It's good if you're not going to be measuring anything past 10ths of grams, and if it's anything extremely important I wouldn't trust it on 10ths of grams either. It's perfect for herbs, spices, and food items though that are weighed in grams, ounces, and pounds.

The fake look a like box it comes in is fantastic. It has a plastic mold to hold the iphone scale and instructions to put on top of it when it's sealed in its plastic container. It looks exactly like a new iphone!

The iPhone scale is an extremely slick way to hide your digital pocket scale. The high quality scale has similar dimensions to the iPhone, as well as looks like it from the outside. However, upon taking off the lid you have your average pocket scale capable of weighing in four modes:

• 1000g
• 35.274oz
• 32.154ozt
• 643.1dwt

To top out the stealthiness of the iPhone scale, you can put it in a seemingly brand new box. An iPhone built to look like a scale is one thing, but putting it in a brand new iPhone box takes the sneakiness up to a whole new level.

To use this simple extension, simply highlight every URL you want to open on the page. Next Multi Links will execute the action you have chosen in the settings area. I just checked open in new tab, it can do many things. If there are multiple files on a page which requiring downloading you could highlight them and switch the action to download. This will begin to download the highlighted files all at once.

There are a variety of plugins that do similar things, but this one is compatible with all versions of Firefox. This includes the nightly builds if you're hungry for the newest and best software available.

The new interface of Opera looks and feels like Google Chrome, which to me is excellent. There are no more bulky tool bars, no bar on the bottom, simply two bars. One of them is for the tabs and the exit buttons, the other is for the navigation buttons and the address bar. The progress bar is built in to the address bar instead of on the bottom of the window.

A lot of time was spent integrating Opera in to Windows 7, but the outcome looks amazing. It utilizes Aero's Glass flawlessly and looks a lot better than it does on Windows XP. The options men, book marks, widgets, and other things are located under one button in the top left corner. Windows 7 users can hover over opera in the task bar to see a preview of each tab. Hovering over that will give you a bigger picture of the browser window. You can also utilize Opera's speed dial which can be used by right clicking Opera in the task bar and clicking your web site of choice.

Another new feature seen previously on other competing browsers is private browsing mode. It's slightly more advanced than the Chrome and Firefox private modes. You can open a separate tab that's private rather than putting the whole browser or window in private mode. You can also make a new window as well.

The speed of the new 10.5 build is incredible, making Opera the fastest browser in the world; easily. I opened the same comment threads in Google's Chrome and Opera and the new 10.5 build consistently loaded pages at double the rate of Chrome. When Chrome first came out I was amazed at how fast it parsed Javascript and loaded websites. After trying Opera I'm just outright amazed at its ability to parse web sites at lighting fast speeds. It loads even the longest Reddit and Digg threads in a second or less! Want to know the best part about it? Opera now supports Adblock!

Along with the speed Chrome provides, there was one other feature that I liked about it. If it loads a corrupt plugin or a plugin that crashes like flash tends to do, it does not bring down your whole browser. Instead it pops up a messaging telling you a plugin has failed.

I think installing and removing plugins is also much easier to do in Google Chrome compared to most other browsers. When hitting the install link, there is no question that times down, download time seems to be relatively slow, most of the time it's instant. However, the best feature is the fact that you don't have to shut down your browser to add or remove programs. This drove me crazy because I use music streaming from Pandora, so I'd have to shut down my music and change songs every time I installed or removed a plugin. That last part did change when Pandora began resuming songs from where you left off, which was a much needed feature.

Finally, the user interface is a lot better in Chrome. There is much less clutter on the browser itself, allowing maxium room to see the website. The pugin admin panel and the downloader, as well as a few other things open in new tabs as opposed to seperate windows, which I also find awesome. This stops the browser from having more than one window open in almost all circumstances.

Another argument that is common is that it has a lack of flash support. Flash is designed for desktop PCs most of the time. You're not going to have the same user experience as you would on a desktop or laptop because this is a touch screen. For the most part applications would have to be redesigned in order to have a pleasant user experience. Another reason for not having flash is Apple doesn't want to support a dying standard. Html 5 is definitely the future and Adobe Silverlight and the likes aren't going to last that much longer. As well as not being designed for phones, flash is often resource intensive and also freezes. I rather a blue box on an iPad than a frozen device.

