Author: Toby Leftly

Lets face it, clean is cool. The only thing cooler than clean is Star Wars, so following some simple arithmetic we can deduce that a bar of soap molded in the shape of Han Solo trapped in Carbonite as seen in Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back equals absolute pure awesome. Available at Luxury Lane Soap, the Solo Scrub is the epitome of what we believe in at Techi.com – awesome, nerdy and fresh to boot. At 4.2″ x 2.25″ and 1″ thick, the soap should last a while, but even better, while a side effect of being frozen in carbonite for Han Solo was temporarily blindness, this bar of soap is fragrance-free and made…

After forking out upwards of $500 for an iPad, your wallet might harbour some resentment towards you, so when it comes to stocking up on accessories there’s at least one that might offer a little cash relief. Frank Hsueh is clearly a man’s man, and as such understands that shelling out upwards of $45 for an iPad case is just for rich suckers. With duct tape already filling so many niches in society, it was only a matter of time before someone used it to make an iPad case, so kudos to Frank. As if this manly stroke of genius were not enough, Frank goes one step further. Having used up an entire roll of duct tape…

With the announcement of iPhone OS 4.0 last week, the big question on the lips of older iPhone owners was “which devices will support multitasking”. The official answer at the time was that the iPhone 3GS is as far back as support will be offered, with the reason suggested by John Gruber that the 3GS has 256mb of RAM, while all previous devices have only 128mb. There is a small ray of hope for users of the older models however, in the predictable form of a jailbreak option. For users willing to take this risk and live outside Apple’s big brother-esque world, the optino to enable multitasking may be as simple…

In a shocking announcement, Tech Radar declares Linux non-sexy with appeal only to nerds, geeks and basement dwellers. In an article addressing the challenges faces by Linux in it’s ongoing quest to unseat either Windows or Mac OS as a mainstream operating system, Tech Radar concludes that lack of sex appeal is it’s biggest obstacle. Citing the iPad as an example of what the open source community is lacking, Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation says that for Linux to jump ahead in popularity, a little magic and sex appeal will go a long way. Other factors cited include the massive…

Like the dorky, sweaty guy at a party in full swing, Nokia dawdles in late, with a crappy gift, mumbling something about getting caught in traffic and the dog eating its homework. It was announced on Friday that Nokia has purchased MetaCarta, a US geographic technology with plans to offer free local navigation to customers. While North American stalwarts such as RIM, Apple and Google have been providing GPS, location and navigation services for years, Nokia has decided that the future is in navigation, and aims to strike a blow at the established market by halfheartedly attempting to keep up with…

As a Mac and iPhone twitter fan, I was personally thrilled to hear that Twitter has purchased Atebits, developer of Tweetie for Mac and iPhone. The Twitter blog provides more information on the story, noting that while Twitter is primarily a web app, there is definitely a need and want for desktop counterparts. “Careful analysis of the Twitter user experience in the iTunes AppStore revealed massive room for improvement. People are looking for an app from Twitter, and they’re not finding one. So, they get confused and give up. It’s important that we optimize for user benefit and create an awesome…

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a flawed concept, but content publishers are clinging to it as a means of maintaining control. Is it possible to maintain control of digital media in the internet age, and is the recent trend towards Software-as-a-Service just a new kind of DRM? Digital Rights Management and its proponents are fighting a constant battle to combat an obvious truth in digital technology: if you can see it or hear it, you can duplicate it in perfect quality. This simple fact hasn’t prevented companies from experimenting, sometimes with very public and almost farcical results….

Adobe’s Flash plugin has become a stalwart in online multimedia content with a massive install base, so why is it suddenly the least popular kid on the block? Back when Netscape ruled the web and Microsoft was the pretentious young upstart nipping at its heels, HTML was the most dominant form of content on the web by a huge margin. Nothing about video, audio or multimedia content made it appealing to work with or serve to visitors, but the demand was great, so great that what ended up happening was inevitable, if not entirely predictable. How Flash Rose To Dominance By version 5 Internet Explorer had…

Detroit used to make cars, now they make auto-inspired watches. In a classic example of life imitating art imitating life, Equipe Watches, based in Detroit, makes watches with a distinctive, if inexplicable vehicular theme. With product names like ‘BUMPER’, ‘CHASSIS’ and ‘HEADLIGHT’, it’s clear that Equipe has been huffing gas fumes for quite some time. The watches are bold and chunky, with some featuring straps that look like tire tracks, or bevels that look like headlight rims. The designs will certainly appeal to the NASCAR crowd, if not many other people. It’s great to see Detroit reinventing…

Gadget freaks become gadget freaks because they love living life on the cutting edge, but sometimes the cutting edge is a strange place to be. Take the Hanwha Umazone K3 In-Car Video Recorder, for example. As a “BlackBox System”, the implication is clearly that with this device mounted on your windshield you will have a record of anything that happens during a journey, be it the events of an accident or some other auto-related crime. But is this really going to be useful at all, other than as a means of getting auto-nerds fired up about driving their kids to and from school? Surely in the event of an accident,…