Remember the good ol' days when you actually had to swipe your credit or debit card to make a payment at the store? Now all it takes is a flick of the wrist to purchase goods with your card, thanks to RFID (radio-frequency identification) technology from Chase (blink), Visa (payWave) and MasterCard (PayPass). But soon "contactless" payments will be made by an entirely different beast—NFC, which stands for near field communication.
Focusing has always been a problem with photographers, and even with today's digital cameras it's not easy. The most obvious problem is trying to accurately focus on the subject before exposure. Next, you have to choose the correct aperture size in relation to the depth of field, and make sure you're using the correct exposure. Then there's lens aberrations, where a certain ray of light does not converge to a single focal point in the desired image, resulting in some light leaking away from t...
It's been a long time coming, but Microsoft has finally released a software development kit (SDK) for the Kinect on Windows 7 PCs. The word "hacking" is no longer needed, thanks to the free beta download available at Microsoft Research that allows anyone with a Windows computer and some coding knowledge to take advantage of the Kinect's motion-sensing capabilities.
Have you ever gone on a long internet binge, researching and surfing mindless things, and thought to yourself: I wish I could make some money surfing the internet and sharing the (sometimes useless) information I had just acquired? Well, now you can!
The Clock Bloggers love Angry Birds so much, they decided to transform into... Angry Birds. With a little advice from our jolly bloggers, you too can jump into the video game fantasy vortex.
As someone who’s entering a time of life that involves weddings, reunions, and generally running into people I haven’t seen in awhile, I find myself being shocked by how much people have changed over the years. A lot of times, people will have dropped a bunch of weight, or have turned into a kind and articulate human being, or have obviously stopped doing so many drugs. It’s important, when complimenting people on positive life changes, to let them know how well you think they’re doing withou...
As a USC student with limited funds, I'm always trying to figure out how to make the most out of my night when I go out. LA is great because there is so much going on for little to no cash if you know where to look. Echo Park/Silver Lake definitely has the most options, see below for my breakdown.
Dating sites are getting more and more culture specific, and this week's brand new girl + guy site offers a very specific service. Cute girls are paid to play video games. Gamer dudes pay to play with them.
Mountain Dew is the answer. Inventor Paul Patone has devised a mechanism that converts soda into actual usable fuel.
Going green has never been so hardcore as Jack Mountain's bushcraft podcast. This is basically a 10 minute poo tutorial. Fortunately for us, Jack's "deposit" is simulated, and we are spared seeing the real act or his prodigious backside.
Any talk about privacy is a complicated (usually) and touchy subject. In today's world, privacy is an ever eroding pleasure to be had. Numerous cases, like the monumental Kat'z vs United States, have been fought to hold on to this right.
As you may have seen in your city or town, red light cameras are on the rise in the United States. In many instances in my area, these cameras have sprung up seemingly out of no-where, and mostly without any reason. Over use of these systems can make privacy (even on the road) a fleeting possibility.
There is a vast amount of knowledge out there on computers! In fact, it is so vast that no single person could ever possibly ever learn everything there is to learn about hacking or computers in general. People usually specialize in a certain field: cryptography, computer security, networking, software development, testing, and so on...It's probably a bit premature to decide what you want your speciality to be, but keeping the question in the back of your mind will help give you direction in ...
Since the launch of Edit on a Dime several weeks ago, I’ve been putting a variety of automatic video editing apps though their paces. One of the first tested was Magisto, a web-based app that’s directly accessed through YouTube, which I enjoyed, but found some obvious problems with. Since then, I’ve been in contact with Oren Boiman, CEO and founder of Magisto, who was kind enough to address my concerns.
Zynga just added another game to their Zynga with Friends series called Scramble with Friends. If you've ever played Boggle, it's basically the same thing, but is dedicated to playing your buddies just like Words with Friends or Hanging with Friends.
Welcome to Minecraft World! Check out our advanced tutorials and come play on our free server. Welcome back to Minecraft World's Ultimate Survival guide! A few days ago, we reviewed a good way to start off right when you spawn, plus a small rundown of the mobs. Now we will continue on to combat strategies. Note that these are strategies, not specific How-To's, so the best way to get better at it is to do it yourself!
Shortening URLs has become a necessity in this age of Twitter and limited-character status updates. It not only allows us to cram more words into our oh-so-important Twitter statuses, but it also helps us with a few other things.
It’s been a pretty big week for Google, and Google+ itself. There were a number of articles proclaiming the end of Google+, because allegedly traffic dropped over 60% after it opened to the public. Then +Steve Yegge accidentally posted a long rant on Google+ itself, which was originally meant only for Google employees and colleagues to see. Interestingly enough, the most inflammatory content wasn’t actually about Google itself, but about the horrible work environment at Amazon. The accidental...
JavaScript is one of the main programming languages that the Web is built on. It talks directly to your browser and exchanges information with it in ways that HTML simply cannot. With JavaScript, you are able to access browser cookies, website preferences, real-time actions, slideshows, popup dialogs and calculators, or you create entire web-based apps. The list goes on nearly forever.
