New Technology : Tweeting Fridges and Web Controlled Rice Cookers: 9 of the Stupidest Smart Home Appliances

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stupidest-smart-appliances

There are a lot of incredible smart home devices out there that are worthy of your time and money. Some of the examples that spring immediately to mind include the Nest thermostat, which will save you energy and money by ensuring you only heat your house when needed. Then there’s the Philips Hue Lights, which allow you to control the illumination in your home. Some will even save your life. The Nest Protect is an incredibly precise WiFi connected smoke and carbon monoxide detector. They are all useful products that will ultimately become ubiquitous because they’re so incredibly helpful. But...


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New Technology : Should You Refresh, Reset, Restore, or Reinstall Windows?

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windows-reinstall

System Restore or reinstall Windows. For most of us, those are the only two choices we had throughout most of Windows history. Ever wanted to reset Windows 7 without losing personal data? It wasn’t easy. Neither was resetting to factory settings. Starting with Windows 8, we got two more goodies to play around with: Windows Refresh and Windows Reset. It’s great to have all of these options, but it can be confusing to know which one to use in which scenarios. So, let’s explore a few scenarios to see which path is the right one to take. It’s actually quite...


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New Technology : Forget Google Translate: 3 Ways to Get an Accurate, Quick Translation

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quick-translation

Bad translations. We’ve all seen them. We’ve all laughed at them. At their best, they’re quite funny. The more notorious examples have even spawned memes. There are even Tumblr blogs that aggregate unfortunate, inaccurate and hilarious translation fails for all to see. Never let your small grass feel ashamed to smile! #translation #badtranslation http://ift.tt/1aBl6Op — ITC Global (@ITCtranslations) August 12, 2013 But at their worst, they paint a picture of unprofessionalism and laziness. Whether you’re planning to apply for a job or an apartment abroad, or are looking to translate your web page, you need to get things right first...


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New Technology : Big Game Studios Are Killing the Video Game Industry

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game-studios-killing-industry

The big names in gaming—like EA, Square, Valve, Blizzard, and Ubisoft—have a big problem. They’ve become part of the corporate culture that eventually infects most industries, and they’ve lost sight of their most important market: gamers. The situation is dire, with bad stories hitting the papers and blogs on a weekly basis. We’ve seen three big problems with the AAA gaming scene in recent years, and I’ll break them down here. Disappointing Games This is possibly the most damning. These studios are in the business of making video games, and if consumers are going to spend $60 (and potentially a...


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New Technology : 5 of the Most Powerful Nostalgia Sites on the Web

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cwa-nostalgia

Why does nostalgia feel good? Seeing a TV commercial, hearing a song or playing a game from an earlier time in your life makes you feel more connected to your past, and can even bring back happy memories. Whatever the reason, nostalgia is something the Internet loves – and more than a few websites and apps are dedicated to it. Today Cool Websites and Apps brings you 5 sites we haven’t covered yet, all of which can make you feel connected to different parts of your past. Whether you fondly remember the 90s or think back to the decades before...


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New Technology : Your Favorite Horror Movies Creepily Reimagined as Children’s Books

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HorrorBooksFeat

Horror movies are generally considered to not be the best media for children to consume. They are violent, often filled with sexual imagery, and they tend be just a bit too scary. But what if they were reimagined as Children’s books? You’d think that would make them less scary, but as the images below show, they somehow make the characters and visuals seem even creepier than in their original movie form. Check out a sample of the images below, and click the via link below to the see whole unsettling gallery. Via BuzzFeed The Shining A Nightmare on Elm Street...


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New Technology : How to Run Internet Explorer on Your Mac (and Why You Might Want To)

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ie-mac

Choosing your Internet browser is not a decision to be taken lightly, yet it is an issue that very few users give careful consideration to. It’s an ironic fact that while Mac and Windows users will argue over many aspects of their operating systems, they both typically agree that the two default browsers are useless. Apple’s Safari and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer are frequently accused of being slow, unwieldy, and insecure, and these days most people who buy a new computer make a headlong dash to Google Chrome’s download page without further thought. We’ve looked at the surprising benefits and features...


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New Technology : Star Trek vs. Star Wars: Which Is More Technologically Advanced?

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startrek-wars

There are three topics that should never be discussed at the dinner table: religion, politics, and the relative merits of Star Trek and Star Wars. Luckily for us, MakeUseOf isn’t a dinner table. While any debate around the two great Star franchises tends to get… passionate… I’m going to try and approach the subject as logically as Spock. I’m not going to talk about which canon is better — it’s obviously Star Trek — but instead focus on whose cannons are better. Let’s take a look at the technology of Star Trek and Star Wars. Space Rules Before diving deep...


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New Technology : Should Clean Reader Be Allowed to Censor eBooks?

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clean-reader-text-censor

“Read books. Not profanity.” The tagline of Clean Reader is short and simple—but what it represents, and the responses to it, are anything but. The swear-word-censoring app has kicked up a firestorm of ideological debate, and neither side is backing down. So, who’s right? And what’s at stake? The Clean Reader App So, what, exactly, is Clean Reader? It’s an e-reader app, available for iPhone and Android, that allows (well—allowed; we’ll get to that in a moment) readers to download books from its store and then choose whether they want to read a “clean,” “cleaner,” or “squeaky clean” version. The...


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New Technology : How Safe Is The Chrome Web Store Anyway?

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chrome-webstore-safe

Around 33% of all Chromium users have some kind of browser plugin installed. Rather than being a niche, edge-technology used exclusively by power users, add-ons are positively mainstream, with the majority coming from the Chrome Web Store and the Firefox Add-Ons Marketplace. But how safe are they? According to research due to be presented at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, the answer is not very. The Google-funded study found tens of millions of Chrome users have some variety of add-on based malware installed, which represents 5% of total Google traffic. The research resulted in almost 200 plugins being...


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