Lifestyle posts

It’s a big day for democracy, albeit all the way over in jolly old England. It’s time for the UK General election, and the world should be paying attention – we need to know the name of the guy who will have his lips pressed to the US President’s buttocks for the next four years. What’s new this time around is the way technology, particularly social media is being used to track and monitor up-to-the-minute news about the election. UK Facebook users should see an ‘I Voted’ button which will add an item to your profile to let people know how you voted. The Guardian newspaper has created a Twitter Mashup Map…

Wade McGilberry is laughing all the way to the bank after winning a million dollars to play a video game. Or, rather, not play it, depending on how you look at it. Developer 2K Sports had offered up a million dollars to the first player who could pitch a perfect game – that is, not allow a single player to make it even to first base – in their latest baseball offering, Major League Baseball 2K10. Upon hearing about the contest, McGilberry’s wife told him to gun it. “She told me, if I was going to be serious about this, that I should stay home [from work] and play the game. I decided to go to work anyway.” Apparently,…

The headline pretty much says it all. Keep reading anyway. It’s true: in a recent study by self-proclaimed ultimate electronics marketplace Retrevo of when it’s okay to answer a text, 10% (yes, TEN PERCENT) of people under 25 declared it perfectly acceptable to text during sex. Think about it. That’s one in ten. And that’s awful. Have we really become this disconnected? Other statistics from the study in the same under-25 demographic cited 49% during eating, and 24% while using the toilet. The toilet one I can understand. After all, it gets kind of lonely during those leg-numbing extended trips…

I’m absolutely speechless. Some truly great things have been made possible in the name of charity, but if there’s five words that should catch the attention of male nerds everywhere, these are they: Star. Wars. Charity. Car. Wash. The video tells the story my keyboard refuses to, but let me try to spell out the scenario. A bunch of “exotic dancers” all dress up as Princess Leia in the golden bikini and wash cars, while stormtroopers and Darth Vader look on. Watch the video. Go. There’s not a whole lot more to say on this one. Enjoy the series of videos, part one, part two, part three, part four and part…

We’re really liking TomTom’s new daft idea: the Darth Vader navigation pack for TomTom! Narrated (as you can see in the video) by the man who provided the voice for Darth Vader, TomTom’s kit gives you the directions you need, all made a little more interesting by his iconic heavy breathing and slightly threatening tone. Better yet, the voice commands are inspired by lines from the original films, Vader may tell you, “Bear left, to the Dark Side,” for example. You also get Star Wars wallpaper, music and sound-effects from the films including the sound of light sabres and TIE fighters along…

How many times have you wished you had a time machine so you could go back and do something a different way? Well, according to the really super-amazing physicist, cosmologist and dreamer, Stephen Hawking, you can…given some simple equipment: Equipment list: A wormhole The Large Hadron Collider or A “rocket that goes really, really fast” Thorough understanding of Einstein’s theory of relativity. We reckon you could probably do with Hawking for advice. These assertions all pop up in Hawking’s latest column for UK newspaper, The Daily Mail. He claims that since time must move faster…

Use your iPhone to monitor your baby remotely. Automatically log your baby’s activity so you gain insight into its sleeping patterns or receive instant notifications when it cries with the app playing a recording your own voice to sooth your child until you arrive. So, I’m a geek, my wife’s a geek and we’re engaged in bringing up a new generation of geeks, and that’s why we’re really pleased to have come across this really rather useful Baby Monitor and Alarm app for the iPhone. What it does? It does it all, really. It will monitor noise in the room of your sleeping child and send an SMS message…

If you’re one of those new million iPad owners then you need to know about Dropbox for iPad. This free app is the missing link if you want to use your iPad for some light business. It works with the online Dropbox service, which offers you 2.2GB of free online storage. That storage syncs with your Mac or PC’s Home directory – where all your data sits – so you get access to all your most important files from wherever you happen to be. Dropbox on the iPad/iPhone/iPod touch lets you access those files. Better, if you have the right app it lets you open and work on those files. You can open a PowerPoint presentation…

You know how medical advances always sound really obscure and weird? As in: “this new combination of tetrahydrozolene benzoate wrapped up with cow RNA and caterpillar mitochondria may make you itch less in the evenings”? Well, how about we keep it real and simple with something like “Pixie Dust”. Because apparently, that’s the name informally given to a substance that helps to save limbs from amputation. No-one is quite sure how it works yet, but it’s made from pig bladder, and something about the material in pig bladder encourages large sections of human tissue to regrow – very quickly, too….

These days, we hear a lot about the future of books and reading and how technology is changing the written word. A lot of people, it seems, are worried about what’s coming for reading, especially when it comes to kids. Well, the fine folks at McSweeny’s are looking to do something about that with a very cool new project. On the surface, A Clock Without a Face seems like a normal storybook: it’s about a clock that has jeweled numbers that get stolen, and the story contains clues as to where those emerald-studded numbers are buried. The twist? Those numbers are actually buried in places around the United…