You play the leader of the 3rd Street Saints, a gang that has disbanded since you have been locked up. To cut a long story short, you escape from jail, bust out your buddy Jonny Gat from death row and go to war with anyone that doesn’t wear the color purple. It is violent, bloody, and a quite a lot of fun.

I probably completed about 85% of the missions on a first run. The activities are actually a bit harder, but tend to take less time, which compensates for the time that you lose with each restart. There is a nice assortment of weapons, which includes rocket launchers, various hand-thrown explosives, various pistols (which you can dual-wield), sub machine guns (which you can also dual wield), assault rifles and shotguns. Ammo is rather precious and will test you in the early stages when money is rather tight.

The graphics of Saints Row II are rather mediocre, but as the game gets under way, this ceases to be an issue and in a way sort of suits the B-grade action movie plot. The cut-scenes are rather entertaining, if a little two dimensional. The enemy characters do develop a little as the game gets underway, but you never grow any attachment to them. Had the designers given them some emotion, it would have made the final scenes for reach gang leader a little more conflicting. In my view this would have been more satisfying overall.

After completing all of the missions, strongholds and a large part of the activities, this is a game that I am glad that I played. It was fun, and though while not in the same league as a game like GTA IV, it manages to entertain. It is a worthy addition to the library and one that I may pick up again some time in the future. If, however, you don’t buy a lot of games, there are probably a number of other titles that I would consider getting first. The fun factor saves this game from a lower rating.

Score: 7 / 10

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This handy power inverter, cleverly designed like a coffee cup to fit nicely in your car’s cup holder, coverts the DC power from your vehicle into two 120-volt AC outlets.

Perfect for powering or charging TV’s, DVD players, game consoles, cell phones, and other portable electronics. This coffee cup also has a USB charging port providing 500mA of power.

Features:

• 200 Watt inverter with 2 AC plugs and USB power port
• Provides 120 Volt AC power from any cigarette lighter socket
• 200W continuous/400W peak
• Fits into standard cup holders
• 18″ cord
• Overload protection and low battery shut-off
• Power 3 devices at once
• One year warranty
• Dimensions: 6″ tall x 3.5″ dia

The Coffee Cup Power Inverter is available from the ThinkGeek website for $29.99.

(Via Techfresh)

ClickHeat is a free software that lets you see heatmaps of your website and all the pages in it.  In order to make your content and design better, you need to know how your readers currently use your website.  ClickHeat allows you to learn more about the behavior of your readers than basic analytics tools do.

What are heatmaps?

Heatmaps are a visual way of showing you the behavior of your readers.  Think of it like the storm tracker you hear about all the time on the weather report.  The darker areas in the storm tracker mean a much higher concentration of bad weather.  The same rules apply to the view of your website.  The traffic areas on your website will get various colored areas around them to show how many clicks that area receives with the higher traffic areas being denoted by much darker areas.

As you can see, the bubbles show where my readers were clicking.  I do wish there was a little more red in the picture, but getting that many visitors will take some time.

Installation

The installation of ClickHeat can be a little challenging, but I’m going to provide you with a few tips that will make it much easier.  The first thing you must do is upload the ClickHeat files to your website.  Once that is complete, you need to go to http://www.yoursite.com/clickheat/index.php and follow the instructions to install ClickHeat.

Those steps were all fairly easy, but the part that gave me a challenge was applying the HTML code to the different parts of my blog.  I tried to follow the instructions, but I was unable to get the code in the correct place after several tries.  Finally, I just placed the code at the bottom of my pages.  I started seeing results after I placed my code there, so I would recommend that you just start by putting your code there.

ClickHeat Options

One of the first settings you need to check when you install ClickHeat is the layout of your website.  You need to let ClickHeat know if your website is liquid and how it is set up.  Having a liquid website means that your website adjusts to the resolution of the person that is viewing the site.  If your web design options aren’t put in properly, the heatmaps won’t make any sense, because ClickHeat can’t collect the data properly.

