flowers

Keeping track of the latest updates on all of your favorite Web sites can be a daunting task. Sunflower for Mac tries to simplify this for you. It is a free application that takes snapshots of specific Web pages over time and compares them to a registry of stored images to allow for easy tracking of any updates or changes that occur on these pages.

SunFlower for Mac is easy to install and set up. It offers many features that allow for customization of how the application takes and stores the snapshots it analyzes. A split pane window shows Web … Read more

Most e-readers will open PDFs, but they don't present them as nicely as you might like. ReFlower will quickly edit any PDF into a document that looks much nicer on an e-reader. You don't have much control over the product, but you will end up with something that is easier to read.

The download seems to be tailored to Amazon's Kindle brand of e-readers. That makes sense, since they are the most popular and can be temperamental with non-native formats. However, a little more flexibility would be a welcome addition. It would also be nice if ReFlower … Read more

These days a lot of life is programmable. But as an avid gardener, I thought that surely nurturing seeds into little green shoots and then full-fledged fruits and flowers would require a nondigital green digit for years to come.

I was wrong. Plants, it turns out, can be activated.

A battery-powered planter pot called Click and Grow out of Estonia lets you grow real, living plants almost without lifting a finger. Even the vernacular around gardening comes fully updated -- sowing a seed can now be described as "inserting a cartridge," watering the soil is "refilling the … Read more

Put down the hymnal and pass the PlayStation. A British cathedral plans to incorporate a video game into worship services this Sunday.

At the Exeter Cathedral in Devon, England, the congregation will collaboratively play the PS3 game Flower, passing the Sony controller around until the first level is completed.

Developer ThatGameCompany calls the game a "video game version of a poem." In it, players guide a flower petal through environments that swing between the pastoral and the chaotic, and in doing so, cause the onscreen world to change. Sounds a lot more contemplative than Call of Duty. … Read more

Munch Time is a reasonably entertaining physics-based arcade puzzler starring (yet another) cute cartoon animal. While most of the gameplay is derivative of similar, earlier games, Munch Time does offer up a relatively interesting twist with its tongue-swinging shtick.

You play as Munch, a photogenic chameleon, as he searches for his lunch on a series of increasingly complex levels. Munch can move across the ground with a tap, but his preferred method of locomotion is with the looping swing of his adhesive tongue, lunging from flower to flower by tapping on them. This requires some timing and momentum management to … Read more

Hewlett-Packard has made its first major executive hire under new CEO Meg Whitman.

The company announced today that it's hired John Hinshaw to fill the new role of executive vice president for global technology and business processes. That long title means he'll oversee the information technology and administrative groups, be responsible for procuring services, and manage all of the company's business processes.

Reporting directly to Whitman, Hinshaw will join HP on November 15 and also take a seat on the executive council.

The 41-year-old Hinshaw hails from Boeing, where he was vice president and general manager for … Read more

You are, no doubt, catching up on your sleep after getting up in the middle of the night to watch all of the Royal Wedding.

You will have enjoyed your favorite moments: admiring the slimness of the bride, the baldness of the groom, or the wonderful joy of the cartwheeling clergyman.

However, the Web seems to have spoken with a resounding definitiveness and taken one small image of one small girl and turned it into a meme for the ages. Or at least the week.

The picture in question involves neither kissing nor hugging. Instead, it is one small section … Read more

We're down a man this week, as Joey calls in with back problems--but the rest of us are on hand to discuss this week's hot topics. The hottest of which may be Apple's upcoming September 1 press event, and we all weigh in with allegedly thoughtful predictions on what new iPods and other gadgets may show up.

Then it's time for a moment of silence as we mourn the death of the ATI brand, with its corporate parent reportedly planning to tag the company's future graphics cards with the AMD brand name instead.

Among the wackier technology antics we look at this week--a collection of pottery figures inspired by the hit casual game Plants vs. Zombies, and a quick visit to a Chicago coffee shop with a pretty sweet pop culture collectible--a full-size model Delorean car from the "Back to the Future" film series.

… Read more

After the devastating January earthquake in Haiti, which left hundreds of thousands dead, many more injured, and more than a million homeless, the country's infrastructure lay in ruins. But because Haiti's cell phone network inexplicably survived, text messaging quickly became a way for people to put out pleas for assistance.

Not long after the disaster, the country's largest cell network provider set up the shortcode 4636, allowing Haitians to text a call for help. But with thousands of texts flooding the system, and a need for many of them to be translated into English, relief workers needed … Read more