Editor’s note: This is the latest in CNN.com’s ongoing “Tech Torture With Topher” video-blog series, in which we “torture” CNN.com staffer Topher Kohan by depriving him of a technological convenience for a week to see how he copes with it. This week, Topher is trying to watch all his beloved TV shows online instead of on his TV.

So it's Day 2 and I'm on the road for work.

Last night was not that bad. I watched Monday Night Football on NFL.com and, I have to say, it was a great experience. It wasn't as good as watching the game live, but I knew exactly what was happening the whole time.

Later, I caught some of my favorite shows, like "Big Bang Theory," on Hulu. I'm flying home tonight, so I'll try and catch up on some TV viewing if I can find Wi-Fi in the airport.

We still hope you'll comment below and keep the conversation going. Also head on over to my Twitter account (Topheratl) and join the conversation there.

To help you get started, I've made some short videos that walk you through the sites I'll be using to watch TV online. The first one is about Hulu.com

Editor’s note: Topher Kohan is the search engine optimization (SEO) coordinator for CNN.com, a “Star Wars” aficionado, a tech dork and an all-around good guy. (No, really, he is — just ask him.)

Musical cues are often used to highlight or signify moods in games and films. Now a new video game is using color – or the lack of it – to symbolize oppression and freedom in the 1940s.

“The Saboteur” (Pandemic Studios, Electronic Arts), which hits stores today, is an action-adventure game based in Paris during the German occupation of World War II. You play Sean Devlin, a character inspired by the true story of William Grover-Williams, an English racer who joined the British special ops unit.

You’ll use a broad range of weapons, explosives and vehicles to throw the Nazis out of Paris. But it's the visual aspects of "The Saboteur" that are most interesting.

Lead designer Tom French's team made Paris black and white at the beginning of the game; color gradually bleeds in as players progress and sections of the city are liberated from Nazi control. French says it was a middle-of-the-night idea.

“We wanted to make the City of Light feel occupied [by the Nazis],” he says. “We wanted to suck the life out of it.”

French says the challenge was making black and white still look like it has depth and feel to it. Turning colors off makes everything flat, so French's team drew inspiration from the movie “Sin City” to make it look cool, he says.

If you think once you’ve ‘colored’ an area you are safe, guess again. French said Paris never gets completely colorized, and some parts turn to black and white again as the Nazi retake certain areas of the map.

“Once you take out a sniper, you never have to worry about him again,” he says. “But there is a point where the Germans take back a headquarters, turning it to black and white again.”

The design team traveled to Paris to get a firsthand look at the city and the buildings. French says they came away with a lot of information.

“I spent three hours in a cemetery imagining firefights,” he says. “We visited Resistance museums, taking pictures secretly and scribbling notes.”

They came away with more than 2,500 photos, but French believes it was worth it. “We wanted to give [Paris] an organic feeling.”

As with most games with wide-open spaces to roam, repetition of buildings can be a problem. The team used what French calls “Legos” to create buildings where they could mix and match different elements without having to create new buildings from scratch every time.

“Climb all the buildings,” French advises. “Use every square inch to make sure you experience the depth of the game.”

“The Saboteur” is available for the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. It is rated M (Mature – blood, intense violence, nudity, sexual themes, strong language).

Editor’s note: This is the latest in CNN.com’s ongoing “Tech Torture With Topher” video-blog series, in which we “torture” CNN.com staffer Topher Kohan by depriving him of a technological convenience for a week to see how he copes with it.

Welcome back you all!

This week I'm going to give up my TV! Not watching TV - just the TV set itself.

Instead, I'll see if between now and Friday I can watch all the TV I would normally watch - which is a lot - online, legally, on my computer or smartphone. I'm also traveling for work this week, which may throw a new wrinkle into this experiment.

To add some more fun to the mix, I'm working with the great folks at CNN's iReport to challenge our audience to try this tech torture themselves this week, then report back to us on how it went. View their challenge here.

We still hope you'll comment below and keep the conversation going. Also head on over to my Twitter account (Topheratl) and join the conversation there.

To help you get started, I've made some short videos that walk you through the sites I'll be using to watch TV online. The first one is about Hulu.com

Editor’s note: Topher Kohan is the search engine optimization (SEO) coordinator for CNN.com, a “Star Wars” aficionado, a tech dork and an all-around good guy. (No, really, he is — just ask him.)

