Computers

To old fogeys like me, it seems like only yesterday that the coolest way to go online was to dial up the AP wire service bulletin board on a 300-baud modem, but it was actually two decades ago that the web as we know it burst onto our world. On Tuesday, it was 20 years ago that the World Wide Web went public, when CERN made the technology behind it available on a royalty-free basis. To mark the occasion, the organization announced that it is recreating the world's very first website for posterity.  Read More

Developers, makers, and hobbyists looking for a beefier alternative to Gizmag favorite the Raspberry Pi will be delighted to learn that BeagleBoard.org has taken the wraps off a 1 GHz ARM-based board named the BeagleBone Black. Though it may look like a slightly more expensive outlay, its manufacturer says that by providing everything needed for display, keyboard and network connectivity right out of the box, the Black provides "a lower total cost of ownership than the nearest competitor."  Read More

Last week, Toshiba entered the ultra high-end laptop market with the KIRAbook, a thin and light Ultrabook with a number of compelling features. The laptop is the first Windows 8 device to feature a Retina-level display (or PixelPure as Toshiba calls it), throwing it into direct competition with Apple's MacBook Pro with Retina display. We take a look at both devices to see which (if either) comes out on top.  Read More

For several years now, it’s been possible to buy Swiss Army Knives with flash drives. The USB Utility Charge Tool, while it’s obviously inspired by the Swiss Army Knife, is a little different – it contains four fold-out plugs for charging or syncing your electronic devices.  Read More

It seems like the last few years were all about watching smartphones and tablets get better and faster. But how much of that was really new? 2013, though, could give us some truly breakthrough products. Google Glass, Apple’s rumored iWatch, and Leap Motion could all be big-time game-changers. One of those just teamed up with another big partner, as the new version of Google Earth plays nicely with Leap Motion.  Read More

Israel's CompuLab, makers of small form factor fanless desktop computer systems such as the Intense PC, is now pushing its way into the industrial server market with the launch of the uSVR. Available in configurations packing Intel's 3rd generation Core i7 processors and 32 GB of system memory, the high performance, ruggedized, fanless server is capable of modular expansion, too, courtesy of the company's Function And Connectivity Extension Module (FACE) system.  Read More

It hasn’t even been released yet but the Leap Motion could already be considered something of a success – at least with PC manufacturers. Following in the footsteps of Asus, who announced in January that it would bundle the 3D motion controller with some of its PCs, the world’s biggest PC manufacturer has joined the gesture control party. But HP has gone one step further, promising to build the Leap Motion technology into some future HP devices.  Read More

If you're a Netflix subscriber and you use a Mac or PC for playback, then you may be aware that the service utilizes Microsoft's Silverlight plugin to bring you all that Breaking Bad and House of Cards goodness. But for a variety of reasons, Silverlight isn't the ideal video delivery method, and Netflix has started looking towards a bright, HTML5-based future.  Read More

Apple’s MacBook Pro is a modern computing design classic, but if you find yourself tiring of its industrial looks, then the MacBook Wood Keyboard by Rawbkny may be of interest. It’s essentially a retrofit kit which modifies the look and feel of Apple’s pro-notebook using either bamboo or rosewood keys.  Read More