The Mini is undoubtedly one of the world's most memorable cars. No, it's not as upscale as Aston Martins, Porsches or even Ferraris. And it's not as aggressive as Hummers, Land Cruisers or even Range Rovers. The Mini is an ultracompact car that's designed to be economical, both fuel-wise and with the parts used for construction. But it has become a 20th century icon, and this may as well extend to the 21st century, with the introduction of a "New Mini." Mr. Bean drove a Mini. Minis were featured in Austin Powers films, too. And the story of the 1960's Italian Job and the 2000's remake revolved around the Mini. The Mini seems to have been ...

It's the holiday season once again, and one tradition I cherish is gift giving (especially for one like me who has kids). Since my kids are just preschool-aged, though, most of our purchases are toys. But I know that a lot of folks are thinking of giving their loved ones gadgets this Christmas. An iPhone? Netbooks? Game consoles? You name it--retailers are facing the rush! Now many of these gadgets surely need battery juice to power up. That's why Gadzooki is raffling off five packs of Energizer Advanced Lithium batteries (4 cells each pack). Most gadgets today would have their own battery packs, but a lot would still need the regular cells like the AA batteries we're ...

Golf is not just a game. Business deals are often made over a few rounds between associates and business partners. Friendships are strengthened. So basically golf is a social network--though not the usual online social network one would imagine. Web app developers have been finding interesting ways to combine the power of social networking and the niche interests of Web users. And in terms of golf, Skill Technology has developed Gimme Golf, where users can compete with other online users, with the possibility of playing tourney (and winning prizes!). The grass just got a lot greener for casual gamers. Gimme Golf, a new online golf game from Skill Technology, allows players to connect with friends and ...

As I write this, I'm running Windows on my laptop, here at the dinner table. It's been almost a year since I worked on Windows, meaning actually running it for a few hours and doing real work with it. With my computers usually running some flavor of Linux or Mac OS X, Windows has mostly only been run only in those rare instances I need to run Windows-specific software. My most recent acquisitions, being an Asus Eee (running on Linux) and a Mac desktop, have brought me farther away from Windows, I was almost tempted to wipe it out from my laptop. And yet here I am. I've booted up good ol' Windows XP because my wife wanted to ...

Notebook designers and manufacturers have long searched for the holy grail of power efficiency. For this reason, the architecture of portable computers has evolved so much since the advent of laptop computers. And one of the main ways to conserve battery life is by reducing hard disk spinning. Recently, the trend is going towards solid-state storage. This means drives that have no moving parts. Most popular of these is flash memory. They're cheap, durable, and can hold data even without power (unlike volatile RAM, which loses data when power is off). Since flash memory can allegedly reduce consumption caused by spinning hard drives, some manufacturers have switched to using solid state drives for their ...

Nokia has announced today the recall of BL-5C battery packs manufactured by Matsushita for the period December 2005 to November 2006 for risk of overheating or explosion due to short-circuiting (rare cases, but potentially realy harmful). The affected phone models are as follows: Nokia 1100, Nokia 1100c, Nokia 1101, Nokia 1108, Nokia 1110, Nokia 1112, Nokia 1255, Nokia 1315, Nokia 1600, Nokia 2112, Nokia 2118, Nokia 2255, Nokia 2272, Nokia 2275, Nokia 2300, Nokia 2300c, Nokia 2310, Nokia 2355, Nokia 2600, Nokia 2610, Nokia 2610b, Nokia 2626, Nokia 3100, Nokia 3105, Nokia 3120, Nokia 3125, Nokia 6030, Nokia 6085, Nokia 6086, Nokia 6108, Nokia 6175i, Nokia 6178i, Nokia 6230, Nokia 6230i, Nokia 6270, Nokia 6600, Nokia ...

If you've been following the ramblings of Steve Jobs on his blog (not the real one, but instead Fake Steve Jobs), then you're in for a disappointment. The magic has gone. The suspension of disbelief has been, well, suspended. Fake Steve has been outed. It didn't take sleuthing bloggers to discover his identity. Nor was it Valleywag (which tried several times, much to the amusement of Fake Steve). It was New York Times Journalist Brad Stone who did the research, and allegedly after just a week's time was able to correctly find out Fake Steve's real identity. So it's good ol' journalistic research that did the trick. So much for new media, huh? Fake Steve is, in real life, ...

I recently came across a review of Zonbu, the $99 PC that runs on Linux. It's sort of the Mac Mini of the PC world--it's just sold as the CPU itself, without input/output devices nor peripherals like a monitor, keyboard and mouse. However, what's really compelling about Zonbu is the cost. Looks like Zonbu broke the $100 barrier. At $99 you get a networkable PC that runs the latest open source software, has plug-and-play functionality with popular devices and gadgets like iPods, digital cameras and the like, and other features you would expect from a full-fledged computer (which the Zonbu actually is). One added benefit is that the subscription model includes secure, remote storage of your data and ...

about:config is the bane for Firefox users looking into getting deeper with configuring their browsers. This is great, since you have direct access to FF's registry, without having to open another application. Just enter about:config into the URL field and you're in. Thing is, you have to be pretty sure what you're doing or you might end up breaking your installation or at least messing it up. Or perhaps you're not adventurous enough to sift through thousands of lines of registry options. Lifespy links us to a GUI for configuring Firefox. Configuration Mania will definitely change the way we approach the about:config settings in Firefox. For one, it gives you a GUI and classifies the different configuration settings into sections from ...

The word is out. The next major release of Apple's web browser Safari--version 3--is upcoming, and a public beta has been made available for download. And an even bigger news is that there is now a version available for Windows! I think we had this coming. Ever since Apple switched over to the dark side (Intel, that is!), theoretically most (if not all) of their software can be run on Intel-compatible PCs. I'm actually surprised it took Apple this long to release Apple for Windows. I'm of the opinion that the next software wars will not be fought on the desktop, but online--on the browser. And while the browser used doesn't matter as much as the applications/sites it's being used on, ...