Stephen Hawking sucks opera singer into black hole (in an ad)

Once you're famous, you get inundated with offers to appear in ads.

But which ones to choose? Should you peddle soap or Siri? Should you declare your love for Buick, while secretly pootling around in your Mercedes?

Stephen Hawking made an interesting choice to advertise auto insurance -- Go Compare's online auto-insurance comparison service, to be precise.… Read more

Paris Apple Store robbed of more than $1 million in goods

Armed robbers broke into the Apple Store in Paris on New Year's Eve and made off with more than a million dollars' worth of merchandise, according to reports.

Masked suspects wielding handguns forced their way into the store through an employee entrance as a janitor was leaving, about three hours after the store's 6 p.m. closing time, England's Telegraph reported. The janitor was "lightly injured," the news outlet said. The Wall Street Journal cited French reports and said a security guard had also been overpowered by the thieves.

The Journal said two suspects forced … Read more

Design your dream home with Home Design Story

It starts with two empty rooms, but with your creative efforts becomes your dream home. Home Design Story is an iOS game that lets you experience all the joy and pain of interior and exterior home design. While it's offered free of charge, you will need to earn coins and gems to purchase items and the process can be a little slow. You may be tempted to spend your own money to speed up the process.

Home Design Story requires two things from the player: creativity and spare time to play. The game is centered around buying items from … Read more

Play the modern version of connect the dots with Flow Free

There are times when you just need a light diversion that isn't too time intensive. Flow Free is a game that fits that need very well, but unless you pay, you'll have to put up with some advertising.

The well-designed interface is sleek and attractive. The object of Flow Free is simple and so are the controls. Your goal is to connect matching dots of color with a line, or pipe. The trick is that the pipes can't cross and you have to fill up the screen. There's enough strategy to make it interesting, but not … Read more

Get the latest news on your phone with the easily customizable Prismatic

If you're willing to link to your social media accounts, you can get a customized newsfeed with Prismatic. This user-friendly app has a few flaws, but overall provides a good reading (and user) experience.

The uncluttered interface makes it easy to get started, and Prismatic makes the most of touch-screen technology to make navigation simple. As you start exploring the app, you'll get a quick overview of the controls, but helpful hints will also continue to pop up. As noted, you can sign in to Twitter, Facebook, and your other social media accounts so Prismatic can take note … Read more

Why I still love the Nexus 7

There's something about the holidays and the cold January that often follows in the Northeast that makes me want to curl up on the couch with a good book -- or in this day and age, a book on my e-reader or tablet.

The Nexus 7 debuted more than six months ago at Google's annual developer conference, but I am still a big fan of the device. And I have no trouble recommending it to tablet buyers.

In this edition of Ask Maggie, I explain why the Nexus 7 is still a good device at a decent price. … Read more

Reddit's visitors skyrocket in 2012 with 37 billion page views

Whether readers want to learn the complexities of how the Mars Curiosity rover was able to enter the Red Planet's atmosphere or just see photos of cats being weird, they can go to Reddit. The social news site announced today its end-of-year stats and it appears that users are frequenting the site at an ever-increasing rate.

Reddit revealed that in 2012 it received 37 billion page views, 400 million unique visitors, and 30 million posts -- not bad for one of the most simple Web sites on the Internet.

The site's user population has skyrocketed since its inception. … Read more

Samsung announces new SC770 multitouch monitor

Windows 8's new multitouch interface means the building of new multitouch monitors will be necessary to take advantage of it. The Series 7 Touch SC770 will be the first such monitor from Samsung.

The monitor supports up to 10 points of simultaneous multitouch. The monitor also offers 60 degrees of back-tilt flexibility; most monitors top out at about 25 degrees of tilt. Why Samsung didn't just go the full 90 degrees is beyond me, however.

Other features include a 1,920x1,080-pixel resolution, an MVA panel, Mobile High Definition Link, and an HDMI connection. Look for more information (… Read more

Samsung's new SC750 monitor gets an unveiling

The Samsung S27C750 is a fairly basic 27-inch monitor that features that rare, but oh-so-appreciated 90-degree pivot option, allowing you to work in both portrait and landscape modes.

The monitor features a cylinder-shaped metal stand with a WVA panel, an LED backlight, and a 1920x1080 resolution. According to Samsung, it achieves a brightness of 300 candelas per meters squared. However, expect to find a lone HDMi port as the sole connection option.

Look for the S27C750 in the first quarter of 2013. Also, look for actual pictures of the device soon.

Pirated iOS app store Installous shutters

Installous, a major portal for pirated paid apps from Apple's App Store, won't be around anymore.

Development team Hackulous today announced the closure of Installous on their official Web site. As of today, the pirated app store no longer works, and only shows these errors: "Outdated version. Installous will now terminate" or "API Error. API unavailable." … Read more