ClickHeat gives you several options when it comes to your heatmaps.  You can find out which browser your users used or how people with different screen sizes used your website.  The changing of screen size could be a great source of data if your website doesn’t display properly for certain resolutions.  You can also change the transparency of the heatmaps in order to get the best view.  Also, you can group your heatmaps by day, week or month.

Conclusion

ClickHeat won’t replace your traditional analytics tool, but it is a great way to quickly see how users and readers really use your website.  It is easy to get lost in all the numbers of a tool like Google Analytics and not see the big picture.  ClickHeat allows you to step back and look at how people use your site every day.  This knowledge will help you determine better ways to catch readers’ attention or find new ways to display your content.  I definitely think that anyone out there that is serious enough to check out their statistics should give ClickHeat a shot.

(By) Kyle Judkins is a 24 year old marketer and part-time tech blogger.  He is the author of LostInTechnology where he talks about some basic technology tips and tricks that everyone can use.

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Now you are that insufferable know-it-all at family gatherings who descends from his Mac OS X Leopard nirvana only to lecture the rest of the brood on their miserable digital lives. In which case, brace yourself for what I am about to say: It’s true - you can make the user experience on your Mac even better!

Back in March, Jackson Chung reminded you of the 10 Essential Mac Apps to Install After a Reformat. Here, in this post, I will endeavour to purloin some of his ideas and add some of my own. If you are a Mac newbie, I hope that the suggested applications are new and useful to you. If you are an old hand, read ahead and correct me with your own better alternatives.

1. Quicksilver

This one’s so obvious that they should just ship the OS with it pre-installed. Instead, Mac OS comes with Spotlight, which is nice - for Grandma. For a slick cat like you, Quicksilver is the rare application that qualifies for that over-used metaphor: a Swiss army knife. With simple keystrokes (default invocation keystroke is Ctrl-Space) it lets you launch applications, look up contact info, navigate your directory tree, send email, and interface with other applications using plugins.

2. VirtualBox

Sure you may have taken the path to enlightenment, but the rest of the world is taking its time getting there, and you do have to communicate with them once in a while. I am speaking here of course of the Microsoft Windows world which imposes itself into your beatific world with that occasional annoying banking site that works only in Internet Explorer. For those cases, there is the free virtualisation tools VirtualBox, which lets you run Windows (a licensed copy of course) on your Mac.

(Image courtesy of virtualbox.org)

And while you are on the job (of making peace with the Windows world), you might as well grab Flip4Mac (Windows Media Components), a tool that will install plug-ins for the QuickTime media player on your Mac, in order to enable playback of Windows Media audio and video files.

3. The Goodies at iSlayer

Choose one or more of the free goodies (donationware) at iSlayer: iStatMenus, iStatPro, iStatNano. They are all applications that will display various useful bits of information about your system.

The first (iStatMenus) sits in your menu bar (see 5 Free Tools to Add to your Mac Menu Bar for this and other useful menu bar add ons) while the other two are Dashboard Widgets. They all display system information such as: the utilisation of your CPU, disk and memory, the top 5 processes that are using your CPU, the status of your laptop battery, and so on.

This is useful, especially for a new user, since such information gives you a clue to those unexpected OS behaviours that even a Mac user encounters, such as slow system response. In the screenshot , you can see that Firefox is using up 20% of my CPU even though I am not actively using it (perhaps a misbehaving Firefox extension?). iStatMenu also provides a nice little date and time display in your menu bar and a pull down that brings up a calendar.

4. Jumpcut

A neat solution to a common problem of maintaining and accessing multiple entries in your clipboard i.e., copying multiple bits of text before pasting them. Jumpcut sits in the menu bar and harvests your copy buffer as you work away on the Command-C’s.

When you are ready to paste these bits into an email message or editor, they can be access by clicking on the menubar icon or, even better, using a hotkey (default: Alt-Space) that can be used to rotate through the clipboard.

