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The sniffles have gone around lately and Iive picked up my fair share of them. Itis moments like Friday night where your body holds a minor rebellion against you that make you wonder if youill ever feel up to gaming again. That and fevered dreams in which a giant whale keeps hitting you in the…

So many DVDs, so many friends to borrow them. For Mac users, the answer is to find a database application that can manage your library and track who has what. DVDpedia handles that task without a hitch, and throws in a wish list just for good measure. DVDpediais iTunes-like interface is both familiar and well…

Appleis iLife i06 applications make it easy to build your own music albums and DVD movies, but they lack the ability to create really sharp disc and case liner artwork. Thatis where BeLightis Disc Cover comes in. This design tool has everything you need to make great looking music CD, DVD, and photo CD artwork…

This godsend of a Web site analyzes a graphic sample of your mystery font and almost always comes back with exactly what you want to know: Which font is that? I started by scanning a font from a printed document.

Keeping track of passwords, logins, and account information can be an overwhelming task. Appleis Keychain Access does a fine job of tracking most of that data for you, but sometimes it just isnit enough. Thatis when itis time to bring in the heavy hitters – like Koingois Data Guardian. Data Guardian is a configurable password,…

For this weekis game, amigo and aspiring programmer Patrick Roanhouse pointed out DragonFable, a cool Flash-based role playing game capable of running on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. And thanks to him, Iim now somewhat obsessed with earning enough money to buy a pig that knows martial arts to add to my party. Players…

We live in an age of portable electronic devices, which is perfectly fine until you need to recharge one and there isnit a power outlet around. The Soldius 1 solar charger from mysoldius can get your devices back in business as long as you have sunlight and a little patience. The Soldius 1 folds flat…

Now it seems that stores start decorating in August, and thereis nothing magical about going toe to toe against a mob of shoppers hell-bent on getting everything on their list. Christmas shopping use to be fun, now its more like a 2 month long game of rugby except there are no teams, itis every man,…

ThinkEquity conducted a survey of 28 Apple retail stores over eight states on November 24, “Black Friday,” and counted as many as 1,750 visitors per hour with an average of eight purchases per 100 visitors. Mr. Hoopes commented “The overwhelming majority of purchases fit into a small bag. That said, demand for CPUs (notebooks and…

“Our checks show that initial interest is strong,” the analyst explained. “If Apple is able to ramp supply to indirect channels, our estimates could be low.” He also found, during checks with 40 big-box retailers, that 70% of clerks are pointing to iPods when asked to suggest an MP3 player under US$200. Thatis up from…

The Internet-based text and voice chatting system, Skype, is popular enough that some people have started using it instead of regular phone lines, so itis no surprise that companies are releasing products that untether you from your computer desk while you talk. Keyspanis VP-24A Cordless VoIP Phone is one option, and it works well enough…

The new setup for the network includes 41 MacBook Pro laptops with Final Cut Studio, a 70TB storage system with 10 Apple Xserve 7TB XRAID systems and 14 Apple Xsan Software Licenses, 12 PowerMac G5 Quad workstations, two PowerMac G5 Dual Core systems, and 19 23-inch Apple Cinema HD Displays for editing and design. The…

SidewinderX is priced at US$19.95, and is available for download at the Hendrickson Software Components Web site.

Virginia Techis Xserve/Infiniband Cluster.

By Chris Barylick Coming Into Its Own: World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade While itis one thing to create and sell a new video game, expansion packs are an entirely different beast altogether. Perhaps a game was successful enough to warrant new content; not a sequel, but a series of additions to keep the player base…

"This holiday season," said the report, "shoppers are expected to spend a whopping $1.6 billion on extended warranties for laptops, flat-screen TVs, other electronics, and appliances. And almost all of it will be money down the drain." The magazine reached this position based on failure/repair rates throughout a variety of industries, and from comparing the…

Iill admit it: Iim an information junkie. Much to my delight, and chagrin, there are plenty of applications out there to turn my Mac into an Internet data siphoning monster. The trick is finding one with the right balance of flexibility, ease of use, and portability – something like Life2Go 1.6.4. Life2Go