Rippin' Through Super Paper Mario

When I was a kid I was addicted to the classic Super Mario Brothers on my Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), and it was my absolute favorite game. It kept me glued to my console for hours and hours at a time. Since then Nintendo has released multiple versions of Mario games but the latest one to hit the stores earlier this month, and the first for the Nintendo Wii is Super Paper Mario.

The game’s story begins as Mario and Luigi heard that Princess Peach was kidnapped. The two brothers head over to Bowser’s (the character with all the spikes on his shell) castle to rescue her, but Bowser is surprised to hear of her kidnapping as well. The villain Count Bleck then appears out of nowhere and kidnaps everyone except Mario by warping them to another location. Thereafter, Count Bleck forces Princess Peach and Bowser into marriage, which creates a rift of dark energy that threatens to tear the universe apart. Only you as Mario can save the day.

To fulfill your destiny as the Hero, you (Mario) must collect eight pure hearts to form the purity heart, which is an ancient artifact that holds great power. It is the only thing that can stop Count Bleck’s plans. To find these hearts you must go through different chapters in the game, which entails multiple journeys and a battle with the main boss at the end of each part within the chapter (four parts in each chapter). To help you through this, you’ll find pixis (fairy-like creatures) hidden throughout the various stages. They will give you special powers such as picking up and throwing things or revealing hidden objects.

While playing the game, you use the Wii controller sideways, with the sensor pointed away from the TV, much like the old-style Nintendo controller. You point the sensor at the TV when you’re utilizing pixis’ help. Crosshairs will appear, and as you move it across the screen you can see any concealed items or find out specific information about them or other characters.

As you progress further in the game you’ll meet new characters and eventually have four members in your group, which you can switch to at any time. Each has their own special ability, but my favorite is still Mario. You can make him “flip” the world from 2D to 3D, which makes it easy to run past enemies or walls, find hidden treasures and talk to characters that are only visible in the other dimension. You have to be careful using this since you only have a limited amount of time in the 3D world. An indicator bar at the top of the screen lets you know how much time you have left. An exception to the character switching is Tippi, a butterfly-like pixi that you meet early in the game. She serves as your guide throughout the adventure.

This game operates almost as a role playing game. You can collect money, level-up to maximize hit points/attack power or buy magic potions and other items to help you heal or gain special abilities. As with previous Mario games, don’t forget about the hidden areas, usually found by squatting down into a pipe. Going for these can often gain you additional coins or desirable goodies.

Overall, I say Super Paper Mario is a cute, wholesome game with a good storyline. Flipping from the 2D to the 3D makes the gameplay interesting since you can do so much in 3D. I also enjoyed the role playing aspect of it, and the only (very small) complaint I have is the lack of voiceovers. It’s no biggie, but it just forces you to look at all the text bubbles, which is good for the keiki to force them to read everything. The graphics are simple, but very eye-appealingly rich.

Super Paper Mario is only playable as a one-player deal, and it’s rated E for Everyone. Find it at your nearest CompUSA (www.compusa.com), GameStop (www.gamestop.com) or Best Buy (www.bestbuy.com) for $49.99.

A Simple Way To Protect Your PC

If you have a PC, one of the biggest concerns you probably have (or should have) is the security of your system. Software that offers you this protection typically takes up much of the valuable resources on your computer and could make it run slower than usual. To counter this, Symantec’s recently released Norton 360 is an all-in-one package that will cover your bases while hardly using any of the juice in your system.

Norton 360 is designed for the average user that needs an easy-to-use, but comprehensive security solution with minimal interaction. Automation, breadth of functionality, user experience and performance are the key design principles for Norton 360. It’s designed to operate as automatic as possible while providing you comprehensive protection, without interrupting your work (or games). These are the five functionality categories that will cover you:

- PC Security: This will offer you protection against viruses, spyware, hackers and more. A smart firewall, intrusion prevention, vulnerability assessments and network detection will automatically optimize your firewall protection using different security settings when connecting to various network types.