Before we go any further, here's proof I'm not just making this up. Here's the first time they came out, and here's the second.

I took it upon myself to visit Comcast's website (which ironically loaded slow) and discover their live support. I decided to fool around with them and entered the chat.

Jamie(Wed Mar 19 2008 19:43:26 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time))>

Hello Alex_, Thank you for contacting Comcast Live Chat Support. My name is Jamie. Please give me one moment to review your information.

Jamie(Wed Mar 19 2008 19:43:36 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time))>

How can I help you today?

Alex_(Wed Mar 19 2008 18:45:03 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time))>

rhetorical question: if you paid top dollar for crappy internet that slows to a grinding halt daily during peak hours, how many months would you put up with them for before you finally just cancel their craptastic service?

Jamie(Wed Mar 19 2008 19:46:11 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time))>

I am not sure, it would be up to the customer I suppose.

Alex_(Wed Mar 19 2008 18:47:10 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time))>

not really when there's a monopoly

Alex_(Wed Mar 19 2008 18:47:34 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time))>

of course I could go to 56k, I guess at this point even that's an upgrade

Sure it was rude but I was sick of their crappy service.

Literally seconds later; maybe even before I finished the last sentence, my internet shuts off. I use OpenDNS for my nameservers so at first I couldn't identify the issue. Later it was discovered that when you use Comcast's nameservers it redirected everything to comcast.net. There was a portal where you could choose if you were a technician or customer.

I remembered this part I thought, it was the page I had gotten when I had first installed my service and hadn't confirmed it. Oh shit did they really do that?

After being around 30 minutes late to his appointment, the Comcast employee arrived. After insisting the issue was on Comcast's end I was reassured it was my modem that was the issue. That is after running endless tests, the splicing many wires unnecessarily, and swapping modems for a brand new one.

When the new modem was installed, it was the same issue. I was almost certain that wouldn't solve the issue, and it didn't. In the end he ended up calling up a Comcast line that was for technicians in northern Chicago. The whole conversation was on speaker so I could hear the conversation clearly.

He confirmed that my account wasn't associated with that modem anymore and then asked the lady to associateship it. I forgot the exact term he used for it, but there was an exact word. After giving the person on the phone my modem's Mac and IP address the modem was authenticated once again and online in no time.

There were no issues with my modem, lines, or PC configuration settings. Every packet loss issue I'm experiencing is/was on Comcast's end. This was confirmed for a second time today and another line technician has been dispatched. I won't hold my breath for it to work properly.

I find it pretty ballsy of an employee to sabotage a customer's account. I don't have any direct proof of this, and I doubt I ever will. I just don't think the odds of my modem being disassociated with my account as I'm making fun Comcast very high.

For the record the employee was just doing his job by the book. He was pretty nice and did fix the issue eventually. He also confirmed the packet loss after testing wires on the poll (which he didn't have to do), and sent the line technician.

The fix isn't the best solution as it requires you to open up your Xbox console to install it. It comes with the needed T10 and T8 screw drivers and each kit will cost $12.95. Considering opening your console voids your warranty, I don't think this solution is practical for the average user. However, if you're a modder, or even out of your warranty then this is the perfect solution.

I myself am quite skeptical of this fix. For the price, what could be in the kit? Not many details are given about it. I'm guessing it will be similar to X Clamp; thermal paste and some cheap hardware.

It has been an awful long time since we have shown any activity in the scene and the break has been much needed after a solid 6 years working at the top level.

Maybe it's a modders last ditch effort to get back in to the scene?

Edit, Team Xecuter has responded to some community concerns and changed the pricing as follows:

1 Kit $9.95 each
10 Kits $8.95 each
50 Kits $6.95 each
100 Kits $5.95 each

Also some points need addressing.

1. This is not any kind of X-Clamp or washers or screws or thermal paste or anything like that. It's not rocket science and didn't take months of development - more like 10 minutes

2. This is not sold as a permanent fix. You want that then get a new Xbox. All I know is that its simple, easy to do with little fuss and works on the boxes I've tested so far. It's impossible to say how long it will last for - only people actually giving it a try will be able to answer that.

