General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article

Super Fans: 89 Technology Inspired Tattoos

Posted: 28 Jun 2011 05:25 PM PDT

It's easy to forget that not that long ago, tattoos were only seen on metal-heads, bikers, hoodlums, convicts and sailors. Sporting ink was an easily identifiable symbol of an outcast, a black sheep, a pariah of society... much like a computer nerd, sci-fi geek or early gamer, actually. Maybe that's why there's so much overlap now between the two groups: both identify themselves as slightly outside the norms of society, or have been seen by others as different from the rest.

However, given the current ubiquitous nature of tattoos - and the ever-increasing visibility of gamers, PC culture, sci-fi sitcoms and the like - it's probably no surprise that members of our own computer-loving community are choosing to demonstrate their fandom using more permanent methods. As the most-heavily tattooed member of the Maximum PC (and Maximum Tech) staff, I tasked myself with finding the best examples of the intersection between tattoo-enthusiasts and PC-lovers. Check out the best technology-related tattoos below, and feel free to share your thoughts (or your own tech tats) in the comments!

worst

Worst... or Best?

Thermaltake Shock One Gaming Headset Review

Posted: 28 Jun 2011 03:22 PM PDT

A solid all-rounder from a newcomer to the field

It seems like these days it's just not enough to master the Case-Heatsink-Power supply trifecta of PC parts. In the past couple years we've seen Corsair, Cooler Master, and now Thermaltake diversifying their hardware portfolios with gaming mice, keyboards, and headsets. The Thermaltake Shock One is the flagship of the new Tt eSports line of gaming headsets, and we got a chance to take it for a spin.

The Shock One is, first and foremost, a well-built headset. None of the materials—from the plastic mesh on the earcups to the cushy faux-leather padding to the metal-reinforced headband—feel cheap, and the whole set has a substantial heft to it. It looks nice, too, with glowing insignias on the sides, and slick black and red plastic across the front and top. Heavy-duty hinges above each earcup allow the entire set to fold up, for easy storage.

The Shock One are better suited to those with bigger noggins.

The set doesn't fall short in comfort, either. The earcups are sort of an unusual trapezoid shape, but they're big and well-padded and comfortable for long gaming sessions. The whole thing is a bit on the large side—great for those of us gifted with ample craniums, but maybe not the right pick for people on the lower end of the head-size spectrum.

The Shock One is a USB headset, and offers simulated 5.1 DTS surround sound. It's ready to plug-and-play out of the box, but installing the included software gives you control over the headset's simulated environments, equalizer and surround sound settings. In terms of directionality, the DTS Virtual 5.1 beats the pants off of any analogue headset, but falls a bit short of the Corsair HS1, which is comparable in price and uses Dolby Digital technology.

The set's 40mm drivers are, in a word, capable. The sound isn't going to blow you away, but the bass response, mids and highs are all perfectly serviceable, and you won't be left wanting while play games, listening to music, or watching a movie. One gaffe: The Shock One's leatherette ear cushions absorb some of the sound, leaving the set sounding a bit muddy. Replacement fabric cushions are included in the box, and sound substantially better, but leave us in the unfortunate position of choosing between good sound and superior comfort.

www.thermaltake.com, $95

Asus P8Z68-V Pro Review

Posted: 28 Jun 2011 02:59 PM PDT

New Z68 chipset makes big improvements over P67

When is a chipset truly a new chipset? That's a question that many PC enthusiasts will ponder when they see the specs for Intel's Z68 chipset, which is at the heart of the Asus P8Z68-V Pro board.

For one thing, there's no native USB 3.0, no additional PCI-E lanes (which are tied to the CPU anyway), and still the paltry two SATA 6Gb/s ports that Intel included with the original P67 chipset's PCH chip. If these negatives are enough to make you skip the rest of this review, know that you're making a big mistake.

The Intel Z68 chipset in the Asus P8Z68-V Pro brings SSD caching and virtual graphics to Sandy Bridge.

That's because the Z68 chipset in the P8Z68-V Pro offers several major advances over the P67: the ability to overclock the processor graphics in the Sandy Bridge CPU; Identity Protection Technology, which is essentially a hardware token integrated into the chipset and CPU; Smart Response Technology for SSD caching; and the ability to switch between the discrete and integrated graphics.

