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The folks over at Anybots have a telepresence robot that's impressive inside and out. Called QA, the 'bot has an attractively slim Apple-white exterior with big 'n' soft blue eyes, and its functionality doesn't suffer for its good looks. It...
POSTED Thursday, January 8, 2009
Satellite-TV provider Dish Network might be getting an inferiority complex about all those Web-connected TVs we're hearing about here at CES, so now it's teamed up with Sling Media to create a uber-DVR for satellite TV watching anywhere. This...
POSTED Thursday, January 8, 2009
After the full day of press conferences preceding the opening of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), there's one big trend that keeps coming up from every electronics company hawking their wares to the press corps. They all are cranking...
POSTED Thursday, January 8, 2009
Toshiba rolled out a variety of LCD displays today at CES, with the highlights being the 240Hz refresh rate it's calling ClearScan 240. Also on tap are internet connectivity, and the ability to play back DiVX movies with a...
POSTED Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Ever been channel surfing and thought, "I wonder what's on YouTube?" If you have, Netgear has just the product for you: The company's Internet TV Player is a paperback-size device that jacks into one of the HDMI ports on...
POSTED Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Hulu — one of DVICE's sister sites through our parent, NBC Universal — will be streaming several views of the annual New Year's Eve festivities that pack the streets of Times Square to the gills. If you're the kind...
POSTED Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Remember that Roku set-top box we told you about, the cheapest way to stream Netflix video? Now the $99 player has gone HD with its updated version 1.5 software and firmware, delivered online automatically in the past few days....
POSTED Tuesday, December 23, 2008
It was the sole heard 'round the world — Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi hurled his shoe at President Bush earlier this week, and the Internet has been ablaze with chatter about the international incident ever since. Everyone's buzzing about...
POSTED Friday, December 19, 2008
We told you about video streaming set-top box Vudu's new update yesterday, adding 120 on-demand TV channels, photo sites Flickr and Picasa, YouTube, a few games, and the promise of more applications to be developed. We gave the new...
POSTED Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Vudu's on a roll. After busting out its ultra-sharp Blu-ray-like HDx video downloads a few months ago, now it's opened up its internet-connected set-top box to the likes of YouTube, Flickr, and Picasa. Along for the ride is plenty...
POSTED Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Mobile broadband is a wonderful thing, capable of giving you a decent 3G internet connection almost anywhere. This Novatel MiFi Intelligent Mobile Hotspot is about the size of a deck of cards, and turns 3G connectivity into Wi-Fi that...
POSTED Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Precursor LLC, a research firm backed by the telecom giants including AT&T and Verizon, is unsurprisingly throwing punches at Google. The search-engine-turned-everything is charged by Precursor as using 21 times the bandwidth than it pays for, and claims Google...
POSTED Monday, December 8, 2008
Movie rental monster Netflix continues its quest for world domination with today's release of Netflix on TiVo. Add this to the Netflix/Roku box, Netflix access on LG Blu-ray players, on the Xbox 360, and the ability to play Watch...
POSTED Monday, December 8, 2008
If you like the idea of cloud computing, you'll love this Pano Zero Client. It's minimalist, to say the least. It has no CPU, no memory, no local software, no nothing. Well, there's a network connection, and the idea...
POSTED Friday, December 5, 2008
Times are tough. With financial resources dwindling by the minute, the movie-viewing public recoils in horror as Hollywood asks them to pay $39.99 for a film on Blu-ray disc. But there are ways to watch those flicks that are...
POSTED Thursday, December 4, 2008
Could this be the home theater PC (HTPC) killer? Netgear just placed its upcoming Digital Entertainer Elite network media streamer up for FCC approval, and so far, it looks excellent. Not only can it play a long list of...
POSTED Monday, December 1, 2008
Not one to sit idly by while Netflix eats its lunch, Blockbuster entered the online movie rental hardware market today with OnDemand. Using a smart-looking 2Wire MediaPoint digital media player for its internet movie downloads, its entry price is...
POSTED Tuesday, November 25, 2008
As the world converts to high-def TV, we're now hearing rumblings of YouTube jumping into the act. The notoriously bad quality of YouTube videos could soon improve — in fact, some clips on the explosively popular video streaming site...
POSTED Friday, November 21, 2008
This is what the future looked like in the '60s. Sit through a short ad for faltering phone service Sprint, and suddenly you're thrust into widget land. The Now page shows you a huge dashboard displaying data of all...
POSTED Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Awww. How cute does it get? This sextet of Shiba Inu puppies just turned 5 weeks old, and you can watch them in action (or inaction), live. The three males and three females can't seem to get enough of...
POSTED Thursday, November 13, 2008
Parrot's Specchio, a wi-fi enabled digital picture frame designed by Parisian Martin Szekely, sure is shiny — it could double as a mirror. We dig how slick and modern it is, and that it doesn't slack off despite being...
POSTED Wednesday, November 12, 2008
The Telo, Internet phone service provider Ooma's latest unit, features a great new look and a dedicated cordless handset, something Ooma's previous foray into the calling world lacked. Ooma's gimmick is simple: buy one of the sets and you...
POSTED Wednesday, November 12, 2008
We feel sad for the Phoenix Mars Lander now that its batteries have run out and it'll soon die of neglect. It's still got some time left, though, and before it goes for good, the Lander will be working a...
POSTED Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Have you ever noticed something online that you couldn't explain and was more than a little creepy? You're not alone. Whether it's sites that seem to looking back at you or Facebook profiles that update themselves, the Internet has...
