MakeUseOf

James Bruce-Hardware Reviews Editor

James Bruce

Hardware Reviews Editor

Page 30

About James Bruce

James has a BSc in Artificial Intelligence and is CompTIA A+ and Network+ certified. When he's not busy as Hardware Reviews Editor, he enjoys LEGO, VR, and board games. Before joining MakeUseOf, he was a lighting technician, English teacher, and data center engineer.

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Oculus Rift Will Change Gaming Forever

The StarTrek Holodeck - the epitome of a virtual immersive environment - has been a sci-fi dream for far too long now. A week ago, Oculus launched a Kickstarter project for a $300 consumer VR headset, complete with head tracking and 3D visuals. It’s very rare that I get this excited for a bit of new hardware, but this is a game changer. This may shape the future of gaming forever.

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Mac
4 Reasons I'll Be Switching to Safari 6 on OS X Mountain Lion

Until now I’ve put Safari firmly in the same box of horrible things as Internet Explorer - a sluggish, default browser that’s only purpose in life is to download other shinier and faster browsers. Safari 6 - which comes with Mountain Lion - may have just changed all that. Here’s 4 reasons I’ll be switching my primary browser to Safari, and ditching Chrome.

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Mac
How To Install Mountain Lion On A PC [Hackintosh]

Are you not looking forward to Windows 8? Perhaps you're jaded by Microsoft’s decision to kill of Windows Home Server? Are you maybe tired of Windows Media Center being treated like a second class citizen? Have you got some extra PCs lying around and wish they were as awesome as your Mac? Welcome to the world of Hackintosh. Now let’s turn your PCs into Macs - Mountain Lion roaring Macs, no less.

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Programming Your Arduino 4x4x4 LED Cube To Do Some More Awesome Stuff

Last week, I built an LED cube - 64 LEDs that you can program to make fantastic futuristic light shows - and I hope you did too, because it's a great project to motivate you and expand your Arduino skillset. I left you with a few basic apps to get you thinking, but today I'll be presenting a few more bits of software that I made for the cube, along with code explanations.

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DIY
How To Swap Out Your Macbook's DVD Drive For An SSD

Is your old Apple laptop starting to struggle? Is the boot time so long that you can actually go out and buy a coffee? If so, perhaps it's time to think about upgrading your main system drive to a low cost SSD and getting rid of that useless old DVD drive. If it's an older Macbook, fret not. This tutorial will be perfect for you.

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Make A Complete Community Site With Buddypress (& WordPress)

BuddyPress gives you complete user profiles, activity streams, and groups. If you’re considering a community site, this needs to be the first free project you check out. BuddyPress is completely free and open source. Just like WordPress, BuddyPress has a thriving community with themes and plugins.

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Parrot AR Drone 2.0 Review and Giveaway

The Parrot AR Drone 2.0 is the most expensive remote control toy money can buy; it’s a smartphone controlled quadrocopter with a 720p HD camera, and it’s ridiculously fun, but quite temperamental. What follows is a review of the Parrot AR Drone 2.0 untainted. We purchased the review unit ourselves and will be giving it away to the MakeUseOf community. Read on to find out more about this $300 toy and how to be in the running to win it!

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DIY
How To Make a Pulsating Arduino LED Cube That Looks Like It Came From The Future

If you’ve dabbled with some beginner Arduino projects, but are looking for something a little permanent and on a whole other level of awesome, then the humble 4 x 4 x 4 LED cube is a natural choice. Construction is far easier than you might think, and using a multiplexing we can control all the LEDs directly from just a single Arduino Uno board. It’s great soldering practice, and the total cost of components shouldn’t come to more than about $40.

