Author: Katherine Hannaford
What to do when Twitter is down: erm, delete your account?
Ode to Twitter:
Oh Twitter, how I loved thee in the heady days of February 2007, when I first had the pleasure of tweeting. Then, just a few months later, I abandoned you for Facebook. When all my friends caught on to Twitter in early 2008, like magic I remembered my log-in details and started tweeting the amount of cups of tea consumed, but now, due to the frequent down-time, I’ve signed up to Plurk.
Twitter, I worry about you. I worry because sites such as When Twitter Is Down exist, which rotates dozens of entertaining options for you to do when such an occasion happens (above). Which, my old love, is every couple of days. When I saw the site Is Twitter Down mentioned today on ye olde towne scribe TechCrunch, I knew our long relationship was over…
Best. PC case mod. Ever: Microwave hacked, now a working computer
I’m considering launching a Tech Digest spin-off site purely for PC case mods, but think I’ve already found the best mod that will ever exist. Yes, even better than that nudie-girl one yesterday, and Chernobyl power plant one from a few weeks back.
Disguised in an old microwave, the inside is full to the brim with the PC’s guts, and the normally-transparent door has been transformed into an actual working monitor. If you look closely enough, you’ll see the food being reheated on the plate is actually the desktop wallpaper, with folders located…
Tokyo Flash dazzles us yet again with the Scramble and Progression watches
Being a fan of Tokyo Flash’s awesome otaku cred, I couldn’t resist showing you these two new designs from the Japanese wrist-lovers’ new series for Summer, Nekura.
Scramble, the left design, lets you choose the LED colour you prefer, with blue, green, cyan, red, pink or orange all on offer, but that doesn’t mean you have to say goodbye to all the other shades, as it still rotates them occasionally. The twelve outside blocks indicate the hour, with the eleven inner blocks…
Acer officially announces the Aspire One sub-notebook, the Eee 900 turns green with envy
Acer officially announced what we all suspected, that they had been readying a sub-notebook to compete with the Eee PC. The Aspire One, pictured, is an Intel Atom-based lappy with an 8.9-inch CrystalBrite LED backlit screen.
It’s not just a choice of 512MB or 1GB of RAM you have either, as Acer is kindly offering models with either Linpus Linux Lite or Windows XP, with the first OS packing 8GB of SSD and Windows giving the user 80GB of HDD space. Some things are best left to Acer to decide on however, so each model has a 0.3-megapixel CrystalEye webcam, 5-in1 card reader, Wi-Fi plus the option of integrated WiMAX or HSDPA connectivity.
Out on the 10th of July, the Linux…
Sure, it's an Eee 900 clone, but the Gigabyte M912 turns into a tablet PC with a twist
The Computex show rolls on, bringing many PC-shaped delights to those lucky enough to attend the Taipei expo. Gigabyte just previewed its M912 laptop-cum-tablet PC which will now be added to the mental list of ‘Eee PC bandwagon jumpers’.
An 8.9-inch screen puts it in direct competition with the Eee 900 and countless others, yet it’s got something clever up its USB port – a rotating 180 degree function which turns it into a tablet.
Internally, Gigabyte has packed in a 2.5-inch S-ATA hard disk with storage capacity of up to 250GB, and up to 4GB SSD if you choose. A 1.3-megapixel webcam and Windows or Linux OS finish…
TinySong – the musical equivalent of TinyURL, and dead useful, too
I’ve just been informed about TinySong, which has quickly been added to my bookmarks list for those occasions when you really need to hear a song but can’t be bothered downloading it/YouTubing it/waiting endlessly on Last.fm for it to play.
It’s being marketed as the musical version of TinyURL, that site which shortens lengthy URLs, and is remarkably simple to use. Just type in the song you want to send your friend, and it will give you a TinySong URL for that particular track. There’s no need to download a program to play it, it streams the track flawlessly using Grooveshark Lite. I tested it with some of my favourite songs, which…
Score some Jemma Kidd make-up with the Sony Ericsson S500i mobile phone
Normally we leave the floral and pink products up to our friends at Shiny Shiny, but I know some women read this site, and I’m sure some male readers would be interested in this phone which has apparently taken inspiration straight from the catwalk.
The S500i has been out for a while, but Sony Ericsson felt the need to cover it in flowers and call it ‘limited edition’. Featuring a 2.0-megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom, Sony Ericsson claims you can access websites easily, and even email and blog. PlayNow is thrown in as well, giving you music file and ringtone downloads.
Available exclusively at The Carphone…
YouTube Hits: Roomba vacuum cleaner hacked to become Bluetooth Pac-Man!
Devout Pac-Man fan Ron Tajima has modded a Roomba vacuum cleaner, adding 448 LEDs, and a unit to control the machine by Bluetooth. Take a look at the video above for what a bit of soldering and a lot of spare time can give you – Pac-Man fo’ realzies!…
Gauge the threat a site poses with RickProof – avoid being Rickrolled ever again!
Too scared of being Rickrolled that you need a way to determine the threat a site poses? Enter RickProof, which will gauge the entered URL’s probability of said action, and warn you against it, if so.
I’m not sure how accurate it is, to be honest – I entered Tech Digest’s URL and it claimed we pose just a ‘minimal risk’, even though for the entirety of the morning of April Fool’s Day, every outgoing link on this site was a Rickroll. Perhaps the site’s creator is as much a fan of Rickrolling as I am – I just set up a Facebook group for people who actually enjoy being Rickrolled. Feel free to join here!…
Eee 900 battery issue not as bad as first thought, only five people complained to ASUS apparently
In his video review of the Eee 900, Dan noted that he was slightly disappointed with the battery life. Several other people have also commented on this downfall in the otherwise-amazing sub-notebook, causing ASUS to generously offer a brand new, better battery, for just £10.
However, when I spoke to an anonymous source at ASUS this morning, I was told that only five people had complained to the company about the battery life, so either everyone has very low expectations on a laptop’s battery life (I know I have, after many bad experiences with machines); only five people own an Eee 900; or everyone is using the little fella connected to a power source…
