Computers

The e-cigarette from Thanko plugs into your computer's USB port and offers puffers a genuine smoking experience... without all the nicotine, tar, ashes, smell and, er, smoke.

The Wall Street Journal wrote a piece earlier this week entitled 'China Squeezes PC Makers' where they outlined the Chinese governments' recent requirement that PC makers to ship their machines with internet filtering software. The Green Dam software is intended to filter out explicit language and pornographic images, but early user reports indicate that this software might not be as slick as many might have expected.

Microsoft has spent considerable time and effort to get attention to its new search engine, the hopeful Google-killer Bing.com.  Let's see how the two sites stack up against each other, after just one day of use.

Did you ever go out to a club and listen to some thumpin' dance beats and think to yourself, "Hey, I could do this?"  If you have a passion for electronic music, or even just a curiosity into how it's done, then this is the site for you.

The Snow Leopard Operating System's video was taken down from YoutTube by Apple preventing folks like us getting an advance peek under the hood. However, since this new operating system is being premiered at Apple's WWCD June 8-12 in San Francisco, we were able to retrieve some first-hand reports from the Confab and surface a video by APPLEBuzz. The insights I uncovered will show you what makes Apple's new OS purr like a domestic kitten and race like a wild cat.

A criminal can be tracked via his cell phone, a dog via his collar, and a girlfiriend via her bra... why don't we track Alzheimer's patients, 50 percent of whom wander away from their familiar surroundings on a regular basis?

On June 4, 2009 during the 20th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, the government actually shut down access to Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Flickr. Then Hotmail blipped off the radar, followed by Bing, Microsoft's latest search engine. Repression was rampant as a Great Firewall went up to prevent Chinese webizens from mourning online in their respective virtual worlds. Is Big Brother alive and well in China?

Remember the computer "HAL 9000" in the movie "2001 Space Odyssey," that acted like a personal navigator? Remember when you had personal assistants to help execute some of your everyday menial tasks? Well, a new shift in searching the Internet is going to make that technology, a reality. Virtual Personal Assistants are coming to a mobile device or computer near you this summer. Siri brings a very advanced collection of technologies (speech recognition, natural language processing, semantic data processing, and geo-location) to create a digital assistant that will help you perform tasks through a conversational, question-and-answer interface.

This side of the millennium has spawned legions of "on the go" digerati who need their electronics to travel with them...and units that can offer the same computer features that we are use to having at home and in our offices. Netbooks are unique in their size, speed and functionality...and based on their light weight, they travel well. Whether you call them Netbooks, mini-laptops, or quasi-notebooks, these small, low-cost, low-power systems are the hottest thing to hit the electronics scene... since the first laptops!

The Super Easy Cushion is a super simple solution to an all-too-common problem - how to relax, read or work comfortably while laying flat on your belly.

Yet another weird USB flash drive has made the scene, albeit quietly, like a ninja. The Shuriken USB drive makes it's "point" by saving your data as stealthily and scarily as possible.

Did TwitSnaps just build a better mousetrap than TwitPic?  Still in Beta format, TwitSnaps has launched a new photo application for Twitter that appears to feature more functionality than any other other photo sharing application online today. 

Ooops they did it again! No, not the Britney Spears fan club! Google did it again...stealing Microsoft's thunder by rolling out Wave, their new communications and collaborative tool during the same week Microsoft debuted Bing, its new search engine. Google Wave is what email would be like if it were on steroids! It is a little of everything all mashed up into one big giant framework. Wave is part email, IM, calendar, Twitter, wiki, spreadsheets/docs/presentation, picture sharing, social media, forums, maps and just about everything else on the web, but the kitchen sink!

The Powerbrella is the perfect accessory for the summer. Lay in the sun, while keeping all your most essential gizmos charged.

You thought you'd take a trip abroad to see some relatives in Bizwackistan. Upon your arrival, Bizwackian inspectors implant a tracking device in your arm to "make sure you don't overstay your welcome." What they don't tell you is that if you miss your flight out of the country, be you ill or otherwise indisposed, you will die.

For anyone who's not following the styling of computer accessories and stand-alones, LaCie doesn't just issue any old tech gadget. It's as much about 'the look' as it is about the function for LaCie's high tech storage units and accessories. With hot items from 5.5 Designers and industrial designer Sam Hecht, who can encase chips with the sleekest of personas, LaCie's new drive cases complement its hardware, providing all-business, but showing all-style.

Most of you probably know what torrents are and how to use them, but surprisingly there are plenty of people who still have trouble with them.  Not that you could blame them.  The first trick with getting over torrents is that you have to allow all kinds of firewall access and direct port forwarding on your router, which can be a bit tricky for the novice internet user.  Torrent2exe takes all the guess work out of torrents for beginners and makes a simple executable file that allows the user to download their desired torrent.

You've been searching online for years. Google has captured most of your attention. Other search engines like Lycos and AltaVista have come and gone. But did you ever think you could be bought to search? If Scour has its way, the little-search-engine-that-could wants to pay for your loyalty while it tries to steal market share from the Google-Yahoo-MSN triumvirate.

Tired of having to move your hands away from the keyboard to take a sip of your tasty beverage?  Well, the answer to this problem is only one click away... A click of your foot, that is.