Of these four features, the biggest impact will come from the Smart Response Technology. SRT lets you use a relatively small, low-cost SSD to give your hard drive "SSD-like" performance. Intel actually claims around a 4x improvement with SRT over an HDD alone.

On the graphics side, the P8Z68-V Pro board bundles LucidLogix's Virtu software, which lets you "switch" graphics modes. There are two modes available in Virtu on the P8Z68-V Pro: i-mode and d-mode. I-mode lets you plug your monitor into the integrated graphics port on the board. Most of your chores will run off the processor graphics, but kick on a game and the discrete GPU takes over. It actually works, but i-mode doesn't support SLI. And the main reason to run it, power savings, isn't hugely material as the GPU doesn't actually turn off. You'll also have to wait for profiles from LucidLogix for new games support. Another weakness of the feature is lack of support for dual-link DVI, so you can rule out 30-inch, high-res panels. Most people, however, will use d-mode, which runs off the discrete GPU. This mode lets you access the Intel Quick Sync video encoding technology in the CPU. In our encoding tests, we found Quick Sync to run roughly 30 percent faster than the mighty GeForce GTX 580 when encoding video using CyberLink's MediaEspresso 6.5. Zow!

The integrated DVI port can be used in combination with your discrete card, but lacks dual-link DVI support.

The board itself is a near replica of the P67-based P8P67 Pro board in layout, SATA ports, and slots. With the PCI-E and memory controller integrated into the CPU and the exact same PCH as the P67 chipset, performance between the P8P67 Pro or Deluxe and the P8Z68-V Pro is a wash. That is, until you factor in the SRT SSD caching, which is a big boost for folks who intend to primarily run a hard drive. If you look at the benchmark charts you can see the impact of SRT, which also felt faster in general use than a hard drive alone.

The best performance will always come from running the SSD as your primary disk, but then you are limited by size and are always managing your data between the SSD and HDD. With SRT, you have all the spatial freedom of a fast 3TB drive with much of the performance of an SSD. One thing to note: The Maximized mode gives you the best write performance, but you run the risk of data loss should your system lose power or blue-screen suddenly during a large write. Enhanced mode is safer, but your fastest write is at the speed of the hard drive.

So what do we think of the P8Z68-V Pro board? We probably would not upgrade to it if we were running a P67. We view SRT and the Quick Sync access as valuable, but not quite worth the hassle of an upgrade. But this board is the clear choice if you're building a new mainstream PC.

$210, www.asus.com

MySpace Could be Sold This Week for $30 Million

Posted: 28 Jun 2011 02:53 PM PDT

saleWe might finally be nearing the end of a grueling MySpace sale. News Corp started entertaining take over bids months ago, but no one wanted to pay the $100 million asking price for the faltering social network. As with all things, the true value of MySpace may have found its equilibrium at a rumored price of $30 million. The buyer is said to be a company you've never heard of, and likely won't remember tomorrow.

News Corp bought MySpace when it was thriving in 2005 for a massive $580 million. It was all downhill from there as Facebook, and even Twitter took up the mantle of the social web. Even the huge loss a $100 million sale would generate wasn't enough to unload this property.  At $30 million, News Corp may have found a friend in Specific Media or Golden Gate Capital. Rumors indicate a Thursday deal is being hammered out with one of these suitors so as to get in before the end of the fiscal year.

News Corp is expected to take the axe to their MySpace workforce yet again in preparation for the sale. Some reports have as much as 50% of the remaining staff being cut to appease the buyers. After the deal is done, we wouldn't be surprised to see even more employees shown the door. 

Both front-runners in the acquisition discussions are expected to refocus MySpace on music. Do you think MySpace has any kind of future?

Google Launches Google+ Social Network

Posted: 28 Jun 2011 02:36 PM PDT

gpGoogle's Facebook killer has arrived, and it is called Google+. The limited beta product is currently invite only, so don't expect it to have the same massive social graph as Facebook does right now (if you can even get in). But Google has included some interesting features to help people share content. Google+ actually seems to be a few different products all rolled into one.

