Hasta La Gadget!

Since you clicked your first link, you were promised one thing about the internet: you may have to pay a cover charge, but once you’re in, everything’s free. Except that suddenly doesn’t seem as true anymore. You know what? Good. More »

Next time you’re trying on a pair of (non musical) jeans, why not snag a free Android phone to help fill their roomy pockets? And while you’re shopping for that big trip you’ve got planned, you can let “HTC Airlines” book that flight for you. Honest, it’s no trouble at all. Well, it’s a little trouble. Wet Seal’s “try on some pants and get a free phone” deal comes attached to a two-year contract, and those flights? Still free, but only if you happen to be picking up your HTC Status or Salsa in Germany. You didn’t expect them to offer a free ride to just anybody, anywhere, did you?

Android deals just got weird: free phones for pants, free flights for phones originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Jul 2011 07:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink TamsAndroid  |  HTC, Wet Seal  | Email this | Comments

The border runners at Taco Bell have fallen behind the ginger clown and his posse of hamburger-loving friends in terms of connectivity, but the fast food franchise will soon rectify that with the introduction of free WiFi at 5,600 locations over the next four years. In an attempt to keep you connected whilst stuffing your face with Beefy Melt Burritos, Taco Bell has teamed up with Indoor Direct to bring in-store WiFi and a specially branded TV network to the chain. Diners will apparently be encouraged to interact with content running on the network, with enticements to download free music, receive opt-in text messages, and engage in social media campaigns. Sounds like the perfect opportunity to resurrect that pot-stirring little chihuahua.

Continue reading Taco Bell to serve up free WiFi and in-store TV, keep you LOL’ing through Fourthmeal

Taco Bell to serve up free WiFi and in-store TV, keep you LOL’ing through Fourthmeal originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Jul 2011 14:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink HotHardware  |  Indoor Direct  | Email this | Comments

Qi-Hardware has a bit of an obsession with free, open source, and underpowered. The latest project from this descendent of OpenMoko is a set of license free wireless boards called atben (for the company’s Ben NanoNote) and atusb for other laptops. The adapters rely on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard which powers 6LoWPAN and ZigBee. Don’t get confused though, this is not a replacement for WiFi — it’s more like long range Bluetooth (and it’s not compatible with either). Ben WPAN, as it’s being called, has a range of about ten meters in “standard” mode while pushing 250Kbps. Turning on the “non-standard” mode boosts throughput to (a still patience-testing) 2Mbps, but cuts the range in half. You can pick up pre-built adapters starting at €29.50 (about $42) for the atben, €41.30 ($59) for the atusb, or €59.00 ($84) for both at Tuxbrain. Don’t expect to just jam one into your Mac however — for now at least, Ben WPAN is a Linux only affair. (How often do you hear that?)

Qi-Hardware debuts free, open source wireless solution, not a threat to WiFi originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Jun 2011 14:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink The Register  |  Tuxbrain  | Email this | Comments

This article was written on October 22, 2010 by CyberNet.

Windows only
Earlier this week the first Beta release of Defraggler 2.0 was posted, which is a pretty big milestone for the software. This defragmentation utility is freely available, and this update serves as the first major milestone in nearly three years (Defraggler 1.0 Beta debuted back in November 2007). Interestingly enough the list of new features isn’t all that long, but when you’re talking about a Windows defragmenter program a lot of what you’ll want to see are things that happen behind-the-scenes.

The list of new features include:

• Offering complete offline defrag during the boot process with full OS support
• UI has been improved with a new Drive Map and customizations
• Rearchitected the internal defrag processes to make it faster and more efficient

While that list is short the last bullet encompasses a pretty big overhaul, and I see the boot-time defragmenting as a nice feature since it can be set as a one-time thing or at every boot. If you choose to use that option your machine will defrag before you even login to your system, which may mean that it will be able to reorganize some of the files on your system that would have otherwise been unmovable.

I look forward to them polishing this up a bit more, but in my brief tests this Beta worked well. Keep in mind that they don’t have this packaged as a portable release yet like they offer for their latest stable version, which may mean that some of you will want to hold off a bit if you were wanting to throw this on a USB drive.

Defraggler 2.0 Beta Homepage (Windows only; Freeware)

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

CyberNotes: How To Schedule A Drive To DefragmentMicrosoft Lets Users Disable Vista’s Startup SoundDefragment Specific FilesMore "Spiritual" Startup Sound In Windows Vista?Add, Remove, and Modify Startup Programs