Fighting zombies on the ground is a sucker bet. I mean, they always outnumber you, and there's never enough ammo.

Plus, it's a level playing field, and that's the last thing you want when faced with relentless hordes of flesh-eaters. (Yes, I've thought this through.)

In Zombie Gunship, you take the high road--literally. You're the gunner for an AC-130 ground-attack aircraft. As the heavily armed weapon of undead destruction circles a bunker, you have to--make that get to--gun down the zombies before they reach the entrance.

Of course, humans are trying to get there, too, as it's the only safe place. So you can't just lay down fire willy-nilly; you must aim for the zombies and avoid hitting the humans.

And so the stage is set. Part of what makes Zombie Gunship such an interesting challenge is that your aircraft is constantly circling the bunker (albeit slowly), so your perspective is forever shifting. You don't get the muscle memory of "zombies that way, bunker that way," like with most tower-defense games.

What's more, you see everything through a motion-blurred, night-vision lens, giving the game a certain militaristic realism. It feels like something you'd see in Call of Duty (and, indeed, you can see where Zombie Gunship drew some inspiration).

Upgrades keep things lively. Each zombie you kill and human you save earns you coins, which you can use to upgrade your guns and buy bigger, better ones. There are a few extra upgrades as well, like more money per kill and a bunker-gate bomb that's automatically deployed--but only once per round--when the zombies get too close.

Which, eventually, they do, at which point you head to the upgrade store for more gear, then take to the skies again. Die, zombies, die!

Zombie Gunship is one of the best games I've played this year, and a bargain at 99 cents. The only thing missing is an iPad version, which would make gameplay a lot easier on my aging eyes.

By the way, if you love zombie-whompin' like I do, be sure to check out these other posts:

iPhone apps for a very zombie Christmas
5 iPhone games for zombie lovers (and haters)
Braaaains: 5 more iPhone games for zombie lovers/haters

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

Now this I like.

The Humble Indie Bundle #3 is a collection of five PC games, all of them compatible with Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. Their combined value: about $55.

Your price: whatever you want to pay. Think the bundle's worth a buck? Pay a buck. Think it's worth $15? Pay $15. Feeling generous? Pony up $5,000 and earn the pole position on the Top Contributors list.

What's great about the Humble Indie Bundle is that you get to decide how to divvy up your contribution among four potential recipients: the game developers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Child's Play charity, and your Humble hosts.

You can steer all of your contribution to one party or split it up in pretty much any way you want, which I think is awesome. (Personally, I'm giving an equal share to everybody.) I also love the real-time donation stats, which are very revealing: Linux users are averaging the highest contribution (!), followed by Mac users, then Windows users.

Anyway, on to the games: And Yet It Moves, Crayon Physics, Cogs, Hammerfight, and VVVVVV. I can't say I've heard of most of them, but each one looks cooler than the last--and there are some award-winners in the mix. I'm excited to try all five.

All the games are DRM-free, and all can optionally be retrieved via Steam or Desura (except for a couple of the Mac versions). The bundle will be available for the next 13 days.

I'm in for $10. That's a measly $2 per game (Crayon Physics alone usually sells for $19.95), and I get the satisfaction of giving something not only to the developers, but also to two worthwhile causes. And the Humble guys deserve a couple bucks for putting it all together.

Also, as a Windows user, I feel compelled to raise our donation average (which is currently $3.81, to Mac users' $6.23)! In this instance, my competitiveness outweighs my cheapskate-ness. Who's with me?!

Bonus deal: A lot of you were keen on yesterday's desktop RAM deal, so here's a nearly identical one for laptop users: Newegg has the G.SKILL 8GB DDR3 laptop RAM kit for $39.99 shipped. It comes with two 4GB, 204-pin modules, and a lifetime warranty. You even get a free 4GB flash drive!

Originally posted at The Cheapskate

Mac OS X Lion users might want to disable the operating system's "automatic login" feature, a password recovery firm has warned.

According to Passware, the latest version of Mac OS X has a "vulnerability" that allows login passwords to be exposed while the Mac is locked or in sleep mode. In order to access those passwords, users will need to connect to the Mac's FireWire port, since it allows for communication by direct memory access, the firm said.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard, the previous version of Apple's operating system, is also affected, Passware says.

Lion was released last week in Apple's App Store. According to the company, it delivers 250 new features. The operating system retails for $29.99.

Passware, which offers its password recovery software to law enforcement agencies, says that its latest release, the Passware Kit Forensic v11, addresses the apparent Mac OS X vulnerability. When users employ the $995 software, they'll be able to recover login passwords, as well as passwords saved in the Mac keychain, such as those for Web sites, wireless networks, and more.

Luckily for Mac users, the issue can be solved quite quickly by disabling the automatic login setting in the operating system. Passware president Dmitry Sumin told CNET in an e-mailed statement today that users must also turn off their computers. Upon doing so, the platform will no longer save passwords in memory, thus making them unrecoverable. According to Sumin, users can also disable the FireWire port to safeguard themselves from the vulnerability.

Disabling automatic login is a good security tip in general, regardless of whether passwords can be recovered when the Mac is sleeping. By allowing for automatic login, Mac users are basically letting anyone who starts up their computers have full access to their machines. Disabling the feature requires Mac users to choose their profile and input a password to log on to the computer.

This isn't the first time that Passware has used this technique to access seemingly secured data. According to the company, it was able to use the same technique to decrypt hard drives encrypted with Windows' BitLocker and TrueCrypt.

Apple did not immediately respond to CNET's request for comment.

Update at 7:15 a.m. PT to include comments from Passware president Dmitry Sumin.

Originally posted at The Digital Home

Google has released a new developer version of Chrome to re-enable a multitouch gesture that changed in Lion, the new version of Mac OS X that Apple released last week.

With the new operating system, a three-finger swipe left or right moves among different full-screen apps or desktops. That conflicted with Chrome's use of a three-finger swipe to move backward and forward in browsing history.

Yesterday, though, Google released Chrome 14.0.835.0 for Mac (and 14.0.835.0 for Linux, and 14.0.835.2 for Windows) that changes the forward and backward navigation to two-finger swipe gestures on Apple machines. The fix worked on my MacBook Pro, but it'll be some weeks before Chrome 14 arrives as the stable version intended for mainstream users.

The new version also adds support for a new communication protocol for Web Sockets, a high-speed communication mechanism between browsers and Web servers, according to Chrome team member Jason Kersey in the blog post about the new version.

Also new are tweaks to Chrome's support for multiple user profiles, a feature that will let people use the Web with different online personas. Multiple profile support was an early Chrome feature, but Google pulled back for a long development hiatus.

Originally posted at Deep Tech