I hate carrying paper and I’d much prefer to scan and email documents rather than fax them. So, when I heard about Plustek’s new OpticSlim M12 Plus scanner, I was pumped. I own a flatbed scanner but placing one page at a time is such a pain that I often end up faxing documents to [...]

Adobe Photoshop has long been the defacto standard for professional photographers and serious amateurs alike. Adobe recently released Photoshop CS4, and it includes some great new features. For most users, the best way to make image adjustments in Photoshop is to use layers so that the adjustments are non-destructive. Photoshop CS4 makes that process faster [...]

Call it a ‘Web 2.Oh, no…’ application. PMSBuddy.com is a Web site where men can register to have reminder e-mails sent to them, warning of the onset of their beloved partner’s monthly difficult days. The site was created by 28-year-old Jordan Eisenberg, an Aussie who got tired of his married and attached buddies complaining about [...]

Before I discovered Lightroom I opened every image in Photoshop, closed the ones I didn’t like, and adjusted the ones I did. I got pretty good at it and I had macros to do things like create jpegs for use on the Web. Lightroom changed all that and introduced me to a much faster and [...]

Have you ever suspected that your uber-tech friends and loved ones were speaking a whole different language? You were right. It’s called Binary and it’s the universal machine-level language of programming and network operations. Now, you can amaze your tech friends (and confound innocent bystanders) by addressing them in their native tongue, thanks to the [...]

Many of our readers will have seen the viral video that circulated wide last ear which supposedly caught, on a surveillance camera, a lone office worker slaving late in his cubicle going off the deep end in a fit of tech rage. While experts contend that the video was probably apocryphal, anyone who works with [...]

High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDRI) techniques can be used to create spectacular photos.  However it can also be complicated and frustrating for the newcomer to the field. Practical HDRI by Jack Howard is a wonderful guide to the world of HDRI.  The 168 page soft-cover book beings with a discussion of equipment, ranging from what [...]

A few weeks about I wrote about the winter blues and seasonal affective disorder, along with some new products from Philips Home Healthcare Solutions (formerly Apollo Health). One of the products they were kind enough to send me to try out is the Daybreak Duo, an clock radio that features a sunrise and sunset simulator. [...]

Here’s a Web site every parent will want to bookmark. Amaze your kids with the ability to communicate with them in their own language! Here’s an example… English: “Supper is at six. Be there or be hungry.” TXTR: “SUPER SI AT SIX!!!11 LOL B THEIR OR B HUNGRY !1!!!!1!! OMG” See? Inventor Lucas Longley writes: [...]

Here’s a Web page all women should visit at least once. A Girl’s Guide to Geek Guys is an indispensable reference for any woman who must live or work with severely technically-minded men. But there’s a definite emphasis on romance… Why date a Geek Guy? Page authors Mikki Halpin and Victoria Maat insist that — [...]

The VideoMate Vista U890F from Compro is an analog TV and FM radio receiver in a USB 2.0 stick form factor. It includes a flexible wire antenna, a Microsoft-certified Vista/MCE remote control, a composite/s-video input cable, and a USB extension cable for those times when plugging the approximately 3 1/2 in. stick directly into your [...]

A while back, I read about the Eye-Fi, an SD memory card with built-in 802.11 wireless networking capability. I admit being skeptical — WiFi inside an SD memory card? So I contacted the folks at Eye-Fi and they were kind enough to send over a 2 GB Eye-Fi card for me to try out. The [...]