5. Freeing your Music

Remember that music you bought from the iTunes Store with your hard-earned money that Apple now refuses to give up to you, locking it into their proprietary format or making it inaccessible from your iPod? Two applications that will set that right are FairGame, which will let you convert DRM’ed iTunes Store in your iTunes library to an unprotected format, and iPodDisk, which conversely, helps rescue music stored on your iPod. To this bundle, you can add SimplyBurns which completes the loop by enabling you to burn your media to CD or DVD.

There are other useful tools (here is one example: Open With Manager) for a Mac newbie that we can explore in a later post.

(By) Ravi is a Unix hacker from before the days when the word hacker lost its meaning to the media. And he is a generalist, which is another way of saying he knows more and more about less and less! You can view his less structured rambling and bits of code at http://ahren.org/code/.

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Springpads or your notebooks can contain maps, lists, tables, events, alarms etc. Springpads are easy to create, manage and share. You can start with one of the templates which are more of a showcase giving you a peek into all that Springpad can manage. It’s better though if you jump right in and start adding details and information yourself.

Springpad has a nice, clean interface. It does most of the work for you and you just need to enter the details, leaving all the formatting and management to the app.

To understand what I mean, lets say you want to keep track of your spending. Obviously the first thing that comes to mind is having a tabular presentation to enter the details. So you create a new page in your Springpad and then click on ‘budget’ from within the ‘more’ menu (or the toolbar if its already there). This will add what could be called a budget widget to your page, having a table representing all the details that you can add and keep track of your spendings. Now you just need to enter the details, and not bother about creating the table itself.

Similarly you can add and keep track of other kinds of information like notes, lists, files, events, alarms, recipes etc.

You can share individual pages or items with others, or embed them in your webpage for the world to see by choosing ’share’ from the options menu.

Springpad also offers collaboration with other users. You can invite others to collaborate with you by clicking on ‘My Account’ and then on ‘members’. Keep in mind that currently you don’t have control over what you choose to show to the invited members, they will be able to see everything you have in all of your Springpad’s.

Springpad also syncs all your events with Google Calendar and allows you to search and add your Gmail Contacts quickly to Springpad contacts. However you need to authorize this by signing into your Google Account, via the Account Settings Dialog. Support for importing photos from Flickr and tweeting out your shared links and events is also expected to come out in the future.

We are really curious to know what tools you have been using to organize your personal life. Do you think Springpad can replace those tools? There is surely room for some improvements and features. Have your say and let us know in the comments.

(By) Varun Kashyap - Programmer, Blogger and Tech enthusiast, who also blogs about tips, tricks and hacks on TechCrazy Blog

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So if you received a document of say names and email addresses in a file called Leads.PDF. You can open the document, print the document and even send the document on to others. But if you want to import that information into your email address book, an excel spreadsheet or otherwise manipulate the data - you just can’t.

Now as The Admin - can’t is not in my vocabulary. No I do speak English and know what it means….but I started to look for an answer. Most of them came back to buying Adobe Acrobat Pro - Mucho Dinero. Not an option for the little guy. Then I came across all these little sites also promising to help me for $29.99 or $49.99.

I looked around the web and then I searched good old MakeUseOf.com and found this article by Aibek from January of this year. He ran down some popular free PDF tools. And low and behold he listed exactly what I needed.  It’s called…..wait for it….wait for it…

FREE PDF to Word Doc Converter

I downloaded it from the link above, installed it and was greeted with this screen:

The fields and options are not only straight forward but simple as well. Just input the file you want to convert by hitting the browse button on the left and navigating to your PDF file. It will automagically set the output file to be in the same directory with just a .doc extension.

You can set how much of the document you want converted and what program if any should open the .DOC after it is created. You can choose your font, and if you want images and shapes to carry over.

That’s it.  Click the “Convert to Word Document” Button and you’re off. I sat back and waited for my 986 page document to convert and it only took a few minutes. It then popped up in Word 2003 - fully editable!

What do you guys use for converting PDF’s to text? Anyone have any better or other solutions?

How do you get numbers into Excel from a PDF? Is anyone actually using Microsoft’s version of the PDF format - called XPS?