POSTED Friday, October 31, 2008
The "Second China Project" is a federally-funded initiative by a team at the University of Florida to create a virtual training ground for American diplomats who will work in China. It'll be a virtual city in Linden Lab's Second...
POSTED Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Video rental-by-mail company Netflix decided to do the only thing needed to make its "watch instantly" service perfect: stream the video in HD. First up is the Xbox 360, where the Netflix HD streaming service will begin in three...
POSTED Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Computing in the cloud: it rocks. Instead of working with programs and documents on your PC or Mac, you move the whole experience (along with the app and all your data) online. That means there's no more syncing, no...
POSTED Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Amazon just rolled out Windowshop, giving us a peek at the web shopping environment of the future. It looks simply gorgeous, similar to the iTunes Cover Flow where album covers float by in graceful 3D. Amazon populates its Windowshop...
POSTED Tuesday, October 28, 2008
How can a T-shirt link to a website? Simple: you put a logo on the shirt that a cellphone camera can recognize. Then, when someone snaps a picture of the logo, the phone automatically calls up the site that...
POSTED Tuesday, October 28, 2008
We're at the dawn of a new computing age, where data resides on a server somewhere and it's accessed from your Web browser — they're calling it "cloud computing." You know this concept is starting to catch on when giant...
POSTED Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Did somebody say "Interplanetary Internet?" I'm sold already. Internet co-creator and Google vice president Vint Cerf is working with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to create an Internet for space, a standardized and upgradable form of communication for astronauts and...
POSTED Monday, October 27, 2008
This is the most polled presidential election ever. What's the pulse of the nation? Before you cast your ballot on one of a variety of voting machines (find out which ones will be in your state on our Map...
POSTED Friday, October 24, 2008
Japanese weight loss site Metaboinfo.com has an interesting way to help you stay on target — a virtual wife that'll nag you to death. The free service of the site offers you one of four wives to choose from...
POSTED Thursday, October 23, 2008
YouTube not high-def enough for you? Just synchronize four YouTube videos for quadruple the resolution! If you don't mind those YouTube logos and the transport controls splitting the frame in half, it's not too bad. To play it, go...
POSTED Friday, October 10, 2008
In this time when politics are the hottest topic of all, you may be interested to know that a new lobbying group has been created: Arts+Labs. The new lobby is backed by AT&T, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, NBC Universal, Viacom...
POSTED Thursday, October 2, 2008
Readers of DVICE are no stranger to Wakamaru, the robotic receptionist made by Mitsubishi and installed at Uniqlo's Manhattan location. The 'bot acts as a greeter, replying in English on all kinds of topics from the weather to what...
POSTED Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Harmonix web director Jeff Chausse posted some of the community features in store for RockBand.com. The web site will be getting a complete overhaul. Among the new features is an online photo creator that lets you do photo shoots...
POSTED Wednesday, September 24, 2008
RCA has expanded its popular Small Wonder line with new EZ300HD. For only $160, you get a pocket-sized cam that's capable of shooting 720p HD video and crisp pictures, with the same 2.4-inch screen and easy controls as previous...
POSTED Friday, September 19, 2008
Someday soon, you may not even notice which operating system your computer is using. That broadband-connected machine may not have an operating system on board at all, at least not like Windows and Mac OS X are today. That's...
POSTED Thursday, September 18, 2008
If you've ever watched someone have a video chat on his PC and thought, "I'll never figure out how to do that," Asus has something you should see. The AiGuru videophone makes video calls super-simple by getting rid of...
POSTED Thursday, September 18, 2008
It's easier to curse the darkness than light a candle. Actually, I might have butchered the saying, but that's the appropriate way to put it when it comes to the copy protection issues with Spore, Electronic Arts' amoeba-to-universe sim...
POSTED Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Google turned 10 years old on Sunday. It celebrated with a show of power last week when it released Chrome, a new Web browser that may or may not destroy all others. But earlier this summer, with far less...
POSTED Thursday, September 11, 2008
Hitachi (best known for manufacturing computer parts and electronic products — not, uh, web software) unveiled a new search engine called GazoPa, which finds images based on the shapes and colors they present, rather than tags and text related...
POSTED Thursday, September 11, 2008
Pretty soon you may have to add one more peripheral to your computer desk: a Tikitag scanner. The scanner would be used to scan Tikitags, which are RFID-enabled stickies that you can program to link someone to a website...
POSTED Tuesday, September 9, 2008
A concept like the Touch-Hear is something we're probably a while off from realizing, but it represents a very attractive technology: putting a world of knowledge at your fingertips. The advent of the Internet, especially in its current form,...
POSTED Monday, September 8, 2008
NBC blasted out of the gate with the debut of its NFL Live webcast last night, offering multiple camera views and interactive features that gave viewers more options for football watching than ever. We tested the Adobe Flash-based interface...
POSTED Friday, September 5, 2008
Fire up your broadband-connected PCs tonight folks, because it's opening night for the NFL! (McCain who?) We hyped up NBC's web-based companion broadcasts a few weeks ago and now they're upon us, where we'll get multiple views of Sunday...
POSTED Thursday, September 4, 2008
Japan's found something else for passersby to hold a cell phone up to: movie posters. Major Japanese cell phone carriers are embedding Near Field Communication (or NFC) tags in popular movie posters, so that when someone holds a cell...
POSTED Thursday, September 4, 2008
Google's decided to take a flying leap into the browser game. As is its wont, the company whose motto is "don't be evil" will release the browser in beta form, refining it along the way as it's been doing...
