fast

Quick image editor

MemeCode's i.Mage is a compact, flexible image-editing tool that's designed to handle a variety of common tasks quickly, much like simple pixel editors such as DPaint from the Days of DOS. That's prehistory to most users, but i.Mage is actually up to date. What sets it apart is its speed: instead of starting bloated out of the box and then being loaded down with plug-ins, i.Mage launches and loads images quickly. It's got quite a full assortment of tools plus some interesting options.

Launching i.Mage calls up the program's interface in … Read more

The Silly Putty age of social media

For something that seems very rudimentary in a world of iPhone apps and fancy smartphone operating systems, text-messaging services were getting a whole lot of love at October's edition of the monthly New York Tech Meetup.

Along with about a dozen other start-ups eager to pitch the audience of potential partners, investors, and advisers, two back-to-back presentations from new companies called GroupMe and Fast Society showed off different takes on the same basic concept of group text messaging.

They have extremely similar premises. Both GroupMe and Fast Society require a single user with an iPhone (or also, in GroupMe'… Read more

Build your own burger

Sky Burger is a casual burger-building arcade game with endearing visuals, surprisingly fun controls, but fairly repetitive gameplay.

Your job is to build burgers to order, one at at time, by positioning a bottom bun (and a teetering, ever-growing tower of ingredients) under a steady, random cascade of pickles, patties, tomatoes, onions, and the like. Burger ingredients fall from the top of the screen, and you can get your proto-burger under them by using either touch or tilt controls: touching and dragging the bun, or tilting left and right. Both have their advantages (tilt keeps your fingers from ever obscuring … Read more

Sleep less than 6 hours a night? Hello, diabetes...

I have long felt guilty about the extent to which I indulge in sleep. As a former and chronic insomniac (from kindergarten through college), I appreciate it so much I can hardly go without eight or even nine hours a night. And, as someone who knows lots of new parents, I consider this a guilty pleasure of the most luxurious variety.

But the fact that I slept three to five hours a night for so many years could mean I have a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes and heart disease, according to an analysis of six years of … Read more

PhotoFast iPADock perfect for Apple households

Taiwan-based PhotoFast is well-known for its range of flash memory and adapters, so its newest product comes as a bit of a surprise. The PhotoFast iPADock is a dock that lets a whole household charge their Apple devices. It can hold Apple products in the following combinations:

Two iPads One iPad and two iPhones/iPod Touch players Four iPhones or iPod Touch players Six iPod Nanos

Yes, you can dock up to four iPhones with this massive dock. Not only does it let you connect these products to charge or sync, the iPADock is also a multicard reader and USB … Read more

Will DC fast charging harm electric car batteries?

I wrote a blog post a couple of weeks ago about a new charging technology by JFE Engineering that can charge a battery to 50 percent in 3 minutes, and up to 70 percent in 5 minutes. While the technology is impressive, some readers wondered if that fast-charging battery technology would have a negative effect on the life span on EV car batteries.

Well, readers have little to worry about since that technology probably isn't making it to the U.S. or in stateside electric vehicles any time soon.

There are few public level 3 charging stations in the … Read more

Toyota loses domain name trademark appeal

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Thursday ruled that an authorized Lexus dealer can use the word "Lexus" in its Internet domain name. It also ruled that the Japanese automaker took advantage of two auto brokers who represented themselves in court.

Toyota sued Lisa and Farzad Tabari, the owners of Fast Imports, in a Los Angeles federal court in 2003 stating that consumers would be confused by the use of the name Lexus in the defendant's Web site domain name and the use of Lexus photos and the Lexus logo.

Toyota … Read more

JFE unveils the 3-minute electric car charge

Thirty minutes used to be the gold standard when it came to charging electric-car batteries. But JFE Engineering, a Japanese energy technology company, has unveiled a way to recharge batteries in one-tenth of that time.

In only three minutes, the company claims that it can recharge a battery up to 50 percent of its capacity, and in five minutes recharge the battery up to 80 percent, according to an article in CrunchGear.

The Mitsubishi iMiev had a 50-mile range after a five-minute charge in testing.

In contrast, the Nissan Leaf using 440-volt fast-charging stations takes 26 minutes to achieve an 80 percent charge … Read more

Group to-do lists and WWII dogfighting: iPhone apps of the week

With the iPhone 4 launch Thursday, those fortunate enough to have Apple's latest shiny new device probably want to see what it can do. Since not everyone reading has an iPhone 4 just yet, my featured apps are going to appeal to all iPhone users, but if you have the new device, I have a couple of apps you should check out immediately.

Apple's iMovie for iPhone ($4.99) helps you make fun videos using both the forward- and rear-facing cameras, letting you edit your footage, add themes and music, and more (get more info about iMovie here). … Read more