Author: James Mowery

Remember when your parents always reminded you to turn off the lights when you were not using them? Seems logical enough, right? It helps the world and saves on the energy bill. But Ford must slept through that childhood, because the company has only recently become aware that they could save over a million dollars simply by shutting down their computers at night. Insane, right? Yes, our beloved American automaker is reporting that it plans to shut down or utilize power management functionality already built into computers and laptops to save the company an astounding $1.2 million per year. Could…

Why is it that completely deconstructing a piece of technology is so amazingly cool? We have no idea, but we love to watch! If you love that, then you have to love the group over at iFixit. They have the time, money, and patience to do the grunt work. Their target: the Nintendo DSi XL. They took it apart, piece by piece, and they analyzed all the components, and the results are fascinating. Stuff like this is especially cool if you enjoy learning about the elements that go into making a device like the Nintendo DSi XL, or the Sony PS3. Just don’t ask us to do this to our own expensive gadgets. We tend…

Greenpeace is calling out many of our favorite technology companies as polluters. Are they right? Companies like Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft and others are relying heavily on dirty coal energy to power their data centers. Greenpeace believes that this is wrong, and the group is calling for these companies to utilize 100% renewable energy sources instead. Greenpeace feels strongly about this too: “The last thing we need is for more cloud infrastructure to be built in places where it increases demand for dirty coal-fired power.” Many technology companies tout their efforts as green,…

Those who were bold enough to place pre-orders for the iPad should rest assured — their hardcore love for Apple products will be rewarded soon enough. For the rest of us, however, the question of availability becomes the talk of the Web. Recently leaked inventory numbers from Best Buy paints the picture, and we would not be surprised to see inventory quickly flying off the shelf. In plain English: each Best Buy store that will have iPad devices will have five 16GB models, five 32GB, and five 64GB models — that means there will be a total of 15 iPads available at participating store locations. If…

What’s the problem with netbooks and other portable devices these days? For starters, you can’t type on them unless you have the hands of a five-year-old. Sadly, many of us are not blessed with small hands. That said, the iWEB 2.0 Laptop Concept would laugh at all those other laptops that try to serve you a tiny keyboard. The iWEB 2.0 features a slick design (and we don’t mind the Transformers wallpaper either) that just makes us think of fancy things when we see it — businessy and eloquent. The main highlight, however, is the fold-out keyboard. It allows the user to have access to a full-sized keyboard…

Verizon and friends want to create their own application stores to compete with the likes of the Apple App Store and Google Apps Marketplace. That’s good, right? After all, isn’t competition a good thing? In most cases, that would be true, but when a competitor holds the keys to all the doors and all owns the roads that leads to those doors, it can be very bad news. Verizon has stated at CTIA Wireless 2010 that V Cast Apps — Verizon’s application store — will learn from Apple’s ways and give developers 70 percent of profits and keep 30 percent for themselves. But the company has also stated that…

The Sony PS3 is highly regarded in the gaming world. Heck, it is even looked upon favorably by the U.S. Military as a number-crunching beast. But it is also innovative in that it allows other operating systems like Linux to be installed. Unfortunately, Sony has decided to kill off that feature for the sake of security. You’d think that Sony would realize that if a user was willing to go as far as to install a Linux operating system on their PS3 that they would be well aware that things could go wrong — system security could be compromised. After all, any script kiddy could hack into any one of Sony’s laptops…

What do you get when you have a cheap but powerful device that was created to do simple tasks and a bunch of hardcore hackers that are determined to undermine those limitations? You get something more than you bargained for. You get the LeapFrog Didj. The Didj is a gaming system released by LeapFrog that is intended to be a kiddy version of the PSP, aimed at children aged 6-10. One of those teach-your-kid-math-and-english things. It even goes as far to offer dedicated games that can be purchased. But the hackers have pretty much taken over the platform by gaining access to the root by soldering two wires…

Zinio, a company focused in digital publishing tech, has just released Zinio Reader 4, an Adobe AIR application that enables access to thousands of magazines — interactive magazines too, and National Geographic celebrates with a freebie. Zinio Reader 4 allows users to instantly access over 2,000 magazines by utilizing Adobe’s AIR framework. It is essentially a cloud-based digital library that will be synced to your devices. Users who install this application can pay once for a digital copy of a magazine, and it will instantly be available to the user for reading in its entirety on any platform…

We’ve all heard of the hand massage, but what about the sound massage? Perhaps that idea won’t be so foreign after feasting your eyes on the Sony Sound Lounge, a concept design by Sharifah Nasser. Nasser has created something that looks futuristic, classic, and eloquent all at the same time — it is a coffee table with a sound system built right in, and anyone who loves music has to at least wonder what this thing would be like in person. Now it is true that seeing this thing in a home might be a tad bit awkward, but the thought of the Sony Sound Lounge in a recording studio or high-class office building…