tower

Before we get to this week's apps, I ran into a problem recently with my iPhone that I was able to quickly fix after a little online research. I had recently synced my iPhone only to find that most of my music was gone. When I got home and plugged in to my computer I saw that most of my storage space was taken up by "Other." Only about a third was music, about 900MB for apps (you better believe it!), and some smallish amount for photos. But more than half of the storage space out of … Read more

TapDefense is a fun (and addictive!) free game in which you try to stave off hellish hordes from reaching the "Gates of Heaven." A touch version of popular "tower defense" real-time strategy games, TapDefense has you building six types of towers (that shoot arrows, cannonballs, ice, and so on.) to stop seven different types of enemies (everything from gremlins to succubi) before they reach the end of a winding path.

You place towers and navigate upgrade menus within an easy touch interface, and the game has excellent graphics and sound effects. TapDefense offers surprisingly rich gameplay, … Read more

Coolfer has an interesting post this morning, responding to Peter Kafka's suggestion that it's getting too hard to buy music because fewer retailers are stocking CDs. I think Kafka's confusing cause and effect--if retailers were still making lots of money on Britney and Rihanna, CDs would be sold front and center. But regardless of the chicken-and-egg question, Coolfer makes the very good point that most music purchasers don't seek out music and aren't willing to sift through the racks at their local record stores, but rather pick up a CD as an impulse buy on … Read more

On today's show, Brian Cooley announces that he's made the switch...I mean, the big switch. He bought an iPhone. The world briefly stopped rotating, and when it resumed, we laid down the smack on poor Jerry Yang, the Justice Department, the XM-Sirius merger, and subsequent channel flipping, and some poor guy who thought it was a good idea to call our show. Good times!

Yahoo's Jerry Yang to step down, as a search for new CEO commences http://kara.allthingsd.com/20081117/yahoos-jerry-yang-to-step-down-as-a-search-for-new-ceo-commences/ Jerry Yang's entire memo … Read more

Two superstars of the casual gaming world--David Scott, the author of Flash Element TD, and Paul Preece, who wrote Desktop Tower Defense--are collaborating to create a new games company, Casual Collective.

Updated versions of Flash Element and Desktop Tower Defense are among the games offered at the new service, as well as new marquee titles Minions and Desktop Armada. These are multi-player games, and Scott and Preece hope they will bring users back to the games to hang out with (or conquer) their buddies. The games are monetized through in-game ads served by Mochi Media.

While an important key to … Read more

Several times throughout today's show, The 404 almost causes the universe to implode. Our Earth-shaking collection of topics today include a story about Viagra missiles, iPhone flaws and young love, divinely drunk intervention, and more Ryan Gosling/Ryan Reynolds confusion...which witch is which?!

One of the more ridiculous stories on today's show is about a man that somehow managed to smuggle a fake, but extremely realistic looking missile into New York with a sticker on the side that proudly read "VIVA VIAGRA." After driving around New York, making stops at Times Square and the Trump Tower, the man ended up in front of the Pfizer corporate building where the company promptly slapped a restraining order and a cease and desist warning on his man-made missile. The craziest part about this story is the fact that one man somehow drove through the Midtown tunnel and several New York police officers with a missile attached to his truck.

Is that all it takes? The man claims that ""New York City cops are smart. They know the difference between a mock-up and the real thing," and that's all well and good, but what about scaring the sh*t out of thousands of New Yorkers? Mass chaos isn't so fun. Do you think The 404 should pull a stunt like this? Clearly it'd be pretty easy to set in motion, and you know we need the publicity! Any suggestions? Leave us a comment and and let us know!

Wilson can't make it to the show again because of his ongoing illness, so everyone send us a voice mail wishing our buddy well wishes and a speedy return back to The 404! Dan the Mantern takes time out of his busy schedule of doughnut runs and paper stapling to fill in and give us some laughs on this overcast Monday. We recap our weekend adventures, talk about the dangers of kidnapping a virtual lion, send our condolences to the hungry worker bees at Google, protect ourselves from exploding iPods, and perform reveal the first ever sushi DNA test!… Read more

It's some kind of weird contradiction, but for some reason I really loved Tower Records. I say that because I have a long standing thing about indie record shops, and I never bought much at Virgin or HMV, but when Tower opened its two Manhattan stores I became an even bigger vinyl junkie. I lived just a few blocks away from the uptown one and would spend many nights there just looking at music and talking with music buyers. The social scene was part of the trip.

Tower's two gigantic shops were initially filled with groovy records, and later in the 1980s the CDs started to eat away, aisle by aisle, at the vinyl paradises. It must have taken three or four years before CDs occupied most of the bins. Granted, vinyl's decline was mostly market driven, but remember CDs typically sold for double the price of LPs, so Tower, like most stores figured that even if the vinyl title was still available they'd rather you bought the CD. If the LP wasn't there you'd have to pony up the extra dough for the CD. During that time I'd get my vinyl from indie shops.

One rainy spring day walking through Central Park I was listening to a classical radio station when they played Aaron Copland's "Concerto for Clarinet, Strings, Harp and Piano." It so perfectly framed the misty day and green grass I had to buy the music. I exited Central Park, walked a few blocks over to Broadway and bought the CD. That was twenty years ago and I still have the CD to trigger those memories.… Read more