3. Yes you could probably make this kit yourself. All I have done is made the kit to an exact spec in an easy to use and cheap package.

Thanks to Cybernet

Standard torrent traffic is upload and download, meaning a user both uploads and downloads the file at the same time. Since Comcast has as many as 500 house holds on one node, only a handful of users can greatly effect network speed. When seeding (allowing people to download files off of you), multiple individuals on one node can clog up the network for all other customers. Comcast has in return came up with an algorithm to determine if customers are "abusing" their bandwidth. If a user uploads a file for an unspecified amount of time without downloading they will issue reset packets. This will trick your client in to thinking the connection was lost and stops the upload.

Torrents are an extremely efficient way to move large amounts of data across computer networks. Many Linux distributions use torrents to release large pieces of software, sometimes gigabytes large. This takes quite a load off the server as the file is downloaded off many people rather than a single location. So why is Comcast against such a brilliant idea?

It looks like it's time for Comcast to adapt or fail. With almost as many P2P users as TV show watchers, bandwidth usage won't decrease anytime soon. Bandwidth hogging services such as Xbox Live and other consoles, VoIP, P2P, and the transfer of large high definition media aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

As a Comcast customer myself, I definitely feel the lag spikes they're talking about. Usually occurring at peak time, web sites will load extremely slow - or not at all. I find what helps the most in these situations is steer clear of Comcast name servers, and opt for OpenDNS. However, penalizing paying customers for utilizing a service they pay for is wrong. Instead of blaming users, maybe Comcast needs to take a look at their network's topology.

Faster internet speed

I use Comcast as my ISP. While they do have decent bandwidth, their DNS queries are slow and unreliable. The ping time is quicker to the OpenDNS server than to the Comcast DNS server. However, this might not be true for you. The recommended name servers are 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. I get faster results with the lesser known one.

Since OpenDNS is so large, it has the user base to cache millions upon millions of pages. This saves you an extra trip to a server to look up an IP. Their software relies on the webmaster to tell OpenDNS how long to cache their page using the Time to live setting.

Reliability

They have thousands of servers around the world ready to serve you. If anything goes wrong with one part of the network, a different part takes over. Using some of the most well known ISPs such as NTT, UUNET, and Cognet, there's virtually 100% uptime. When I use my default nameservers, sometimes I'll notice Firefox saying looking up google.com and delaying there for a bit. The page would then just load instantly. With OpenDNS both the query to look up Google

Phishing protection

Phishing is a common problem as the internet grows. Attackers will create domains that look similar to popular websites and then setup look alike sites to steal passwords. While the human eye might not recognize the slight differences in these phishing sites, OpenDNS has a blacklist of known phishing websites. It'll compare the website you're visiting to the black list and then prevent the websites content from being viewed.

Block adult sites

OpenDNS has an option to block websites deemed by St. Bernard to be indecent. St. Bernard is commonly accepted as a web filter at most schools and works; including mine. There is an option to add a custom logo for the blocked website to suite your company or family's needs.

Track website statistics

With the statistics feature it makes it possible to track which websites you've been to and how many times. It'll conviently place that on a graph or chart. A lot of people might find that to be a bad feature. However, that leads me to my next point...

OpenDNS data retention

Non customers like myself will have their IPs logged for 2 business days. Not bad considering other companies like Google will keep it for 18 months. A customer has an option not to log the data at all, as well as an option to just delete the data from their system completly. Neat huh?

It's important to remember that all the big players retain your search data when you search through their site. Basic information such as user agent, IP, and search queries are saved. So which company is keeping your data the longest? Google holds on to theirs for 18 months, followed by Yahoo who retain it for 13 months. In fact Ask.com is the only major player that will allow you to control data retention. It should be noted that if the eraser is not used, the data will be retained for 18 months - matching Google.

As well as subpoena's, your data can be compromised in a variety of ways. Many of the terms of service including Google's tell you the data may be sold to third party companies. AOL learned it's lesson after releasing the data of 600k users to the public. This so called "anonymized" data lead to the finding of multiple people who searched for very specific things.

