I agree that there are too many choices, but I believe that's part of the point of open source solutions.
It's partially the responsibility of the application developers to choose the toolkits and platforms that work best for them, not complain about having too many to choose from.
If companies like Google and Adobe got together in a side meeting and came up with a "standard" they found acceptable, it would create a demand for those platforms and make those toolkits/apps the dominant. Too bad this will never happen...
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
While the message of living a greener life seems to be pounded into our ears on a regular basis, it's never too early to get your offspring in on the energy-conserving fun. The Blow Light toy from Nigel's Eco Store features a simplistic, kid-friendly design that's sure to require a lot of attention, as the miniature pinwheel doesn't light up and excite without a little effort on your youngster's behalf. The internal blue and green LED lights remain dormant until a gust of wind (or hot air) starts the spinning, subsequently lighting up the device and eliciting smiles all around. Of course, with no batteries required, the price on this uber-green toy tends to be a bit higher than the mass market alternatives, but at least your £9.99 ($20) won't be fueling the proverbial fire.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Filed under: Desktops, Peripherals
Product reviews are typically a welcome nugget of knowledge when trying to make a critical purchasing decision, but we'd probably succumb to just picking a power supply at random before actually wading through 105 reviews to find out which one was king. While this could all very well be a completely impractical prank, Stéphane Charpentier of France's MatBe has apparently put just over one hundred PSUs on the testing bench in order to find out which is worth your cash, and he went through a variety of flavors and wattages to make sure the very one you were eying was thoughtfully included. Without getting into specifics, Akasa's Power80+ took home the gold in the nonmodular category, Antec's Neo HE notched first place in the modular realm, the Fortron Zen won in the fanless arena, Cooler Master's Real Power Pro ruled the "powerful" division, and Antec's Earthwatts proved the most "valuable." Of course, there's a good bit of detail surrounding the 100 other losers in the crowd, so if you're down with skimming through 140 pages of PSU reviews, the read link awaits your attention.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Video
Uh-oh. Looks like MPAA boss Dan Glickman skipped over his pal Steve's open letter. Speaking at a LexisNexis conference on DRM, Glickman announced that the major studios comprising the MPAA have made a "philosophical commitment" to interoperability and fair use and announced a plan to let people rip DVDs to home servers and iPods. The goal, he said, is to "make things simpler for the consumer." However, Glickman also stressed that the studios were going to move forward "legally and in a protected way," meaning, of course, DRM. Hammering the irony home, the solution he proposed -- a "technology summit" of academics, tech companies, and content producers to develop a workable DRM system -- is exactly the sort of wasted effort Steve-O lambasted in his open letter. And while it's encouraging that Glickman recognized the "impatience" of consumers, he didn't give a timeline, instead saying that pricing and business models were "way beyond" him. Now, to be fair, Steve himself doesn't think TV shows and movies need to be DRM-free, but on the whole, Glickman's plan to solve DRM's problems with more DRM isn't exactly our favorite idea ever. Still, it's nice to see the MPAA finally recognize the importance of interoperability. Let's just hope they're actually serious about it -- we're not holding our breath.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Canada has announced it will build North America's biggest solar power plant - a 40MW project covering 365 hectares with around one million solar panels, Reuters reports.
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