Active digitizers: The feature you didn’t know you wanted in your tablet

• March 4, 2014

Affordable and lightweight touchscreens changed the consumer electronics market forever. The promise of touchscreens was full control with precision. Navigating our screens with hardware, like we did on our computers or non-touchscreen phones, was precise but didn’t give us the same sense of control that reaching out and touching our target does. Of course, things did not work out quite as smoothly as we found out that our clunky fingers were really imprecise and so were those soft-tipped styli we bought to fix that problem.

What could bring us the greater precision that we seek? Not better fingers nor bigger screens. Instead, a different touch-sensing system entirely.

Zotero, the free citation manager for students, teachers, and more

• March 3, 2014

Citing sources is one of the most tedious parts of research, academic or otherwise. You’ve done the legwork, but proving it to your readers seems to take more effort than the writing and searching! Once upon a time, websites like EasyBib or Citation Machine were the cutting edge for people trying to expedite the process. With the advent of a widely available, free citation manager like Zotero, those seem like things of the past. 

Share Wi-Fi from your hotel or college dorm: Connect your XBOX, PS4, Roku, or other devices to college/university or hotel Wi-Fi

• February 27, 2014

Did you bring your Roku or Chromecast on your trip, only to find out you could not get it to connect to your hotel’s internet? Were you really excited to play some multi-player on your new XBOX or PS4 at college, but you can’t get it to recognize your dorm’s wi-fi?

You may be able to create a wi-fi hotspot of your own to share that internet with your devices.