(By) Karl L. Gechlik is a superhero of the IT industry who wears many hats and changes in telephone booths. Karl mostly uses his powers for good and the occasional hysterical prank. Get your geek on & follow his geeky antics at the NEW AskTheAdmin.com today. Show your support and check us out today! Where all your technology questions are answered for free!

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By Evan Ackerman

Exotic cars are impressive, but they tend to be bound by reality and practicality… If you’re going to buy one, you expect certain things. Things like the ability to drive it somewhere. On a road. Legally. Concept cars suffer no such restrictions, which is why I like to ogle them so much. They’re all about being incredibly super awesome looking and nothing else. After the jump, I’ve posted a gallery of concept cars from the 2008 LA Auto Show… Click on the thumbnails for big versions.

Dodge Zeo Concept

Four passenger electric sport wagon, 0-60 in 5.7 seconds, 250 mile range at 120 mpg equivalent, 130 mph top speed, WiFi enabled.

Hyundai i-Mode Concept

Turbo diesel powered, seats six, front passenger seats swivels around to rear, drop down touchscreens, integrated wireless network.

Buick Riviera Concept

Hybrid engine, carbon fiber bodywork, when opened doors project “Buick” onto the ground.

Jeep Renegade Concept

Electric hybrid with 40 mile battery range and 400 mile gas assisted range, modular rear equipment storage area comes with two matching diver propulsion vehicles.

Saturn Flextreme Concept

Electric hybrid with 34 mile battery range and 444 mile gas assisted range, integrated induction chargers for gadgets, Segways beneath cargo compartment recharge from vehicle battery.

Honda FC Sport Concept

Hydrogen fuel cell sports car, 3 passenger (driver in center, passengers on either side), body panels made of bio-plastics.

[ LA Auto Show ]

By Evan Ackerman

The number one reason I went to the LA Auto Show was to see exotic cars. I’m not a car nut, not really… I mean, my vehicle of choice (of choice, not necessity) is a 1994 Volvo 940 Wagon. Swedish turbo bricks FTW! But still, exotic cars get my juices flowing just as much as the next guy (or gal), and I spent a significant amount of time at the show doing silly things like measuring the size of the brakes on a Ferrari or repeatedly opening and closing the doors of a Lamborghini. They open UPWARDS, it’s SO COOL! Check out a bunch of pics from the show, after the jump… Click on them for high res versions.

Ferrari California

460hp V8, 0-60 < 4s, top speed 193 mph, retractable hard top, $190,000.

Ferrari F430 Spider

460hp V8, 0-60 < 4s, top speed 193 mph, convertible, $201,000.

Ferrari F430 Scuderia

503hp V8, 0-60 3.1s, top speed 199 mph, $220,000

Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano

611hp V12, 0-60 3.7s, top speed 205 mph, $310,000

Gumpert Apollo

650hp V8, 0-60 3s, top speed 224 mph, $250,000

Aston Martin DBS

510hp V12, 0-60 4.2s, top speed 191 mph, $265,000

Lotus Exige

218hp S4, 0-60 4.1s, top speed 150 mph, $61,000

Lotus Evora

270hp V6, 0-60 <5s, top speed 160mph, 4 seats, $67,000

Porsche Boxster

255hp V6, 0-60 5.9s, top speed 165mph, $51,000

Porsche Cayman

265hp V6, 0-60 4.9s, top speed 172 mph, $55,000

Mercedes SL 65 AMG Black

661hp V12, 0-60 3.6s, top speed 199 mph, $370,000

Mercedes SLR McLaren

617hp V8, 0-60 3.8s, top speed 206 mph, $495,000

Chevy Camaro Black

422hp V8, 0-60 6.1s, top speed 140 mph, $31,000+ (trim concept)

Spyker LM85

400hp V8, 0-60 4.5s, top speed 187 mph, $300,000+ (race edition)

