desks

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Discussion: Are you spoiling a movie for yourself by listening to the soundtrack before watching the movie? Inspired by Clint Mansell's new "Stoker" score available to stream.

- Discussion: Which programs are still shown in standard definition?

- The New York Times warns against sitting at work.… Read more

The Samsung Galaxy S3 (and Note 2) has a neat feature when docked to a Samsung multimedia dock; it can automatically display the desk home screen. The desk home screen is a useful display with a clock, calendar, local weather and multimedia shortcuts. It's a nice companion display when you're charging your S3 at your desk. However, you don't necessarily need a dock to use the desk home screen.

If you're using a third-party smartphone stand with a separate charger, you can still make use of the desk home screen.

To use the desk home screen, … Read more

The day of the single-purpose gadget is rapidly fading. You can't just have a phone that you use to talk to other people. It has to do 50 other things. You can't just have a desk lamp that lights up your desk. You have to have one that charges your phone and gives you mood lighting, too.

The Satechi Smart LED Desk Lamp tries to fit as much functionality in as it can. It charges smartphones and has a built-in timer to power it off. It's also very touchy-feely. It's controlled through a touch panel and has different lighting modes to fit your mood.… Read more

One of the fascinating things about living in this era is observing how everyday products can become far more useful with a little infusion of technology.

Konica Minolta today debuted a desk lamp with an ace up its sleeve: it features a built-in induction charging pad for devices that support the Qi wireless charging standard (such as the Nokia Lumia 920 and many other products). It appears to be the first of its kind. … Read more

The DeskAngel is an application intended to extend the use of your mouse and keyboard. This means getting more done with fewer keystrokes or mouse clicks.

We were more than a little confused by the instructions in the Read Me document that accompanied this application installation. After visiting the website for the application, some of the features were made more clear but nearly half of them are useless if you don't have a mouse with a wheel (for scrolling). Most of the other features like Edge Snap, Roll, and Screen Clipping are already available through Windows 7. If you … Read more

When online chatting first became popular, most of us did it using a chat client, such as AOL's Instant Messenger or (if we really want to show our age) ICQ. These days, many people chat using Facebook, and why not? The vast majority of the people you know are probably there, and chat is integrated into Facebook's interface, which you probably have open all the time anyway. If you miss having the option to chat without having your browser open, however, try Facebook Chat DeskTop. This simple program lets you access your Facebook chat buddies from your desktop. … Read more

Seagate today launched a new family of external hard drives that's a continuation of its popular GoFlex line-up but now with a completely different name: the Seagate Backup Plus family.

While the GoFlex name is now in the past, the flexibility remains with the external hard drives. The new Seagate Backup drives come in both a portable version, called Seagate Backup Plus, and a desktop version, called Seagate Backup Plus Desk. The former are bus-powered drives that are compact and don't require an external power adapter. The latter are larger drives, both in terms of physical size and … Read more

AutoDesk isn't exactly a household name, but I'm continually impressed by the quality of free apps it offers.

One of the latest free apps, which came out earlier this month, renders everyday objects in 3D on your iPad, a fairly nifty feature. These aren't the wonky 3D images that seem to fly off the screen; I'm talking about rendered images that can be moved around on screen.

The app 123D Catch works like this: You use the app to snap 40 or so photos of an object at different angles. The photos are then uploaded to … Read more

Crusty Craigslist may finally be getting an update based on this job listing for a senior user-interface engineer, so Jeff and I are brainstorming the features we think Craig should incorporate in CL2.0.

Jeff likes to indulge in the art of self-reflection, and a friendly chat about Blu-ray discs this weekend inspires him to question the value of physical discs and their jewel cases. On that note, what is the best way to display a collection? Is it on...what are they called again? Oh yeah, towers? A discussion on subtle self-promotion follows.… Read more