The US government just love spying on people, but let’s face it, without them we wouldn’t have all those brilliant cold war thrillers to watch over the holidays.  Nobody is safe from the US government’s prying eyes either as even Santa Claus is tracked each and every year by the Pentagon’s North American Aerospace Defence [...]

Though customizing desktop wallpaper is by no means essential, many of us like to do it. Changing the mood of the desktop gives you repose and a personal touch. Windows 7 in particular is known for numerous customization options. This article presents another website which offers abstract wallpaper options to appeal to geeks and non-geeks [...]

In case you missed this story, IBM have been wanting to test the new Natural Language AI engine in their Watson supercomputer, so they arranged for it to appear on US game show Jeopardy.  This particular show was chosen because the nature of the questions means that it’s not a simple case of word recognition, [...]

Fast, faster, instant. It seems that speed is a popular factor nowadays. Youtube Instant is a new third party example how speed can change a service. The developer, Feross, inspired by Google Instant has created a Youtube pendant, sort of. The basic service displays the search and video on the same page. Videos begin to [...]

Ah the good old days. When adventures were hard to crack and players could really die when they made the wrong moves. Sierra On-line was one of the big dogs of adventuring back then, they produced series like Leisure Suit Larry, Kings Quest, Space Quest and heaps of other remarkable games. The games are still [...]

I am going to be doing a series of iPhone related posts for the next few posts. We have people doing interesting things with their iPhones and have more interesting accessories coming out for it now. In the meantime, the first ever worm for the iPhone gives everyone a bit of a scare. Get over [...]

The folks at Mac are at it again. They are offering to give you 6 great Mac apps completely for free. if you were to buy them individually, you would have to pay $154 for them. But in the MacHeist’s NanoBundle, they will be yours for free. Do not lose any time and get over [...]

Good news iPhone lovers and users in general, we finally have apps in the App Store that do things we have always wanted to do with the iPhone. First up, we finally have Marvel Comics titles available on the App store (yay!). Then we have this cool new app that translates your speech as you [...]

The iPhone has been one of the major driving factors behind the exponential growth of Apple in recent times. Their latest financial report for Q3 2009 shows growth that has blown everyone away, including themselves it seems. Despite the soft economy, they have actually managed to remain terrifically bullish and have gained 12% year on [...]

Not a lot of movies are released exclusive to Bittorrent. The American Prince is the latest movie, or shall we call it documentary, that is exclusively distributed this way. What probably makes it even more interesting is the fact that it was produced by well known director Tommy Pallotta who made great movies such as [...]

Do you have a spare sheet of cardboard lying around and are trying to find a use for it? You can turn it into a stand for your laptop. Have a ton of plastic bags lying around? Turn them into a funky bracelet. Think this is weird? Well, these, and other ideas like them are [...]

Vastfm provides an interesting free of charge service that allows users to listen music online; Lots of music to be precise. The website uses mashups to provide their content as their servers are only hosting a few lines of code that power the site. What Vastfm is doing is to pull the selected artist’s discography [...]

How do you buzz on the Internet? One of the most successful ways is a viral marketing campaign. Samsung thought of a great way of promoting their new 256GB MLC Solid State Drives. They decided to create an uber-geeky computer system powered by 24 of their SSDs in Raid mode and show of the video [...]

Whether you are a novice or an intermediate user in the world of Photoshop, everyone can use tutorials. Even if a person is comfortable with the software, tutorials are a great way of introducing oneself to new styles and concepts and pretty much be amazed by what you can create with Photoshop. If you’re looking [...]

Windows Mobile Wallpaper Pack 1 and 2 are collections of wallpapers in the formats 480×640 and 240×320 that have been specifically designed for Windows Mobile devices. Both Windows Mobile Wallpaper Packs are available for download at the Deviant Art profile page of the creator. The downloads have a size of 14.6 and 10.8 Megabytes and [...]

In today’s digital world, pretty much everything is possible online, including creating photo slideshows. And ImageLoop is an online service that helps you do just that. This free service makes slideshow creation a breeze and also provides lots of other services. With ImageLoop, creating a slideshow is very easy. You can either upload a bunch [...]

