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Exploring arguably essential home gadgets

9 Replies MattRawlings

We all love our gadgets, some people more than others of course – we’ve all got parents or grandparents who haven’t got a clue how to turn a computer on, let alone check their emails or catch up with their family on Facebook. But for the gadget lovers among us there’s nothing better than getting home with a new bit of kit, setting it up and turning it on for the first time. It’s like a birthday and Christmas all rolled into one!

Christmas and birthday in one

Christmas and birthday rolled into one!

But while we all have such affection towards the latest offerings, what would we actually call “essential’? After all, the very latest devices and gadgets don’t come cheap and disposable income isn’t exactly at its peak at the moment. We’re finding that we have to budget more, and even wait until the price drops after a few months before we can get our hands on some devices, an agonizing wait for many I’m sure. So if we had to prioritize our gadgets, what would they be?

Laptop

Of course, you have to have a laptop. Tablets and smartphones are great but sometimes you just need a computer to get certain jobs done as well as they possibly can be with a bigger screen and better all round packages. You’ve got numerous top quality manufacturers to choose between, all offering different packages, with Apple, Dell, HP and co all vying for the title of top laptop manufacturer.

Printer

Obviously, if you’re working on your laptop at home for an important project for work, school, college or University, it’s vital that you have a way to get it off the computer and into a tangible document. For that reason you need a printer capable of producing your work in high quality, something Dell printers for one are synonymous for, while other features can include scanners, photocopiers and fax machine capabilities.

Smartphone

Then when you leave the house it’s vital that you can stay connected to the rest of the world. Smartphones such as the iPhone, BlackBerry and Samsung Galaxy give you the ability to check your emails on the move, update you location to Facebook, look into what Lady Gaga has had to say on Twitter and even buy things, you can do it all while you’re out of the house. Oh, and you can text and make calls too of course!

Tablet

One of the must-have items of the moment, tablet computers such as the iPad are taking the world by storm. On the train, in the boardroom, at the park, they’re all using them as perfect hybrids between smartphones and computers.

Music Player

Finally, of course, you have to have an iPod or similar device to listen to your favourite music on. Whether you’re in the gym, on the train or just relaxing, it’s always good to have some music to keep you in the mood for whatever you’re doing.

These are what I believe are essential home gadgets, but what is your views? Do you consider all these gadgets essential, and if not, which are yours?

Data centers – where would we be without them?

1 Reply Christopher Roberts

It is hardly a controversial opinion to suggest that data centers are an indispensable part of modern life – it really is impossible to envisage a world without the vast capacity and power that data centers grant the business and information technology sectors – where would we all be without Google, eBay and Facebook? But what exactly are the advantages of a data center that their absence would remove? Let’s take a look…

Firstly, the cost to enterprises of running an in-house own data center is increasingly prohibitive, given the growing size requirements of such facilities. As more and more information is transmitted online and more transactions take place online – just as computing power continues to grow – then a data center needs exponentially more power and more hard disk space. Server racks just keep on getting longer and even keeping them cool enough becomes uneconomically costly for most small, medium or even large-sized enterprises.

Server RoomSecurity is the second big issue – in a world where cyber-crime and espionage is constantly growing, there needs to be a very robust response to security. Most enterprises just don’t have the time and resources to police their IT operations to the level required, and a good data center can give them the reassurances they need. Technicians can be on hand throughout the 24-hour cycle, not just to ensure that the server racks keep on functioning perfectly and that any problems are swiftly dealt with, but also to ensure that information is kept safe and secure and that hacking or phishing attempts are roundly thwarted.

So, where would we be without data centers? The answer is that we would have a vastly more limited cyber-world, with businesses forced to keep their computer operations artificially scaled back due to cost considerations, with the knock-on effect of a hobbled e-commerce sector. Social networks would be slow, unsafe and prone to disastrous infiltration, while search engines would also be grindingly slow and frustrating to use – welcome back to the late 1990s.

It’s safe to say that data centers are not only here to stay, but will keep getting bigger and better so long as the computer world leads the way.

iPhotoCap App Review

Leave a reply Steve August

I want to preface this review by saying that I have been creating memes for years on my computer, and just now started looking into going mobile with it. The iPhotoCap application came up as one of the captioning tools, so I decided to download it.

After downloading a score of applications that make you put captions exactly where they tell them to, it is extremely refreshing to have an application that gives some kind of freedom to put captions where you want, on any image that you have currently, can take or can download. I had originally just been looking for a meme editor, but after finding this I can think of more useful ways to use a captioning tool for creative and thoughtful messages.

Now before, I send off a picture of me giving a goofy face, I make sure that I accompany it with an equally ridiculous caption.

iPhotoCap - Let's Wok N Woll

Something doesn’t have to be complicated to be good. So many times I have come across applications that you need to study and dissect for hours before being able to do the basic functions that it has to offer.

The iPhotoCap is comparatively easy-to-use. It does all the heavy lifting so you can do all the fun creative work. Social sharing has become a basic feature for these kind of apps and iPhotoCap too has the ability to share your works via Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr and Instagram.

It also allows you to email and text your newly captioned images for anyone you know to enjoy (or in my case, they are annoyed at 3am when they receive a message of the worst face I can make with a crazy caption).

iPhotoCap App

I did download this program with the intent of making memes out of it to post onto memebase.com, so I would definitely like to see some kind of ability to integrate to websites or something of that nature.

I have already sent it over to everyone I know using an iOS device and hope to find a similar app for Android so that I can get that on my tablet. Without a doubt, iPhotoCap deserves a try if you want to create creative captions for any of your images.