Spyker C8 Aileron

400hp V8, 0-60 4.5s, top speed 187 mph, $250,000

Maserati GranTurismo S

433hp V8, 0-60 4.8s, top speed 183 mph, $135,000

Audi R8

414hp V8, 0-60 4.4s, top speed 187 mph, $109,000

Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder

560hp V10, 0-60 3.7s, top speed 203 mph, $222,000

Lamborghini Murciélago LP640

642hp V12, 0-60 3.3s, top speed 219 mph, $319,000

Stile Bertone BAT 11

No specs on this one, but supposedly 25-50 will be produced next year

Galpin Auto Sports Scythe

1005hp V8, all interior functions voice activated, car is functional but not street legal. I didn’t know where else to put it, ’cause it certainly is exotic…

[ LA Auto Show ]

By Evan Ackerman

Looking forward to this year’s LA Auto Show, I was hoping to see something to reassure me that things are seriously happening towards innovating our way out of a gasoline dependent transport economy. Aaaaand I didn’t really get that, at all. There were lots of impressive concepts, to be sure, and a lot of talk about sustainability and green initiatives and crap. But what are people actually producing? Nothing especially remarkable, with a few exceptions.

First of all, just about everything is a hybrid. Which is good, I guess… Or I should say, it’s better than things not being hybrids. The thing is, though, that just because something is a hybrid doesn’t mean it gets significantly better (or even good) gas mileage. At least, that’s the way it seemed from just walking around the show looking at the EPA estimated mpg stickers. Why is this the case? I think it’s because car manufacturers (and car buyers) are still for some silly reason concerned with maximizing horsepower, which is most of the time useless after a certain point. But maybe my 95 Volvo and I are just jealous. Most new cars were distinctly unimpressive when it came to gas mileage, whether they were hybrids or not.

Also, everybody’s got a fuel cell car or light SUV now, but most of them are sort of “hey look, we can do it too!” vehicles rather than a serious production effort. And of course, nobody’s been able to solve the crucial problem: distribution. I think BMW has had the most promising interim solution (and has for years) in the Hydrogen 7 gas/hydrogen hybrid, but it wasn’t at the show… Rather, BMW was promoting a system to make gas engines up to 20% more efficient by dynamically controlling power output. That’s nice and all, but gasoline should be the past, not the future.

Is it too much for me to expect that automakers asking for a financial bailout should be trying new things and not just taking existing cars and retrofitting them with hybrid engines to eke out a few extra MPG? Maybe it is, I suppose it’s cheaper to do that than to make a serious commitment to a new technology that might not prove to be adoptable mainstream. But there is some good and important work going on, using technology that makes a substantial difference to efficiency and eco-friendliness. Have a look, after the jump.

Honda FCX Clarity

We’ll start off with a car that I’ve written about before: the Honda FCX Clarity. The Clarity is a production ready car powered exclusively by hydrogen. Honda has tackled the problem of hydrogen distribution by creating the Home Energy Station, a box that plugs into your natural gas line at home and creates heat and electricity while making hydrogen for your car. That still doesn’t help if you want to drive long distances (over about 250 miles), but at least it turns the Clarity into a practical commuter. If you live in the LA area, you can sign up to rent a Clarity for about $600 a month.

Honda Insight

The Clarity might not quite be ready for primetime yet, but in the meantime, Honda is working on some short term solutions, one of which is the 2009 Honda Insight. While the original Insight managed 70 mpg, the second generation will most likely not be quite as efficient, with estimates placing it somewhere between 40 and 67 mpg. It’ll be a little friendlier, though, with seating for four and a hatchback… Basically, it’s Honda’s take on the Toyota Prius. It’ll also be relatively cheap: scheduled for an April 2009 release, it should start at around $19,000.

Honda CR-Z

If the Insight isn’t sporty enough for you, Honda has a third eco-turnative™: the CR-Z. Details are a bit scarce on this one, but it’s supposed to follow the launch of the Insight in late 2009 or 2010 starting at $31,000.

Honda Civic GX NGV

Not content with hydrogen cars and electric hybrids, Honda is also trying out natural gas power. Like the Clarity, the problem with the Honda Civic GX is finding sources of natural gas to fuel the car, so also like the Clarity, Honda has a solution in the form of a home fueling station.

