“I have a lot of couples coming to me about issues that cause tension in their relationships — of course, finances and job stress are the usual suspects, but I am also hearing more concern about computers and technology being a source of tension. It is clear that we need to reconcile how and when we are using computers and get a better gauge on their impact on our personal relationships,” says Dr. John Gray, relationship expert and author of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. The problem that Dr. Gray is talking about is a widespread one. Forty-five percent of males and 37 percent of females agree…

Arguably the most important and undervalued component of computer hardware is the fan. We often take it for granted until it stops working and the computer overheats – then we know all about the condition of the fan. This may be the solution in the very near future. Sandia Cooler is 30-times more efficient than conventional air-cooling, giving it a quiet (nearly silent) ability to keep dust off and processors cooled down. Check it out: …

The term “ancient” is relative and unfortunately I can remember using many of the machines in this video, but compared to what we have today, the various equipment used here are “older than the internet,” so to speak. It makes the end result, an equipment-generated variation of “House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals, even more epic. According to creator bd594, “My last couple of videos I built a couple of robot bands (yeah! machines that play actual instruments). These videos didn’t fair as well so I decided to go back to the basics and create a video staring my trusty old HP Scanner and a scrappy old…

It proved that it could beat the best Jeopardy! champions in the world at their own game. Now, IBM’s Watson will try to help doctors make better medical decisions for their patients. WellPoint, Inc. and IBM announced an agreement today to develop and launch Watson-based medical solutions. It will be the first commercial applications of the IBM Watson technology. The program, which is scheduled to roll out next year, will begin by assisting nurses who manage complex patient cases. It will help the insurer to review treatment requests from medical providers. Stage two will put the technology…

When Mark Dean, CTO of IBM Middle East and Africa, declared this morning that we are in the “Post-PC Era”, a tinge of frustration and anger popped up in me. Items that are used daily in millions of households across the world don’t simply die. I was annoyed when IBM CEO Lou Gerstner declared that “The PC is dead” in 1999. I was annoyed when they made the same claim in 2005 when they sold their personal computing division to Lenova. I was annoyed this morning when I read it again. Then, I realized something: they may be right this time. The younger generations Y and Z – 10-30 years old or whatever those boundaries…

You don’t make it to a billion-dollar blunder without making a few mistakes along the way, or so should be the motto of the day for Intel. The world’s largest chip maker has distributed roughly 8 million faulty Cougar Point chips, and the cost to fix this mess: one billion dollars. The problem is that the Cougar Point SATA chips (the ones that transfer information back and forth to your hard drives) are faulty — more specifically the 3Gbps controllers are experiencing the issues. There is a slight chance that they could fail, and that is what all the fuss is about. However, it isn’t as bad as it might…

Check this out. As you may or may not have already hit play, you may or may not already know that this is Watson, a computer by IBM that they’ve dubbed a ‘question answering system’. As horrifyingly uninteresting as that sounds, this is the closest I’ve come to a sense of ‘awe’ at the communication skills of a computer. Yeah, all Watson does is answer questions – he probably isn’t one for small talk. But the cool thing here is that Watson does it by interpreting natural language. How many computers do you know that are bad enough dudes to do that? Probably less than one. Slang, colloquialisms, and conversational…

In this day and age, it’s often all too easy to complain about the problems plaguing social networking sites, overpriced computers, and the lack of viable applications available amongst various smartphones. It’s important, however, to remember where we came from and acknowledge how far technology has come. Before you throw your keyboard at the wall after your next Firefox crash, take a deep breath and try to imagine a time before browsers even existed… a time before websites existed. Allow us to take you on a stroll down memory lane and put it all in perspective. 1. Computers Given the variety…

We have bestowed technology with the task of improving our lives, and as technology becomes more intertwined with our lives, it becomes a danger to mankind as well. So what happens when technology fails us? Could technology really result in the end of all humanity? If you’ve watched a few Hollywood flicks lately, it might not be too difficult to envision. A popular theme focuses on highlighting the consequences of technology, usually having technology posing all of humanity with a serious problem while our hero is tasked with saving all of us from extinction. But even though Hollywood tends to…

A USB stick that shows you what’s on it, without having to actually plug it into your computer? Yes please! They were really thinking of convenience when they came up with the idea for this. It’s really simple: the pink area shows images, the blue represents documents and green is for movies and other multimedia files. The colors fill up the space in proportion to how much is actually stored so you’ll be able to tell what’s taking up the most room and where there’s extra space to add files. The design for this new USB stick is just a prototype at the moment but it will hopefully be on the market soon. You’d…