- Transaction Security: Antiphishing protection gives you confidence to do your online shopping, banking or other transactions by protecting your identity. It recognizes known and unknown phishing sites and seamlessly integrates your Norton Toolbar into your web browser. The web authentication will verify the authenticity of trusted brands that are commonly phished.

- Backup And Restore: You have the option to do either local or online backup/restore. You can store your backups just about anywhere – internal or external drives, CD/DVD drives, USB drives, mapped network drives or secured online backup. Norton 360 comes with 2 GB of online storage and additional space can be purchased $29.99 for 5 GB, $49.99 for 10 GB and $69.99 for 25 GB. Your changed files will automatically be detected and incrementally backs up the changes through your custom backup scheduling or during idle time.


- PC Tuneup: This will identify and delete unnecessary files that will clutter up your hard drive, such as Windows temp files, Internet temp files or Internet history files. It will analyze and defragment your hard drive(s) for faster and more efficient operation. It Norton’s Background Scheduler will automatically initiate your remaining scans, backups and tune-ups.

- Embedded Support: This automatically diagnoses and resolves common issues and guides you to easy issue resolution from within the context of the product. It gives you free tech support on the phone, live chat or e-mail.


Norton 360 is only available for Windows XP or Vista, unfortunately no Mac version. It won CNET and PC Magazine’s Editor’s Choice Awards, so I’m guessing it must be good. You can purchase it for $69.99 at www.symantec.com, CompUSA (www.compusa.com) or Best Buy (www.bestbuy.com). It’s valid for up to three of your household’s PCs. You can also receive AntiSpam and Parental Controls through an optional add-on pack at no additional charge.

The price is valid for a one-year subscription on the updates/new product features. Thereafter, you’ll have to pay the upgrade fee of $59.99. If you don’t want to spend the money right away, you can download a trial version from Symantec’s website.

Fix-It Yourself Software For Macs

I found computer fix-it software at this year’s MacWorld conference that I just had to share with you Mac users. Well, the software itself isn’t anything new, but what you install it on is different. You would typically see computer utilities on a CD, but unless you do tech support, you probably wouldn’t be walking around with a boot disk in your back pocket. Micromat’s TechTool Protogo, exclusively for the Mac, allows you to use your old iPod or flash drive as a bootable diagnostic tool.

As long as your device is 2 GB or bigger, you can load up Protogo. Note that whatever device you use, it has to be FireWire since your Mac will NOT boot off USB. If you have an old iPod lying around, that’s perfect. That’s what I used for my test . . . the old “brick.” On it Protogo installed Console, Disk Utility, DiskStudio, System Profiler, Terminal and of course, Tech Tool Pro. You can also add in your own utilities, and still have ample room left for data backups.

If you don’t happen to have any spare FireWire drive or old iPod around, you can buy the TechTool Protege FireWire device. It’s a pocket-sized drive that comes with the same tools pre-loaded. Additionally, this device won Best of Show at Macworld. Unfortunately since it’s only 1 GB, you won’t be able to do any additional backups on it.

Micromat’s TechTool Pro itself is nothing new, but latest version is 4.5.2. The software includes just about everything you can think of to fix your computer. You can run an array of tests from basic (checks your processor, memory, disk controller and more) to the advanced test (surface scans of your hard drives). I ran the basic test just to see what it would do. Of course it was all good (as expected since this is a new computer), and it even told me where my computer was manufactured with the specific date. You can do optimizations (hard drive defragmentation), data recovery, data wipes, critical data directory backups, monitor calibration, use the SMART Setup tool to automatically check your hard drives, and more.

If that sounds intimidating, don’t worry because you don’t have to be a brainiac to run TechTool Pro 4. These tests are pretty much point and click. Or, if you’re on the other side of the fence, and want to intimately explore your computer, the more detailed tests will satisfy your curiosity. In either case, TechTool Pro is for everyone and keep in mind this is what will be on your portable drive with Protogo too!

