Howto

If you're outside the US, and have just paid an exorbitant amount of money to an eBay reseller (or a shipping company) to get your iPad, you've probably realized by now that there's a few hoops for you to jump through before you can start using it to its fullest. Read on to find out just how easy it is to get access to the App Store, iBooks and US-only apps like ABC and Pandora.  Read More

Most users have come to accept the new Twitter-style Facebook home page - but one thing continues to infuriate: all the annoying quiz and application updates in your news feed. But all is not lost if you are sick of learning "what Simpsons character" your friends are - here's a quick and easy way to make those annoying quizzes disappear from your news feed.  Read More

So you want to install the Windows 7 beta on your IdeaPad S10, or another netbook without an optical drive. A Google search will turn up hundreds of guides, but we've read nearly all of them, and they either assume you have access to a Windows Vista machine, are needlessly complicated, or just plain don't work. This guide might not have pretty pictures guiding you along the way, and you'll need to deal with a command prompt, but hey - it works.  Read More

January 26, 2009 About one third of the male adult global population smokes, two thirds in Asia where tobacco advertising is largely still legal. Among teens aged 13 to 15, about one in five smokes worldwide. Smoking is the single largest preventable cause of disease and premature death. Smoking related-diseases currently kill one in 10 adults globally, and on current trends, one in six of ALL people two decades from now. New UK research has found that smokers are twice as likely to kick the habit if they use a support group rather than trying to give up alone.  Read More

August 8, 2008 Sony is expanding their PlayStation Home beta test at the end of the month, and they're looking for testers in the U.S. that meet "a variety of criteria" including their level of activity on the PlayStation Network.  Read More

August 4, 2008 Of all the equipment we use in our hi-fi and home theater systems, the thing that’s changed the least over the past 20 years is the speaker. After all, there’s only so many ways you can move air to produce sound. With that in mind, matching speakers to an amplifier should be easy, right? Well...it’s not rocket science, but there are a few key specifications that affect their overall performance. Our AV expert Tim LeFevre explains.  Read More

July 23, 2008 While tethering (using a 3G phone as a modem for a laptop) is a feature included in almost every 3G phone on the market, AT&T have come out and said they will not support tethering on the 3G iPhone. That oversight has spurred hackers into action and resulted in the circulation of a tutorial for doing what AT&T won’t. Remember that this might be against your use license agreement with AT&T and result in much unpleasantness – or they may do nothing at all.  Read More

Boeing has begun delivering the first Laser Joint Direct Attack Munition (LJDAM) kits to the U.S. Air Force. The Precision Laser Guidance Set (PLGS) kits have been created inside just 11 months to satisfy the Air Force and Navy's urgent need for weapons capable of engaging fast-moving land targets. The US$47,000 PLGS gives a JDAM with a 500 pound warhead the ability to hit a target travelling at up to 70 mph. It’s quite an amazing piece of engineering because the PLGS kit goes in the nose, and the US$22,000 JDAM kit fits to the tail of what was once a very dumb bomb. The JDAM kit offers both GPS and inertial navigation, and the PLGS adds laser, meaning it only takes US$67,000 to make a dumb bomb much smarter.  Read More

May 17, 2006 If you’re one of those people who object to speed humps and believe there are more effective and less neanderthal ways to slow traffic, take heart from the victory this week of a campaign organized by local residents in the town of Yate in South Gloucestershire (UK) which will see speed humps removed from its roads. The campaign website distributed downloadable bumper stickers (pictured) and in conjunction with intensive campaigning by residents and assistance from the Association of British Drivers, the council has been forced to execute a 'U' turn and order the removal of the humps as a matter of priority. The council will instead install a pedestrian crossing and vehicle-activated speed limit warning signs.  Read More