Out of the 6000 plus fans of the Tom’s Hardware Facebook page, 94% are probably males (this according to the page’s admin, who I know personally). That’s no surprise, but I’d still like to see more women getting into computer hardware. This isn’t another drool-induced rant pleading for hotties to turn into geeks and spice up our socially-challenged online lives, mind you.

Nothing makes a community livelier than diversity, and geek circles desperately need a woman’s touch. So how do we get more women drooling over specs and components? Here’s my five-step plan. Read More – Wanted: More Women into Computer Hardware

A few weeks ago, right until the Black Friday-Cyber Monday retail orgy, Microsoft was selling a 3-pack of Office 2007 Home and Student edition at a discount. Pretty good on the surface, until you ended up on Microsoft’s shopping page, and see that there was an “optional” $10 addition to the final bill.

In any case, three licenses of Office 2007 Home and Student edition are still available at a discount, though at a higher price of $110 (compared to the previous discounted price of $90). That’s a bit below $40 for each license, the only limitation being that the three …read more

No worries, in case you haven’t taken advantage of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday promos recently featured on The Gadget Blog. Those retailers still want to move stock, especially as Christmas nears, so check out what Dell and HP have made available.

While estate planning is a must-do for anyone, especially for rich dudes who want to keep squabbling heirs in line, how many take the same approach with our online profiles? Inevitably, Swedish company My Webwill caters to this need (or “need”, for those who aren’t active online anyway).
There are already various online services that automatically send emails on the behalf of the dearly departed. Yet My Webwill hopes to differentiate itself by asking customers for access to their respective social networking accounts. A Facebook user could have his account deactivated upon his death, for instance.
My Webwill is free, but for …read more

The whole “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place” speech by Google CEO Eric Schmidt continues to have effects. Most recently it pushed Mozilla executive Asa Dotzler to tell Firefox users to ditch Google for Bing, praising the latter for having “a better privacy policy”.

This is big, because Mozilla and Google have had a historically strong relationship. Google has been the default search engine on Mozilla’s Firefox for many years now, and the browser has enjoyed exposure via Google’s push to attract converters from Internet Explorer—at …read more

Before Facebook rolled out its new privacy settings, Mark Zuckenberg promised that it would “create a simpler model for privacy control” and allow users to more control over access to their online profiles. Yet the general consensus is that the new model actually makes it harder to protect your privacy.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has even said the new model is to push Facebook users to share even more personal information with the general public. Much of the information you could previously control access to, such as your list of friends and the pages you are a fan of, is now …read more

Here’s a good attempt to attract viral attention from Epson:
A quick summary for those who can’t watch the video right now: guy gets into jumpsuit, then wears a specially-designed (and most likely heavy) harness that carries a HD-capable Epson projector, a PS3, and loads of batteries. Guy goes around the vicinity, playing games on the a building’s side wall, the road, and even the while floating in the air courtesy of a practice parachuting vertical fan. The video ends with a brief warning not to attempt said stunt in any way, anywhere.
Game played: An unspecified member of the Need for …read more

So want to maintain a nearby stash of your favorite alcholic beverage. But what about inconsiderate co-workers, who consider anything not nailed down freebies? Or what about that ever-watchful boss, ready to fire you at the sight of even the most minor transgression? Sneaking in a sip or two between meetings and long hours of pretending to be busy isn’t a crime, is it?
Enter the secret beer fridge, which hides its true purpose thanks to some simple yet effective DIY ingenuity:

Even better, the secret beer fridge won’t cost you additional time nor money, on top of the price of your …read more

Is this for real? Take a quick look through Google Street View at the corner of 29th street and Park Avenue South in New York City. You’ll see what seems to be a dead guy sprawled on the road, with several individuals looking on. A woman has her hands pressed to her cheeks, expressing shock.

This snapshot of the busy New York intersection has been accessible through Street View feature for quite some time now. From the first sighting to the publication of this post, more than 11 hours have passed. I’ve sent a complaint to Google; let’s see if they …read more

Recent research conducted at the University of California at San Diego has enjoyed the attention of the internet attention gods. According to the university’s report, your average American consumes 34GB of content and a hundred-thousand words a day.

Wondering how your sucky “broadband” connection is able to pull that much information into your computer within the average 11.8 hours of daily consumption? The study went beyond the internet, covering other major channels such as TV, radio, SMS, video games, etc.
Seriously though, if Americans are exposed to so much content on a daily basis, then is it reasonable to assume that a …read more