Like most people, I have a fairly large collection of music in a digital format. The only problem is that very often I get songs that are at different volume levels. This is irksome because then I have situations where one song is really loud and the next one is very soft. To solve this [...]

Every now and then I encounter a website that does not really fit into any category here at Ghacks but is worth promoting. Speakaboo is one of those websites. It is a website for children and parents alike. It offers access to various stories for children which are narrated by professional speakers and animated as [...]

It’s holiday season and while it is the season to spend time with the family and be grateful for your loved ones, it’s also the season for presents. Whether you’ve been naughty or nice, it’s likely that there’s something you really want to get your hands on. Since this is Ghacks, there’s a pretty good [...]

CardFunk should remind everyone of Elf Yourself as it practically uses the same concept for its eCards. A user visiting the page can create an eCard for Christmas. The final product will have up to five dancing characters, music and a personal message. The basic steps are similar to Elf Yourself. You start by picking [...]

I almost decided to create a top x list of the nerdiest screensavers on the planet but decided against it. You get a simple list of some of the nerdiest screensavers around, many compatible to Windows PCs and Macs. Screensavers nowadays are more for showing off than to really save the computer screen. Many users [...]

For mobile phone owners, finding good applications to use can be tiresome. Firstly, you have to ensure that the software is compatible with your particular phone model. In addition, if the application you want is a paid one, you need to scout around to find a suitable freeware alternative. Phoload makes your search for quality [...]

I came across the coolest looking datacenter today, and probably the coolest looking place, bar none, ever built (thanks to Royal Pingdom). It was built by one of Sweedens largest ISP’s as a new high profile datacenter, and yes, it’s under ground, made to look like Dr. Evil’s mountain of extreme doom, with fog machines [...]

How many times have you turned on the TV and thought ‘Hey, I can create better shows than what’s on’? If you’re one of those people with a penchant for creating your own videos, you now have a place to show them off. You can use UStream. Ustream is a live interactive video broadcast platform [...]

After switching from a Samsung 19″ lcd monitor to an HP 24″ monitor I had to start searching for high definition wallpaper websites that would support a monitor resolution of 1920×1200. One good side effect of high resolution wallpapers is that they are also suitable for lower resolution monitors by simply resizing them to the [...]

Tag Galaxy is one of the Flickr Tools that visualizes Flickr image browsing utilizing tags and planetary constellations to show their related tags. A search for night for instance displays the related tags light, sky, dark and city rotating around the central tag. The interesting aspect of this display is that a click on any [...]

Windows Vista Ultimate comes with the Dreamscene extra which can turn videos into background screensavers. Several other applications like VLC offer this options as well. A tip was posted over at Tech Recipes today that mentioned a hidden setting in Windows Vista that makes it possible to use any screensaver as a Windows Vista wallpaper. [...]

Almost everyone owns a laptop these days. And every owner will tell you what a challenge it is to keep the laptop from the bumps and scratches that result when your laptop gets jostled around in the bag. A laptop sleeve is a protective cover for a laptop. It is usually constructed of a thin [...]

I never quite understood why most people shy away from going to a library. After all, 9 times out of 10, the information you are looking for is available at your local library. In fact, libraries have an excellent collection, not only of books but also CDs, DVDs, scientific journals, etc. One common reason people [...]

Anime is a form of Japanese animation that is primarily directed to an older audience. It has a large fan following and some of the shows actually have a pretty well developed storyline. The only downside is that anime is available only a few select television channels. For anime fans who cannot get a fix [...]

YouTube isn’t just for watching videos. A lot of times you can find great music in the form of old songs that aren’t available anywhere else online. Or you come across a fascinating audio track and get tempted to use it elsewhere. Extracting audio from a YouTube video usually requires you to download the video [...]

TV Series Papercraft can be seen as an addition to the Cubeecraft Papercraft series. Papercrafts are little toys that come on paper. They have to be printed, cut out and assembled which is where most of the fun lies. Cubeecraft had some wonderful designs like Iron Man, Stromtroopers, Indiana Jones and as their latest edition [...]

Something interesting for the weekend. If you feel that the usual retail usb sticks are to boring you might want to give designing your own a try. You can do that at the Fabidoo website which not only offers the creation of unique usb sticks but all kinds of like animals or hearts which would [...]

