You’ve bought an Arduino starter kit, you’ve followed all the basic guides, but now you’ve hit a stumbling block – you need more bits and bobs to realise your electronics dream. Luckily, if you have an Arduino board, you can simply stack functionality on top in the form of Shields. Shields are specifically designed for the Uno board to be the same shape and pin alignment; you simply plug them on, and you have instant upgrade of functionality.

Technology progresses at such an astounding rate that sometimes, I really can’t believe what we’re capable of. I love technology, and I’m not afraid to admit it. It’s a curse really, because I’m constantly looking forward to something even cooler on the horizon. Ladies, gentlemen, and everything in between, I present to you my pick of 5 incredible technologies to look forward to in 2013.

Wired ethernet will always be better than wireless connections, but sometimes you don’t have a choice – all manner of mobile devices need wifi. There is however one very basic step you can take which will give you an instant speed boost – picking a unique wifi channel that no one else is using. Today I’ll show you how to scan the wifi spectrum and pick the best channel available to you.

One accessory you’ll no doubt be after is a remote shutter; this allows you to place the camera on a tripod or rest it somewhere and trigger the shutter without the chance of shake that can occur when just holding it, or to use for self portraits without a timer. Today I’ll explain the magic of remote shutter releases, how to make one yourself, and how to extend this for high speed photography too.

Share plugins are a dime a dozen in the Wordpress repository, but most aren’t worth the time it takes to check out the screenshots. I’ve done the hard work for you here, and gathered the absolute best for your consideration. All you need to do is make sure your content is worth sharing – there are no plugins to do that for you.

2013 will be the year of the Smart TV, they say – a new paradigm for interacting with your TV. The TV gets intelligent, with gesture and voice controls, downloadable apps, and can even make you a coffee. OK, I lied about making a coffee – but what exactly is a Smart TV, and should you buy one?

It that time of year again when we take a look back at the past year and see just what articles you enjoyed the most. In total, we published an astonishing 4,600 items of news, tutorials, and reviews, but I’ve narrowed it down to 20, in descending order of popularity. What were you sharing in 2012? Read on to find out.

If you’re in the market for a new phone in 2013, you’re probably going to hear about something called NFC, and how it’s apparently changing the world. Don’t be fooled by the sales talk though. Read this so you know exactly what NFC is, what you can use it for, and why you probably won’t. And if you haven’t done so yet, read our Winter 2013 SmartPhone Buying Guide.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

For most people, home networking consists of knowing the wifi password; it’s an oft-neglected yet significant topic that has a big impact on performance. If you have more than one computer in your house, home networking knowledge becomes essential. But there are many factors which can slow down a home network, often quite easily fixed.