Kiran Upadhyay

I’ve recently been looking at options for expanding the storage on my Raspberry Pi. Such choices are limited – the USB ports are often used by a keyboard, mouse or retro game controllers , while the SD card slot is naturally limited to just a single device. In terms of expanding storage via USB devices, there are two options, but how you connect these will affect how successful you are. For instance, you might connect your USB hard disk drive or flash drive to one of the USB ports – but if that port is needed for another device, things can get tricky. Many Raspberry Pi owners use powered USB hubs to get around this problem, and once you’ve recognized the importance of this (the computer doesn’t draw enough power to deal with the majority of USB devices) then adding a new USB device – storage or otherwise – shouldn’t be a problem. There are a few things that you need to be aware of when expanding storage on your Raspberry Pi, however. Although there are really only tw

Media-lovers rejoice! Released on Wednesday, Google has developed a new way to bring great content from the Internet straight to your television: the Chromecast, an interesting little gadget that plugs straight into your television’s HDMI port. The Chromecast connects wirelessly to the user’s smartphone, tablet, or laptop, and can play video and music from these devices right on their television. With support for both iOS and Android, such devices double as a media source  and  a remote control for playback. Google originally sold the device with three months of Netflix included for free. However, according to the LA Times, this promotion ended on Thursday due to the high demand for the product by consumers. “Due to overwhelming demand for Chromecast devices since launch, the 3-month Netflix promotion (which was available in limited quantities) is no longer available,” Google said to the Times. For only $35, users can already purchase the device from stores like Am

I’ve used my fair share of lists to keep myself productive. In fact, when it comes to organization and motivation, there are plenty of apps designed to make you more productive, and that’s what lists are ultimately meant to do, right? I’m not just talking about to-do lists either. My beloved Catch Notes and Any.DO both have to-do list functionality, and I love them for it, but sometimes apps just get in the way. Sometimes, plain text is the way to go. I use plain text lists for pretty much everything. For example, I keep track of potential character names for my fiction writing in a TXT file. I run local tournaments and use plain text lists to manage and organize registered teams. And, of course, I use plain text for to-do lists too. Plain text can become messy, but thankfully there are some tools I’ve found online that will lend you a helping hand. Alphabetizer If you’ve got a list of text lines, then the most obvious organizational tool you need is a method to sor

The iPhone has always had reasonable battery life , but as the power of the chip inside as increased, Apple has struggled to keep endurance from falling behind. The small, thin iPhone 5 only has so much room, and a small battery almost always leads to modest talk time. Buying a battery case is the easy solution. But which should you buy? There are numerous options available for the iPhone 5 , and all of them basically do the same thing: add battery life. Yet some manage to gain an edge over the competition through size, design or endurance. Here’s the best of the best. iBattz Mojo Power Bank  ($79) In a test by Laptop Magazine the iBattz Mojo Hi5 Power Bank beat the endurance of the next-closest competitor by almost three hours. That gap is larger than the gap between the four cases combined, making the Hi5 Power Bank a clear choice for anyone who seeks maximum endurance. Better still, this case is priced at just $79, which is less than many competitors with muc

In its never-ending quest to add more locations around the world that you can explore using Google Street View, on Tuesday Google added a new collection of imagery from the very top of the Eiffel Tower. Now, anyone that places the Street View icon over the Eiffel Tower in Google Maps will find themselves standing on the top of the tower, with a stunning 360-degree view of the city. Virtual visitors can also look up at the tower, taking in the historic architecture of the monument itself. The addition of the Paris monument imagery to Google Street View is only the latest in a series of updates Google has made to the service, providing visitors with opportunities to explore not only streets, but buildings and monuments as well. Other recent additions to Street View included the Diagon Alley movie set at UK Warner Bros. studio, the Parliament of Canada, and the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Past scenic Street View experiences included the Great Ba

If you have ever read books to toddlers you know there’s something really special about seeing them enjoy the story. The more they understand, the more they enjoy it and it becomes a bit of a feedback loop until they suddenly move on to new stories. You may also have noticed that there’s a certain age where books with lift-up flaps, textures, things that move and instructions for the reader often become favourites among toddlers. That’s because they thrive on interactivity at this age. The more the better. In fact, interactivity is often cited as a great learning tool. This is because the act of getting involved actually helps you to remember things. So, stick an interactive book in front of a small kid and you will teach them easily and most likely find that they love the book. If it’s also free, gorgeous and full of great lessons, there’s nothing to lose. Install the following great eBook apps for an extremely memorable experience. Icky Mr Fox Icky Mr Fox is all

  Several years ago, I experienced a hard drive failure. I was at work when my laptop suddenly started to act particularly strange. First, I thought it was because I had too many windows open and the RAM was full, but when the problems persisted after a reboot, I knew it was more than that. I immediately started to back up recent files. About half an hour later, the hard drive failed audibly and the laptop wouldn’t boot anymore. Thank God I had backups! Except that I didn’t have backups of everything. Just weeks earlier my backup drive had reached capacity. To back up important work files, I had decided to delete my personal photos. The irony was that I had already purchased a new external drive, but had not taken the time to back up my photos. Now they were lost and I was devastated. Over the next couple of weeks I researched ways to recover the data and considered doing everything under the sun — and did most of it — to revive the old hard drive. I eventually did r