Instead of one big friends list, Google+ encourages users to organize people into groups called Circles that can receive personalized updates. This system may help avoid the unpleasantness of accidentally sharing too much with family or work acquaintances. Within Google+, Sparks are basically status updates. When you share content with a Spark, different Circles can be included, or excluded.

Google's video chat platform has been integrated with this new social service as well. Google calls this feature Hangouts. This is essentially a group video chat room that your friends can join and well, hangout in. As expected, there is also a lot of mobile integration. Android users have and app that includes a group messaging service called Huddle, automatic picture backup to Google+, and access to all the Google + desktop features.

This is probably Google's last real shot at social. If this all out effort goes down in flames, the search giant might have to accept that the social web is out of reach. Still, we're intrigued by what we've seen.

Where It All Began: The 10 Original Software Companies

Posted: 28 Jun 2011 12:47 PM PDT

In compiling a list of the world's oldest software companies, one comes face to face with an inevitable question. Namely, what is it? What the heck is this thing we call "software?"

We searched the darkest corners of our brains and perused the online dictionaries for quickie text bytes and never really could come up with a single, all-purpose answer. Is it the overtly simplistic "Anything that is not hardware but is used with hardware" or the seemingly too limiting "The programs used to direct the operations of a computer?" How about this metaphysical beauty: "Unlike hardware, software can't be touched." Ouch. That makes our heads hurt.

While it's easy to say that Windows or Office or even the wanton dismemberment of Dead Space 2 are obvious examples of software, where does one draw the line? Did software, for instance, exist before the advent of computers? In our minds, it did. Though the concept of altering the performance of mechanisms by feeding them independent sets of instructions has clearly become rampant in the computer age, it in fact started long before that – the early 18th century, to be exact. And that is precisely where we'll start our journey.

Please remember as you read that software – and for that matter, computers – were with us long before the desktop PCs that so radically changed everything. Moreover, just because Joe Blow in some dungeon in Joe Blow Land cranked out a few lines of code before one of the key players, we've elected for the purposes of this article to ignore Joe and highlight instead those companies that history will see as having made a serious impact. Ergo, our countdown may seem a bit scattered. It isn't. It's perfect.

Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation (CTR)

To accurately discuss one of the most important companies in the development of early computing, one needs to discuss its most important contribution, the punch card. And to accurately discuss the punch card, one must transport oneself all the way back to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

As any history buff will tell you, the invention of the textile loom in the early 17th century – which permitted the mass-manufacture of clothing – was a critical moment in the history of modern man. So when two French dudes, Basile Bouchon and Jean-Baptiste Falcon, added perforated paper rolls to the equation, thus allowing one person to output a variety of goods without enlisting assistants, it was a Very Big Deal that is today considered by many to be the birth of software.

   

In time, the punch card concept was used with a variety of machines. But it was a fellow by the name of Herman Hollerith (above, left) who pioneered the idea of recording data on a punch card that would then be read by a machine. The US government liked the idea enough to use it in its 1890 census, the first-ever census to be machine tabulated.

In 1911, Hollerith's burgeoning enterprise, Tabulating Machine Company, was one of four businesses that merged to form Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation (CTR). Though the new company's reign under the CTR moniker was brief – just 13 years – it was eminently notable not just for its punch cards but also for the fact that in 1924 it was renamed into something just slightly more familiar – IBM.

IBM

Think IBM and you may think hardware and mainframes. And rightfully so. But you need only look at its birth to see it flaunted a not insignificant software component right from the start.

As we documented earlier, it was a merger between four companies that formed Computer Tabulating Recording Company (CTR), the predecessor of IBM, exactly one hundred years ago. Of these four concerns, two were of the software ilk. Granted, we're talking primitive software, but software nonetheless.

  

First, and as we've already discussed, there was Herman Hollerith's Tabulating Machine Company. But we can't forget International Time Recording Company, a business founded in 1888 on the principle that a tardy employee was a bad employee. ITRC pioneered the notion of the employee time clock – and of course the associated "time cards" – a concept that would ultimately be a mainstay throughout industry for much of the following century.

IBM's done a ton of stuff since then and had its fingers in virtually any pies it could find as it built itself into one of the world's premier corporate goliaths. Yet software has always played a role.

