April 26, 2012 – Both Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook deserve a lot of credit for getting people to read more, thanks in large part to the instant gratification experience of buying and downloading books on the fly. But the e-ink versions of both readers had the same fatal flaw — they're useless in bed at night, unless you want to turn on a light and wake your partner. As it has several times before, perpetual underdog Barnes & Noble has temporarily leapfrogged the competition with a simple welcome upgrade to its Nook Simple Touch reader — a backlight. This modest change is merely the latest skirmish between the two bookselling giants, which have been locked in a years-long battle to sell you reading devices tied to their respective online bookstores.

April 23, 2012 – A good music-based video game can be hard to come by. Sure, there were countless iterations of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, but that entire karaoke-lite genre is nearly dead, pushed to an early grave by overeager game publishers who assumed everyone wanted to drop $200 on a new set of plastic drums every 12 months. Fortunately, the music game is making a bit of comeback, thanks in large part to Sony.

April 13, 2012 – We've seen bands use video games as a platform to debut songs and videos before (Mìtley Crüe's single "Saints of Los Angeles" in Rock Band, for example), but now Nintendo is adding a stereoscopic take to a music promo. Starting now and running through April 16, the only place to see the new video for the Shins' "The Rifle's Spiral" is via a download to your Nintendo 3DS handheld. The clip is viewable in both 2D and 3D, via the Nintendo's 3DS Video app (in fact, if you have the video app already installed, the Shins video will automatically download itself the next time you open it).

April 10, 2012 – It's typically the stuff of sci-fi movies, but what if you could actually don a pair of augmented reality glasses and have them overlay all kinds of useful information onto your everyday life? That's the idea behind Google's Project Glass, which the company has been showing off in prototype form since last week. These glasses, which a handful of beta testers have been spotted walking around with recently, project useful bits of information right into your field of vision. For example, maps and directions laid right into the streets in front of you, or a video chat (via the built-in microphone) with someone in a tiny window off in your peripheral vision. Dan: This exactly the kind of thing, along with flying cars and domestic robots, that sci-fi geeks have been waiting for years to get.

April 4, 2012 – Our latest app addiction: Draw Something Whether you have a new third-generation iPad, or one of the previous models, there's a good chance you're already playing Draw Something, the out-of-left-field hit from OMGPOP. The game has been in the iTunes App Store Top 10 for weeks, and it's essentially a take-off of Pictionary played from your mobile device, where you connect with friends in the game or through Facebook and take turns guessing the secret words behind each others' drawings.

March 20, 2012 – Another year, another new iPad. For the third version of Apple's popular tablet, fans lined up the night before at Apple stores around the world (although the smart ones went by Best Buy, Walmart, or Verizon and AT&T stores to pick one up without a wait). We've previously debated the new iPad's merits in the abstract, but now that the new camera, faster graphics, and incredibly high-resolution screen are in our hands, we snapped some photos to compare them and ask: Is it really worth dropping another $500 (or more) just to have the latest coffee-shop must-have? Dan: I was initially very excited about the high-res screen on the new iPad. It's the kind of thing most people don't think about (do you even know the native resolution of your phone or laptop?), but it had the potential to really improve the experience.

March 9, 2012 – After months of fevered speculation, Apple's new iPad has been revealed. It pretty much matched our predictions (except for the lack of Siri, the annoying iPhone digital assistant), and the biggest surprise was that there were no real surprises. The new high-res screen and fast LTE data service are solid improvements, but are they worth upgrading for if you just bought an iPad 2 last year? We're torn — the current model is still a great piece of hardware, but who really wants to show up at the coffee shop with last year's gear? Dan: Before the original iPad came out in 2010, I wasn't going to buy one. I thought it was too stripped-down to be useful. Then, I got a chance to play with an iPad a couple of days before the official release date, and I was hooked. Last year I sold my original and got the iPad 2 right away, and I still use it every day.

March 6, 2012 – Tablets and smartphones have evolved to the point where they're all essentially carbon-copies of one another. That's why Samsung's brand new Galaxy Note stands out from the crowd. With a 5.3-inch touch screen (the iPhone's screen measures 3.5 inches) and a tiny stylus, it's a unique hybrid of phone and tablet. The features and apps all say tablet — for example, we've seen the Note used as a portable sketchpad by artists. But it also runs on AT&T's mobile phone and data network, and unlike your iPad, actually makes calls (at least as much as any AT&T phone). Does it hit the marks as either a phone or tablet? Or is it just an overhyped mashup of both that won't satisfy anyone? Let's argue! Libe: The Samsung Note is like Benecio Del Toro — it’s impossible to tell if it's hot or not.

February 29, 2012 – Late last year, bold prognosticators put their markers down, declaring that Apple would release a version of the iPad tablet sometime in the spring of 2012. Of course, Apple had done exactly that in each of the two preceding years, so not really much of leap of faith there. But Apple is a company known for playing its cards very close to the vest, and the very existence of a third-generation iPad won't be confirmed until an Apple exec trots one out onstage in during a tightly controlled press conference, just revealed as happening at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on March 7. Still, the rumor mill is buzzing with lists of purported new features, some based on actual leaks, while others feel more like wishful thinking.

February 24, 2012 – Libe: Strictly as far as visuals, the PlayStation Vita is definitely a sexy piece of hardware, with a shiny black body, a big bright touchscreen and every type of button configuration you'd possibly need for gaming, social media, and video playback. It's like a Swiss Army Knife of modern gadgetry, but it also feels like a gaming device that wants to cram in too much other stuff. Dan: That reach-for-the-stars attitude is precisely why the PlayStation Vita feels special in a world flooded with copycat smartphones and tablets. It just looks and feels like a cool gadget should, and the hardware is packed with features, including front and rear cameras, a 3G antenna for data (if you want to cough up an extra 50 bucks), motion-sensing gyroscopes, a GPS antenna, and even a super-bright OLED screen, which looks better than your iPhone's screen.