In a service that may quickly rival Netflix streaming, Amazon has fired up their own video on demand service. You probably already know the premise: you browse a huge library of on-demand content and watch what you want instantly over the Internet. As a way to allow new customers to give this a try, Amazon is offering a $5 credit to new customers. To redeem,...

If you want to get a better understanding of what the equalizer settings on your media player/stereo system mean and at the same time impress (some of) your friends, train yourself on what different frequency tones sound like. You can do this easily using the site: Quiztones. The site is simple, when it loads you select from different categories: tones, noise,...

In yet another made up "day" to bring our attention to something, yesterday was Data Privacy Day: Data Privacy Day is an international holiday that occurs every January 28. The purpose of Data Privacy Day is to raise awareness and promote data privacy education. It is currently celebrated in the United States, Canada, and 27 European countries.[1] On...

Not too long ago you may have heard that the popular open source productivity suite, OpenOffice, was acquired by Oracle. Many have perceived this to be the beginning of the end which prompted an open source fork, LibreOffice. A few days ago, LibreOffice released it’s first major version. This release has a slew of new features, including:Import SVG...

When you look a credit card, there is a long string of numbers raised across the front which correspond to your bank and account information. Have you ever wondered what these numbers actually do and how they are used? If so, check out this infographic which breaks down the numbers on a credit card. When I first saw this, I thought of the movie "Catch Me If...

Whenever you install certain utilities, they may add or enable new useful functions in the right click context menu of Windows Explorer. While these actions are, of course, easy to manually invoke, if you want to automate a process available only via the context menu, you are at the mercy of what the respective utility allows. To work around this limitation and...

Video and graphic enthusiasts looking for the best possible display you can get on your LCD monitor should consider color calibrating it (much like what is done with HD-TV’s). Rather than paying someone to handle this for you or purchasing an expensive device, consider renting a color calibration device from your local photo store: I did a little research...

Despite the multitude of capable alternatives, Adobe Reader remains the "standard" when it comes to PDF viewers. So in some cases (mostly when it comes to business use) you just have to use it, especially when it comes to PDF which have complex/uncommon elements. So when it comes to downloading Adobe Reader, you are forced to use their Download Manager...

Whenever a new year rolls around, I always like to check out the "best of" lists for the previous year. Trend Labs (the maker of HouseCall online scanner and HiJackThis) have released their list of the most dangerous tech of 2010. Notables making the list:Website: Google (primarily due to advertising malware exploits) OS: Mac OSX Social Networking...

Those of you with an iPad looking to add a bit of "wow" factor to the device should take a look at the iCade. This is a combination of both a specially designed arcade stand and a bluetooth joystick. To see the combination in action, check out the video in the page for some classic Asteriods goodness. Atari has committed to releasing more retro games...

In a relatively unadvertised event, Microsoft released version 2.0 of their anti-virus product, Security Essentials. Ars Technica has a write up on the release but the primary change is that the detection engine is now heuristic based in addition to signature based. In a nutshell, signature based protection can only detect known threats which have a particular...

As you may know, just about every modern laptop uses a lithium-ion powered battery. What you may not know is the care for these types of batteries differ from their NiCd predecessors. That said, it is important to give your battery proper care to get the most life out of it possible. A great article on this subject can be found at Battery University: "How...

While New Year’s Resolutions are a sound idea in principle, the problem (as with any goal) becomes that most people start very strong but lose motivation and/or discipline as the year goes on. That said, if one of your goals is to lose weight this year then Traineo is a web site you may be interested in. Traineo is more than a simple calorie counter as it...

If you have multiple monitors and have ever tried to watch a Flash video in full screen on one while working on the other, you quickly find that it doesn’t work. As soon as you shift the focus to something other than the video, it reverts back to window mode. To prevent this from happening and keeping Flash in full screen mode, check out FlashHacker. This...

Outside of cash, perhaps the most generic gift you can give is a gift card. While I am sure anyone presented with the choice of cash or a gift card to "X" would choose the cash, it is somewhat taboo to give this as a gift so ultimately a gift card is the result. If you would like to convert a gift card to cash then take a look at this article which...