POSTED Tuesday, September 2, 2008
When there's a disaster that knocks out lines of communication and power, or in a country that isn't so technologically advanced, UNICEF busts out its prototype "Bee." The Bee was designed to be mobile and versatile. It can be set...
POSTED Friday, August 29, 2008
French public transportation company SNCF is getting 1,000 customers to help it test an RFID-enabled smart card that's also a USB drive, known as the Weneo ID Smart. It's a push by SNCF to expand its contactless payment system,...
POSTED Thursday, August 28, 2008
We’ve been wondering if installing solar panels on our house would be worth it. Then we found RoofRay, a clever website that lets you accurately determine the solar potential of your roof using Google Maps. You zoom in on...
POSTED Wednesday, August 13, 2008
If you send Netherlands-startup Shapeways a 3D rendering or design, they can send you back a fully three dimension representation for your work rather cheaply — fees usually range from $50 to $150. Considering that 3D printing units typically...
POSTED Friday, August 1, 2008
The LG BD300 brings a new twist to the Netflix subscription movie service’s streaming video idea: it's the first Blu-ray player that can go slumming, snagging all of those 12,000 oldy-moldy Netflix movies available for instant online viewing in...
POSTED Thursday, July 31, 2008
The NFL has given the cold shoulder to the Internet since Al Gore invented the series of tubes, but now that’s all changed. Starting September 4th, NBC and the NFL will begin ad-supported streaming webcasts with a Thursday night...
POSTED Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Looking to save a few bucks? Plumble has an idea that’s long overdue: Listen to two 22-second ads, and make a two-and-a-half-minute call anywhere in the U.S. or Canada for free. Currently in beta testing, the service promises to...
POSTED Monday, July 21, 2008
Video on demand is coming to Amazon, replacing the company’s Unbox service that’s been in place for the past two years. Amazon’s service will start out with 40,000 movies and TV shows that can be watched instantly, instead of...
POSTED Thursday, July 17, 2008
The Pandigital Kitchen Technology Center is a touchscreen device that puts functionality and entertainment right at your fingertips, in the comfort of your kitchen. Want a recipe? Don't run back to the computer or crack open a cook book...
POSTED Thursday, June 26, 2008
Two things impressed us about Memeo's Share software right off the bat. First, it acts as both a picture and video organizer as well as a media uploader, and keeps the process as simple as possible. It works on...
POSTED Thursday, June 26, 2008
Big media doesn’t want you to download their stuff. I should know, because for the past two months, I’ve abandoned DVD and Blu-ray discs, and tossed my cable box out the window. I was trying to see if big...
POSTED Thursday, June 12, 2008
When you're as popular as the iPhone, you're bound to have some enemies. The competition is catching up, but the impression the iPhone has made on them is undeniable. Full-bodied touchscreen phones that do more than just enable calls...
POSTED Monday, June 9, 2008
See that dark blue blot surrounding Denver, Colorado? That's what a strong 3G cluster looks like on AT&T's Coverage Viewer, and you'll find that kind of concentration around the major cities in the US. The lighter blue spots represent...
POSTED Monday, June 9, 2008
Canada is about to prove itself good friends with movie studios and record companies, trying to pass the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) we’ve been hearing about for the past few months. The idea behind this proposed international agreement is...
POSTED Friday, June 6, 2008
With the teacher heading right for him, walking between monochrome desk/blocks sitting atop a poorly textured floor, little Billy had to think fast about why he didn't have today's assignment: "Sorry teach, someone hacked my homework." Silicon Valley's San Jose...
POSTED Friday, May 30, 2008
We’ve abandoned cable TV, dumped Netflix and its associated "discs," and turned to other sources for our entertainment. Now in our fourth episode of Video Rebel, I’ll show you the easiest way to enjoy a huge variety of video...
POSTED Tuesday, May 20, 2008
JVC wants to make it as easy as possible to show your video masterpieces to the world, making uploading to video-sharing website YouTube just a button push away with this GZ-MS100 camcorder. This is the first camcorder we’ve seen...
POSTED Monday, May 19, 2008
Last year we reported about Tivoli's plans for a standalone Internet radio device. It never came out. The radio manufacturer ended up redesigning the unit from top to bottom in an attempt to make it easier to use, and...
POSTED Wednesday, May 7, 2008
When I decided to turn myself into the Video Rebel — eschewing all cable and satellite TV as well as Blu-ray discs and DVDs — the one thing I figured I’d miss the most in my cable-shunning, disc-free experiment...
POSTED Tuesday, May 6, 2008
While XM was fighting Sirius and iTunes was clobbering the record stores, another potentially huge change was afoot in the music-dissemination business. Internet radio has the ability to radically change how we access our favorite music, while increasing exposure...
POSTED Thursday, May 1, 2008
Apple pulled the trigger on the DVD industry today, announcing that movies will now be available on its iTunes Store on the same day they’re offered on DVD. Lining up for the deal are majors such as 20th Century...
POSTED Thursday, May 1, 2008
Disclaimer: I want a 3G iPhone. However, like everyone else, I also have a list of things I want Steve "Santa" Jobs to include on future versions of the iPhone, Adobe Flash 9 support being one of them. I...
POSTED Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Whenever David Bue Pedersen looks over at the pictures of his loved ones, he'll know exactly which of them are online. That's because his picture frame is no ordinary frame. Known as the "DIY instant messenger online contact signalizer...
POSTED Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Right under our noses, those Swiss wizards have been creating The Grid, a worldwide data network that’s 10,000 times faster than the slow-poke Internet we know today. It’s happening at CERN, that hotbed of technology where Web daddy Tim...