It was only a matter of time.

On the heels of "Dead Space's" successful debut last year, Electronic Arts has officially announced that the game series' storyline will continue with the creation of “Dead Space 2.” Hero Isaac Clarke will return to battle necromorphs with new weapons.

Visceral Games will be producing the new saga, which had been rumored for months. A press release from EA says that survival won’t be the only thing on Isaac’s mind in "Dead Space 2" – "this time, he calls the shots."

Released in October 2008, the original action-horror game won nearly 100 industry awards and received a score of 89 percent from gamerankings.com. Earlier this year EA released “Dead Space: Extraction”, a prequel story that was exclusive to Nintendo's Wii system in an effort to win over a new audience.

Executive producer Steve Papoutsis said, “Expect plot twists that will surprise you and a huge cast of twisted, disgusting monsters that are sure to scare the daylights out of you.”

“Dead Space 2” is being developed for the PS3, Xbox 360 and the PC. No release date has been announced.

As the holiday shopping season ramps up, video game console makers are keeping a wary eye on early sales.

Sony, maker of the PlayStation 3, claims it got off to a rousing start during the Black Friday week ending on November 29.  Patrick Seybold, Sr. Director of Corporate Communications, said the company sold more than 440,000 consoles, which was an “all-time high.”

Those sales numbers are up from October (320,600 units sold) and Seybold believes Sony's software will help sell its hardware.  “We have no doubt the momentum and demand will continue,” he said.

By contrast, Nintendo said it sold 550,000 consoles during the same Black Friday week.  It also announced its DS Lite and DSi portable gaming devices combined to sell more than 1 million units during the week.

In September Nintendo cut the price of the Wii for the first time, by $50 to $199.99.  Last year, the company shipped 800,000 Wiis to the U.S. for Black Friday week.

Microsoft has not made any announcements about sales of the Xbox 360 during the intense shopping week.  Aaron Greenberg, Director of Product Management, posted on his Twitter account that the Xbox 360 had its biggest sales week of the year.

When asked about hard numbers, Greenberg tweeted that Microsoft was waiting for the official industry numbers before commenting.  The game review site, Gamespot, extrapolated previously reported numbers from October to come up with approximately 124,850 consoles sold during this past Black Friday week.

What was the world buzzing about most in 2009?

Michael Jackson’s death, the rise of Twitter, “New Moon’s” vampires and Microsoft’s Windows 7 release, among other hot topics gathered by Google for its annual Zeitgeist survey.

The year’s other “fastest-rising” topics, culled from Google search results in almost 50 countries, included Facebook, emerging pop star Lady Gaga, Spanish social-networking site Tuenti and Torpedo Gratis, which I believe has something to do with sending free text messages in Brazil.

These replace 2008’s hot topics, many of which landed on Google Zeitgeist’s “fastest-falling” list for 2009: The Beijing Olympics, Barack Obama, Wii, Heath Ledger and Amy Winehouse.

To compile the 2009 Year-End Zeitgeist, Google says it studied the aggregation of billions of queries people typed into Google search so far this year.

“We use data from multiple sources, including Insights for Search, Google Trends and internal data tools. We also filter out spam and repeat queries to build out lists that best reflect 'the spirit of the times,' " Google said in a statement.

Last year's fastest-rising topic, Sarah Palin, didn't make the fastest-falling list this year, which means people must still be intrigued with her. Maybe it's all the fuss over her book, press tour and chat with Oprah.

The only topics to make the "fastest-rising" list for 2008 AND 2009? Facebook and Tuenti.

Apple has won its copyright-infringement claim against the Mac cloning company Psystar.

Psystar sold PCs that ran Apple's OS X software. The computers functioned essentially the same as standard Macs, but were sold for less than Apple-built machines. Psystar argued that since the OS X software was legally purchased, the right of first sale allowed them to resell the operating system on custom-built computers.

However, the courts sided with Apple (pdf), and agreed that "customers were contractually precluded from utilizing Mac OS X on any computer hardware system that was not an Apple computer system." In addition, Psystar circumvented "lock-and-key technological measures to prevent Mac OS X from operating on non-Apple computers," which violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Groklaw provides analysis of the court order and concludes:

That means damages ahead for Psystar on the copyright issues just decided on summary judgment, at a minimum. The court asked for briefs on that subject. In short, Psystar is toast.