It's as simple as it gets. Either enter in the web address of the PDF, or upload it to their servers from your computer. Their software will then present your document in a viewable form in your web browser. There are only a few options you have to manipulate the PDF, and those include zoom, tilt, and page next. I said it was simple right?

The best part about the whole thing is it's free. Not only is it free, it's open source. You can visit their main page for the latest version of their source code.

I downloaded the source code for it. It appears to be quite simple, utilizing linux shell scripts to decode the PDF. However, this presents a two downsides. One being the fact that it requires a linux server and the other being it requires a MySql database.

Overall it appears to be a highly useful script. If they actually do some of the things in their To Dos it will have a much greater value. Current it's limited to only 256 colors, and the user interface is extremely basic. A great feature would include the ability to edit the PDFs and download the new version.

You will hear people saying that these are not issues as the iPhone is so new, but how can you launch a smartphone without cut & paste? Update after update, the iPhone continues to skip the most basic of features. With plenty of interesting applications being released to the modding scene only, most people haven't even seen what the iPhone is capable of and besides, why should you have to modify your iPhone to take advantage of what it should have done out of the box? No matter how cool it is, the iPhone is anything but practical.

Helio designed the Ocean with young people in mind. They made popular sites such as MySpace, Digg, and Flickr easy to use. You can upload pictures or videos to your Helio UP account in seconds. Once there it can be sent directly to Youtube or Flickr. There is a toggle to automatically upload the media once it's placed on an UP account. One downside to the image upload is the resolutions appear to be cut down smaller. There's also a nasty Helio logo in the bottom left of the image. Other means of retrieval eliminate the logo and the small resolution. However that requires you to hook the phone up to your computer with the included cord.

Keeping in touch is of course easy with the Ocean's built in Email clients. It supports basic email websites such as Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, and Earth Link. It downloads and parses through new emails quite fast; sometimes in seconds. You can send, delete, and read emails easily on the screen because of its perfect layout.

The camera quality on the Ocean is superb, taking brilliant high resolution pictures. The camera comes with a built in flash which can be toggled on/off/auto. The cameras take excellent pictures in the light (natural or lights), and pretty decent ones in dimmer light. However, once you hit night, the flash is almost useless. The only downside of the camera I see is the awkward placing of the lens. My fingers always seem to be right in front of it while trying to take a picture.
The Helio's qwerty keyboard is a bit awkward to use at first. However, within a few minutes you'll be typing extremely fast. Never have I typed on such an easy to use keyboard on a cell phone. In my opinion this keyboard is more comfortable and practical than that of a sidekick.

Internet on the Helio is about the same as any other phone. The screen is extremely small and not the easiest to navigate. However it's good if you need to get some quick information. Pages load on the 3G network relatively fast. Pages like Google load in seconds, but pages like eBay take as long as 20 seconds. Upon loading it automatically parses the web page for a phone's resolution. Clicking the up area reloads the page like it was intended to be loaded. This is a pretty cool feature on news sites where you just want to read the article.
The Helio's mp3 player is a bit disappointing. It plays music and videos fine, however, you can't make or receive calls while listening to music. In fact you can't text message or do anything while listening to music! This is a huge flaw in my opinion. I don't want to have to stop a song just to respond to a text message or something. For this reason I rarely use the music player.

Another thing on the Ocean that is troubling is it freezes a lot. Sometimes when doing a few things at once it will lag and take 1-20 seconds to go back to normal. During this time the screen will freeze on the same frame no matter what you do. This doesn't happen often, maybe once a day or so. Another downside is when you exit out of the internet it has to load back your desktop. The longer you were using the internet, the longer it takes to load. It gets to be a pain when you want to make a call directly after that.

Helio rents out Sprint's cell phone towers to provide their service. The reception in my area was average or below average. It did however make calls in most areas that I went to. The biggest trouble I have with it is reception in basements - where it started to get choppy. My old Verizon phone performed fine in such areas, thus I expected Sprint to. The internet on the Ocean is fairly fast when you have good reception. Even when you're not equipped with full bars, it's still pretty fast.

Overall the Helio is a pretty above average phone. The unlimited media features combined with the sleekly designed phone secure it as a competitor to the iPhone. While still a new phone, it has little things wrong with it. There are only a handful of things that I'd change on it.