Tag: Computing

In the never-ending quest to run the PC classic video game Doom on absolutely everything, YouTuber James ‘Ancient’ Brown managed to get the game playing on wearable ring. We’ve come so far. Perhaps too far, but there’s no turning back now.

Because some people firmly believe that bigger is better, self-proclaimed “not experts,” Evan and Katelyn set out to build the world’s largest laptop, a 100-pound behemoth with a 43″ screen. The unit features an oversized keyboard and, just like an actual laptop, can run on batteries.

Inspired by a giant functional keyboard that Razer had on display at the Consumer Electronics Show back in 2018, engineer and keyboard collector Glarses decided to build his own after the computer accessory maker refused to sell him theirs.

Designed and built by computer hardware manufacturer Cooler Master, the Orb X is an immersive gaming pod designed with luxury and comfort in mind. It kind of reminds me of Darth Vader’s meditation chamber, but with less wondering what the heck he does in there for hours at a time.

Because most computing technology is notoriously earth-unfriendly with its inability to be reused or recycled, researchers at the State University of New York at Binghamton have developed circuit boards printed on paper that can be safely disposed of after a single use, either by burning or naturally biodegrading.

Because when it comes to computing, there’s always room for unimprovement, Google Japan has created a 5.4-foot long keyboard with all the keys in a single row. Presumably inspired by the dancing piano keyboard scene from Big, its creators say the keyboard prevents having to look in every direction for the key you need since it can only be left or right and not up or down.

The brainchild of Matthias Werner, the HDD Clicker 2.0 is a tiny computer board that attaches to your solid state drive (SSD) and makes it sound like an old platter-style hard disk drive (HDD). And it doesn’t just make the sounds all willy-nilly either; it only does it when your hard drive is actually reading or writing.

In things I didn’t know I needed and am still not convinced I do, there’s Monitree (monitor + tree), a modular system for growing vining plants around the perimeter of your computer monitor. You know, to liven up your workspace with some greenery.

Typing: a lot of us do it all day long. But what kind of wear and tear does that cause to our hands and arms and neck and shoulders and joints? Mine hurt all the time; I know that.

We’ve featured a Bluetooth-based program that automatically locks Windows PCs when the user walks away. Here’s another approach to automatically locking a computer. While the Bluetooth-based program relied on proximity, Didier Stevens’ program LockIfNotHot works in conjunction with an IR thermometer to detect changes in the surrounding temperature.

The DNA from all of the cells in the human body is 45,000,000,000 miles long. But it seems that if we were digitized, our code would only be a page long, including the detail about our shoes and, uhm, a tattoo on our right leg: Looking at the code, I can see that it has no room for variation save for the gender.

Today’s computer use pro-tip is brought to you by Star Trek. This was made by a commenter on xADAMx‘s blog, after the latter posted the original reminder, which he saw in one of the bathrooms of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

I like high tech stuff that is easy to use and looks sort of like magic. Such is the case with the new Slurp device that turned up today. It’s a squeezy dropper that has some tech gear grafted onto it.

Email has come a long way since its inception. This great infographic from the guys over at The Oatmeal pokes fun at different types of addresses and stereotypes its users. Way back when I started using email daily, it was through a Unix terminal at school.

Recently, the nerds at Google had a minor eureka: not all languages use the same alphabet, and yet a large number of personal computers are equipped with keyboards that feature the Latin alphabet, which is the one used by the English language.

It turns out that Microsoft doesn’t have a monopoly on supersized multitouch goodness  – PQ Labs is hawking their  iTable, aka Multi-touch G³. Contrary to its name, it supports not only OS X, but Windows 2000 through Windows 7 as well.