POSTED Monday, April 7, 2008
MySpace has just announced that its launching a music store that'll be stocked with DRM-free MP3s from three of the four major labels as well as loads of indie prints. The giant social networking site will be selling MP3s that...
POSTED Friday, April 4, 2008
One of my favorite games when I was a digital music reporter in the '90s was guessing how long a new Web music service could survive before the recording industry suits shut it down like a bad habit. For Muxtape,...
POSTED Thursday, March 27, 2008
The AIR, or the Area's Immediate Reading, is designed by Preemptive Media and is on display at Eyebeam's exhibition space in New York City. It's a GPS-equipped handheld device that'll let you know everything you didn't want to about where...
POSTED Friday, March 21, 2008
Ever get that feeling when you read that you're missing something? Meet the the Dixau from Korean company Unichal: this text-scanning gadget agrees with you 100%. That's why it'll read along, scanning words with a camera and displaying them back...
POSTED Monday, March 17, 2008
hulu, the NBC Universal and FOX-owned website that offers ad-supported movies and network TV shows, launched to the public this week. We should first note that NBC Universal also owns DVICE: in December we even gave out logins for...
POSTED Sunday, March 16, 2008
Keep this Thomson Symbio phone next to your bed, and it’ll play you music and wake you up in addition to making Internet phone calls. The VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone wirelessly connects to a service such as...
POSTED Friday, March 14, 2008
Whatever happened to the Information Superhighway? It was the big talk of the 90s, but now the United States has fallen to 16th place in the world for broadband deployment and availability, according to a survey by the Communication...
POSTED Thursday, March 13, 2008
Dressed in a casual (and surprisingly male) fashion, world-class stand-up comedian Eddie Izzard has been crackin' wise at the Union Square Theater in New York City about everything from the origins of mankind to hunting bees with flamethrowers. And, of...
POSTED Wednesday, March 5, 2008
It's amazing to think that the World Wide Web part of the Internet was born less than 17 years ago. When WWW inventor Tim Berners-Lee put the very first web site online from his office at CERN in Switzerland,...
POSTED Sunday, February 24, 2008
With seemingly endless places to visit on this here Internet, you may get the impression that it's infinite — not so, reveals the January 2008 Web Server Survey by Netcraft. As of the first month of this year, the...
POSTED Monday, February 4, 2008
Early Friday morning Microsoft made an unsolicited bid to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion. The goal? Microsoft wants to bring Google down and thinks that Yahoo's huge traffic numbers might help. How does all this affect us, the web...
POSTED Sunday, February 3, 2008
The skies are about to get a little friendlier: American Airlines has begun installing WiFi equipment on its planes, starting a pilot program that'll bring internet connectivity to the air. The first plane was just equipped with the new setup,...
POSTED Wednesday, January 23, 2008
The Polymer Vision Readius received a release date of sometime toward the middle of this year, and the cell phone/e-reader hybrid is shaping up to be an enticing contender against Apple's iPhone and the new wave of e-readers. It...
POSTED Tuesday, January 22, 2008
CuePrompter.com is a free teleprompter service website. I bet you never thought you'd need one of those. But think about it: if you have a speech written up on your computer, you could read it from a Word document...
POSTED Tuesday, January 22, 2008
The Library of Congress is archiving a considerable volume of photos on the photo sharing site Flickr from the annals of American history. Its Flickr account already has over 3,000 pictures, in both black and white, and the welcome...
POSTED Monday, January 21, 2008
In August Linden Labs, the creator of Second Life, banned in-world gambling for legal and logistical reasons. Now the company has banned banks, further tightening restrictions on freedom in the alternative on-line universe. One of the problems with gambling...
POSTED Tuesday, January 15, 2008
The Bloog is a machine that scrambles blog posts by pulling them in from an RSS feed and then filtering them down into little haiku-like packages. The machine's creator, Andrew Haarsager, is a student of industrial design and says...
POSTED Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Let's start the year by taking a look back at one important tech event we missed just a couple of weeks ago: the Get Firefox Video Awards. Created by the Mozilla Japan organization, the event was judged by Joi...
POSTED Tuesday, January 1, 2008
So you want to get invited to the Hulu trial beta program but don't have an invite? Well, 2,500 of you are in luck, because DVICE just happens to be giving away 2,500 invites starting...right now. This is a first...
POSTED Friday, December 28, 2007
Double Happiness Jeans has an intriguing business plan involving a giant printer, a dress made of meat (images), a sweatshop in Second Life and printable cloth. Actually the meat dress (called the Meat Mini) is just a way to...
POSTED Monday, December 24, 2007
Just as mental dust bunnies begin multiplying in the minds of baby boomers, here come computer games designed to improve memory, focus and reflexes. Cool as jug of fiber drink, right? I thought exactly that when I saw Lumos...
POSTED Thursday, December 20, 2007
Next time you fly, you may have more options than just reading a book or passing out. American Airlines, joining others such as Virgin and JetBlue, are teaming up with carrier Aircell to offer passengers free Wi-Fi on Boeing...
POSTED Friday, December 7, 2007
The Pentagon's Defence Advanced Research Project Agency, aka the guys who get a ton of cash to dream up stuff like laser weaponry and human catapults, are now looking into virtual weapon ranges to test out different means of...
POSTED Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Earlier this month, Facebookintroduced a new "feature" called Beacon that tracked its users' activity on 44 websites. It took information like purchases at Overstock.com, recipe favorites at Epicurious, and movie ticket choices at Fandango.com and then broadcasted the information...