Developed in the 1950s, FORTRAN has been at the FORefront of high-level programming languages ever since. COBOL, also developed in the rock and roll 50s, remains a standard language for business apps. And of course there's Lotus Development Corporation and its Lotus Software, acquired by IBM in a hostile takeover in the mid-90s. IBM. Big Blue. Big software.

Computer Usage Company

Back in the day ("the day" meaning pre-Beatles, when the number of computers worldwide was just a few thousand) the term "software" wasn't even on the radar and the coding that ran the beastly machines was developed either by the company that built the computer – which at the time were each about the size of a school bus – or by the users themselves.

Two ex-IBM workers, Elmer Kubie and John Sheldon, had a plan to change all that. Veterans of the IBM Technical Computing Bureau in New York, Kubie and Sheldon saw a need for independent software providers and in 1955 formed a business they would call, inventively enough, Computer Usage Company (CUC).

In time, CUC would build programs that simulated the flow of oil (for the California Research Corporation) and tracked election results (for the CBS television network). It "had business" with the US Navy, and developed a compiler – a program that translates source code into object code – for the Federal Aviation Administration.

In 1967, as Hendrix performed at Monterey and two years before man walked on the moon, CUC sported a staff of 700 and revenues in excess of $13 million. Twenty years later, in the midst of a rapidly changing industry - and likely because of it - the company was Chapter 7. But not before staking claim to being the first independent computer software developer. Ever.

Computer Sciences Corporation

Any company that's survived more than 50 years must be doing something right.

In 1959, a bright young IBM programmer by the name of Roy Nutt (below, left), a key player in the development of IBM's groundbreaking FORTRAN programming language, banded together with marketing specialist Fletcher Jones (below, right) to found Computer Sciences Corporation. Legend says the total investment of both men was a mere $100.

   

Today, Nutt and Fletcher have sadly gone to the great mainframe in the sky, yet CSC annual revenues regularly hit the $15 billion mark and the company employs more than 91,000 people in 90 countries. In between, CSC pioneered early software development, defeated rival CUC (see above) at its own game, became the largest software concern in the United States in 1963, and has counted among its customers such trifling outfits as NASA, the federal government, and AT&T.

All of this from a business most people may not even know, and one that certainly hasn't produced any software at any time that's become a household name. Which proves you don't need to be a household name to do a good job and make one heck of a lot of money.

MSC Software

In May of 1962, President John F Kennedy predicted America would by the end of the decade place a man on the moon. Just a year and a half later, the world had lost one of its great leaders. Yet there was no shortage of folks ready to keep Kennedy's grand dream alive over the course of the next six years.

 

Certainly MSC Software was in there doing its share. Debuting in 1963 as MacNeal-Schwendler Corporation, the company specialized from the start in structural analysis, developing software for pre-PC computers that simulated the functionality of complex engineering designs. Its first product, SADSAM (Structural Analysis by Digital Simulation of Analog Methods), was designed specifically for the aerospace industry, and by 1965, MSC was involved heavily with NASA.

Today, MSC Software employs 1200 people over 23 countries and says it can count virtually every OEM manufacturer in the world as an MSC customer.

 

 

Applied Data Systems Inc.

The early 1960s - 1963 in particular - was an instrumental time in the up-and-coming software world. We've already referenced several other companies that either began life or began to flourish during this era, decades before the concept of home computing had even been concocted, and we can now add another. Founded in San Francisco in 1963 and incorporated one year later, it was called Applied Data Systems Inc. (ADSI) and it lays claim to being "one of the oldest established, independent software companies in the world."

By 1967, ADSI was big news. Big enough that on June 21st of that year, it was featured on the front page of what would eventually become an industry media staple – Computerworld. There, in bold headlines, we see, "COBOL, RPG Bested By New Language?"

What the heck were they talking about? Well, it seems ADSI, under the leadership of one Peter Harris – who himself had turned down an earlier offer from fellow ex-IBM buddy Peter Nutt over at the newly formed Computer Sciences Corporation – had been slaving on a new programming language dubbed ADPAC. ADPAC, claimed ADSI, was far superior to IBM's much ballyhooed COBOL language (according to Harris, "The world thought COBOL was just terrible") and ADSI was out to prove it.

