With all of the issues surrounding online privacy and internet snooping many are very concerned about having their personal information reviewed, logged, scanned and then stored away for sale by the companies that are tracking this. This issue is a very real one and as the companies we work for can (and do) put system in place to monitor, log and block certain types of traffic we are not surprised to see this become a very hot topic. The issue has become so large that there are multiple protests about privacy and personal data security happening in many countries. So what are you to do if all you really want is to check your Hotmail or maybe do some quick shopping without giving up all of your details? A Canadian company by the name of SurfEasy has a possible answer for you. So sit back, relax and read along as we talk about the SurfEasy Plug-in Privacy device.
Read more: SurfEasy's Plug In Privacy Device Offers Peace...
During our trip to CES 2012 we managed to stumble across some cool technology. Some of this was in the form of gadgets, while some was more about supporting the gadgets and extending what they can do. One of these products was DryCASE. DryCASE makes exactly that, a case intended to keep everything inside of it dry. The demo for this product was pretty impressive; we contacted them and asked about performing our own review on this product.
Read more: We test the DryCASE and DryBUDs Sport in the...
There are some gadgets that you do not realize you want or need until you stumble on them. These are the things that you have “made do” without using all kinds of methods. We had one of these moments the other day when an unexpected package was delivered. Upon opening it we found a new product from Thermaltake. It was simple labeled Dr. Power II. My first thought upon seeing it was that it was like the Kill-A-Watt power testers we use to determine power draw from the wall. We could not have been more wrong. The Dr. Power II is a Power Supply tester. With it you can test the nominal voltages from each rail and the PSU as a whole. With a retail cost of only $39.99 it can be a very valuable tool in any DYIer’s home. Let’s take a look and see if it is worth the $40 you will spend on it.
Read more: We Look at Thermaltake's Dr. Power II ATX PSU...
Taking their cues from Apple’s Siri a group of developers came up with a natural speech recognition algorithm similar to Siri in 8 hours. The difference is that this one is for Android. The new app (that is available as an alpha release in the Android Market) is called Iris and for an 8-hout project is very functional. We were rather impressed after we had a few hours to tinker with it. After we first heard that someone had done this we immediately went to the Market to see if we could get it there. The first thing that we noticed though was that while we could grab this for our phone, there was nothing visible in the Market on our Transformer tablet. In fact a quick run to the Market on our desktop PC shows us that Iris is not compatible with our Transformer. The other thing that we noticed is that you have a grab a dependency application called Speech Synthesis. This is what takes the text based responses and turns them into speech for you to enjoy.One of the first questions we put to Iris was the big one… What is the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything! It took three tries but we got the answer we were looking for. However some of the more mundane ones like “What is the forecast for the weather near Orlando” it had some problems with. I think my favorite answer for that question was “Beyond your Ability to comprehend”.
Now, I know this is nowhere near as polished or complete as Siri is on the iPhone, but what I did like was how accurate the device was at picking up what I was saying. Even when using contractions like what’s or can’t it knew what I was looking for. I was also able to differentiate between declarations and questions. We are still playing around with this very interesting software, but we have to say what if this is what the group at Dexetra can do in only 8-hours… Apple should be worried when they put some real time and effort into it.Discuss in our Forum
Not too long ago I made a comment about the iPhone losing ground in the smart phone market. Not too long after that I started looking at the mobile phone market; not because I was trying to find some information about on smartphone purchases, but because I was interested in a new phone. The phone I was replacing is one of the most popular Android based phones on the Market. It was actually one that many people went to after the issues with the iPhone 4 (the grip of death). In fact that is how I ended up with my HTC EVO 4G from Sprint. The phone that caught my eye was another HTC phone. This was the HTC EVO 3D. This is a dual core high performance phone with a 3D Screen that does not need glasses to view. So I went out and picked one up, let’s see if it was worth the money and time.
Read more: Sprint's EVO 3D from HTC hits our lab
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