 1/2.5 CMOS sensor, 4x digital zoom, 16MB of internal memory, an SDHC/SD memory card slot (up to 8GB), a USB 2.0 port and a 2.36-inch TFT screen.

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Kenko-Tokina’s super-cute Mickey Mouse camera

A friend of mine just asked me a few minutes ago whether she should spring for an SSD in her new laptop. No way, I told her — SSDs are improving far too quickly for a consumer to invest hundreds of dollars in something guaranteed to be superseded almost instantly. And lo and behold, almost as I was texting her, I noticed this post over at Giz about the newest Microns breaking speed records that were probably set within the last couple months

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New Micron SSDs fastest in the world – but for how long?

After watching Generation Kill , my anxiety for our troops went up quite a bit. War is an ugly business to begin with, but when you’re driving around a battlefield in an unarmored Humvee with electrical problems, it tends to look even uglier. Afghanistan is still an extremely hairy theater, and the vehicles they’ve had over there over the years ( years , people) just weren’t cutting it

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New off-road military vehicle for Afghanistan looks solid as hell

AT&T is just plan awful in parts of NYC, but yet Tyler, from the ABC show V , managed to get reception on his iPhone high above NYC in a gigantic spaceship. How is that possible when I know for a fact that the iPhone is basically useless in most parts of the city? Rubbish.  Maybe, just maybe, we’ll find out in a later episode that each V spaceship is actually part of an evil AT&T plan, but a side effect is that each ship actually improves cellular reception. Most iPhone owners would probably welcome alien overlords if they could actually use their phones around New York, San Fran, LA, Boston, and the rest of the major US cities

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Apparently the writers of V have never used an iPhone in NYC

More Psystar news for you. We now know that the Florida-based company will have to pay Apple $2.68 million in damages over its little Hackintosh business. (That’s a partial settlement, not court-mandated or anything.) Go ahead and go to its Web site : everything is out of stock! Of course, Psystar said it will appeal the decision handed to it that said it violated the DMCA when it installed Mac OS X on PCs.

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Psystar settles with Apple to the tune of $2.7 million (but won’t pay up just yet)

Every now and then tech companies will launch a product that’ll make you think, “Wait, why weren’t we doing this all along?” Universal Studio’s new “Flipper” disc is one of those: a two-in-one disc that’s Blu-ray on one side and DVD on the other. Universal is rolling out the dual-format disc beginning with the Bourne trilogy ( Bourne Identity, Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum ). Each Flipper disc will cost about $30 — about the same as most Blu-ray titles cost brand new

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Dual-Format Blu-Ray/DVD ‘Flipper’ Discs Landing in Stores

There’s almost a comedy about this next story: Australia has banned another video game because it’s too violent. (What is it with Australia and banning violent video games?) The game is CrimeCraft , and it has been refused classification by the ratings board down there. The game was refused classification because “there is insufficient delineation between the ‘fictional drugs’ available in game and real-world proscribed drugs.” In other words, the in-game drugs aren’t “fake enough” for the Australian Classification Board

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Yet another game, CrimeCraft, refused classification in Australia

Does anyone remember the Japanese anti-burglar mat for stores and restaurants I blogged a few months ago? Well, there’s another security system from Japan and it clearly raises the bar: It’s a new mechanism, dubbed Capture, for these places and it sprays stinky agent on thieves who won’t be able to get rid of the stench for a week.

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It’ll linger for a week: Japanese security system sprays stinky smell on thieves