Latest Articles
How To Sync Favourites & Tabs From Your Phone Or Tablet To Your Computer
Have you got a new smartphone or tablet for Christmas, but frustrated that your bookmarks and tabs are all on your desktop when you absolutely must surf the information superhighway from your sofa? You could access them with some kind of remote control to your desktop perhaps, but that’s just silly. Instead, learn how to sync your tabs and bookmarks to and from your mobile devices with handy guide.
Plan Your Garden For The New Year With These Great Websites And Apps
For those of us lucky enough to not live in the middle of the city or to have a little land to call our own, the garden is often the most neglected part of the family home. Most fall into the category of either a complete mess, or the whole thing is turfed over. Well no more, geeks! Rise up, and MakeUseOf these wonderful apps and website to plan your complete garden makeover. Get your fingers grubby for once!
Save Money On Expensive Board Games With These Self-Printed Alternatives
Christmas is coming, and that means getting together with friends and family around a good board game. But board games can be expensive, and many of you will only play them once or twice at most. Instead of buying something new this Yuletide, how about printing your own instead? Here’s my pick of 5 awesome printable games to suit all tastes, mostly drawn from personal experience, and BoardGameGeek’s extensive list of Print and Play games.
Why Internet Monitoring Laws Will Make Criminals Harder to Catch [Opinion]
While the ITU is busy behind closed doors trying to take away Internet freedoms on a global scale, the UK government brazenly announced plans to give wide-reaching Internet monitoring powers to various British agencies as well as increasing the amount of retention time of data ISPs must store. The so-called "web snooping" plans have been met with widespread criticism.
Buying The Right Case For The PC You're Building: What You Should Know
Putting together a computer is a special experience that every geek needs to do at some point in their career. Underloved and overlooked, the decision of which case to choose is such a fundamentally important choice that I absolutely cannot stress enough that a good one will last you 10 years or more. Today therefore, we present a mini-guide to choosing exactly the right case.
How To Set Up Arduino Web Control Without An Ethernet Shield
For the last few weeks, I handed over control of the mood lighting in my studio to viewers during the live broadcast of Technophilia Podcast - you can see the results of that in the recorded episode here. Today, I thought I will explain exactly how I accomplished that using a little JavaScript, Processing and an Arduino. The method I’ll outline does not require an Ethernet shield for your Arduino, and I’ll provide full code samples for you to also use.
Build Your Own Dynamic Ambient Lighting For A Media Center
If you watch a lot of movies on your PC or media center, I'm sure you've faced the lighting dilemma; do you completely turn off all lights? Do you keep them on full blast? Or do you use a dimmer switch to keep a dull yellow glow somewhere? Well, suffer no more. For less than $100, you can set up an amazing lighting system that's going to reflect what's on-screen. Welcome to world of ambient RGB lighting.
Windows RT - What You Can & Can't Do
Windows RT edition was discreetly launched about a month and a half ago with the flagship Microsoft Surface RT tablet device. Though visually indistinguishable from Windows 8, there are some key differences as to what you can and can’t do with it. Today I hope to explain those to you in detail. I also did a full review of the Surface RT device, and the rest of the MakeUseOf writers have weighed in on Windows 8 in general.
Forget Pies & Brandy: 8 Arduino Projects To Fill Your Holidays
Has your Arduino been sitting around gathering dust? Well, no more. Today I’ve scoured Instructables to find 8 fun, family friendly, or just really cool Arduino projects for you to have a go at these Christmas holidays, inbetween the bouts of pies and brandy of course. If you’re stuck for Christmas ideas, an Arduino might be an ideal gift for children or the hacker in your life.
Super-Power Your Media Centre With These 9 Hacks
The media center is the ultimate living room experience; one PC to play everything, one PC to find and download, and one PC to bring in all the family and bind them in front of a glowing widescreen TV. And if you didn’t get that reference, you ought to watch more movies. But with a few hacks, your humble media center can do so much more.
Mythbusters: Dangerous Security Advice You Shouldn't Follow
When it comes to internet security, everyone and their cousin has advice to offer you about the best software packages to install, dodgy sites to stay clear of, or best practices when it comes to passwords. Or perhaps you've never listened to others and have your own beliefs about internet security? In that case - this post is for you. Let's take a look at some of the most common beliefs - some might say myths - about internet security.
2 More Home Surveillance Apps You Should Consider
I wrote a round-up review last month for anyone interested in using their webcam as a home surveillance system, but since then we’ve had a few updates from developers so I thought it appropriate to revisit the topic and take a look at these services.
What Is DRM & Why Does It Exist If It's So Evil? [MakeUseOf Explains]
Digital Rights Management is the latest evolution of copy protection. It’s the biggest cause of user frustration today, but is it justified? Is DRM a necessary evil in this digital age, or is the model it supports no longer valid? Join me, as I explain all about DRM, why it’s needed, and why it just doesn’t work.
Japan Delivers: 8 Of The Weirdest Game Show Clips
Japanese game shows are bit of an enigma really. While most of Japan can be said to be remarkably uncreative (Nintendo being a prime example of Japanese “creativity” on a corporate level), I have to admit that Japanese game shows tend to go where no western network would dare. Here then, is my pick of 10 of the most ridiculous game show clips from the land of the rising sun.
An Introduction To DMX Lighting Control - Take Your Lighting To A Whole New Level
Intelligent lighting systems used to be an expensive domain for professionals only; but with the proliferation of cheaper electronics and computer control systems, incredible lighting effects are now firmly within the reach of the hobbyist. Whether you’re planning the most awesome house party ever, or want to take your Christmas or Halloween lighting to a whole new level, it might be time to invest in some DMX systems.
6 Crazy, Interesting Or Useful Ways To Use a WiiMote
When Nintendo released the WiiMote, it was arguably a console industry game changer. The concept of interacting with a game using your physical body was born. Lifelike motion controls enabled it to appeal to a wide audience that might otherwise never have touched a video game. Like any new piece of technology, the humble WiiMote was quickly subverted to other uses beyond the Wii.
How To Publish a Podcast To iTunes With Podcast Generator
Publishing a podcast is not rocket science, but it’s probably something you’ve never done before. That was the situation we found ourselves in when Dave, Justin and I decided to start a weekly tech podcast called Technophilia; that was nearly a year ago now, and we’re getting close to 50 episodes and now live broadcasting too. Read on to find out how you too can publish you own podcast to iTunes.
Get Great Windows 8 Features Without the Upgrade [Opinion]
Windows 8 was officially unleashed on the world on 26th October; I’m going to assume you either attended or held your own mini launch party, because that’s what everyone does every time a new version of Windows is released. However, we understand there are some of you who can’t afford the “upgrade”, so here are 5 tips to get the best features of Windows 8 on your shoddy old Windows 7 machine, right now.
How To Set Up A Live Skype Audio Broadcast With A Chatroom [Mac]
Now that our little Technophilia Podcast has amassed over 500 weekly listeners (guys, we love you), we’ve been looking for ways to interacts with listeners in real-time while we record live. That’s no easy task. We've been experimenting with just a chatroom, but without a live audio broadcast too it’s not very compelling for people to participate. So today, I’m going to share an easy way to broadcast your Skype audio (both yours and your co-hosts) to a Mixlr stage.