tester

Popularity of Apple products has always brought out scammers, hoping to prey on the wish list's of potential targets. Currently, a Facebook scam promises to send consumers a brand-new iPhone 4 or iPad 3G for testing. In return for your opinion, you get to keep the device.

Well, not to dash your hopes and dreams of owning one of Apple's latest iDevices, but signing up at the linked site will not result in a shipped product. These types of scams are only designed to get user information and spread throughout the Facebook network.

This scam has also been … Read more

The Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) protocol is an improvement over the earlier "plug-and-pray" standard, which is a different technology. Devices that use UPnP announce their presence when they're attached to a network, which makes them easier to install and integrate, especially in a large environment. UPnP is a work in progress, however, and there are unresolved issues, particularly with authentication. Noel Danjou's Universal Plug and Play Tester is a free utility that lists all UPnP-compatible network devices, including Internet Gateway Devices.

This utility downloads as a small compressed file, even though it includes both 32-bit … Read more

DownTester is a portable app that tests download speeds from HTTP and FTP URLs. It's unobtrusive and gets the job done, but also comes with some useful features that make it worth downloading.

The Advanced Options menu is reasonably robust. You can configure the tests to conclude and move on to the next URL based on time or bytes downloaded. Both of these are user configurable, giving the test broad powers to judge how fast data is flowing to you. You can also set the program to retry upon failure and configure the number of times that repetition should … Read more

As performance reasserts its prominence and features become less of the driving force behind browsers, I find myself looking at the list of inactive extensions in Firefox with jaundiced eyes. It's been months since I've added a new extension, but the ones I still have I use regularly, and several are actually new to me for this year.

Part of the problem with add-ons is that they're such a personal, subjective thing. What do you need? Why do you need it? One of my favorites is a minor, tiny thing, but it saves me so much time … Read more

Huh, what? A spaghetti tester? For what? Determining if my cooked spaghetti is al dente? Hmm. I didn't know I needed such a thing, but now that I think about it... yeah, an Al Dente Spaghetti Tester would make a great addition in my kitchen. I'd be able to test spaghetti. I'd be crazy not to get one. Wait. What am I saying? Nobody needs this--especially because the price is almost $50.

Ridiculousness aside, the Al Dente Spaghetti Tester from POTT actually does look nice. The sleek, hook-like shape with a slotted end appeals to my aesthetic … Read more

"Mother of Satan"--that's what bomb makers call peroxide-based explosives like triacetone triperoxide (TATP), which are easy to make and hard to detect. But a new pen-shaped detector doodad offers hope for those doing time in airport security lines.

The Peroxide Explosives Tester, or PET, by Acro is supposed to help security personnel quickly and accurately identify peroxide-based explosives, from diacetone diperoxide and hexam-methalene-triperoxidediamine to the notorious TATP, a component allegedly used by Mr. Goofy in the shoe bomb he tried to detonate on a trans-Atlantic flight in 2001.

Acro announced this month that it had licensed … Read more