A phoney word in a game of Scrabble is basically a non-valid word, either played or considered being played. Why? To fool the other player and go from losing to winning. It's perfectly acceptable in Scrabble play, but only if you don't get caught. If the other player challenges your play, then you'll be forced to remove it and your turn will be skipped. That right there—not fun.
What if your fridge knew your food and expiration dates? What if your fridge could tell you which ingredients are missing and where you can get them the cheapest?
While using Google+, it's been apparent that there are two types of posters. There are the people who post thoughtful, serious posts about everything from tech to dealing with cancer. And then there are the meme propagators, the people who decide to rick roll others (ahem, +Bryan Crow), and constantly put up animated gifs. Sometimes they are the same people, and this is where it gets a little controversial.
Here's a noncomprehensive list of current features confirmed and experienced in Minecraft 1.8. If you have anything to add, please do so in the comment section below.
It's no secret. Professional video editors everywhere are irate at the newest edition to Apple's popular non-linear video editing software, Final Cut Pro X. As of right now, Final Cut Pro X has 503 five-star ratings in the Mac App Store. Not bad. But it also has 671 one-star ratings and 414 users who aren't sure what they think. It's such a bad update that it even earned itself a skit on Conan.
Google+ is the most exciting new social network to come around this decade, and the only product with a chance of challenging the monopolies we know as Facebook and Twitter. As an Internet addict, I've joined every major social network there is - from Friendster (who?) to MySpace (so ugly) to LinkedIn (yawn) to Twitter (irritating) and Facebook (annoying to manage). Competition is delicious, especially between well-financed monopolies. Google+ really seems to have identified an Achille's heel...
Three years ago, Double Fine productions held an in-house event called the Amnesia Fortnight. The company was split into four teams, each of which set out to spend two weeks developing an idea for a small game and present it to the other groups at the end of the duration. All of the ideas turned out to be winners, and founder/owner Tim Schafer secured publishing deals for all four games to be released on a combination of XBLA and PSN. In honor of the excellent Trenched becoming the third game...
Is that House? Built in Minecraft? Well, time to cross out one more item off my bucket list! As inspiration for this week's Minecraft-themed Tuesday Giveaway (enter here to win an awesome Minecraft Pickaxe!), I present a roundup of amazing things found in Minecraft.
Nobody could predict the success of Microsoft's Kinect, not even Microsoft themselves. So, it was quite a surprise when it ended up earning a Guinness World Record for fastest-selling consumer electronics device, and an even bigger surprise to see people buying one that didn't even own an Xbox 360.
Minecraft is the most basic and barren open sandbox building game. There are a limited number of materials and recipes to craft. But with these few building blocks, people have been able to creatively build some amazing structures and cities. There is a physical limitation, but the beauty of the game is turning that limitation into a strength.
What Dad Really Wants from You for Fathers Day!
Do you have an awesome rig that is able to run anything you throw at it at 60 fps with maximum settings? Prepare to be humbled. The Witcher 2 is the first game in quite some time to tax your system the same way Crysis did when it first came out.
With so many wireless iOS networking apps for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch available, there’s very little reason to connect any of these devices to iTunes, except to update the software. Besides, importing and exporting photos using iTunes has never been one of the best features of Apple‘s mobile device process. Let me introduce you to 5 useful apps for importing and exporting photos to and from your iOS device(s).
Our hacked Kinect series has demonstrated amply how the Kinect is changing the worlds of business, art, medicine and robotics. But where does it go from here? That will be determined by the thousands of dedicated DIYers out there doing work like you've seen here over the last week.
So the Big Surprise News of today is that The King's Speech is Kicking Major Nomination Ass with twelve count-em 12 nominations, just brutalizing stuff like The Social Network (eight - nice try), The Fighter (seven - really? seven? that's the best you can do idiot movie?) and True Grit (ten - double figures is respectable... I guess...). How come that happened? I'll tell you. It's because North Americans freaking love rich British people.
My first attempt at a helmet cam, yielded ok results, but I wanted something even better. The downside to all of this was cost, but it is very close to what I want now.
Last week I talked about the video / image side of things, and as promised here is the audio side. Sound is integral to all studio productions, but for most student and low budget production, it's the last thing filmmakers seem to think about, and one of the most noticeable problems with low budget stuff. Sound IS half the experience, and yet it is usually all but forgotten come production.
Three-dimensional printing is one of the many wonders of modern technology. It's the first step towards real life Star Trek replicators and Timeline-esque teleportation chambers. While we aren't at the level of reconstructing strands of DNA, it's already possible to make tons of fun and useful designs on a 3D printer.
Hey, hackers! Now that you've hacked/owned your first "box" in my last article, let's look a little closer at another great feature of Metasploit, the Meterpreter, and then let’s move on to hacking a Linux system and using the Meterpreter to control and own it.
In my Wireshark article, we talked a little bit about packet sniffing, but we focused more on the underlying protocols and models. Now, I'd like to dive right back into Wireshark and start stealing packets.
This morning, I received a message from a friend who was reading a hack log, and she had some questions about the commands used. This got me thinking, as Linux has a ton of commands and some can be archaic, yet useful. We are going to go over everything you need to know to read a hack log and hopefully implant the steps in your head for future use.