I’m loosely following the technological advances in a few sectors that are not directly related to the topics I write about at Ghacks. This includes advancement in new input technologies like Microsoft’s Surface but also character animation and robotics. Maybe once or twice in a year I come upon something that is so fascinating that [...]

From time to time I read an article on the Internet about a new technology or software that makes me jump up and down and clap my hands at the same time. In other words, a technology that blows me away. This time it is a new method of enhancing video by using photos of [...]

The NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, partnered up with the well respected Internet Archive to provide access to a huge collection of pictures and videos of a total of 21 different collections. The non profit organization will administrate the collection which is expected to go live in the coming week. Lo and Behold the [...]

I only read a couple computer magazines on a regular basis and other magazines only when I have to go to meet a doctor who usually have heaps of them lying around in the waiting room. Still I know lots of people who read magazines, lots of them, on a regular basis. Women really seem [...]

Animated Gifs are mostly a phenomenon of the past and one only comes occasionally upon a website that makes excessive use of them. Those are either websites that have been laid to rest for a very long time by their owner, forums where users post all kinds of images or social community websites like Myspace. [...]

As a tech blogger I am really embarrassed to say I haven’t heard anything of this service before it was rolled into beta today. However, this means I was thrilled this morning to try it. Lively is a social playground made by Google, more in common with SecondLife than any other site, but for my [...]

Google Earth is definitely an application that is fun to play around with. Chance is that you will stumble upon some strange sights sooner or later. Plugins make the discovery process easier and it is surprisingly easy to load and find interesting places using those plugins. They basically provide everyone with an ability to load [...]

The same dude who used the game Wii Sports that shipped with the Nintendo Wii gaming system to reduce his weight and become fitter decided to try it again with the new Nintendo game called Wii Fit. This time though he decided to do keep on living and eating like he did before and include [...]

I was not really sure if we would ever see Vreel, the semi-official successor of Stage 6, go live but apparently the developers did it finally. Vreel’s doors have opened and anyone can join the Open Beta. Vreel, like Stage 6, is based on Divx technology which means that the latest Divx Web Player has [...]

Online services like Flickr and Google’s Picasa are primarily photo-hosting and sharing sites. This means that apart from image files, you can’t really upload any other type of file you choose. Well, all that is about to change. Digital Inspiration has come up with a way to embed or hide an mp3 file within a [...]

For those of you who are new to this, manga is basically the Japanese version of a comic book. Why should manga interest you? Well, for one thing, if you enjoy watching anime, you’d know that most anime series are adapted from their manga forms. This includes hits like Naruto and Bleach, amongst others. The [...]

Big Bug Bunny is the second Open Movie after Elephants Dream and it is really astonishing what a team of dedicated artists can create with a limited budget. The quality of the movie is excellent and on pair with popular Dreamworks creations but unlike those Big Bug Bunny can be freely distributed and is already [...]

I discovered a nice website running a script that can create a CD, and DVD, paper case for you. The most basic version of the CD paper case requires an artist, an title and tracks to be entered before the paper case will be created as an Adobe PDF document that can be printed later [...]

With the much anticipated release of Firefox 3, Mozilla also wants to set a Guiness Record of the “most downloaded software in 24 hours”. I think that is put just plain stupidly, but nevertheless, if you’re a Firefox fan, why not? You can visit the Spread Firefox site and offer your pledge to download Firefox [...]

1000 Kilogram are 1.3 cows, 5.6 female lions or 1 shire horse while 100000 kilogram equal 18 male African elephants and 7.1 Big Bens. The website Sensible Units (via Genbeta) converts boring units like Kilogram, Meters, Miles or Pounds into real world objects. There is obviously no real scientific value behind the calculations but it [...]

Artist Erik Nordenankar had an interesting idea for a self portrait. He would send a GPS device around the world to specified coordinates to draw the largest image the world has ever seen. Well, the largest virtual image the world has ever seen. The GPS tracking device was put into a briefcase and sent away [...]

I discovered two very interesting tech demonstrations at the TechEBlog which I had to post about. The first is a next generation destruction CG tech demonstration that looks ultra realistic. If they could implement something like that in games it would be awesome. “Using particle-based tools, the Extreme Loading technology generates iterative visuals with the [...]