ADPAC was ultimately successful but not as successful as Harris felt it should have been – a situation he blames on IBM scooping all the juicy government contracts. Today, ADSI, now renamed ADPAC after its original programming language, continues to deliver mainframe solutions to those who need them.

Cincom Systems

Today, Cincom Systems proudly proclaims on its very own website that "The history of the software industry really follows the history of Cincom." And you know, they're not that far off the mark.

Founded in 1968, the same year we saw the television debuts of Hawaii 5-O and Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, Cincom was at the outset unique from the rest of our Top Ten. You see, it did not make software. Nevertheless, we feature it here. Why? Because Cincom recognized, long before the vast majority of people both inside and outside the industry, that software would one day be an entirely separate entity. Ultimately, its contribution was arguably just as key to the maturation of the industry.

Selling software in 1968? At a time when the mere suggestion of computers was enough to make most of us shake our heads and verbally question the sanity of anyone even thinking such weirdness? Why, yes, that's exactly what Cincom did.

Granted, the road wasn't easy. With a $600 investment and an office that consisted of a card table in the home of co-founder Thomas Nies, Cincom ran rather lean at the start, promoting the soon to be trendy idea of database management and selling one such system, named "TOTAL." But the years were kind to Cincom and less than a decade later its offices were found in such faraway spots as Japan, Belgium, and Australia.

   
The only constant in the computer industry is, apparently, Tom Nies' facial expression.

Today, with Nies still running the ship, Cincom is a multinational giant. That its point man is featured in the Smithsonian Institute's Computer History Collection is the icing on the cake.

Nintendo

By strict chronological definition not one of the world's first software developers, Nintendo Company is nevertheless a positively ancient entity by any standards – beginning life as Japanese playing card manufacturer Nintendo Koppai way back in 1887 – and is certainly one of the first businesses to jump aboard and drive the arcade and home video gaming bandwagon.

Now worth somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 billion dollars (what's a few billion between friends?), owner of Major League Baseball's Seattle Mariners, and creator of such classic – some might say irritating – video gaming icons such as Mario and Donkey Kong, Nintendo was far less affluent and far less prestigious when it made the switch in the mid-70s from toys and other less successful ventures to electronic games.

Even then Nintendo's primary interest seemed to lie in entire game systems, and soon it had become the Japanese distributor of one of the very first home gaming consoles, the Magnavox Odyssey. The "Color TV Game" series of consoles followed soon thereafter, but by the early 80s Nintendo had begun to carve a historical niche by shipping all-time software favorites such as the aforementioned Kong and Mario on both home-brewed and third-party systems.

   

It can be argued that Nintendo's biggest claims to fame are its full-on systems, but the company also delivered plenty of software to go along with the hardware. In the end, Nintendo's two-pronged attack helped shape the home gaming industry.

Microsoft

Microsoft is by no means one of the world's first software companies. But we simply can't keep harping on about programming languages, mainframes, and punch cards when most people consider software to be the programs we as end users load on our personal computers. Thusly, we're compelled to discuss the Redmond, Washington giant simply because its founders, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, are generally acknowledged as being not just the first people to accurately forecast that software as opposed to hardware was the way of the future, but to also successfully act on it.

And act on it they did. Though there was no shortage of entrepreneurs who seemingly saw the writing on the wall and entered the PC software game in its formative stages (such as Digital Research's Gary Kildall, the creator of the wrongly short-lived CP/M operating system), Gates and company finagled and stepped on a few shoes (most notably Kindall's) and took it to the max, writing a programming language for the primitive yet seminal Altair 8000 in 1975, developing first the Xenix and then the MS-DOS operating systems, and then pumping out the WYSIWYG Microsoft Word in 1983 and of course the graphical extension of MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows 1.0, in 1985.

   

By 1990, Microsoft had cut its earlier ties with IBM, released the Microsoft Works office suite, and slammed the market with a Windows version that had staying power – Windows 3.0. The rest, as they say, is history – except for one thing. Say what you will about Gates' business practices – and many have – but dude is one heck of a philanthropist.

Apple

Like Microsoft, Steve Jobs' and Steve Wozniak's Apple Computer may have been a late arrival to the computer party. But it wasn't late where it counted – the PC revolution.