The court's message is clear: EULAs mean what they say; if you don't want to abide by its license, leave Apple's stuff alone.

Psystar, which is also fighting a second infringement case in Florida, will likely appeal the decision, but for now it looks like you Snow Leopard fans will be forced to stick with Apple-approved computers. Or build your own Hackintosh.

It seemed like this was going to be the holiday shopping season of the e-reader.

But that was before Barnes & Noble told customers it had run short on pre-orders of its new electronic book reader, the Nook. That device was poised to be a big holiday competitor to the more-established Amazon Kindle.

Barnes & Noble says customers who pre-order the Nook now won't get the device until the week of January 4 - after the holiday shopping season. A limited number of the devices will be available for sale in some of the "highest volume" Barnes & Noble stores.

In an e-mail, spokeswoman Mary Ellen Keating said early sales of the Nook beat the bookseller's expectations.

"We had expected strong interest in Nook and pre-orders have exceeded those expectations. We’re excited to have such a wonderful response from customers," she wrote. Keating did not specify how many Nook readers have been sold.

Customers can pre-order a Nook gift certificate in time for the holidays, according to a B&N blog post.

The Sony Reader, another e-book competitor, also is not guaranteed to ship by the holidays, according to Sony's Web site. "Pre-orders will ship Dec. 18 thru Jan. 8. Actual delivery date cannot be guaranteed," the site says.

Steve Haber, president of Sony’s digital reading division, tells the NYTimes that the company is being cautious. “We may be able to hit it [the Christmas delivery date]," he told the Times' Bits blog. "I just don’t want to promise someone a gift that arrives after Christmas. We may be giving up sales by saying that, but we are in it for the long haul."

Amazon did not respond to a request for comment, but the company's Web site says its Kindle device can ship to customers as soon as the day after it's ordered.

For some do-gooders, today isn’t just Thanksgiving. It’s also the second annual TweetsGiving, the culmination of a 48-hour global effort to raise money online for a school in Arusha, Tanzania.

Participants are encouraged to share what they are grateful for – and donate money, of course - through Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, and of course, 2009’s new media darling, Twitter.

The project is the brainchild of a U.S. nonprofit called Epic Change. Last November, Epic Change’s efforts raised $11,000 in 48 hours through hundreds of small donations, which the organization used to help build a classroom at the Tanzania school. Epic Change dubbed the students the “Twitter kids of Tanzania” and encouraged users to send tweets to them via their #Twitterkids blog.

This year, Epic Change had hoped to raise $100,000 by midday Thanksgiving to build the school a dormitory, library, cafeteria and more classrooms. As of Thursday at 11 a.m. ET, however, the effort had raised only about $26,000 – a possible victim of the worldwide recession.

If you still want to donate, however, it's not too late.

Alarmists take note: The planet is intact after particles began smashing into each other at the Large Hadron Collider today.

For the first time, the $10 billion machine circulated two proton beams simultaneously in its 17-mile tunnel underneath the border between France and Switzerland.

This is a major step toward finding the answers to fundamental physics questions about the nature of matter in the universe, and how the world as we know it began.

“The events so far mark the start of the second half of this incredible voyage of discovery of the secrets of nature,” said Tejinder Virdee, spokesperson for the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment, in a statement.

The particle collisions are finally happening despite discredited theories that the accelerator could produce a black hole that could swallow the universe, and that it is being sabotaged from the future. Read more about these theories

The project appears to have rebounded from a substantial setback in September 2008. Just nine days after it started up, one of the 25,000 joints that connect magnets in the LHC came loose, and the resulting current melted or burned some important components of the machine, said Steve Myers, director of accelerators at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

The collider has drawn thousands of physicists from around the world together in a collaborative search for never-before-seen particles and new properties of nature. These particles include the Higgs boson, which theoretically gives mass to matter.

Today's collisions are relatively low-energy; the next step is to get particles colliding at higher energies than ever before. The accelerator should reach an energy of 1.2 TeV (teraelectronvolts, or a million million electronvolts) per beam by Christmas if all goes well, CERN said.

Read more about the collider going back online.