POSTED Sunday, December 2, 2007
Those lousy routers you pick up at most electronics stores tend not to give you much freedom to surf the Web while sitting on your patio, let alone move around from room to room without dropping the signal. The...
POSTED Monday, November 19, 2007
Attention all television addicts: Prepare for some serious withdrawal, and a healthy dose of reality. Reality TV, that is. The East and West Coast divisions of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) are on strike against the Alliance of...
POSTED Thursday, November 15, 2007
The ASUS Internet Radio (also known as AIR) was more or less just a whisper until now, but tonight we saw it in all of its retro-styled glory. The features listed on the box promised to fulfill some of...
POSTED Monday, November 12, 2007
A federal jury delivered a landmark verdict in a copyright-infringement case between the RIAA and defendant Jammie Thomas, a 30-year-old mother of two from Minnesota. The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) is the trade group that represents the...
POSTED Thursday, October 18, 2007
I can't tell you how many tykes I see running around with cell phones these days. Do they even have anyone to call? Well, they must have a friend or two out there because the Zipit Wireless Messenger 2,...
POSTED Thursday, September 27, 2007
This week The New York Times killed its "paid content platform," Times Select, effectively making all its online content free for the taking. For the past two years, news and editorials on the site had been free, but all...
POSTED Sunday, September 23, 2007
While most people simply use Google to search the Internet for anything and everything online, the company has yet to reach people in the real world — with, say, some kind of gadget. That's all about to change, one...
POSTED Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Like every adult over the age of 15, we type more quickly than we text. In fact, receiving texts from friends can make us a feel testy— it costs us $.10 to reply, and it's not even healthy. So...
POSTED Monday, August 27, 2007
Panasonic, together with a British design firm, has come up with a cameraphone accessory that's designed to make it super-simple to upload photos to a social-networking site like MySpace. The idea is you would slip your cell phone into...
POSTED Thursday, August 23, 2007
Japan's a country known for looking towards the future, which is probably why it seems like it's kind of in the future already. In fact, they've already started work on a "replacement" for the Internet, something they hope to have...
POSTED Monday, August 20, 2007
Who is Fake Steve Jobs, and why does every tech article this week seem to mention him? If you go to the Fake Steve Jobs website, it doesn't look alike anything special: Just a very simply designed Google-hosted blog,...
POSTED Sunday, August 12, 2007
A few years ago, social networking was for kids, lonely adults, nerds, and perverts. Today, everyone uses Facebook. This is a positive development: Facebook is fun, and it serves as a virtual White Pages for all of your friends,...
POSTED Thursday, August 2, 2007
When you go to the ATM, do you huddle around it protectively and then refuse a receipt because you don't want your friends to find out how broke you are? We don't. We prefer to complain about our near-empty bank...
POSTED Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Anyone who's tried to navigate the Web on his mobile device can tell you that it's often a pain in the rear. Sure, there's a world of content that's been configured for handheld devices, but it's limited, and so...
POSTED Tuesday, July 17, 2007
T-Mobile launched its HotSpot@Home service a couple of weeks ago, but because of all of the recent iPhone mania, reviews are only coming in now. The service costs $20 a month on top of the cost of your normal...
POSTED Sunday, July 15, 2007
I'm convinced that most reporters who write about Second Life have never explored the world themselves. Maybe they read blogs about it or get press releases with screenshots from Linden Labs, but if they had actually "been" to the...
POSTED Thursday, June 28, 2007
We've just discovered out new favorite time killer: Wikimapia. Launched in spring 2006, the site uses Google's satellite maps as a basis for a clickable map of the globe. Any visitors can add descriptions of places — which can...
POSTED Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Now that you're using tons of minutes at home, are you regretting getting rid of that landline? Don't reverse course and start looking for that painted-over wall jack — at least if you have T-Mobile service — since the...
POSTED Wednesday, June 27, 2007
If you'd like to carve some intricate patterns into wood but were born without the crucial skills that would make such an endeavor necessary, put the noose away. Life is still worth living, thanks to Craftsman. They're releasing the...
POSTED Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Look out, Chumby's coming. No, it's not your portly brother-in-law coming to clear out your fridge — Chumby is a portable Internet gadget that first made itself known to the world about a year ago. The handheld device has...
POSTED Monday, June 25, 2007
Internet radio, which for years has played the role of disorganized slacker in the radio family, abruptly hogged the spotlight for a few minutes today when Tivoli unveiled its NetWorks Internet radios. Modeled like most of Tivoli's table radios,...
POSTED Friday, June 22, 2007
It might seem a little silly, seeing that WiMax is on its way, but Ermanno Pietrosemoli in Venezuala got a WiFi signal to transmit a whopping 238 miles. That's a lot farther than from my living room into my...
POSTED Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Image by Matt Krueger Asked if he had done market research before he invented the Model T, Henry Ford reportedly said, "If I had asked people what they wanted, I would have built a faster horse." Cars, of course, changed...
POSTED Thursday, June 14, 2007
I've cheerfully used DOS and every version of Windows: 3.1, 95, 98, ME (briefly), NT, 2000, XP, and (briefly and with mounting horror) Vista. Yesterday I took a walk on the wild side and tried Safari for Windows XP....
POSTED Thursday, June 14, 2007
YouTube is reportedly testing new software that can automatically detect copyrighted material uploaded to its servers. When detected, YouTube will then contact the copyright owner and give them the option of removing it or leaving it up as part of...
POSTED Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Apple just had its big fancy keynote at their Worldwide Developers Conference, where they went over their upcoming OS, Leopard, in detail. There wasn't a ton that we didn't already know about, but some highlights include a better document...
