The Bakugan offensive continues this month with one more video game release on the DS and DSi; Bakugan Battle Trainer. Following just a few quick months after the previous release, Battle Brawler, this title continues the story of Dan, who has to cope with both losing his memory and retrieving all of the Bakugan that have been stolen up into a nasty UFO.

The game play in this title is broken into a couple of separate sections; training and battling. The training section features plenty of cool devices, together with mini missions taking advantage of all of the DS features. Through training, your Bakugan gain abilities which may be used in battle. In Bakugan Battle Trainer, heightened importance is placed in technique rather than the overwhelming moves from past games.

Graphically, Bakugan Battle Trainer is sweet and vibrant, with the upper screen treating users to fun battle animations. Moreover, the graphics are pretty well the same as past games. The audio aspect features the vocal actors from the series, which is a nice addition, and the Bakugan themselves stay as formidable as before.

Bakugan battle trainer is a decent release for the series. The game itself is kind of brief, and lacks various appealinggame modes the previous title offered. Alternatively, now an emphasis is placed on technique and perfection – compelling users to level up to the total level. This title continues to be a must have purchase for Bakugan fans, but will appeal more to the strategists throughout Bakugan’s fans.

Are you mysophobic? Oh, you don’t know what “mysophobic” is? It’s a fancy way of saying “germaphobe”, which, according to scientists or linguists or some other group of academics, isn’t actually a word. Go figure.

So — Are you mysophobic? No? Well, you might be after reading this. Because it’s naaasty.

CareerBuilders did a survey of 5,200 mobile workers (that is, people who primarily work on the road), and found that their cell phone habits are generally dangerous, a bit rude, and pretty friggin’ gross.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch

By Chris Scott Barr

No one wants to get a trojan on their computer, for quite obvious reasons. Thus one is careful about the sites they browse, the links they click and the software they download. Generally doing these things will keep your computer free of such malicious bits of software. But have you ever considered that your hardware might be hiding something nasty?

Apparently the Energizer DUO USB Battery Charger has been carrying around a nasty little trojan that can wreak havoc on your system. CERT has issued a warning and stated the following:

An attacker is able to remotely control a system, including the ability to list directories, send and receive files, and execute programs. The backdoor operates with the privileges of the logged-on user.

That’s right, something as simple as plugging in your USB battery charger could give someone complete control over your system. I think the question on everyone’s mind was how in the world the trojan was put onto all of these in the first place. The file is tied into the installer for the charging software, which also means that downloading it from Energizer directly was no better an option. (In my best Ricky Ricardo voice) “Energizer, you’ve got some ’splainin’ to do.”

On a bright note, Mac users were not affected. The OSX version of the software was found to be clean.

[ CERT ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

Whoa. It seems that our amigos over at Laptop Magazine had a bit of a run-in with an iBuyPower laptop, and that nasty little cut was the result. IBuyPower’s response? “Yikes, we need to look into that, one moment please.”

So the deal is that the “W” in the word iBuyPower peels off in less than 1 percent of Battalion Touch CZ-10 gaming laptops. The logo, which is aluminum, was able to slice right through Laptop’s skin, leaving the battle wound you see there. It’s not something you’d want to deal with, no.

If there’s a silver lining to this story, it’s that, after some digging around, iBuyPower was able to identify the defect, and has gone ahead and fixed it. In a perfect world that means, should you decide to plop down the $999 for the laptop, you shouldn’t have to worry about walking away with needing to go to the emergency room.

And if you already own one of these laptops, it wouldn’t hurt contacting iBuyPower to see if they can replace it with a new, less dangerous one.

Look at your hand for a second. No, closer than that. Really close – like an inch for your face. Okay, now lick your hand.

As predicted, the Federal Trade Commission is suing Intel for, as they put it, “[engaging] in a deliberate campaign to hamstring competitive threats to its monopoly.” This isn’t going to end well for Intel.

Earlier this year, Intel was forced to pay a $1.45 billion fine by the EU, and last month they had to pay AMD a $1.25 billion settlement for anti-competitive practices. This new suit is for basically the same things.

The E.U.’s charges included paying computer makers to use Intel chips instead of AMD ones, and even threatening some companies if they went ahead and used AMD CPUs. The FTC notes that the public has been denied access to “potentially superior” chips as a result of the same bad practices. And it highlights what seems to be a particularly nasty one: Intel apparently designed compiler code so that it “deliberately stunted” the performance of the code when run on non-Intel CPUs, and then told the public the code simply worked better on Intel-made chips.

Ugly stuff. The first hearing is scheduled for September 8, 2010, so this is going to be a long and drawn out process. [FTC via FastCompany]