Let's say you have your router upstairs or just on the other side of the room and the stock WiFi antenna on your laptop can only gather the WiFi signals at half a dozen paces away. Bummer if you want to work your couch in front of the TV on the other side of the house. Or another sad scenario: your laptop doesn't have WiFi capabilities.

Fret not. Here's an adapter from Buffalo, the WLI-U2-SG54HP. It boasts of boosting reception range by 210% plus it sticks to the back of your monitor. Additional specs: Vista compatible, Wi-Fi b/g, WEP 64/128bits, WPA-PSK and IPv6.

It retails at around US$ 31 and would be available sometime next month. We all know that this can also be used for less than legal purposes but don't get any ideas.

Now you can wave a copy of Time's annual year-end issue in the faces of anyone who told you YouTubing gets you nowhere. If you're one of the millions of people who uploaded (even the silly ones) videos to YouTube, pics to MySpace, contributed knowledge to Wikipedia, or blogged about anything, you're it.

How did you end up (figurativelly) on the cover of "Time" with other former honorees such as Albert Einstein (1999 Man of the Century), Bill Gates, and U2's Bono (2005), as well as Adolph Hitler? Every year the magazine editors choose a person or object (the PC was Machine of the Year in 1983) that good or bad has most affected the course of the year.

According to the magazine, everybody who "took part in this global media... working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game....changing the nature of the information age" is Time's Person of the Year for 2006.

Congratulations!

Buffalo, the company that specializes in many-in-one card readers, recently introduced its 29-in-one USB card reader. Marketed as MCR-C12H/U2, it is a powerful card reader that supports the new 4GB SDHC memory cards, micro SD, and various memory sticks. It can read mini-cards without any adapter and can/read write simultaneously with two cards (with certain restrictions) inserted in it.

The MCR-C12H/U2AES also comes with SecureLockWare, an encoding software that provides data security. It is available in clear blue, silver, black and white and retails for about $25 (if we got our figures right - the website is in Japanese). The MCR-C12H/U2 is powered by the USB and normally does not require driver installation. But in case it doesn't work, a driver for Windows 2K/98SE/98 and Mac OS 9/9.2.2 can be downloaded from Buffalo's website

Thanks for the price correction, guys!

I remember Apocalypse of the X-Men cartoon series back in the 90s telling our mutant heroes that he can never be beat; because without evil, no one can be good. This is perhaps the same principle current manufacturer of any portable gadget nowadays. We have white and black PSPs, multi-colored DS, and now we have white iAudio U2 (2GB) to compliment its black counterpart.
 
It may be unheard of to some but to many who have tried this baby, it is considered as the best flash player around. With its MP3/WMA/WAV and OGG support, 128x64 LCD, line-input sound and voice recording to MP3s, FM tuner, and 20 hour battery with fast recharge, it is quite hard not to fall in love with it, right - especially now that it comes in this classy white finish.

There can't be yin without yang. In the same manner, there can't be black iAudios without white ones. This one will be available in Japan starting July 7 for ¥18,980 (roughly $165). Quite a cheap way to get balance 'ey?