Kyle over at JayIsGames sums up this great hybrid tower defense/shooter game well:

While I'm not the world's biggest fan of either strategic defense games or platform shooters, Eternal Red just seems to work so well that it quickly becomes a difficult game to put down. Instantly it grabs you with its simple yet dark and foreboding artistry: everything save the moon in the backdrop is done in black shapes outlined with red, and these wonderfully morose visuals are backed up with a macabre kind of techno soundtrack that manages to combine the oppressive mood of the setting with the intensity of the action. And that action is quite awesome.

http://armorgames.co...lay/2818/eternal-red

Very nice top-down shooter, similar to Robotron, etc., but with some nice exploration stuff.  Not particularly difficult (at least not the first mission), but nice control.

http://www.kongregat.../mechanical-commando

The NANY Challenge for 2009 has just over a week to run until the official release! The NANY Challenge is DonationCoder's annual Software Challenge where coders of all experience levels are challenged to pledge a New Application for the New Year and release it on January 1, 2009. This is not a contest where the entries are judged to see who has written the best programme, but a fun celebration to create something new: all entrants who honour their pledge "win" a NANY 2009 Mug.

Entrants post Teasers, Pre-Releases and their final Release on the NANY 2009 Forum, and currently 28 of our 38 Pledgers have either posted a Teaser or Release already! It's a great place to get a sneak preview of the upcomming applications, offer functionality suggestions and even help by beta testing the pre-releases.

The Pledge Deadline has already been extended once, but we're still getting enquiries from coders wanting to Pledge their commitment to this year's Challenge. If you know a programmer who you think would get a kick out of participating in this fun event, please let them know!

Teaser / Entry Focus

---

Lacuna Launcher
Have you ever wished you had more control over the way applications are launched? Maybe setting a delay for launching applications at start-up? How about spacing out the launching with a pause in between each one? Or control the order in which applications are opened? Or perhaps you just want to launch many applications with a single shortcut? Lacuna Launcher will allow you to set a group of files to be opened with a single shortcut by creating a text file with the paths to all the files you wish to open. You can include applications (.exe), shortcuts (.lnk), internet shortcuts (.url), images, music, movies, anything that is a file on your system that you wish to open. You can also set an initial delay time that it will wait before opening files, as well as a pause time that it will wait between files it launches.


CrazyLittleFingers
Bub's are curious, bub's like to imitate.  You're always amazed at the way bub copies the things that you do, and laugh when you see her with one hand one the keyboard and one on the mouse like a true fps'er, but at the same time getting quickly frustrated because 'nothing' is happening.  And then she hits the magic combination to hack into the FBI, delete some important files and shutdown your computer. The solution is CrazyLittleFingers.  The aim of CrazyLittleFingers is simple, lock out all the keys on the keyboard, except for one that lets you exit the program, and remap each key to provide a reward for bubs exploration. For example, pressing 1 on the keyboard, might get the program to display a 1 and say 'one', pressing g might change the background to the colour green and display a picture of a goose (or a green goose).


AutoCursorMove
Auto Cursor Mover is a program that lets you set up a loop of actions for the cursor to go through and enter text if necessary. Features: Left Click, Right Click, Middle Click, each with Double Click option, or No Click; Customizable wait times between cursor actions; Text box for text to be type after a click event; Customizable wait times between each key press; Test button to test settings for a specific cursor action; Viewable list of cursor actions; Emergency Stop Key - Scroll Lock; Cursor Jump or Slide option (globally for all cursor actions); Save and Load for lists of cursor actions Tray Icon Support


KeyDB
KeyDB is a small portable application that will securely store web passwords. Features: Small and fast; Portable; Encrypted password files; Sort and filter items for quick retrieval; Copy to clipboard; Launch URLs from KeyDb; Random password generator; Ability to archive items.

1. Newsletter Editorial - NANY 2009 Approaches!

Well, only 10 more days until the New Year and the official release of the NANY 2009 Applications.  What is NANY 2009?  NANY stands for "New Apps for the New Year", and it's a little challenge we hold every year to encourage coders who hang out on DonationCoder.com to write and release a new program.  We have a ton of participants who have pledged to release something new and many are available to download and experiment with now.

In addition, although my normal custom is to spend holidays programming, this New Year's it looks as if I'm going to get a visit from DC members Gothi[c] (our intrepid server admin and expert coder), and his wife Della.  I'd like to warmly welcome any other DC member within driving range to come join us.  It will be a low-key, uneventful get together. I'm not generally very social, so I wouldn't re-arrange your schedule if it means missing a party where you might have a chance of talking to that girl/guy you have a crush on! However, if you are living a geeky, solitary life, why not come have dinner with us?  There is plenty of room to camp out in my house for the night.  See the post below for more info.

Here's a nice and deep tower defense game with a few new twists.

I love the tower defense genre.. it's always interesting to see what mechanics work and don't work, and how different games experiment with different elements.

This one is easy to play but adds a few new things that have mixed success.  Perhaps the most interesting new aspect is the idea that certain upgrades and new towers are unlocked only by reaching certain achievements.  The achievements are listed and your progress towards them shown.

This game also makes use of something i'm not that fond of, which is manually triggered/aimable actions.  In other words, to take maximum advantage you have to be prepared to direct strikes occasionally.

http://www.miniclip....es/viking-defense/de

Today I collected a couple of links to interesting pages that involve photography in various degrees. So I decided to include them in just a single post, instead of one per page. Let's start.

The year in photographs

The Boston Globe, like the Wall Street Journal, has a daily section devoted to posting high-quality photographs illustrating different news around the world. Today they posted the last part of a special edition dedicated to showing in photos how the 2008 was. It's pretty amazing overall.

http://www.boston.co...n_photographs_p.html

Part 2 and Part 3. The three pages are pretty heavy in graphics, so they may take a while to load. Word of warning: The most striking photos are not showed by default, so be sure to read the description below each one before clicking in the frame to see the picture. A couple ones are really not for the faint of heart, so proceed carefully.

Photo retouching: Before and after

It's not a secret that most photos in professional publications nowadays are retouched using the ubiquitous Photoshop, or similar photo editors. In his page, Glenn Feron show us a good number of the work he did for his clients, showing us the retouched photo and the original one if we move the cursor over it.

http://www.glennfero...ortfolio1/index.html

Weight is lost, wrinkles disappear, breasts get bigger and, in general, everyone is younger in the hands of Glenn. The results sure are better than plastic surgery.

How to get better pictures

Even if digital cameras are far easier to handle than traditional ones, Chris Foresman at Ars Technica teaches us a few tips on how to get the best out of that gorgeous new digital camera, and make better shots, complete with some graphical examples.

http://arstechnica.c...oliday-pictures.html

Seasoned photographers would probably not learn anything new, and a few ones are common sense (flash, blergh!), but with the commoditization of digital cameras, knowing how to make good photos sure come in handy.

---

via Fotografía Microsiervos and the Ars Technica feed