POSTED Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Real Networks' Media Player got an update today. I know, big deal. Who uses Real Player anymore? I know I haven't in years due to the fact that they turned it into a boated adwareosaurus some years ago, forfeiting...
POSTED Friday, June 1, 2007
Image by Matt Krueger Warning: this first part is going to sound like an advertisement. I love Google. I trust Google with an inordinate amount of information. It hosts a blog for me, my primary e-mail account, my calendar, and...
POSTED Thursday, May 31, 2007
You may be wondering how Google took all those millions of photos to get street-level views for its online Google Maps. The 360-degree shots were captured by Immersive Media, an innovative company that's been capturing views like this since...
POSTED Thursday, May 31, 2007
Can a website be repackaged as a "desirable physical object" in a non-x-rated way? QiGO certainly thinks so. The company hated the fact that there's so much paid content on the Internet, and yet no way for anyone to...
POSTED Thursday, May 31, 2007
A few years ago at CES, Bill Gates demoed a future technology that would allow users to sit down in a restaurant, hotel, or airline lounge and use an interactive table surface to get work done. It was a...
POSTED Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Google Maps has just added a pretty sweet new feature that allows you to actually see the streets that you're getting directions on, and not just satellite images from above. No, now on select city streets you can have...
POSTED Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Via Big Huge Labs...
POSTED Monday, May 21, 2007
Yesterday Amazon announced it would open a digital music store sometime later in the year. This was a move that analysts had been expecting, but the exciting aspect of the company's announcement was that the songs sold from Amazon's...
POSTED Sunday, May 20, 2007
I don't know about you, but when I'm walking through a driving rainstorm, trying to keep my umbrella from unfurling in the wind, one thing is always missing: Internet connectivity. Brainy types at Japan's Keio University have addressed that...
POSTED Friday, May 18, 2007
Magnets are the new wave for surgery and shark deflection, but what's happening in the everyday world of refrigerator magnets? Well, you could light up your kitchen with Vegas-style refrigerator lights, or you could do something far more practical, like...
POSTED Thursday, May 17, 2007
Amazon.com announced today that it'll be opening an online music store later this year that will sell only unprotected MP3 files. With EMI and 12,000 other smaller labels on board, this will set them up to take on the...
POSTED Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Wi-Fi in a photo frame? I know, at first it strikes you as about as useful as that USB eye mask, but this techno-combo is actually pretty cool. Obviously, the eStarling 2.0 frame is digital, made to display JPEG...
POSTED Monday, May 14, 2007
A few days ago, some users of Digg.com began posting a code that can help hackers break the copy protection built into HD DVDs. The code's discovery wasn't particularly newsworthy: Wired had posted the code back in February. But...
POSTED Sunday, May 6, 2007
Don't call Second Life a game. Every time I use the word to describe the megapopular online virtual world as I talk with a couple of reps from Linden Labs, the company behind the phenomenon, they correct me. Instead...
POSTED Wednesday, April 18, 2007
A hot-from-the-lab optical chipset from IBM promises to reduce the download time of a movie to as little as a second. It moves data at 160 gigabits per second by replacing electrons flowing through wires with light pulses. Of...
POSTED Monday, April 2, 2007
It's unfortunate, but sometimes when a friend or relative dies, not everyone can make the trip to attend the funeral. This is one instance where technology can be big help, since a live webcast of the services is a relatively...
POSTED Sunday, March 18, 2007
Still having trouble finding a Wii out there? I know, it's tough. They're so popular that you have to wait in line on a Sunday morning if you want one, even so many months after the release. Well, if...
POSTED Friday, March 9, 2007
Those evildoers who create spyware have apparently found legitimate employment at Solid Oak Software, making the SnoopStick, a USB flash drive that lets you spy on unsuspecting PC users by planting undetectable software that reports everything back to you, either...
POSTED Monday, February 26, 2007
Although we normally don't write about screensavers, this one by Primelabs has a cool factor mammoth enough to qualify as an exception. Twingly, as it's somewhat perplexingly called, shows blogging activity all across the world. Judging from the video...
POSTED Wednesday, February 21, 2007
YouTube is super-popular because people can watch videos on there instantly, but let's be honest — the quality kind of sucks. It's fine for short clips that you don't really care about seeing with crystal clarity, but it's far...
POSTED Thursday, January 18, 2007
Small items appeared in The New York Times and CNN last week reporting that Google has signed on to help 19 universities and laboratories with an ambitious telescope project in Chile. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will have a 27.5-foot...
POSTED Wednesday, January 17, 2007
How many times have you sent an email and immediately wished you could change something in it or take it back entirely? Sure, at 3 am after a bottle of whisky it might have seemed like a great idea...
POSTED Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Okay, we all know about GPS, but here's a new twist: Internet GPS. That's right, all of Dash's GPSes are connected to the Net, so if a car with a Dash GPS 5 miles ahead of you slows down,...
POSTED Thursday, January 11, 2007
"Look where I've been!" will become your catch phrase once you download a new program called Track Exporter from sports-watch maker Suunto. Made to work with the company's X9 or X9i (above), the free download will take the GPS...
POSTED Thursday, December 14, 2006
With everyone all psyched about downloading HD movies and CD-quality music and all that jazz, our trusty Ethernet cables are starting to look like they might not be up to the task. We want to be able to download multiple...
POSTED Wednesday, December 6, 2006
Barry Diller's latest brainchild is AskCity, Ask.com's answer to CitySearch, which debuts today. It's a local search network — half the page is devoted to search, the other half is a Google-style map. By our reckoning, Ask's search engine still...
