Neil Armstrong passed away on Aug. 25, 2012, after a life filled with magnificent achievements. Sadly, his death prompted many people across the InterWebs, particularly on social media sites, to ask, Who was Neil Armstrong, and why should I know of him? Surely everyone should know who Neil Armstrong was and what he achieved. After all, he will always be the first person to have walked on the moon.
Digital formats are a brilliant innovation let down by one fatal flaw: If anything bad happens – be it theft, failure, or natural disaster – to the physical object housing the data, then a lifetime of work (or more likely your whole music and movie collections) can literally be lost forever.
This is why backing up your digital data is so important. This prompted the question in last week’s We Ask You querying your methods for preventing that possibly cataclysmic loss happening to you.
If you’re reading this then the chances are you’re a fan of technology. I would also hope, as a fan of technology, you’re on Twitter by now. But who should you follow on Twitter? I’ve sorted the wheat from the chaff to bring you a rundown of the 8 essential technology journalists you should be following on Twitter. Now. Go. Do it. Well, after you get to the end of the article at least.
Twitter isn’t for everybody. But whether you have love or hate for Twitter it’s hard not to acknowledge how it has changed the way we communicate, not only with each other but with famous people too. Twitter makes it immensely easy to contact celebrities, and even politicians and world leaders have accounts (although they’re usually run by a lackey or two rather than themselves).
Marvel Comics was founded in 1939 as Timely Comics before becoming Atlas Comics in the 1950s and eventually the company we know and love in the 1960s. This was the era when Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and the omnipresent Stan Lee created the characters that have grown far beyond their humble beginnings as mere ink drawings. Marvel Comics is now part of the larger Marvel Entertainment, which in turn is part of The Walt Disney Company.
It’s time for me to come out as a cat lover. I cannot hold it in any longer, I love the little furballs, especially my own little furball of joy that cuddles up to me when it’s cold and looks at me longingly when he wants feeding. Which is all the time. Thankfully I’m not alone in my adoration of the feline species. You may have noticed that cats make up a huge part of the Web, with multiple websites, memes, vlogs, and picture blogs all dedicated to them.
The power of nostalgia cannot be underestimated. Experiencing something again that gave you pleasure in…
We all make mistakes from time to time. It’s natural, a part of life, a learning curve which we use to better ourselves. Typos are no exception. They happen often, and if writing forms a big part of your life, whether for your job or for sheer entertainment, typos can be a tiresome subject matter that can get you down when they’re pointed out to you. Repeatedly.
Believe it or not there was a time when YouTube wasn’t the daddy of all online video sites. It was instead merely just one of a number that was offering ordinary people the chance to share their videos on the Internet. Now it’s difficult to see past YouTube, at least in terms of user-generated content. There are of course the big media sites such as Hulu and Netflix, but YouTube is such a strong contender.
The Nexus 7 is Google’s first foray into the tablet market. There have already been a host of tablets that have utilized Android as their operating system of choice, but this one is made by Asus and branded by Google. It is therefore a flagship device designed to show off Android to its full potential. The Apple iPad has so far owned the tablet market, but the Nexus 7 has now entered the fray in a big, bold way.
The majority of us like watching movies. Sure, the genres we love differ, but there’s still little better than losing yourself in a different world packed with a story, a setting, and characters for a couple of hours. The problem is there are so many movies to choose from, with new ones being released each and every week. So what to see?!
Quitting smoking will change your life and could potentially save it too. Unfortunately it’s easier said than done. Cigarettes are highly addictive, which is why quitting tends to involve a process rather than just suddenly stopping. The majority of smokers express a desire to quit, but when it comes to actually putting their money where their mouth is things change.
Geeks are fairly well represented on television. Sure, some shows – even those listed below – are aimed at the mainstream and therefore represent geeks as being spotty, scruffy ne’er-do-wells that live in their parents’ basements, but in general geeks are shown as role models or important people who give something positive to society. Which, as geeks ourselves, we all know we do.
Owning a quality pair of headphones is very important for anyone who wants or needs to listen to music by themselves on a regular basis. In fact, they’re more important than the device actually playing the music itself, whether it be a home stereo system, an mp3 player, or a smartphone. A decent pair of headphones can make up for a trashy player.
London is a great city to visit. I should know, having lived on the outskirts of it for 30 years before I upped sticks and headed north to Manchester, another great British city. London is always a hotspot of tourism, with a long history told through the buildings, a great many attractions, and the good ol’ Royal Family that is more beloved by tourists than the people they rule over.
Many modern video games play out like movies, with strong storylines, fleshed-out characters, and action sequences that surely give even Michael Bay pause for thought. And yet when it comes to actually making movies from video games, Hollywood and its film-making sister cities around the world have failed spectacularly. There are some video game movie adaptations worth watching, but most end up pleasing neither film buffs or gamers.
Downfall, or Der Untergang in German, is a film detailing the last days of World War II in April and May of 1945. It’s an often uncomfortable portrayal of a dictator facing the end; of the war, of his beliefs, of his life. Unfathomably a meme around a particular scene from Downfall has propagated on the InterWebs like wildfire. It takes the German-spoken video of Hitler being told all hope is lost but places English subtitles over the top suggesting what is being said.
The release of Windows 8 is, at the time of writing, a mere three months away. The time to make sweeping changes has passed, and Microsoft will be unleashing a version of Windows 8 very close to the preview versions we’ve tried and tested (and in some cases dismissed out of hand) here at MakeUseOf. Microsoft has taken a huge gamble in its strategy for remaining in the game against Apple and Google in the emerging post-PC era.
Very few of us are likely to ever make it into outer space, unless the various space tourism ventures become mainstream successes. Even then the price of being flown into space will be so high that normal, everyday folk like you and I will only be able to look on with dreams of one day affording such a once-in-a-lifetime trip.
Radio has moved on considerably over the past few years. While FM (Frequency Modulation) is still the most popular platform, the combination of DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) and the Internet has expanded the options people have for listening to both music and speech stations.
The history of video games is littered with the dead corpses of titles that never quite fulfilled their promise. Not because they sucked – far from it, in fact – but because they didn’t sell in anything like the number they deserved to. Critical acclaim didn’t result in commercial success. Many of these titles are slow-burners or a little strange, but those gamers who took the time to become fully immersed in their worlds became hooked.
Google unveiled the Nexus 7, its long-awaited foray into the burgeoning tablet market, at Google I/O last month. The combination of hardware, design, and price took many by surprise, with all three of these components being about the best we could have hoped for from such a device at this time. I believe the Nexus 7 is competition for the iPad and I feel competition to Apple’s stranglehold on the tablet market is exactly what’s needed.
I’m a gamer, and like all gamers I have particular tastes. I have adored some video games through the decades, and would count playing them as highly memorable experiences. I have also played some games I ended up hating, and have sought to force the memory of those to the back of my mind. Video games can frustrate very easily. Whether because they’re too difficult, too annoying, or just generally bad.
Social networking is a huge part of the Internet, providing the means for us all to connect and communicate quickly and easily. There are both positive and negative aspects to the very act of social networking, but most of us take part in the activity on at least a part-time basis. Most of us doing so on more than one site. This complexity of connectivity makes it very tempting to combine the various social networks we use.
