Hardware posts

Every time there is a new smart phone put on the market, millions of people flock to the release in hopes of getting their hands on one on that opening day. However, what if technology changed and the smart phones of the past moved forward to what Google is now testing called Project Glass? What if we can explore and share everything about our world and everyday lives without pressing buttons? Google’s Project Glass is taking technology out of your hands and is instead putting it right in your face. Well, not literally in your face, but right in your view. Here is what it looks like: Now, while this could…

The advent of the tablet has already changed our perspective on what can be accomplished with a personal computer. Within a short time frame, the tablet has become the “go-to” device for internet browsing, business communication, and media manipulation. As tablets become even more affordable and compatible, consumers will have the opportunity to evaluate how their needs match the tablet’s powerful performance.   Tablets in your home One exciting way that tablets are rapidly changing our daily habits is a tablet’s ability to control other synced devices in our homes. One appeal…

Technology is amazing and we all know it. What we may forget or even take for granted is that there was a time around thirty years ago when we needed dozens of different devices to do the things that we do with our current smartphones. As they put it at Gather, “The smartphone that’s currently sitting in your pocket right now is hundreds of times more powerful than the massive computer components that once filled entire rooms.” Now we have to wonder what will fit in our pockets thirty years from today….

Sensitive data has always been a challenge to deliver securely. Even in the days of the Spartans, military commanders would use ingenious encryption techniques to communicate with each other across distances. Today, we have an ongoing battle for data security that pits the brilliant minds of encryption experts with the equally-brilliant hackers trying to get into this database or capture that bit of data. A ton of resources are used on both sides to get the upper hand in the various virtual wars. As this infographic from Visual.ly details, even governments are involved. Special thanks for…

When a product becomes synonymous with the general term for the item itself, it can own the market. To paraphrase Ra’s Al Ghul from Batman Begins, “If you make yourself more than just a tablet, if you devote your circuits to an ideal and if they can’t stop you, you become something else entirely – a legend.” Such is the case with the Apple iPad as it now accounts for 94.64% of all tablet web traffic. It accounted for 2/3rds of the tablets sold in 2011 despite a surge by the Kindle Fire around Christmas. Just like Starbucks, people often interchange the word “iPad” with “tablet” when discussing the mobile…

The dorm rooms that are often the most visited by friends are the ones with a fridge, a Playstation, and a Bose stereo. The gadgets and features of the “lucky” kids in the high-dollar dorms are great but they have nothing on BRAD. Take a few hundred dollars worth of equipment, a good amount of time putting it together, lots of skill and a ton of creativity and you have what Berkeley Engineering freshman Derek Low put together in unit 2, Griffith’s Hall room 402. The innovative approach to automation may have a short life, however. Despite keeping in line with housing standards of using tape rather than…

Less-useful than a laptop, less-awesome than a tablet, the netbook market has suffered the most in the past two years with the rise of the iPad (and other tablets, of course, but really let’s just blame Apple). Keyboards were the last real argument for the netbook over a tablet and most tablets have keyboard attachments that work just fine. With a 34% drop in Q1 2012 versus Q1 2011 marking the 6th consecutive drop for the waning product, can we call them dead, yet? In a press release by Canalys that was punctuated by the announcement that HP regained the top spot in PC sales over Apple by 40,000 units thanks…

Leave it to the brains at MIT to improve something that most of us take for granted: glass. Their “Fog-free glass” is a nano-textured, multifunctional variation that resists fogging, virtually eliminates glare, and self-cleans. In the video below, you see water droplets bouncing off the superhydrophobic surface without leaving a, well, droplet. Imagine the applications on our gadgets and gizmos, not to mention what this can do to the solar power industry that is in desperate need of improve efficiency with their equipment. The rumors of repelling zombies are unconfirmed. Related articles…

Small kids can use them just fine. They are more portable than a laptop, more powerful than a smartphone, and perform nearly every duty that a business person needs (especially when an external keyboard is added, which sort of defeats the purpose of having a tablet, but that’s another debate). Why, then, are more corporations and large businesses not adopting tablets as their primary method of mobile productivity? Why do so many continue to push clunky laptops onto their employees? The answers are numerous. Some companies simply do not trust the cloud, yet. Some still require access to programs…

It’s hard to tell the difference sometimes. At other times, it’s comically easy. Apple and other companies have fallen victim to many counterfeit technology stores and products in China for years, but it seems as if there has been an influx of activity in recent months that’s been making the news. In a land that is growing into its own in pseudo-capitalism but that’s still shrouded by government-induced mystery, it can be extremely lucrative to sell fake merchandise for a little while, knowing that someday it will likely get busted. Until it does, there’s a yuan to make. This graphic from Charlotte…