production

How far can you get with a 3D printer and a dream?

CNET photographer Sarah Tew and I took a tour of Quirky's new Manhattan offices this morning. As depicted in her frankly great shots in the slideshow below, we got a firsthand look at the inner workings of a serious, professional product development company.

Normally I don't go in for facility tours. The articles that tend to result from such things too often take the appearance of marketing material. It was the promise of the chance to see how a real design company uses a 3D printer that drew me to accept Quirky's invite.… Read more

Apple CEO Tim Cook might just be taking some tips from Bill Gates--last week he announced he donated $100 million to charity, according to The Verge.

Cook made his announcement during an internal town hall meeting celebrating Apple's successful fourth quarter.

According to The Verge, Cook said $50 million had been donated to Stanford's hospitals, with $25 million for a new main building and $25 million for a new children's hospital. Another $50 million has been donated to Product RED, which is a charity that combats diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.

Since becoming Apple … Read more

Choosing the proper font for a flier, title page, or even a graphic can be a difficult task. 

Sometimes the standard fonts installed on your operating system just don't cut it, and browsing free font Web sites can be a time sink with no guaranteed results. However, you may see or recall an image with a really awesome font, but have no way of contacting the artist to identify the font used. Here's a good way to identify fonts in images for free.

Step 1: Find a picture with the font you want identified. If the image … Read more

When organizing a lot of files, you'll also probably have a lot of different windows open. Move the pictures to this directory, move these documents to that work folder...oops, closed that work folder. 

Now you need to dig back through the directory hierarchy to open it and make your drag-and-drop organization method fast again. This annoying occurrence can be prevented with a simple app for Windows that will let you reopen your last-closed window.

Step 1: Download and extract UndoClose.

Step 2: Run the program by double-clicking on the program icon in the directory you extracted it … Read more

Apple is making a move to break into South America--and Brazil is ready (and willing) to help.

According to a report from Brazilian newspaper Folha (via MacRumors), Foxconn will begin producing iPads in its Brazilian factory after being officially granted a batch of tax incentives from the Brazilian government.

As Tim Cook noted in his quarterly earnings call Tuesday, Brazil is one of the top four countries Apple is looking to break in to and is seen as the gateway to the rest of South America. With over 200 million people in a relatively stable economy that is growing its … Read more

I'll let you in on a little secret: I haven't been thrilled with any iPad keyboard case solution, despite testing and reviewing about half a dozen of them.

Sure, some of them are excellent products. Still, I don't find them essential. This is why I don't use my iPad during mission-critical trips to trade shows and live-blogged events. This is why I don't use my iPad as a laptop replacement. Not entirely. Not yet.

I agree with a lot of what Harry McCracken refers to in his experience with his iPad and the ZaggFolio keyboard case. Ideally, having such an ultraportable, flexible device with a long battery life would be a perfect travel tool. For me, however, that perfect tool hasn't materialized yet.

I'd love to have some sort of evolved hybrid of an iPad and a MacBook Air. I've been dreaming of it for a while, actually. Apple's clearly leaning toward a fusion of sorts between iOS and Mac OS X. Lion was the first step. iOS gets a bit more advanced every year, taking baby steps toward being a true operating system for hard-core computing tasks.

There are several reasons it won't work right now, and the biggest by far is the good old-fashioned trackpad--or lack of it.… Read more

About a week ago I featured Kingsoft Office Suite Professional 2012 in a bonus deal. Since then I've been test-driving the software on an old laptop. And you know what? I like it!

I mention this because although the Kingsoft Professional giveaway is over, you can still get Kingsoft Office Suite Free 2012 for, well, free. Update: This program is for Windows.

Until last week, I'd never heard of Kingsoft or this product. I had, however, tried all the usual freebie Microsoft Office alternatives: OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Lotus Symphony, Google Docs, and so on.

They're all OK--good enough, … Read more

It's so easy to grab extensions for Twitter, Facebook, and even music services. 

Unfortunately, while these extensions are great for socializing and surfing, they may be resource hogs or distracting you with animated icons while attempting to be productive. There is one extension that can help solve this conundrum for you: Context. Basically, this extension groups your other extensions for situational use. So if you're working, shopping, or just surfing for fun, you can load only the relevant extensions. Here's how to get started:

Step 1: Head to the extension page for Context in the Chrome Web Store.… Read more

Popular Web sites are the bane of any would-be productive day's existence and, fortunately, there are ways to help. 

If willpower isn't your thing, there are lots of programs out there that can block access to Web sites. The problem with a lot of these programs is that you have to manually disable the block--if your conviction really falters your can still unblock it before your work gets done.

FocalFilter is a program for Windows operating systems that can block a user-generated list of Web sites for a specified period of time. The lock on these sites … Read more