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Froogle successor uncovered?

Froogle 2?
ZDNet's Garett Rogers says he's discovered Google's secret-until-now replacement for Froogle. Back in September Google announced that it would roll out a new product search engine by the holiday season, but it has yet to materialize--or has it? Doing a little poking around, Rogers uncovered this site in the same area of Google's web site as Google Base. It's a product search engine that lets you refine your search in a variety of ways--type, brand, price--and lets you see the results in three formats: List, Grid, and Map. The List view looks a bit like a standard Google results page, Grid view looks a bit like Google Images, and Map view looks like Google Maps.

The site is clearly in beta, or maybe alpha, as its results are sometimes nonsensical. As Rogers points out, a search for "iPod" is next to useless if you want to buy one, as it turns up more MySpace and Friendster pages than actual stores. Interestingly, the site seems intended to do more than just product search: A search for "athletic" gives you options like Age, Gender, Marital Status, and Sign, a search for "ranch" gives you real estate-related options, and a search for "sedan" gives you car-shopping options.

So, is this the new Froogle? I'm not sure. It must be something--Google wouldn't give it a URL and make it publicly accessible if it wasn't part of a product that will eventually be launched. However, with results that are often confusing and occasionally useless, what's available today (and it may or may not be available tomorrow) clearly isn't a finished product.

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Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

CiviballsI have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.

To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.

Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.

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