Indeed, Apple's first computer, 1976's Apple I, was notable not just because it was handmade by a teenaged Jobs in his bedroom, which it was, but also for its compatibility with – gasp! – keyboards and monitors. Scoff if you want, but this was a time when competing PCs, of which there were precious few, relied on toggle switches and blinking lights. Can you say "Star Trek?"

But back to the software. Though the Apple I didn't actually feature software inasmuch as firmware, all that would change as new units rolled out. By 1978 and as an upgrade to the Apple II, Jobs and Wozniak released both a disk drive and Apple's first operating system, Apple DOS. By 1980 and the business-oriented Apple III, we had Apple SOS (Sophisticated Operating System), which would then morph into Apple ProDOS three years later.

But it was the Apple "Lisa," foisted upon an unsuspecting public just one year prior to the first Mac and priced at a groan-inducing $9995, that heralded Apple's first foray into full-blown graphical operating systems. In it, we found file browsers, document icons, spreadsheets, drawing tools, and much, much more. Apple's graphical OS thusly predated Microsoft's by two years and that alone was one giant leap for mankind.

Cheat Sheet: 10 Banging Bing Tips

Posted: 28 Jun 2011 11:57 AM PDT

With the exception of a few yahoos, when most of us think about searching the web, we're thinking about Google. While Mountain View may be able to fulfill the bulk of our search-related needs, there's no harm in mixing it up a bit. When looking for an alternative to Google, you could do a lot worse than giving Bing a try. Only a few years old, Microsoft's upstart information-seeking darling has managed to incorporate a number of user-friendly features into the service's already impressive set of capabilities. Care to give Bing a spin? We've put together 10 of our favorite Bing tips for you to trick out your browsing experience with.

 

Why Regionalize When You Can Americanize?

As any fanboy will tell you, Superman's powers are only realized when he is in the presence of a yellow star like the Sun. Bing's got the same thing going on with the United States: While there are many Bing regionalized portals, only the one enjoyed by default in the U.S. unlocks all of the search engine's features. If you're living in America, no doubt you're already good to go. If you live outside of the country, chances are you'll need to do a little ticker work in order to get all the goodness out of Redmond's search engine offering. Navigate to Bing.com, and look to the top right of your browser window. Click the name of whatever country you see up there—chances are that if you live in Ireland, by default the country you'll click on will be Ireland. Doing so will open a page filled up with the various locales that Bing caters to. Click on United States - English, or United States Spanish if you hablan español. Boom! Welcome to the U-S-of-A.

 

Downplay Bing's Good Looks

It's a little known fact that Bing's user interface was designed with the mullet in mind: Business up front and party in the back. Sure, the search service's pages are pretty, but all of those high-definition pictures can be something of a distraction when there's hardcore searching to do (or searching for hardcore. We won't judge you). To rid yourself of Bing's colorful backgrounds, navigate here and savour Bing in all of it's minimalistic grey, white and orange splendour. Dulling up the joint can save you a few kilobytes of data every time you load the page moving forward. That might seem like small potatoes, but it adds up over time. This is a great solution for road warriors with a limited cellular data plan or individuals with slower rigs purchased at the dawn of the millennium.

 

Deck Out Your Desktop

Can't get enough of Bing's gorgeous background imagery? Then you're really doing to dig Bing Downloader,  a free jewel of a program that allows users to download those sexy Bing homepage backgrounds to their PCs. At this time, Bing Downloader is able to procure the background pictures from a wide variety of the search engine's international portals including Canadian, American, Chinese, the United Kingdom and Germany. To snag yourself some new desktop wallpaper, simply locate Bing Downloader's executable file, double click it and let the program run its course. For best results, fire up the program on a daily basis. In no time at all, you'll have accrued a massive collection of Microsoft-approved background images to bend to your will. What you opt to do with them is entirely up to you.

 

Take to the Air

With Bing on your side, there's no need to hop on an airline's status page in order to find out whether or not your flight's on time, cancelled or lost somewhere in the Bermuda triangle. Instead of entering your airline's website URL, type Track Flight Status into Bing's search field. At the top of your returned search results, you'll find entry fields for your airline and flight number. Just pull the information off of your ticket or confirmation email, click Get Status and you're in business.