POSTED Monday, December 4, 2006
It's strange that the most mundane of daily tasks are what we worry about most when we go away on vacation. Like getting the mail, for example. What if you get some important piece of mail while you're gone?...
POSTED Friday, November 24, 2006
As a New Yorker, I know that getting to the airport is a huge pain, especially if you're headed to Laguardia or Newark where the subways don't run to. You're stuck with the unappealing option of taking a cab,...
POSTED Tuesday, November 14, 2006
In a casual chat here at SCI FI Tech's mobile-Web-browsing labs, Opera CEO Jon S. von Tetzchner (pictured above) came out swinging against the DotMobi domain, calling it a "total waste of time" and "completely unnecessary." You may be...
POSTED Thursday, November 9, 2006
In case you missed it, Yahoo's been offering a Skype-like service — making phone calls over the Net for just pennies — for a little while now, called Yahoo Messenger. So it was pretty much inevitable that companies were...
POSTED Thursday, November 9, 2006
After announcing Mac support in January of this year, and then consistently missing just about every deadline since "Q2 '06" was announced (and pulling a major no-no by including Mac OS and Universal Binary logos on the new models'...
POSTED Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Attention chat room occupants: you might think you can hide behind your keyboard and mouth off to anyone and everyone with your misspelled insults and dry, referential wit, but don't be so sure you're safe. In England the first...
POSTED Thursday, October 19, 2006
Old people. They just can't wrap their heads around new fangled technology, and who can blame them? When they were growing up all they spent enough time figuring out stuff like automobiles and televisions that we take for granted, and...
POSTED Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Each week Adam Frucci takes a closer look at the latest gadget buzz in his column, Shift. Image by Matt Krueger MySpace and Facebook are technically "social networking" sites, but are they really that social? Sure, you can get in...
POSTED Thursday, October 12, 2006
As you've probably heard by now, Google went ahead and made YouTube an honest woman by dropping $1.65 billion on the online video site. What sorts of changes can we expect now that YouTube has the richest of sugar...
POSTED Tuesday, October 10, 2006
If you use RSS feeds to follow your favorite blogs and news sites, you probably use an aggregator such as Bloglines or Google Homepage to keep 'em organized. Well, the problem with those sites is that you need to...
POSTED Friday, October 6, 2006
Each week Adam Frucci takes a closer look at the latest gadget buzz in his column, Shift. Image by Matt Krueger I'll apologize right now for using "Web 2.0" in the title of this column. It's a terrible buzzword, but...
POSTED Thursday, September 28, 2006
MySpace, one of the most popular and poorly designed sites on the Internet, is looking to move into the online music store business. Already hugely popular in part because of it allows unsigned bands a way to get their...
POSTED Tuesday, September 5, 2006
Google has just added complete books in the public domain to its Google Book Search. Now, any book that is out of copyright can be downloaded in full form as a PDF, including masterpieces by Shakespeare, Dante, and Cervantes....
POSTED Wednesday, August 30, 2006
When active parenting is too much of a hassle, it's nice to know technology is there to back you up. This WebGuard Programmable Internet Timer will automatically shut down your Web connection down after your kid has spent however...
POSTED Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Each week Adam Frucci takes a closer look at the latest gadget buzz in his column, Shift. Image by Matt Krueger With the rapid advances in computing power over the years, it seems ironic that the personal computer could someday...
POSTED Thursday, August 24, 2006
Each week Adam Frucci takes a closer look at the latest gadget buzz in his column, Shift. Image by Matt Krueger There are two new ways to connect to the Internet coming in the near future (if not here already),...
POSTED Thursday, August 17, 2006
Losing the contacts from your phone is terrible, and while we've posted about gadgets designed to backup your phone data, even we are too cheap and lazy to buy them. We require something easier, something… freer. New service Zyb...
POSTED Friday, August 11, 2006
When is a router more than a router? When it can hold 160 GB of files, act as an iTunes server, download files via FTP and BitTorrent, and act as an FTP server, all with your computer off. Yeah, we...
POSTED Friday, August 11, 2006
New e-paper technology is making its way into credit cards, making it safer to make online transactions. By putting a small display in the card itself, a Smart Card can generate a unique number at the push of a button....
POSTED Wednesday, August 9, 2006
While most people already have DSL and cable as options for connecting to the Internet at a reasonable clip, Sprint is betting you'll think jumping ship to its new WiMax network will be well worth the effort. While building a...
POSTED Tuesday, August 8, 2006
AOL accidentally released the search histories of 650,000 of its customers on the Internet, not only breaching their customers privacy but also raising questions about how collected search data should be used. While many engines collect data on what people...
POSTED Monday, August 7, 2006
The Internet is great for providing us with up-to-date information and instant communication, but it's just so cold. Why can't the Internet be cuter, that's what I'm always asking. The Nabaztag rabbit looks like just the solution to my...
POSTED Wednesday, August 2, 2006
There's been a big push to bring technology to third-world countries, with the One Laptop Per Child $100 laptop program getting quite a bit of media attention. However, once we get these cheap laptops into the hands of people...
POSTED Wednesday, August 2, 2006
Jeff Taylor, founder of monster.com, thinks he has the key to creating a MySpace for the baby boomer set: rather than focusing on classmates and bands, he'll focus on people's inherent fear of death and interest in the deaths...
POSTED Tuesday, August 1, 2006
Thank you Dateline, for instilling an irrational fear of social networking sites into the technophobic minds of middle-aged parents and politicians everywhere. Let the reactionary counterproductive gestures commence! Yes, the always tech-savvy House of Representatives just passed the Deleting...
