Share/Bookmark Where would computers be today without the ever present universal serial bus? Thanks to Ajay Bahatt, the Intel engineer who invented the specification, we now have USB devices and gadgets that are self-powered and plug-and-play. Some of these unique little electronic anomalies are useful and some are just down right amusing. If you have ever been sitting at your desk rubbing your chin in an effort to realize information that up to that point had been fleeting, and noticed you have a bit of a beard (happens less often with women) you may need the Syba Rechargeable USB Shaver with...

Share/BookmarkWhen the XBox Kinect hit the market last November, the web was inundated with a wave of cute little girls scratching tiger-ears, dancing twenty-somethings, and other well-polished marketing material. The hype was met with modestly successful sales numbers, and quite a few of the devices found their way into homes. In spite of the sales and positive reviews, I still kinda felt like many of you do: that the Kinect was just a gimmick that would be forgotten within the year. However, when Microsoft announced the release of a software development kit (SDK) for the Kinect hardware last week I...

Share/BookmarkVideo game development is a tough business. The games cost millions to develop, produce, market, and distribute, and then, in most cases, really only get a couple months of solid sales ’till their product gets thrown in the discount rack—not to mention pirated off the internet! Because of this, video game developers are too often guilty of cutting corners, rushing deadlines, and generally skimping on the polish that can make games great. Only a rare few have what it takes to make it past those first few weeks, let alone to gain entry into the pantheon of PC gaming...

Share/Bookmark Tech aficionados may have heard a thing or two about Intel’s “Light Peak” over the last couple of years. It was an all-powerful new I/O interface meant as an all-in-one replacement for several of the data connections currently popular in computers—though it hasn’t received much media attention while in development. That changed today when Intel shot out a press-release not-only presenting their new connector to the world but announcing its immediate availability through Apple’s latest line of Macbook Pro Laptops. Intel also declared a name-change for the technology, dubbing...

Share/BookmarkWhat was the first picture a webcam ever took? Someone’s foot, you may assume, as the technician fumbled to get the cam to power up. But, no. It was the coffee pot in the Trojan Room located in the computer laboratory of the University of Cambridge in ye’ olde England circa 1991. This new wave technology was created to keep hard working computer students from making pointless trips to the coffee room only to find the coffee pot had no coffee. But, even with its modest 128 x 128 grayscale picture, it was still the beginning of a technology which would become important once the Internet...