To run Protogo 1.0.3 you need Mac OS X 10.4 or above, a DVD-ROM and 512 MB RAM. You can find it for $135, TechTool Protégé for $229, or just the TechTool Pro software for $98 at www.micromat.com. These are worth it considering they can possibly save your Mac one day. Unfortunately there’s no PC version. In addition, if you have one of the really old Beige G3 Macs, you need to use TechTool Pro Classic ($97).

Fight Diseases With Your PS3

Folding@home (also known as FAH or F@H) has been around for a while, but from talking to different people, I’m finding that this project isn’t common knowledge. You may not know what context I’m talking the word “folding” into, but I’m definitely not talking about folding your clothes or origami. It’s all about protein and other molecular simulations to help fight diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Mad Cow diseases, and many cancers / cancer-related syndromes.

With this in mind, know that you can use a PlayStation 3 (PS3) to help fight these diseases and more. The PS3’s Cell processor can fold these proteins and achieves performance only possible with a supercomputer using distributed computing (an approach adopted by universities and research labs to use immense computing power without the use of central supercomputers - small computing tasks are assigned to each user’s CPU and the results are collected after each computation is complete). It’s a perfect excuse to say that you “need” a PS3. Folding with a PS3 can attain this massive computing power with performance on the 20-gigaflop scale. With about 50,000 PS3s around the world in action, the performance can reach the petaflop scale. Pretty dang impressive, don’t you think?

If you do already own a PS3, make sure it has system version 1.6 or later. If it’s not, I would recommend downloading the system update. Once you have that all set, you’ll see a Folding@Home in the network column of the XMB (PS3 menu). Click on the icon and that’s it. You can sit back and watch your PS3 fold proteins in work units (WU). Each WU takes about eight hours to complete, but you can run it overnight to achieve a useful result. Note the WUs do expire if you should decide to pause it and restart. It’s fun to surf around the world map to see where other PS3s are folding too. They’re just about everywhere. Also, your PS3 will use about 200W while running F@H. The program’s research lab has several PS3s successfully at work showing good results so far.


If you’re wondering why this all matters, proteins are important because they are the workhorses or nanomachines of biology. They’re the necklaces of amino acids and the basis of how biology gets things done. As enzymes, they’re the driving force behind all of the biochemical reactions that make biology work. Before carrying out their important functions, they assemble themselves or “fold.” Although fundamental to almost all biology, the whole process of protein folding remains a mystery. If proteins do not fold correctly, we see serious consequences. Thus, all this folding is important to the cause.

Since 2000 over a million computers have participated in this distributed computing project. Every participating CPU increases the computing power available to the F@H project. The overall goal is to research and protein folding and misfolding to gain an understanding of how these are related to disease.

Even if you don’t have a PS3, you can still help cause by running the software on your computer. Band together to help make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Each PS3 or computer makes brings the project closer to the goals. Visit the website and download the software at http://folding.stanford.edu. For your computer, it’s available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X.

This program isn’t limited to English, so you for those of you who have friends around the world, you can also find it in Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Occitan, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Vietnamese.

Bringing GEORGE Into Your Home

With a dime-a-dozen iPod speaker devices out there, I’ve learned to shut my brain off when a new one pops up. After awhile they almost all sound the same. While I was at Macworld this year, I saw even more of these mundane speakers that I really wanted to ignore, but I just couldn’t ignore GEORGE.

No, GEORGE isn’t a person. It’s a digital audio system made by Chestnut Hill Sound, Inc. for the iPod, and, most importantly, it won Best of Show from the editors of Macworld during the conference. Because of the award, I just had to check it out. The big crowd at the show prevented me from having much first-hand contact with GEORGE, but I finally had chance to play with it for myself in my own home.