If that's not easy enough for you, simply enter your flight number, sans any other information. More times than not, Bing will understand what you're getting at and provide you with the data you're looking for courtesy of flightstats.com. While this might be great news for people that need to be on time for a flight, the flip-side of the coin is that thanks to Bing, you'll never have an excuse for being late to pick up your in-laws at the airport again.

 

RSS to Impress

Being able to look up information on the web is great. Trying to read that information while away from your browser? Not so much. While you can opt to peruse your search results on another device with the help of services like Instapaper, Read It Later or Evernote by the time you get around to doing so, the results Bing returned to you might be cold. Instead, savvy Bing users might want to consider taking in their Bing searches in the form of a live RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed that can be viewed via any RSS reader. To rock this hack, simply add &format=rss to the tail end of any of the search results returned by Bing. Doing so will provide you with a live RSS feed version of your results that is automatically updated in real-time. Now that's useful.

 

Search for Specific File Types

You are an important individual who considers their time to be a precious commodity. There's not enough hours in the day to quibble over the masses of data that comes as a result of most web searches. Fortunately, Bing understands and endorses your picky data-scoffing ways. In an effort to keep you happy and provide discerning types such as yourself with only the most pertinent of information, Bing makes searching for particular file types online easy. If you know the information you're looking for is contained in a PDF file, for example, type the topic of the file into Bing's search field and add filetype:pdf to the search parameters. You'll find that your search results contain only links that include PDF files. While this trick can be used with any just about any file extension, we've found Bing's returned on searches for .mp3, .wpa and other oft-times DRM protected file types are pretty weaksauce.

 

Track a Package

In many parts of the world, sadomasochism has been an illegal practice for centuries. Luckily for those of you that derive pleasure from inflicting torment upon themselves, tracking a package over the internet was still a go the last time we checked. While you could waste your time navigating to your shipping company's website and then hunting down the page's tracking utility, if you're looking for some immediate satisfaction, we suggest cutting to the chase by entering your package's tracking number directly into Bing along with the shipping company's name. For example, if Big Brown's got your goods, you'd enter:

 ups # [tracking number]  

This trick works with the majority of the world's major shipping companies. You'll find the returned results to be as comprehensive as anything you'll find on the FedEx, DHL or UPS' websites. More than this, with all the time you're saving on data entry can be used to get in some kinky kicks from other sources, like balancing your checkbook, getting your taxes done early, or comparing long distance rates.

 

Convert Sums Like a Champ

No matter whether it's converting kilometres to miles, gallons to litres, or parsecs from a measurement of distance into one of speed—sometimes the math can escape us. Fortunately, Bing is more than willing to carry the two for its bleary-minded users. Using the search engine's conversion capabilities is absolutely the bomb when it comes to planning your next Canadian road trip or sizing up the dimensions of a cabinet from Scandinavia to see if it'll actually fit in your living room. To get the conversion party started, simply enter the measurement you're being boggled by and the standard you'd like to see it converted to. For example, if you're dying to what 5.65 cm works out to once converted over to the Imperial system of measurement, you would enter convert 5.65 cm to inches.  The same trick can be applied to international currencies: to get the current exchange rate of a Canadian dollar to its U.S. Counter part, enter CAD to USD as a search.

 

Get Your Math On

Less ghetto than Windows 7's baked-in calculator application and easier to find than that old TI-89 calculator of yours that's been packed away in a box since your graduated from college, Bing's built-in calculation capability is a reliable tool in the fight against confusing math equations. Similar in function to its Mountain View situated nemesis, Bing allows users to crunch numbers by entering their math questions as a search. For example, if you wanted to know where 47 multiplied by 33 would get you, you'd enter 47 * 33 and click the search icon. The search engine  understands a wide variety number nerd operator mainstays such as percentages (% of), square roots (sqrt) and higher power (**). Need answers to some troubling equations? Bing's got it going on, and can handle a respectable share of middle-of-the-road calculus and algebra computations.

