Blog Posts by Mike Smith

While the long summer break may be great for laid-back vacations, family time, and outdoor pursuits, it's not so hot for academic performance. Studies show students can lose as much as two or three months of progress in core areas like reading and math over the course of the summer.

In other words, as they head back to school in the next few weeks, your kids likely have some catching up to do. So send them off with a head start, courtesy of an Android or iOS tablet and one of these top-rated educational apps.

Think you're good at games? Sure you do. Who doesn't? The only thing gamers love more than playing is bragging about their skills.

If you can brag about beating all 10 of these terrors, however, you're in a league of your own.

It's one thing to be able to bust out a decent score at Bejeweled or dominate a Call of Duty match, but quite another to finish this set of video gaming's most challenging releases. Some are new, some are old, and some are somewhere in between. But they have one thing in common: they're all so hard they'll make your thumbs bleed. Grab a box of Band-Aids, and read on.

Writing music is a daunting affair. Whether it's the impenetrable morass of time signatures, keys, and chord progressions, the monochrome confusion of clefs, staves, slurs, and rests, or the simple problem of finding enough quiet time to sit down and crank out a tune, getting musical ideas out of your brain and into the world isn't as easy as it sounds.

Or it used to be, anyhow. These days, a veritable orchestra of music creation and editing programs and apps for PCs, Macs and mobile devices take the pain out of the process. You don't even have to be able to read music (although it might help). While you might not use these five programs to mix down that rock opera you've been sweating over for the past ten years, they're cheap, powerful, and user-friendly. Music to our ears.

Ever since the Nintendo Wii first showed up back in 2006, motion controls have been all the rage. Microsoft Kinect, PlayStation Move, and Nintendo's Wiimote have become household names -- but if you thought they were just clever toys, we're about to blow your mind.

Thanks to the efforts of hundreds of enthusiastic hackers, the motion-sensing tech behind today's games consoles has been turned to purposes far more imaginative and diverse than their creators ever dreamt possible.

Here are a half dozen of the most creative.

Fitbit Aria (Credit: Fitbit)"So how much do you weigh?"

It doesn't get much more personal than that, especially if, like most of us, you're a little self-conscious about your mid-section. But wouldn't you be a little more conscientious about your workout routine -- or your habit for going big with dessert -- if you knew you'd be constantly sharing the ups and downs of your body-fat percentage with all of your friends?

If the answer to that question is "yes," you're the perfect candidate for a new breed of bathroom scales that do more than just measure your weight. They'll also analyze your body composition and your BMI, uploading all that info to a web site where you can watch the numbers change as the months go by, and even disseminate it to the world at large via social sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Sound crazy? It kind of is. But to find out exactly how crazy, we tried out the two front-runners.

A tough E3 for Nintendo?Underwhelmed by Nintendo's showing at its E3 press conference yesterday? You're not the only one.

Nintendo shares fell 1.6% in early trading following the high-profile event, where the company unveiled a slew of new games for its upcoming Wii U console. It's the latest blow in what's been a difficult year for the under-pressure company, which has seen sales of its once-proud Wii and DS consoles decline sharply in the face of hot competition from Sony's Playstation 3, Microsoft's Xbox 360, and Apple's range of mobile devices. Back in April the Tokyo-based firm posted its first annual loss for decades, and overall has lost 15% of its value so far this year.

Want to see which video games are going to be hot property this holiday season? You're in the right place.

This week the annual E3 video games trade show takes place in Los Angeles -- and that means it's a week of big news. It means product announcements like Microsoft's intriguing SmartGlass, it means we're seeing all the latest details on the Wii U's software lineup, but most of all, it means lots and lots of flashy, hype-filled new trailers to enjoy.

From Halo 4 to the latest Mario game, here's ten of the best from the show's opening day.

Xbox SmartglassKicking off the annual E3 video games trade show — by far the biggest week in the video games calendar -- market leader Microsoft took the stage at a star-studded Los Angeles press conference today to unveil its slate of video games for the year to come.

But despite showing off flashy demos of big-name upcoming releases like Halo 4, Madden, and Call of Duty, the best of the buzz went to a brand-new system that promises — yet again — to change the way you interact with your TV.