magic

Buying gifts for geeks can be expensive. They are likely to have things like iPads, Microsoft Surface tables, and working replicas of the TARDIS on their wish lists.

You don't have to drop a bundle to show you care about your geek's nerdy pursuits. For $7.99, you can cross that egghead off your holiday shopping list with a Magic Geek Ball from ThinkGeek.

The Magic Geek Ball is the techie, meme-loving cousin of the Magic 8 Ball. Ask it a yes or no question and it will spit back a response like "404 error," "Fail," or "Can Has."… Read more

Sometimes one monitor is not enough, and over the years, MimoMonitors has provided an easy way to add extra screen real estate with its line of USB-powered monitors for desktops and laptops. Now, the company is taking it to the next level with what it says is the world's first USB capacitive touch screen.

Available in two models, the Mimo Magic Touch and Mimo Magic Touch Deluxe are less than 1 inch thick and weigh less than 1 pound. Both feature 10-inch, 1,024x600 resolution displays and connect to your PC or Mac via a USB 2.0 connection. The Deluxe model also includes two mini-USB ports and a separate AC power adapter, so you can hook up other devices and charge them. … Read more

Hewlett-Packard mulls what to do with WebOS, Asus unveils a powerful tablet, and Adobe ceases development of a Flash Player plug-in for mobile devices.

Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded:

SAN FRANCISCO--Disney spent the last couple of decades making mermaids into friendly, lovely creatures bursting with curiosity and love (see "The Little Mermaid" and "Splash"). It took about a year's work from the visual-effects pros at Industrial Light and Magic to return the fair ladies of the sea to their classical, bloodthirsty ways.

To show off the effects studio's work on the billion-dollar-grossing "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" as it arrives on Blu-ray next month, ILM's Ben Snow (visual-effects supervisor) and Aaron McBride (art director) sat down with reporters at George Lucas' Presidio compound here earlier this month to discuss the challenges of creating mermaids beautiful enough to lure Johnny Depp to water and ferocious enough to devour him.

"Classically, mermaids were beautiful but deadly creatures," Snow said. "We were excited to bring them back to that tradition. But the challenge was developing creative concepts that preserved their beauty while making them scary again." … Read more

What more can one say about Tetris? The megapopular classic '80s action puzzle game from Russian programmer Alexey Pajitnov is now available for the iPhone, featuring everything you loved about the original, and some added bonuses to keep the game interesting. The game is crystal-clear with Retina Display support and the simple interface requires only swipes and taps on the screen to move, rotate, and drop pieces on the board. Sometimes the tap-to-rotate and swipe-to-move method can be a little frustrating (it's easy to make mistakes), but we were mostly able to enjoy the classic game on our iPhone … Read more

When Apple showed off Mac OS X Lion at the Worldwide Developers Conference keynote speech earlier this year, it was clear the company had paid attention to its successes with the popular iOS devices, and was now beginning to include successful iOS features in its flagship OS.

Also, with Apple laptops and tablets now far outpacing desktop sales, Apple has moved from a primarily desktop computer company to embrace mobile computing. This release of Mac OS X seems to be a reflection of Apple's successes in those categories.

With this eighth major release of the big-cat OS, Apple is … Read more

Taking pictures with your smartphone can be a fun and easy way to share moments with friends and family. With Magic Hour for Android you can improve or make variations on your photos with the app's easy-to-use features. In just a few steps, you can give a photo an antique look, a more professional feel, or maybe something more artsy for your blog. Magic Hour offers a free filter market, and you can even make your own and share it with others. Here's how to get started:

Step 1: Download Magic Hour from the Android Market. … Read more

How do you get from point A to point B without your favorite backseat driver spewing commentary and driving tips? Well, now you can enjoy that familiar nagging even when you're alone in your car.

The new Mary On Board, a humorous dash-top device, gives criticism, driving tips, and navigational "advice" in two languages.

Mary On Board creator Dan Finkelstein said he was inspired by his wife (named Mary) to create a device that would "backseat drive" for him when she wasn't around.

Finkelstein explained that he was distracted by a phone call one day while driving, only to be reminded to move into the right lane by his wife, who was "motioning wildly and saying repeatedly, 'right lane!'"

So Finkelstein, who had been laid off from Unisys after 25 years, took on the task of inventing Mary On Board. The device was developed through the aid of a Utah-based company, Design My Idea.

The device is about as helpful as a Magic 8 Ball when it comes to dispensing actual directions. Instead, it offers about 15 preprogrammed sayings in English or Spanish, including "I so need a brake pedal on my side," "Admit it! You're lost because you wouldn't ask for directions," and "Don't you think you should slow down?"

The gadget retails for $19.95 on the company's Web site and through Things You Never Knew Existed. For every unit purchased, $1 will be donated to the National Kidney Foundation, Finkelstein said.… Read more

Ommoo Magic Desktop is a free tool for customizing the look of the Windows desktop. It not only manages your wallpaper but also your themes, cursors, and other visual style elements and even lets you create and save your own custom themes. It can change the look of your Windows PC, or crash it--your choice.

Magic Desktop's simple but stylish interface features tabs along the top axis and buttons along the left-hand side bearing much the same labels: Theme, Wallpaper, Visual Style (Skin on the sidebar) Icon, and Cursor. The Tabs manage features, while the buttons access Web-based libraries … Read more