After taking it out of the box and getting it situated, the first thing I noticed, and my favorite aspect of it, is that the faceplate comes off and acts as your remote control. It’s powered by a rechargeable battery, and recharged by attaching it back onto GEORGE’s main body, or the optional remote charging stand. You’ll see everything you need on this, including the controls of your iPod, the radio or an alarm clock. I like the fact that it has a big knob for the volume, and the rest of the easy to use buttons, and other options that appear on the screen.

While listening to the radio, GEORGE features BANDLESS tuning, which eliminates the artificial barrier of AM and FM. You can just spin the knob around and you have a seamless circle of stations to choose from. You’ll also see the radio stations appear at the bottom of the screen.

“We are delighted to have our first product, GEORGE, honored as Best of Show by the editors of Macworld,” said Steve Krampf, CEO of Chestnut Hill Sound. “The iPod has completely changed how you listen to music and GEORGE represents a better way to experience your iPod at home by giving you full control over your music from your place of comfort. CHS is committed to creating digital sound innovations that define next-generation home audio,” he added.


In addition to syncing up with your iPod and playing the radio, it can act as your alarm clock. The alarms available vary from nap and sleep timers to dual or one-time alarms. You can pick and choose what song(s) will play to wake you up. You can do the same for a radio station if you don’t want your iPod to go off. If you’re a particularly heavy sleeper you can set the wake up volume to be as loud as you need.
Additionally you can use GEORGE as a jukebox by plugging its preamp out into your bigger sound system. With that your iPod’s sound can flow richly through your house, and can be fun using GEORGE’s remote control. If you’re worried about GEORGE being out of date, you can easily update and upgrade it with a USB cable.

Overall GEORGE is a good product because of its multiple features. It is the only remote that can fully control your iPod’s functions. To me the only drawback is the sound quality isn’t quite up to par. The total size of GEORGE is 14.25x5x8.6-inches, and it honestly doesn’t sound as good as my Bose SoundDock. If you’re in a very small room, or using at your nightstand, as it’s targeted for, then it’s adequate. Blasting GEORGE in a bigger room made it sound like some weak speakers (fixable by plugging it into your big speakers). If you’re very picky on sound you probably will not like it, however if you’re more into the gadget aspect of it, the multiple features are fun to play with.

You can buy a GEORGE of your own for $549 (or $599 with the remote charging stand) at www.chillsound.com. They’re working on getting it into the Apple Store, so we might see it there soon. For now it’s only available on the website stated above. I know the price is a little steep, but you can try it out for a free 30-day in-home trial.

Digital Photo Frames

As much as I love to take pictures it’s a shame not to be able to display them all on a regular photo frame for printed photos. I intend to buy a digital photo frame eventually, but I’ve just been lazy and don’t have one yet. Now that my husband and I have sort of settled into our new house, we can finally think about what to do with our pictures along with the rest of our decorating ideas. Still fresh in my mind, while I was at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) a few months ago I saw Kodak’s impressionable new line of digital photo frames.

Kodak brought out four new EasyShare digital picture frames that will play vibrant slideshows of your favorite pictures and videos set to music. There are eight and 10-inch Wi-Fi versions, and seven and eight-inch standard versions. All are extremely user-friendly and come with a multifunction remote control.

The frames are color tuned to Kodak standards and will support CF, SD, MMC, MS and xD memory card formats. MPEG 1 / 4, MOV, AVI video types and JPEGs are recognizable by the frames. You can source digital files from any digital still camera, computer, jump drive, or flash drive via USB 2.0. Stereo speakers are built into the frames for dramatic sound effects for your slide shows.

Starting at the top of the line, and my favorite of the four, Kodak’s EasyShare EX1011 has a 10-inch 800x400 pixels high resolution digital display and gives you wireless access of pictures, videos and music from your computer or online from the Kodak Gallery over your network. There’s 128 MB of built-in memory for storing your media directly onto the frame and a headphone jack if you don’t want to disturb everyone around you. This one will cost you $279.95.

