(Credit: CNET)

There is no shortage of tower defense games at the iTunes App Store. Even in the beginning, developers understood that the touch screen was a natural fit for placing towers on a game board.

One of the first out of the gate, GeoDefense, was an immediate hit with tower defense players, providing a level of challenge that was mostly unmatched in the iTunes App Store. The game was developed by David Whatley of Critical Thought Games, a one-man development house. He developed the game in six months on nights and weekends. Our very own Josh Lowensohn wrote a story featuring Whatley back in 2010.

But things are different for Whatley now that his games have gone on to become classics in the iTunes App Store. Now he's got 25 people to help out with development and his latest game, released last week, has a whole new level of polish. Can it follow in the footsteps of his popular early classics? You be the judge.

This week's collection of iOS apps consists of tower defense games all made by the same developer. We've decided to put these games together as a collection because you can't go wrong with any of them and the earlier ones provide an excellent contrast with the latest game. Beware, though, once you get started you'll find these are the kind of games that are almost impossible to put down.

The o... [Read more]

Use the new Chrome 'new tab' page

The blank Web site that stares back at you when you open a new browser tab is no longer a vast field of dead white space. Google is making Chrome's 'new tab' page a robust launch pad from which you can interact with your recently visited sites, Web apps, and bookmarks. It's currently only available in Chrome 15 beta, but it'll be handed over to the majority of people in the stable version of Chrome soon enough. Here's how you can use it, and thankfully it's intuitive.

The new page splits up your Most Visited sites, Chrome Web apps, and Bookmarks into three chunks. Arrows appear on the left and right page gutters. If you don't see them, mouse over that area and the background will light up. Use them to flip through the three default categories, and conveniently, Chrome will remember the last one you looked at and return you to it when you restart the browser.

There's a clever and intuitive organizational feature included, too. You can click and drag items from any of the three pages to the bottom bar and create custom categories for keeping them organized. Double-click where the new category label is blank to name it. You can also mix and match items in a custom category, so you can have your Google Calendar Offline Web app live next to your Gmail bookmark next to your Google.com f... [Read more]

(Credit: ZeptoLab)

ZeptoLab today released its Toy Box update for the incredibly popular physics-based puzzler Cut The Rope (download) on the Android platform. With it, players get 25 new brain-teasing levels as well as a new Save feature that lets you save and restore your progress across devices. Big fans of the title might also be interested to know that the update is being promoted with an Om Nom plush toy giveaway through the Cut The Rope Facebook page.

Cut the Rope for Android is available for 99 cents in both the Android Market and the Amazon Appstore.

Update, 3:10 p.m. PT: According to ZeptoLab, the update has been unexpectedly pushed back and "won't be going live in the Android Market or Amazon Appstore for Android until early next week."