Author: Connor Livingston

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been over 9 years since Gmail was opened up in beta. When it was first launched, many thought it was an April Fool’s Day joke because it was launched April 1, 2004. Some joke, eh? The funny part is that it stayed in beta for over five years, so if that qualifies as a joke, then good on Google. Here’s an infographic that shows the timeline. Are you on Gmail? …

Gamers, it’s time to mourn the loss of one of our oldest and most respected gaming icons. After 31 years, LucasArts has been shuttered by Disney. Around 150 employees were laid off. According to Kotaku: Publicly, Disney is saying their current games could be licensed out to a different publisher or developer, but according to our source, that’s unlikely. Our source says Lucas has pursued the option for “one or both games,” but nothing happened. “With the teams now basically being dispersed I think both games are effectively dead forever,” our source said. It’s sad news but not unexpected. They…

April Fool’s Day is pretty annoying for the unprepared. The flood gates of false announcements, buyouts, and new products fill the feeds and often get people excited or discouraged until they remember the date. It gets bigger every year. Some companies such as Google play multiple tricks on people. Others do even worse – making announcements that aren’t so far fetched that they actually get some people to believe them for a time, embarrassing them when they spread the words to their friends. I’ve been a victim of that in the past. Never again. This year’s round includes some standard cleverness,…

With all the attention Google Glass is getting before it’s even launched, one would think it was an Apple product. It’s not, but it has the buzz level of the new Corvette Stingray. Now, it’s making news by doing something that other tech companies have avoided for a while. They’re going to have Foxconn build Glass in the United States. Foxconn is a Taiwan company that has been associated with Apple products as well as other tech giants. For Glass, they’ll be operating out of a plant in Santa Clara, California. This isn’t the first domestic move. Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that certain Macs were going…

It’s easy to point fingers. It doesn’t take a genius to look at trends and start spouting doom and gloom. When Apple is concerned, it’s even easier, almost wanted, as the company has enjoyed golden child status for several years now. For the first time in a decade, Apple had a quarter that showed negative growth. That alone is not necessarily a telling sign; companies can only continue to show positive numbers for so long. There’s simply no way to sustain it indefinitely and a decade is a long time. However, when you look at the other things that have been happening lately, it’s not out of the realm of…

There was never a doubt that iOS and Android are much bigger than Windows when it comes to mobile OS adoption, but a report by MetroStore Scanner that the Windows Store has only recently broken the 50,000 app barrier is both a little embarrassing to the company and at least a little alarming to developers who are looking for long-term homes for their apps. By comparison, iOS is tracking to hit 800,000 in April and Android is tracking to hit 900,000. The fear of developers is manifesting in a slowdown of new apps. In November, 2012, the average daily count of new apps submitted to Windows Store was a brisk…

There was a time in 2008 when Twitter really started taking off. Celebrities were starting to use it. Kevin Rose, former geek leader and entrepreneur, dissed his own startup, Pownce, by saying that he preferred Twitter. The company was on a good trajectory. That was on the surface. Behind the scenes, it was far from cozy. They were having coding issues. They couldn’t stay up for an entire day without presenting a fail whale for an extended period of time. They were, in essence, a tech company that was getting too popular for their own good and couldn’t figure out how to bring everything together. Then,…

Leave it to Doctor Who to squeeze two intriguing lines into a single 41 second teaser. One might even argue that there’s a third. First, the Doctor says, “You are the only mystery worth solving.” Doctor Who fans (AKA real geeks) love a good mystery and if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for us. Then, they cut to a scene that has the Doctor uttering words we never thought we would hear. “I am the Doctor and I am afraid.” Whatever it is that could scare him, we’re dying in anticipation to find out more about it. Here’s the teaser: …

There are many videos, both parodies and serious ones, that give a particular angle or treatment to the exceedingly-popular HBO series, Game of Thrones. As the start of season three nears, we’ve already broken down the real trailer, laughed at the mashup with The Princess Bride, and been blown away by the stunning Minecraft treatment. Now, we get to see what might be considered the best of them all – the 1995 re-imagining of the intro. It starts off with an ancient lead in from HBO, then we launch into a perfect compilation of the previous two seasons. Appropriate 90s music plays uncomfortably in…

Skyscrapers are normally associated with society’s forced decline of the environment’s quality and sustainability. They represent man’s destructive ways against nature for the sake of progress. Not all skyscrapers are made this way and one concept design won the 2013 eVolo Skyscraper Competition. The Polar Umbrella isn’t just a skyscraper design that tickles the imagination with future technological wonders. It stems from a concept that buildings can go beyond being eco-friendly. Built properly, they can actually start reversing some of the damage that has been done to the environment….