Next in line is the EX811 which has an eight-inch display, and all other features identical to the EX1011 ($229.95). The eight-inch EX811 has the same features, minus the wireless. It’s a little easier on your wallet at $179.95. Lastly, the EasyShare SV710 is almost the same, but measures in with a seven-inch frame and the smallest price at $129.95. You can find all these wonderful Kodak frames at www.kodak.com. They are not available for purchase yet, but will be sometime this month.

Another interesting line of digital photo frames were from Parrot. I like that brand name since I have a parrot, but anyway, they make a plethora of Bluetooth (2.0) enabled photo frames. You can upload your pictures right from your cell phone or other Bluetooth devices you own. These frames are 720x480 pixels and have 128 MB of built-in memory that will hold approximately 500 photos. Prices range from $169.99 (3.5-inch) to $239.95 (7-inch) in a variety of colors – see www.parrot.com for more information.


If you don’t want to spend actual money on a digital photo frame, Central Pacific Bank (CPB) is running a promotion, where you can receive a digital photo frame when you open a new Exceptional Plan account. The frame is an eight-inch Pandigital with 800x600 pixels and 64MB built-in memory. Courtesy of CPB, I was able to have the Pandigital sitting on my kitchen counter for a few days, but now I’m convinced that I need to buy one for myself. Banks have come a long way from giving away blenders or toasters.

A side thought for you tax procrastinators: CPB is offering 15% off Turbo Tax from its website – www.centralpacificbank.com.

Getting The Message With Visual Voicemail

Listening to voice messages have come a long way from hearing them on a cassette tape answering machine, to a digital answering machine to what most of us use today – digital voicemail. To take this to the next level, Hawaiian Telcom recently announced a “visual voicemail” service that links your cell phone with your computer.

Call Choice allows you to hear and respond to your cell phone messages in your e-mail. This service works on virtually every cell phone in Hawaii, not only with Hawaiian Telcom’s service. It enables you to organize, store and forward all your messages via e-mail, not taking away the ability to access your voicemail in the traditional way.

“Hawaiian Telcom is providing richer options for voicemail and call management through our Call Choice family of services,” said Jon Gelman, Hawaiian Telcom’s Vice President of Wireless Operations & Development. “Through visual voicemail, customers can see, prioritize and listen to messages and even send a text reply or initiate a call back from their computers. Visual voicemail brings a new level of ease and convenience to managing mobile phone content. We’re glad to bring this innovation to Hawaii because it enables our customers to interact with their calls and calling communities in ways that few have considered before,” he added.


Similar to how iTunes organizes music for your iPod, Call Choice uses your computer to manage your messages and contacts. The features include:

Find Me: When your wireless phone is not answered, it redirects the call to a designated number, such as your home or another cell phone. You can also have both your cell and your other number to ring at the same time. This is quite convenient since your phone doesn’t have to be on to do this.

Smart Routing: You can choose to always send certain callers directly to voicemail. Perfect if you have someone stalking you. Or, on the other hand, you can put other callers put on a “VIP” status so that Call Choice will ring you at several locations.

Call Preview: Hear your caller as he/she is leaving you a message. Just press “1” to interrupt the message. This is very comes in handy if you JUST missed that phone call.

Call Transfer: This lets you transfer calls to your designated number(s) by pressing “2.”

Message Alerting and Delivery: There are various options available, but you can have your notifications sent to your e-mail or cell phone. It lets you know when you received new messages, and it can e-mail your voice messages to you.

Call Choice is free to all Hawaiian Telcom subscribers, but even if you have another carrier, it’s no charge to you for the first three months, and thereafter it’s $4.99 per month. Check out www.callchoice.com to signup or call Hawaiian Telcom Customer Support 643-3456 for more information.

When I tested it, I used the web-based version, but you also have the option to download and install the program directly on your computer. Unfortunately it’s only available for PC.