Bing a-go-go

While Bing's extensive functionality makes it a worthwhile addition to anyone's laptop or desktop internet search toolbox, the search service also offers up some pretty impressive search functionality for use on smartphones and dumbphones alike. By accessing Bing via your handset's web browser, you'll be able to utilize all of the the same search functions we've talked about in this article from anywhere you can pick up a cellular signal. If you happen to be rocking an Android or iOS device, you can also opt to download the service's free application. For those out there who refuse to take part in the smartphone revolution,  Microsoft also offers a lesser known Bing 411 phone number that can be called from any landline or cellular telephone. Just dial 1 (800) Bing-411, and you'll be given voice driven access to, street addresses, movie time and up to the minute weather information, as well as other sweet features such as turn-by-turn navigation over the line—a definite bonus for folks without a GPS receiver.

 

ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 First Mobo to Rock PCI-E 3.0 Ports

Posted: 28 Jun 2011 10:52 AM PDT

If you're familiar with the ASRock brand, you probably recognize it as a builder of budget motherboards. ASRock has been known to appeal to enthusiasts with next generation and/or unique design decisions, like the 939Dual-SATA2 that combined both an AGP port and PCI-Express ports on the same board so users could have a GPU upgrade path to PCI-E without overhauling their foundation. ASRock's latest concoction is the Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen3 motherboard, the first ever to implement PCI-E 3.0 ports.

The Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen 3 rocks two PCI-E 3.0 x16 slots and one PCI-E 2.0 slot. It supports Nvdia Quad SLI and AMD 3-Way CrossFireX. The PCI-E 3.0 interface provides twice the bandwidth of PCI-E 2.0 (1GB/s versus 500MB/s).

Other features include six SATA 6Gbps ports, ten SATA 3Gbps ports, dual GbE LAN, 7.1 channel audio, eSATA, dual HDMI, four USB 3.0 ports, debug LED, Intel Smart Response Technology, and a Fatal1ty USB Mouse Port (allows polling rate adjustment from 125Hz to 1000Hz).

No word on price or availability.

Image Credit: ASRock

Microsoft Launches Online Version of Office

Posted: 28 Jun 2011 08:59 AM PDT

Microsoft today officially throws down the gauntlet at Google and other competitors in the online productivity software space with the global launch of Office 365, the company's newest cloud service. Office 365 is now available in 40 markets, giving users around the world access to always updated versions of Office, SharePoint, Exchange, and Lync.

"Great collaboration is critical to business growth, and because it's so important, we believe the best collaboration technology should be available to everyone," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. "With a few clicks, Office 365 levels the playing field, giving small and midsize businesses powerful collaboration tools that have given big businesses an edge for years."

According to the Wall Street Journal, nine out of every 10 office computers run Microsoft's software, making Microsoft's move into the cloud a bit of gamble for Redmond. There's a chance Office 365 could make a significant dent into Microsoft's boxed software business.

Small business plans costs $6 per user per month, while enterprise versions range in price from $2 to $27, depending on the feature-set.

Opera 11.50 Aims to Attract More Fans than Lady Gaga

Posted: 28 Jun 2011 08:32 AM PDT

Whether or not you're a fan of the Opera browser, you have to give props to Opera Software, the Norwegian browser maker that despite lagging behind the big three (Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome) in market share, they never take themselves too seriously. With the release of Opera 11.50 today, for example, Opera Software didn't set a goal of catching up to the competition, and instead made reference to Star Wars and Lady Gaga, all in same breath.

"Almost 1.2 million stormtroopers, droids, and janitors can fit into a fully operational Death Star. Nearly 11 million follow Lady Gaga on Twitter. Now, Opera aims to put those numbers to shame with the number of downloads for its newest browser," Opera Software says.

The browser maker even put a live download counter on its homepage so you an keep tabs on how close they are to reaching their goals, silly as they might be.

As for the actual browser update, the big new feature in version 11.50 is extension support for Speed Dial. Rather than thumbnails and links to your top sites, you can now embed your Speed Dial with extensions to, say, keep tabs on weather or not news tidbits.

"We're excited about the work that has gone into Opera 11.50," said Jan Standal, VP of Desktop Products, Opera Software. "Before we challenge Lady Gaga though, we've got to surpass the Tom Selleck mustache fan page on Facebook and the number of forum posts Opera fan Tamil has written. We think Speed Dial extensions are amazing enough to do the trick, but we didn't stop there."

Other new features include password synchronization, a streamlined and lightweight design, and thousands of bug fixes. You can download the latest release here.
Posted by Shri Krishna
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