Computers

The anonymity of the internet is both a blessing and a curse. Not only does it make it easy to pretend you’re someone else and live out a harmless fantasy online, it also makes it relatively easy for someone else to pretend they’re you and run up a hefty credit card bill or the like with nothing but a few key pieces of personally identifiable information. European researchers propose a more secure form of online user authentication that uses common computer hardware to identify specific users.  Read More

In the technology world, everyone wants to have the thinnest, fastest, smallest device going around to gain some bragging rights, if only for a short time. ADATA only let Toshiba hold the title of the world's thinnest external HDD for a few days before it rolled out its DashDrive Elite HE720. Coming in at 8.9 mm thick, ADATA managed to shave a fraction of a millimeter off Toshiba's 9 mm thick Canvio Slim portable drive and take the title ... for now, anyway.  Read More

While many of us buy stands in order to raise our computer monitors to eye level, most of those come preset to a certain height. The HiRise for iMac, however, which incorporates the base of any size of iMac or other Apple display, allows users to choose from six different height settings.  Read More

While Facebook today is an absolute juggernaut, with about one in seven humans on the planet being a "monthly active user," it's almost hard to remember that before November 2007, MySpace was the biggest game in town. Since then, MySpace has more or less been relegated to punchline status, a desolate place with fewer users than it had twinkling background GIFs. But it seems MySpace is about to launch a dramatic redesign of the site that brings its interface well and truly into the touch-screen era and, frankly, makes the gigantic Facebook site look a bit stodgy and old-fashioned in comparison.  Read More

Originally unveiled at Computex in June and subsequently making quite an impression on European power gamers at IFA 2012 earlier this month, the Republic of Gamers Tytan CG8890 Gaming Desktop PC is now being prepared for release. It features one click overclocking of its liquid-cooled Core i7 CPU, a mesmerizing transforming case, powerful GeForce graphics and generous system memory and storage options.  Read More

Unlike Iomega’s eGo Helium portable hard drive, a new hard disk drive platform developed by Western Digital (WD) subsidiary HGST actually does fill hard drives with helium. Rather than just making the drive a little bit lighter, replacing regular old air with helium and sealing it within the drive enclosure has allowed HGST to increase hard drive storage capacity by 40 percent while reducing power consumption by 23 percent.  Read More

Many home and business local area networks (LANs) built around the 802.11n standard are starting to buckle under the strain placed on them by an ever-increasing number of wireless devices clamoring for bandwidth. A new technology known as WiGig is looking to clear the bottleneck by offering transfer rates 10 times that of the fastest 802.11n networks. At its Intel Developer Forum (IDF) 2012 in San Francisco, Intel demonstrated WiGig multigigabit wireless docking technology that has the potential to remove almost all wires trailing to and from a computer.  Read More

NVIDIA just announced that its Quadro K5000 video card is coming to Mac Pro computers later this year. The K5000 is billed as "the most powerful professional-class GPU ever for the Macintosh," and based on the specifications announced for this monster, that is quite believable.  Read More

In the same way that professional athletes have turned to technology to give them an advantage in training and competition, professional gamers are increasingly being targeted by peripheral manufacturers promising gamers an edge over their opposition. Thermaltake’s Level 10 M Mouse is just such a peripheral. Unveiled earlier this year, pricing and availability details of the mouse have now been announced.  Read More