Super Headphones, Compact Size

So now that you have the tangling problem squared away, are you ready for new headphones? I certainly am. I’m tired of using the headphones that came with my iPod. They’re alright, but they always pop out of my ears when I’m running, and the sound quality isn’t the best. Even when I’m not active, I can still hear the majority of the ambient noise around me while using those. I’ll usually use my Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones while I’m traveling, but that’s too big to tote around on a daily basis.

Although these have been out for awhile, I just discovered Ultimate Ears’ line of earphones, in particular, the super.fi 5 Pro and the super.fi 5 EB. These earphones go all the way inside your ear to give you professional-grade audio. Low and high frequency speakers are built-in each side of the headphones for excellent fidelity, and the tips help seal off external noise.

You can hear a huge difference between the super.fis and regular headphones. I haven’t tested it on an airplane yet, but the super.fi 5 Pro definitely keeps out the background noise. Additionally, once you insert them into your ears, it loops over your ear rather than hanging down. The cord is a little thicker than a normal one, but that’s what makes it sturdy. It could possibly my next choice to travel with (as opposed to taking the big hunking Bose with me), but I’ll have to wait for my next plane ride to truly test it.

Exercising with it isn’t bad, but best at the gym while on a machine that doesn’t move too much, such as the elliptical or bicycle. The 5 EB (Extended Bass) has more bass response, so it’s good for listening to rock, but the earbuds are a little bigger. The 5 Pro gives you strong acoustics for all music genres, and the earbuds fit snug in your ear. Both come with leather and metal carrying cases for storage.

The super.fi 5 Pro retails for $249.99 (white, cherry red, black and clear) and the 5 EB is a little less for $199.99 (white, black). If you’re really strapped but still want a discriminating earphone, there’s a super.fi 3 Studio for $99.99 (white, black, clear) or metro.fi for $79.99 (black only). You can find these online at www.ultimateears.com or at your nearest CompUSA (www.compusa.com). The difference in the models/pricing reflects in the sound quality.

Untangling A Headphone Problem

One thing that frustrates me is untangling my headphone cord when I’m all set to go on a run. I feel like I’m wasting so much time fighting with the jumbled mess. A few times I’ve just gone running with a tangled cord as a result of not wanting to deal with it. Ever since I found the Cordgo at MacWorld, I have no need to deal with this problem anymore.

The Cordgo is such a small, simple little device, yet a huge sanity saver. Once you have it set up, it’s simple to use with one hand. When you first look at it you might wonder how it works, and how to take it apart for setup. It’s actually quite easy. First you push the clip, and it releases the lid as you pull on it. You then loop your cord through the spindle, pop the lid back onto the unit, and rotate it using your thumb in a circular motion to retract the cord.

When you’re ready to remove your cord back out, you evenly pull both ends of the cord, and it comes right out. Depending on how long and thick your cord is the Cordgo can hold an average of six feet. The clip comes in handy to hook onto your sleeve, and your headphones are no longer weighted down to pop out of your ears.

Apparently the whole tangling frustration is shared. "I came up with the idea after untangling my headphones for the millionth time,” said Darrel Hade, President of Wing Products and the inventor of the Cordgo. “I also had problems with the cord getting in the way and the weight of the cord pulling the earbuds from my ears. The experience of listening to music should not have to include the frustration of dealing with headphone cords. While the concept is fairly simple, the design is pretty sophisticated - it took many prototypes to get it right. I think anyone that uses a Cordgo will find it difficult to do without. It takes away the issues of tangled, lost and damaged cords, not to mention cord interference. People that like gadgets will find it an interesting device,” Hade added.

You can find this neat invention at www.cordgo.com. It’s $9.95, with a buy one get one free special. There’s no limit on the quantity (buy two, and then two are free, and so on and so forth). Unfortunately you can't find this anywhere in the state yet.