scales

Google's popular Nexus 7 tablet has display issues, according to an expert.

First of all, let's be clear: Google seems to have a certifiable hit with the Nexus 7 tablet and reviews have mostly been positive, if not very positive. And there have been no major complaints from review sites about the display.

That said, Raymond Soneira at DisplayMate Technologies says the tablet's display "falls short." Not mincing words, he says in a new blog post that he knew "something was seriously wrong" when he looked at the standard photos that DisplayMate uses … Read more

When considering the bitter rivalries that have emerged in the smartphone industry between Apple and its competitors (Samsung, Google, HTC, Nokia), one needs only to review the patent portfolio of each company to see from where it all stems.

To argue that the patent system is broken is another article for another day, but with Apple receiving the grant from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for document translation, rotation, and scaling, it is safe to assume that the intellectual property battles will only heighten.

Sure, in 2007, just as the iPhone was released, Apple had to teach the … Read more

I was struggling to meet a deadline, procrastinating on a million errands, and avoiding answering 100 e-mails -- in short, I was stressed. Then I saw this, and nothing seemed like a big deal anymore.

What is it? Why, it's everything. It's an interactive display of The Scale of the Universe. Twin 14-year-olds Cary and Micheal Huang built this elegant, mind-blowing rendering of the entire universe. And with their curiosity and gumption, they created the best tool I've ever encountered to "put things in perspective." Kurt Vonnegut would be proud. … Read more

Is it a mixing bowl? Is it a kitchen scale? Yes.

A large, durable mixing bowl is hard to not appreciate. It's perfect for so many things, from scrambling the morning eggs to whipping up batter for a decadent batch of brownies. So useful is the everyday kitchenware that it is hard to imagine asking any more utility from it. But that doesn't mean we can't.

Striving to become more than the sum of its parts, the Beurer Digital Mixing Bowl & Kitchen Scale offers an all-in-one solution to mixing and weighing needs. The overachieving bowl consists … Read more

Kitchen tools are only useful when they can be found.

Counter space is a valuable commodity in any kitchen. Not only does increased area allow for easy navigation during prep work and cooking, but it also makes finding things a whole lot easier. Gadgets and appliances have a tendency to find themselves tucked away in all manner of nooks and crannies as we manipulate them into ever smaller and smaller spaces. And then sometimes, they are hidden in plain view.

The Wolfgang Puck 2.5-pound Automatic Breadmaker with Scale ($179.95) brings together the cooking and the prep work necessary … Read more

I was prepared to hate Mat Honan's latest feature on Instagram, the popular vintage-filter-photo app for Apple's iPhone. But to his credit, the Gizmodo writer made a little business problem immensely fascinating.

Honan tells a story of how Instagram blew up without blowing up--that is, scaled to 15 million users without losing uptime, industry credibility and each of its 10 employees' minds. The key is that Instagram shunned a Web interface, or a second or third app platform to support, and kept innovating in the narrow space in which they exist: a single photo-sharing app for iPhone users.… Read more

Despite the availability of a plethora of recipes online, many good old-fashioned cookbooks still quite often do the trick; they are easy to thumb through, they are usually well-organized into themes, and they don't stop working when they get wet.

Because of this timeless usefulness, it is not uncommon to find a few cookbooks hanging about on a shelf in practically any kitchen. They make for a good resource when one is not sure what to cook. All one has to do is peruse the spines, pulling one down when they find one of interest. And the scale while … Read more

There's always been tension between server and storage bigots.

Scott McNealy, former CEO of the former Sun Microsystems, once infamously opined that storage was a (mere) feature of the server. The problem was that at the time he made that comment, the storage industry was writing its declaration of independence. Fibre Channel-based SANs were consolidating and replacing direct attached storage (DAS) architectures in many of the world's large data centers. IP-based network attached storage (NAS) systems were consolidating and replacing print and file servers, much to the chagrin of both McNealy and Steve Ballmer.

Vendors with a server … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Fitbit, maker of a wireless clip-on activity tracker, is adding the Aria Wi-Fi scale to its lineup this April due, according to the company, to user requests.

The Aria has competition in the "smart" scale department, with the Withings booth and its very similar scales for adults and yes, even babies, just a few yards away.

But Fitbit has introduced a multiple-user feature that recognizes--out of as many as eight different users--who is standing on the scale. Think large households, dorm quads, sports teams, etc.

Priced at $129.99, Fitbit's first Wi-Fi scale can tally weight, body fat, and body mass index, and automatically uploads that info with every step on the scale to an online tool with graphs that perhaps too-handily track one's progress (or lack thereof). The online and mobile tools are free and also include weight goals and a food and exercise log.… Read more