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Do You Know Anyone Still Not Using The Internet?

gadgetHead — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 15:40:47 +0000

For those of us in the tech industry, it’s hard to believe that anyone isn’t online in one fashion or another. But if you look closely at your own family and friends, you will probably find someone who still doesn’t use the Internet regularly – or even at all. CNET has posted a great video about the 5 reasons people don’t use the Internet. If you want to better understand the remaining holdouts be sure to check it out.

Is It Time To Upgrade To An SSD?

gadgetHead — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 21:01:42 +0000

Anybody who loves computers has watched with anticipation the growth of solid state drives over the past couple of years. The promise of super fast OS and application load times is enough to make every geek drool. Unfortunately, small capacities and really high prices have kept SSD’s out of the hands of even the most hard core gadget freaks. But over the past few months prices have dropped enough on the higher capacity drives to make a new SSD a very tempting upgrade. Now the question is do you really need one. Lifehacker.com tries to answer that question with a great post on the type of users who will benefit from an SSD and those who won’t.

Sony Adding To DSLR Line

gadgetHead — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 03:41:11 +0000

Sony is continuing to push into the high end consumer digital camera market with a couple of new offerings. Though still on the amateur side, the new Sony Alpha A390 and A290 are packed full of features and are well built. Check out the quick look that engadget.com got of the two cameras.

Skype Joins The World Cup Party With Free Phone Calls For A Month

gadgetHead — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 16:13:35 +0000

Skype is jumping on the World Cup marketing bandwagon by offering free land-line phone calls for month in several countries across the globe. If you have friends or family in other parts of the world you may want to take advantage of this offer and save a few bucks on your international phone charges. Check out the countries available and the specifics of this deal at gizmodo.com

Avoiding The Roadside Tourist Trap

gadgetHead — Tue, 25 May 2010 17:50:27 +0000

This upcoming summer, if you plan on taking a vacation or two, make sure you don’t find yourself with an armload of junk from with the name of the amusement park or oddities museum your kids made you visit. The “World Touristiness Map” may save you aggravation – and money – this summer by helping you avoid the most “touristy” places on the planet. This Google Maps mash-up has analyzed images from photo site Panoramio.com to help you avoid those places overcrowded by your fellow main. To find a great location that’s not overrun with khaki shorts and Hawaiian shirts take a look at this great use of Google Maps via Lifehacker.com.

Is The Future Of Gaming On The iPhone?

gadgetHead — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 18:22:17 +0000

I was surprised to learn that the iPhone is the fastest growing gaming platform in the world. Of course most of the games people are playing on the iPhone are digital versions of classic board, card, and strategy games and not the one’s you’ll find on your Xbox 360 or PS3. But the type of games you’ll find on the Nintendo DS or Playstation Portable are making their way to our mobile phones. Gaming blog Kotaku.com takes a look at what the upcoming iPhone 4 may mean for mobile gamers.

Safari And Opera Beating Chrome Javascript Speed

gadgetHead — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 21:31:59 +0000

With a heated up browser market, more and more makers are touting their speed as the big reason to make the switch to a new browser. One of the big benchmarks is how fast can the browser process JavaScript – client-side code used in some fashion by most websites that can drag a page down if your browser can’t process it quickly. The new lightweight king – Google’s Chrome browser – touts a small footprint with quick load times and fast script processing. But according to techcrunch.com, Google’s own JavaScript speed benchmarker, Sputnik, reveals that currently both Opera and Safari are beating Googles browser. Read the full article here.

Get Ready for the 12 Megapixel Cameraphone

gadgetHead — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 17:51:48 +0000

Engadget.com reports that LG mobile has confirmed that a 12 megapixel phone will soon be produced. Sony Ericsson was the first to demonstrate they could put a 12 megapixel camera in a phone, but LG is the first provider to officially announce one is coming. Don’t get too excited, though, as LG’s UK head of marketing, Jeremy Newing, admitted, “it’s important that people realize when taking 12mp images, they’ll be using huge amounts of data, and it will be more difficult to do things like send such files”. Plus, as lifehacker.com has pointed out, megapixel size is not directly proportional to picture quality. While you’re waiting for over an hour for your phone to send that picture of a daisy to your mom, don’t expect the end result to look nearly as good as your DSL with less megapixel resolution but far superior optics and sensors.

Kindle 2 Still Too Expensive?

gadgetHead — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 20:36:10 +0000

Despite all the hype, at $360 the upcoming Kindle 2 is still going to inhabit a very small niche market. Of the 50% of Americans who read books at all very few are ready to make a digital switch. Just like the visceral pleasure we experience from holding a newspaper keeps them in print, a fair amount of the literary class enjoy perusing a bookstore, reading back flaps and skimming contents. But for those who are ready to adopt the digital model, the Kindle itself, or even Sony’s $300 Reader Digital Book, are not the only game in town. A more affordable option may be Indigo’s Shortcovers – a digital ebook app that will run on iPhone, BlackBery, and Android operating systems – devices that many potential Kindle buyers already own. Shortcovers lets users read the first chapter of a book without charge with the option of buying additional chapters individually or the entire book at rates comparable to Kindle and Sony. The difference between Shortcovers and other ebook readers already available on many mobile platforms is the relationship Indigo has with publishers. Shortcovers will initially offer over 50,000 titles, only a third of which are public domain titles. Indigo will also offer news and magazine articles – ala Kindle. Until prices drop dramatically – which may depend on advances in thin displays – the Shortcovers model may make more inroads in popularizing digital formats than Amazon and Sony can only dream of.

Hate To Make Fun, But…

gadgetHead — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 17:16:00 +0000

I like to think of myself as someone who is painfully aware of their own foibles and therefore restrains from pointing out others – at least as much as I can. But this is one story I just can’t resist. According to techcrunch.com, a woman broke her children’s Wii by repeatedly inserting different credit cards into the DVD drive slot. Why you may ask? Because she had been told to “put in her credit card when prompted”.