Stories by Mark Gibbs

NeuroSky MindWave: Fun with Brainwaves

In last week's Gearhead I discussed, in part, the science of electroencephalography or EEG … the detection and measurement of the neurological activity of the brain via electrodes attached to a subject's scalp.

Goodbye e-books, hello apps

"It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore ... Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year."

The real reasons why SOPA and PIPA are real bad

Following last week's Backspin, reader Alex Gonzales (Sweetwater, Texas) wrote to me: "Just read your SOPA article and I guess I'm just not seeing the big picture. If the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) could put an end to online piracy and stop a lot of those damn viruses, maybe even stop hackers -- what's bad about that? You say bad for business, bad for Internet -- but how? How is stopping/policing the bad stuff on the Internet bad? Give me some real reasons as to why [SOPA/PIPA] is bad. And don't tell me to go read the SOPA/PIPA bills in their entirety."

Twine, jump-started by Kickstarter

Last week I discussed the Lantronix xPrintServer, which allows iOS devices supporting Apple's AirPrint to print on any output device that supports the Common Unix Printing System (CUPS).

No blackout for SOPA/PIPA? We know who you are.

Given the week that just was there's really only one topic I can write about: The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA).

AirPrint to almost any printer

Back when I was young printing was complicated. Printer drivers were a nightmare of options and standards were rare. Now there are all sorts of standards for printing but the nightmare still continues. Even printers that sell for $50 have multiple drivers, often support various printing protocols, have multiple driver updates, and then there is the printer installation software.

Your identity up for grabs

Security was a big issue in 2011 with more sophisticated and a wider range of threats than ever before wasting even more of everyone's time at a cost of billions of dollars.

A tablet for under a Benjamin?

Product names are tricky, there's no doubt about it. If you're not going to use a meaningless string of characters such as "X77-P73" then you've got your work cut out for you because it's hard to find a good name that isn't already taken by some other company. Even internal project names have to be researched, checked that they are OK to use and vetted by lawyers for liability.

2012 Outlook: The end of everything?

Welcome to 2012, the year the world ends. Yes, in case you haven't been following the eschatologists out there (and most of them are definitely "out there"), 2012 will be "it" for humanity. The "last hurrah". Fini. Au revoir.

Goodbye 2011 ... What a year!

Well, as we are just a hop, skip and an eggnog away from putting on silly hats, drinking champagne, and kissing random people as we bid goodbye to the year, it behooves me to look into the digital rearview mirror and ponder what we can see rushing away from us.

Gmail Backup, a recipe for happiness

Before I get to this week's main topic I must give a big thumbs-up to a book that all of you who like to cook will thoroughly enjoy: "Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food" by Jeff Potter (pub. O'Reilly).

Social networking, ignorance, and apathy

There's an old joke: What's the difference between ignorance and apathy? Answer: I don't know and I don't care.

The amazing shrinking computer

The quest for smaller and smaller computing devices usually involves a tradeoff between processor power, battery life, communications features, memory and storage. While the product I'm looking at is in some respects the result of the intersection of a vision with compromises, the WiMM One from WiMM Labs is one of the slickest miniature computing devices I've seen to date.

How stupid can cell carriers be? Really Stupid.

The recent revelation that most of us are carrying around smartphones with embedded rootkits is both surprising and not so surprising. It's surprising because it makes you wonder, "How stupid can the carriers be?" It's not surprising in that we know the answer to that.

Cracking MD5 ... with Google?!

Here's a piece of news that will worry anyone interested in security (which should be pretty much everyone who reads Network World): A programmer by the name of Juuso Salonen has created a Ruby script called BozoCrack that cracks MD5 hashed passwords with remarkable success and with very little effort.