Category: Interfaces

OnLive – Cloud Gaming for the Masses

As services in the cloud continue to proliferate it was only a matter of time before ground was broken with respect to gaming. OnLive has released its MicroConsole TV Adapter (a little box around the size of a thick smartphone) which provides wireless connectivity for up to four controllers as well as Bluetooth headsets, two …

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Turn Your USB Drive into a Bootable Windows Medium

If you have a netbook or a more sizeable notebook that does not come with an optical drive you may find yourself in a quandary when attempting to reinstall Windows from scratch. When I bought my netbook it came with Windows XP which made me feel like crying until I worked out how to put Windows 7 …

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Free Your Android Device of the USB Cable with SwiFTP

Here’s a quick tip for those who are prone to losing, misplacing or hate using cables. There’s a great app called SwiFTP (a contracted form of “Swift FTP”) which basically install a compact FTP server on your phone.  Then you can connect to it using your favourite FTP client (such as FileZilla) and drag and …

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Tethering – Should it be a Fundamental Feature in Smartphones?

Tethering with mobile phones has been around for a while although back in the early days of GPRS it was often worse than dial up (not to mention an order of magnitude more expensive). These days with USB, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity it seems odd that some smartphones have been slow to allow users the …

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Samsung Galaxy S – Why Download and Recovery Modes Are Missing

I’ve had some time on my hands the last couple of days due to the flu so I thought I would put some of that time toward working out why the download and recovery modes are seemingly disabled in some Samsung Galaxy S units around the globe. It’s been established that the download and recovery …

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Windows Home Server V2 Beta Available

Just a quick one this evening. For those of you who are interested, Windows Home Server “Vail” (for home or home office use) and “Aurora” (for small business use) have been released on Microsoft Connect. What has really got me excited are some of the new features, specifically: the ability to natively backup MacOS X …

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1Gbps NBN – No Surprise

In an announcement today by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, it was spruiked that the NBN would be capable of achieving speeds of up to 1Gbps. This is up by a factor of ten over the 100Mbps speeds originally promised by the Government. What should come as no surprise is that fibre has incredible capacity for …

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Use Your Mobile as a Modem and Save Money

Some of us are regular users of mobile broadband services and normally rely on a mobile broadband modem of some description to get an internet connection whilst we are on the move or away from home. Dialup access once reigned supreme for mobility and availability but mobile broadband has pretty much put it to rest. …

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The Days of HDMI may be Numbered – All Hail HDBaseT!

As part of my daily browsing, I came across an interesting article regarding HDMI and a new proposed standard with the moniker of “HDBaseT”. The networking gurus amongst us would know that we already have 10BASE-T (10Mbps Ethernet over twisted pair), 100BASE-T (100Mbps Fast Ethernet) and 1000BASE-T (1Gbps Ethernet). Given those standards and naming conventions, …

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Keys are a Nuisance – Smart Entry FTW!

Prius Smart Key

On the weekend, the missus and I were on the Gold Coast briefly and required a rental car to get us around. We ended up with a Toyota Camry (sadly not the hybrid model) which isn’t a bad car. Whilst not difficult to drive, I did find myself falling into the regular habits of driving …

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