Category: Featured

  • Save Energy and Lower Your Electricity Bill without Losing the Tech You Love

    Most people are worried about how much power they are using and what their carbon footprint might be. Most people think, “I am just one person, what can I do to help?” I have said this same thing before, then I realized a few easy steps can help me save money and help save the…

  • How to NOT Suck at Foursquare (and other location-based social networks)

    If you’re just joining the rest of us on the internet, there’s something you should know.  There are several websites that allow you to use your physical location in the world (typically via the GPS in your mobile phone) to virtually “check in” to venues like restaurants, sporting events, and movie theaters. Checking your location…

  • Want to Create a Web Application? Use CakePHP for Rapid, Secure Development

    So you’ve got a sweet idea for a web application—great, let’s get to work! You’ll need a basic GUI, some sort of user registration, a templating system, logic processing, error handlers, form verification, AJAX processing, and… woah, this is adding up in a hurry. At what point do you get to start making the app…

  • Tag Your Friends’ Faces in Picasa for Easy Photo Organization

    Picasa is a free application from Google that lets you easily edit and manage your entire photo collection.  Picasa offers many useful features like geotagging, web albums, and powerful-yet-simple photo editing (I love the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button). One problem with large photo collections is that it can become extremely difficult to find pictures of…

  • How Microsoft PowerPoint and Excel Can Help You Pretend to Work

    Procrastinating at work.  We’ve all done it at some point during the five day work week.  Whether it be surfing the blogs, catching up on favorite shows, or playing the unprecedented amount of free online games out there, we have all found different ways to break from the insanity called the eight hour workday. Subsequently, it is a known fact that when…

  • Why You Should Root Your Android Phone

    Anyone who owns an Android phone already knows that Google’s operating system provides a tremendous amount of freedom right out of the box. If you want to take full advantage of your device, though, your best option is to root it.  (“Rooting” is the process of unlocking root permissions on your phone, like jailbreaking an…

  • New Evernote Feature: The Evernote Trunk

    The popular note taking software Evernote has announced a new feature called The Evernote Trunk. The Evernote Trunk is a collection of Evernote integrated applications that make use of the Evernote Developer API.  The Evernote Trunk makes these 3rd party applications easily available to you in the Evernote interface on your desktop, web, and soon…

  • Google Re-Invents Android Development with App Inventor

    The Android Marketplace may be getting a little bit more crowded soon.  This week, Google Labs revealed to the world App Inventor, a creative programming tool that allows just about anyone to figure out how to design and create Android applications… and there was much rejoicing. Thanks to the open architecture of the Android OS, App Inventor allows for tweaking…

  • Netflix Will Soon Stream Newly-Released Movies Months Earlier

    I’ve been using Netflix Instant Watch as a replacement for cable TV for the last two years, and I haven’t looked back since making the switch.  Instant Watch has been a great way to get movies and TV shows quickly, and with the rapid expansion of available content and compatible devices, it’s prime time to…

  • Your Computer Is Giving You Insomnia, But I’ve Got the Medicine: F.lux

    If you’re like me, you spend a lot of time looking at a computer’s LCD screen, especially after the sun has gone down.  Now this is great because we’re all doing important things like watching YouTube videos and blogging, but there’s a downside: it’s turning you into an insomniac. That’s right, an insomniac, a person with…