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Create An Awesome Content Slider In WordPress With SlideDeck 2

Nearly every client I’ve worked with on a WordPress site has wanted a slider widget for the homepage - some nice bit of Javascript that features a rotating set of pictures. There are lots of ways to achieve this but none of them are particular user friendly, easily customizable, or robust. SlideDeck 2 is here to change all that

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Making A Legendary Movie Trailer With iMovie On The iPad

Movie Trailers are a great little creative project that makes putting together a professional looking video really easy. Today I'll be using my iPad to make a trailer featuring myself and the mischievous little ferret that wandered into my house last week and decided to stay. You'll need an iPad 2 or the newest generation one; an iPhone 4, or later can also be used,

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Every Computer Dies In The End: Learn What Parts Can Fail, & What To Do About It

Most computers develop problems over time. Learning what they are and how you can deal with them is important if you don't want to be paying through the teeth for professional repairs. Don't worry though - that's exactly why we're here. Today I will present you with a list of things most likely to fail in a computer, how you might identify and fix the problem, and anything you can do to prevent it.

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Why I'm Done With Windows [Opinion]

Microsoft made an announcement this week that has really just tipped me over the edge. It's the last in a string of moves actually; but that's it. I'm done. I'll switching all my Windows machines to Linux or a Hackintosh; I'll be replacing my Home Server with a Time Machine or Linux-based NAS, and Windows will relegated to a virtual machine. Here's why.

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Bypass Regional Locks with UnoDNS from UnoTelly [Giveaway]

Are you frustrated by the international blocks that stop you from watching Hulu? Are you a UK Netflix user, annoyed that the American selection of movies and TV shows is orders of magnitude larger than what's available to you? Well, I have the perfect solution for you: a premium DNS service called UnoDNS which bypasses all those regional locks. We've got 25 one-year Gold subscriptions for UnoDNS to give away, worth a total of $1500!

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Mac
Make Your Mark On Cultural History With Meme Generator [Mac]

If you’d like to make a meaningful contribution to society and share your expert advice, consider starting a blog; otherwise, make a meme. The Internet loves memes. The humble meme - a term originally coined in 1976 by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins referring to a social behaviour that’s passed on through genetics - has now come to mean a short message overlayed on a familiar graphic.

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Create Stop Motion Animations With These 5 Fun Apps [iPhone & Android]

In terms of awesome creative things you can do with a lot of free time, stop motion animations rank right up there with the best. For kids and adults alike, being able to take inanimate objects and give them life through a motion picture is beyond words; but you insist on a word, how about magical? Here’s our round-up of the best stop motion apps for both iOS, and Android.

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What's the Difference Between Windows 8 & Windows RT? [MakeUseOf Explains]

With the Surface tablet announcement a few weeks ago and the final release of Windows 8 looming ever closer, some people are understandably going to be confused about the various versions available. I'm here to set the record straight; at least, on the differences between Windows 8, and Windows RT. Read on to find out about the various differences, as well as the pros and cons of each system.

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The Battle Of The iPhone Podcatchers

While we have many ways to consume blog content on any device, consuming podcasts is still woefully difficult. Thankfully, there are some apps that help to make things easier, so let's take a look at 4 "podcatcher apps" for the iPhone.

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DIY
5 Cheap, Fun Hardware Kits You Can Use To Make Wonderful Machines

Like most kids, I had a electronics kit that taught the absolute basics; you could build something about as advanced as a radio or morse code device. Suffice to say, the fun didn't last long once you'd built all 5 projects. Nowadays though, advanced electronics hardware kits are affordable and the possibilities are infinite - all thanks to the wonder of microcontrollers.

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What CDNs Are & Why Storage Is No Longer An Issue

CDNs make the Internet fast and websites affordable even when you scale to millions of users. Firstly, bandwidth costs money; those of us on limited contracts know that all too well. Not only do you as an Internet 'consumer' need to pay for your bandwidth, but the websites you visit also have to pay for their bandwidth. More importantly though, a slow website will cost you dearly.

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10 Features You Can Expect To See In the Upcoming New iOS6

On Monday 11th June, Apple developers gathered in San Francisco for the start of a 4 day conference. The rest of the Apple world sat watching liveblogs, awaiting announcements of new products. Among those announcement was iOS6 - with some fairly major changes as well as the usual incremental upgrades.

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