Crave

Most 23-inch, LED-based monitors are very basic, general-purpose devices that likely won't impress you with their viewing angles. That's because most monitors feature Twisted Nematic (TN) panels, which are cheap (hence their ubiquity), but usually suffer in terms of viewing angle.

Simply put, when viewed from any angle other than directly in front, images on TN panels become more difficult to see.

The HP 2311xi, however, houses an in-plane switching (IPS) panel. IPS panels enjoy much wider viewing angles than TN panels, but are usually more expensive.

The catch here is that the 2311xi isn't expensive. In more

How far would you go to buy a Samsung Galaxy S III? Would you go to Dubai to buy a Samsung Galaxy S III? Hop on a plane to the sunny UAE and you could bag the year's hottest phone a full week early.

It seems Samsung's hot new quad-core Android behemoth, successor to the Galaxy S II, has hit shops in the rarefied environs of scorching Dubai in the United Arab Emirates seven days ahead of next week's European release.

Read more of "Samsung Galaxy S3 on sale a week early -- in Dubai" at Crave UK.

If you thought Nvidia was just a little too ambitious when it indicated that we'd have $199 Tegra 3 tablets by the second half of the year, this next bit might surprise you. Nvidia's Vice President Rob Csongor, speaking with investors last week, revealed that such an animal is already in production.

To be clear, I'm not talking about one particular tablet or piece of hardware expected to come to market. Called Kai, Nvidia's initiative should be considered more of a platform or strategy at this point.

Though product specifics haven't been fleshed out completely, Nvidia believes it can potentially deliver quad-core Tegra 3 tablets at the all-important $199 price point later this year. Fully realized, this would give consumers a variety of high-powered Android 4.0 tablets with Kindle Fire price tags.

The summer movie season is officially under way, and that can only mean one thing: movie tie-in season is also under way.

Exhibit A (or should I say Exhibit K): "Men in Black 3," which opens in theaters Friday, just got the app treatment. Gameloft's Men in Black 3 is available now for Android and iOS smartphones and tablets.

Obviously any game based on the MIB franchise is going to involve a lot of running and gunning, right? Wrong. Men in Black 3 combines resource management with turn-based combat. And there's way more depth and replay value here more

AT&T just announced plans to add the Samsung Galaxy Appeal to its ranks of prepaid GoPhone handsets. That should come as good news to Android fans, since despite its cuddly name, inside the Galaxy Appeal beats the cool, calculating heart of Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

For Limor Fried, a hardware hacker and leader in the booming maker and do-it-yourself movements, there was never a question of waiting for someone else to jump in and do a better job of inspiring girls than Lego has done with its widely-panned Lego Friends set.

The product was featured on the cover of Bloomberg Business Week last year and drew worldwide attention as the global toy company's first major attempt at showcasing girls in a new set. Still, many Lego fans were upset that the company had focused on well-worn stereotypes and had ignored the modern reality that girls can do pretty much anything they want, whether or not there's pink or purple involved.

For Fried, who runs open-source hardware developer Adafruit Industries, it sounded like it was time for a little culture hacking.

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Mozilla whisked the covers off Webmaker today, a new development initiative intended to encourage Web-based development across the globe.

The company stated that Webmaker's goal is to, "move people from using the Web to making the Web," in a blog post. Mozilla is encouraging people to participate in a series of coding events it's calling the Summer Code Party, and has partnered with some notable organizations and individuals to further its agenda, including author Cory Doctorow, OKGO musician Damian Kulash, Tumblr, Creative Commons, the London Zoo, and the San Francisco Public Library.

Enthusiasts of embedded computing seem to be spoiled for choices nowadays.

A Chinese-made computer that's slightly larger than a typical thumbdrive can now be purchased online for just $74.

The MK802 is similar to the Cotton Candy computer-on-a-stick. Both are powered by ARM processors and support Android or other ARM-compatible Linux operating systems. It comes with a Mali 400 GPU that enables it to output 1080p video through HDMI.

Despite its small size (it weighs just about 7 ounces), the MK802 has a microSD card slot to add to its built-in 4GB flash storage, together with a full-size USB port and a micro-USB version. Wi-Fi is also supported.

Whether you live in rainy Seattle or are expecting thunderstorms in Albany, N.Y., it's always a good idea to carry solid weather apps on your iPhone for quick forecasts.

The Weather Channel released version 5.0 of its app late last week with an upgraded interface and a few more features that will be useful to amateur meteorologists everywhere, but it doesn't have everything. One of the more useful parts of any local weather forecast is when you get to see the live Doppler radar for your location. The Weather Channel will show you a radar overlay, but you can't see it move. That's where the second app in this one-two punch comes in, NOAA Hi-Def Radar.

With this pair of apps, you might find that one or the other is the best weather app for you, but hopefully this comparison will help you find what best fits your needs.