The 2009 Symantec Online Living report is out and provides some interesting statistics on worldwide Internet use. Among the key findings: 92 per cent of Netizens use email to communicate with friends and family. 42 per cent use Web cams. 50 per cent of adults use social networking . 70 per cent access photos online […]

Did you know that, when batteries ‘go dead’ in your your favourite portable devices they’re not really, totally dead? They’re just too pooped to participate in that particular activity anymore. The truth is, there’s usually some power left in every ‘dead’ battery. So, how do we get the rest of the power out and put […]

A legendary German mathematician was recently billed, at his home address in Berlin, by GEZ, the German state agency that collects television license fees. That would not be noteworthy in any way, except for the fact that Adam Ries bought the house in 1525 and died in 1559, centuries before television was even invented. It […]

Researchers at the University of Southern Mississippi have invented a new breed of polyester coating that they claim heals itself with no effort or added material. All it needs is an hour in the sunshine. Scientists Mark Urban and Biswajit Ghosh claim, in their recent paper published in the journal Science, that the coating would […]

The Flybar is, essentially, a souped-up pogo stick that lets the daredevil rider perform tricks heretofore possible only on a skate or snowboard under ideal conditions. The thing will reportedly jump over a compact car, providing enough ‘air time’ to perform flips, somersaults and other previously unthinkable stunts. Users have likened the experience to using […]

Remember when batteries weren’t rechargeable at all? Some still aren’t but, increasingly, we’re relying on rechargeable cells of all sorts to power our increasingly popular portable devices. Remember when it took overnight to recharge your NiCad batteries? Then, several hours to recharge your Lithium ion batteries? Now, many cell phone batteries recharge in an hour […]

California State Assemblyman Joel Anderson has introduced a bill to limit the amount of detail users can see in images provided by online mapping tools. Bill AB-225 also calls for fines of up to (US)$250,000 per day for violators. The key provisions of the bill state: An operator of a commercial Internet Web site or […]

Google AdSense recently launched the ‘next thing’ in interactive online advertising. And it’s creating quite a stir, both among Web publishers and their visitors. Not content to serve up ads keyed to the content on a given Web page, Google has hatched a scheme to spy on surfers who visit any and all Google AdSense-enabled […]

It was 20 years ago today — March 13, 1989 — that Tim Berners-Lee published his now historic document, Information Management: A Proposal, which became the foundation of Internet technology. But it was the mid 1990s before the Internet started to catch the attention and imagination of the masses. And, in 1989, Berners-Lee was very […]

The new iPod Shuffle, launched this week, is even smaller than its predecessor and holds even more songs, Apple says. A new VoiceOver feature lets the Shuffle speak your song titles, artists and playlist names to you. The third generation Shuffle is ‘significantly smaller’ than a standard AA battery, holds up to 1,000 songs and is […]

Industry observers, Apple fans and gadget-space bloggers can’t agree on what Apple’s next iDevice will be. But they seem to have reached a concensus that it won’t be a netbook. The MacBook Air seems to fill that bill, functionally, albeit at a price somewhat above the notional netbook cieling of (US)$400. In fact, the Air […]

Already fed up with pre-roll ads that want you to view a full-screen movie before letting you proceed to the Web page you requested? Hate those ads that expand to cover the content you want to read when you happen to mouse over them? Wait until you see what the major Web advertisers have in […]