TITLE: Children of Mana
PUBLISHER: Square-Enix
SYSTEM: Nintento DS
RELEASE: November 1, 2006
PLAYERS: 1 - 4

I’m sure that someone is going to wholeheartedly disagree with this review. I’m sure someone out there likes the Secret of Mana series a lot. And I’m sure that someone out there really likes the Nintendo DS series offering.

That someone is not me.

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Buying holiday gifts is hard. At least, it is for me.I don’t know if it’s because I’m a guy or because I’m just naturally insensitive, but picking gifts for loved ones is not a skill I’ve mastered. The kicker, though, is that my family and friends are great gifters - and the presents I get from them are almost always excellent.

A typical Christmas morning for me goes something like this: I open a gift and excitedly unwrap a pack of Dinosaurs Attack! trading cards. Awesome! Then I watch someone unwrap the gift I gave them: banana-scented socks. Crap!

So in order to overcome my annual gift-giving incompetence, this year I’m getting some help - from Imagini.

I’m a visual person by nature, so Imagini is a great way to find things. It presents you with a series of questions, which you answer as best you can by clicking the most appropriate photo. These queries narrow down the field of gifts for the specific person you have in mind.

(How Imagini decides what gifts it ultimately displays is beyond me. I suspect it is some sort of holiday witchcraft.)

In the end, you get a list of cool gift ideas tailored (in theory) to the tastes of your loved one. Even if you don’t buy anything presented on the site, it’s a great way to spark some ideas or just get you pointed in the right direction.

The site is based in the UK, so most everything is priced in pounds sterling. If you’re located outside the UK, you might want to find an alternative source for ordering your items. But that shouldn’t stop you from putting Imagini to work for you.

Happy Holidays!

The idea of digital technology driving the evolution of music is endlessly fascinating to me. With Tenori-On, I asked the question, “When was the last time you read about a new musical instrument being invented?”Well, my ignorance to the invention of new musical instruments is now quite apparent, as evidenced by the reactable. According to its developers, the reactable is “a state-of-the-art multi-user electro-acoustic music instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface.”

In short, it is an illuminated surface upon which users can create music using only small objects and their imaginations.

The results are quite remarkable.

How many times have you found yourself in the car or in the mall or in the dentist’s office, and you realize you need some random piece of information? Not just the start time of a movie or the weather forecast - I mean specific information.Does your local electronics store have the brand of DVD-Rs you need in stock? What ingredients will you need to buy at the grocery store in order to make an impromptu apple crumb cake for dessert? Where is the closest hospital?

Those are the times you’ll want NowNow.

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