POSTED Monday, July 31, 2006
Making free Internet phone calls with Skype can be a great thing, but not so much if you have to be tethered to your PC to do the dialing. Finally there is a Skype phone on the way that will...
POSTED Friday, July 21, 2006
Trying to one-up movie downloading service Vongo, rival CinemaNow has just given customers the ability to burn downloaded movies to DVD. Offering over 100 films for your burning pleasure, each download will give users all the menus and features...
POSTED Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Move over MySpace, there's a new king of social networking sites in town, and it's ready to put all the mom and pop sites out of business. That's right, Wal-Mart has entered the crowded field of youth-oriented social networking...
POSTED Tuesday, July 18, 2006
If you fondly recall riding the rails in your youth, debating the merits of Teddy Roosevelt and his cockamamie Panama Canal plan, you are probably very, very old. Because you grew up in a simpler time, computers and the...
POSTED Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Japanese cell-phone makers have combined GPS, compasses, and cell phones to give people the power to get information about any location simply by pointing their phone at it. Because emergency regulations in Japan require cell phones to have GPS on...
POSTED Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Following in the rich traditions of products created for parents to spy on and track their kids comes KidQuery, a service for keeping tabs on your little angel's online life. You simply register your child with them and they check...
POSTED Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Are you like me? Do you lock up your house every morning with a hint of nervous trepidation that today could be the day some thief decides to break in? You can allay some of those fears by setting...
POSTED Monday, June 19, 2006
Amazon is already one of the first places people look online for everything from Tolstoy novels to Canon Elph digital cameras to Seven jeans, but could it soon also be your store for — mac 'n' cheese? That's right, Amazon...
POSTED Thursday, June 15, 2006
We've already got TV via broadcast, cable, and satellite, but now the phone companies are elbowing their way into the mix as well. AT&T is planning to expand its Internet Protocol Television, or IPTV, network, which delivers TV signals via...
POSTED Monday, June 5, 2006
With all the Skype talk floating around the news lately, it's good to keep in mind that they aren't the only free Internet phone service on the block. In fact, a little startup from the Pacific Northwest called Microsoft...
POSTED Monday, June 5, 2006
Sending large files via e-mail is a pain, as most services have limits on how big an attachment you can send, usually less than 10 MB. With multimedia files such as audio and video generally taking up much more space...
POSTED Friday, June 2, 2006
Finally, the government has discovered a way to combine Americans love of peeping with their distrust of immigrants to put freedom-loving citizens to work for Uncle Sam free of charge. Texas Governor Rick Perry has announced a plan to put...
POSTED Friday, June 2, 2006
PC World magazine has put together a list of the 25 worst tech products of all time, and by putting AOL at #1 and RealPlayer at #2 they've earned a hearty thumbs up from us. Remember the Apple Mac Portable?...
POSTED Friday, May 26, 2006
Here's a colorful spin on a cool low-tech idea: the downloadable pinhole camera. Lighthouse in a Tree is offering a pdf you can download, print out, and assemble to build your own functioning film camera out of paper. Couldn't...
POSTED Monday, May 22, 2006
The first draft of a language designed for mobile Web content was released today, which may someday make viewing Web sites on cell phones an easier process. The language would take into account the screen size, color, and resolution of...
POSTED Monday, May 22, 2006
Owners of Nokia's 770 Internet tablet are probably feeling a little more chatty today than usual. The company unveiled a software upgrade for the handheld that includes an onscreen QWERTY keyboard and Google Talk software for instant messaging. Going...
POSTED Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Skype kicked off a new promotion today that allows users in the U.S.A. and Canada to make free calls to landline and mobile numbers for the rest of the year. Normally free only when you call people with a PC,...
POSTED Monday, May 15, 2006
Internet service providers warn that the current infrastructure of the Net is not capable of handling widespread downloading or streaming of high-definition video. Since the World Wide Web was intended to allow people to sporadically view Web sites and make...
POSTED Monday, May 15, 2006
Awkward teens will soon have yet another alternative to actual human interaction: The PCD Music Lounge is an online meeting place that's like a mix of MySpace and World of Warcraft. Users create representations of themselves to populate a...
POSTED Monday, May 15, 2006
MTV has entered the online music store fray, joining Microsoft today in launching Urge, their new service. Integrated into all new versions of Windows Media Player, Urge gets a leg up on its competition by becoming standard software with every...
POSTED Monday, May 15, 2006
Skype's added pay-per-minute translation as an option for its online phone service, which lets people talk for free to anyone with a PC. The translator option isn't exactly as high-tech as you might expect, as it connects callers to a...
POSTED Friday, May 12, 2006
Microsoft has patented technology to allow instant messaging on televisions during regular viewing. Splitting the screen up into multiple frames, it would allow you to watch My Super Sweet 16 while simultaneously chatting with a friend about, say, the...
POSTED Friday, April 28, 2006
There are a lot of cheap Web cams out there, and they all do pretty much the same thing: show low-resolution pictures of you sitting at your computer to anyone with enough free time to look. This one, however,...
POSTED Friday, April 28, 2006
Remember when you had to actually talk to a person to buy a movie ticket? Boy, was that annoying. Then they started letting you buy tickets from kiosks with your credit cards, and later you could buy them on the...
POSTED Thursday, April 27, 2006
Skype, the popular Internet phone service, has only been picking up steam since eBay bought the company late last year. But one of the things holding it back from reaching an even wider audience is that users generally have...
POSTED Thursday, April 6,