The Phill natural gas fueling station taps into the natural gas line which comes into your home if you have a gas stove, and will fuel your car automatically overnight. That’s the downside, though… A complete refueling takes 16 hours. Overnight refueling is only possible if you drive your car 100 miles a day or less, but that’s true for most people most of the time. And if you’re going on a road trip, well, there are other places to get natural gas fuel (quickly), as long as you don’t try to leave California.

As for the car itself, the mileage is decent enough (24 city 36 highway), but natural gas is also a lot cheaper (and more stable in price) than gasoline, and is nearly emission free. The GX delivers 118 hp with a range of 250 miles, and costs $25,000.

Toyota Camry CNG Hybrid Concept

Believe it or not, Honda isn’t the only one going the eco-friendly route. It just seems that way ’cause they’re being so proactive about it. But other companies have Natural Gas Vehicles, like the CNG Camry Hybrid from Toyota. The Camry is unique in that it’s a hybrid, using the same hybrid system as current hybrids, just with natural gas instead of gasoline. The 4 cylinder engine outputs up to 170 horsepower with the electrics kicking in, and you’ll get almost exactly the same efficiency as a conventional Camry hybrid. The range of the CNG Camry is about 250 miles, but Toyota doesn’t say much on the subject of refueling.

Mini-E

As friendly as hydrogen and natural gas are, we just don’t have the infrastructure for them yet. It sucks, but it’s a fact. The eco-friendly power source that we do have an infrastructure for is electricity, and the Mini E takes advantage of that. It has a 220 hp electric motor under the hood, and uses a lithium battery pack to achieve a range of just over 100 miles in mixed driving. It’ll go 0-60 in 8.5 seconds with an electronically limited top speed of 95 mph.

Although you can recharge the Mini E from a standard outlet, doing so takes over 26 (!) hours. You really need 32 amps at 240 volts to get the time down to a more reasonable 4.5 hours, or if you live next to the Hoover Dam, 48 amps at 240 volts will charge the car in 3 hours.

Some 500 Mini Es have been made available to the public in California, New York, and New Jersey for $850 a month which includes maintenance and insurance. Needless to say, they’ve all be spoken for already, but you can sign up for updates on the Mini E (I guess it’s pronounced “Minnie”) website.

Dodge EV

Vehicles like the Tesla Roadster have taken advantage of the massive amounts of power offered by electric motors, and Dodge is next in line to realize that electric sports cars are serious amounts of awesome.

Based on the Lotus Evora chassis, the Dodge EV has a 268 hp motor that can go 0-60 in under 5 silent seconds and surpass 120 mph just as quietly. It has a range of 150-200 miles, and can recharge completely in 8 hours from a standard outlet, or in 4 hours from a 220 volt appliance outlet. No price, availability, or alternate color information as of yet.

Chevy Volt

Last but certainly not least is what seems to be the best hope for a practical consumer electric hybrid car: the Chevy Volt. Just to recap, the Volt can recharge from a wall outlet and travel 40 miles (more than what most people drive in a day) on electricity alone. For longer trips, a gas engine kicks in to boost the range to 400 miles, and you can keep filling the tank and drive as long as you want. So for most people, the Volt will be an electric car most of the time, but thanks to the hybrid gas system, you don’t get all the range limiting downsides of pure electric operation.

This was my first chance to see the production design of the Chevy Volt in the flesh, and I was honestly surprised by how good it looked. Don’t get me wrong, I still like the original concept design a lot better. But having seen the new Volt in person, I’m willing to revise my initial impression of it and say that yes, I do like the production version, even if it has a slightly lesser degree of badassness.

The Volt is currently scheduled for a 2010 release for somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000, but a lot of bad stuff could potentially happen to the auto industry between now and then. I’m just hoping that the Volt, and vehicles like it, will turn out to be the solution to the problem, instead of something to cut to temporarily solve it.

[ LA Auto Show ]