Category Archive

technology

How to keep your personal information private

If you have utility, internet, or cable bills in your name, they will lead to your home address. If you file a police report or go to court as either a plaintiff or defendant, you may get calls from ambulance-chasing lawyers; those records are public. If you own your residence in your own name, anyone can search property records to discover where you live. Most of you will never face the level of harassment I have received, but taking basic privacy measures can also deter marketers, identity thieves, and other people you don’t want to meet. Here’s how…

If I don’t know you, I won’t talk to you: why I have a cruel blacklisting app on my phone

While attending a small film festival a few years ago, I made the mistake of texting my vote for the festival’s best film. Within a couple days, my phone number had been sold to marketers and I started receiving a ton of text spams.

This made me very angry. I was already dealing with telemarketers calling my mobile, trying to sell me mortgage refinancing and carpet cleaning, and now I had to deal with shitty text spamming too? It started getting to the point where half the time my phone made a noise, it was a voicemail from a telemarketer or a text spam.

Use this phone wallpaper hack to make sure your phone comes back if it gets lost

Today’s great idea came from my best friend, Erik, on how to keep my best electronic friend from disappearing forever.

Snap a photo of a house to learn everything about it

When we were searching for a house, Zillow was a GODSEND. It makes so much relevant housing data available at your fingertips. But I’ve found something even better: HomeSnap — an iPhone app which uses GPS data, combined with the nifty hardware inside your smart phone like readings from the gyroscope and accelerometer, to give home shoppers instant access to data on a neighborhood, a home’s value, its trending value…all based on a photo you snap of the house.

Nerding out: how we wired our house for ethernet

Setting up a wired LAN in your house is somewhat unusual, because most people do just fine with a wireless connection. But it does offer some distinct advantages over an exclusively wireless network, like faster speeds, lower latency, and better reliability. If you’re a hardcore enough nerd, this might be your next home project.

We live in the future: my new touchscreen media center (+ video demo!)

We recently ran a story about getting rid of your TV, but today I’m going to talk about going the other way: after a decade of not having a screen in our living room, I finally decided I was sick of watching movies on a laptop. This is the story of how we got a TV, but how it’s a crazy futuristic touchscreen media center that cost less than many widescreen TVs.

Tune in: Do these 5 things to optimize the shit out of your home entertainment

This electronics aficionado will help you save money when you buy cables, pick the right TV for your needs, and avoid new tech pitfalls.