tree

Plant a tree, save a phone strap

Craver Kent German gave us an excellent tour last week through the bizarre and sometimes disturbing universe of phone straps and dangles that is Strapya-World, but it's not done yet: Its latest offering is going green.

The "Babytree Cell Phone Strap" features tiny capsules containing an assortment of equally tiny trees from various parts or the world from which you can choose, Tokyomango says. The trees--from Argentina, South Africa, Mexico, and the United States--are alive and, according to the Web site, will stay that way for six months as long as they're watered once or twice … Read more

LendingTree sues mortgage firms over security breach

LendingTree on Monday told customers that their sensitive information was leaked in a security breach and that it has sued three lending companies as a result.

Several former employees of LendingTree are believed to have taken company passwords and given them to a handful of lenders who then accessed LendingTree customer data files, the company said.

The data includes customer names, Social Security numbers, addresses, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, and income and employment information, but not credit card information, LendingTree said in an e-mail to customers and on a frequently-asked-questions page on its Web site.

The outside lenders are believed … Read more

Map your family in more ways than one with It's Our Tree

It's Our Tree is a genealogy service that lets people create very simple family trees using Adobe Flash. Like Geni (review) and Kindo (review), the idea is to get your entire family involved by inviting them to join and add family members they remember. It doesn't offer some advanced services like DNA sleuthing using cheek cells, but it's incredibly simple to get started, and the finished product can double as a Rolodex, birthday reminder, and private e-mail system for you and your family.

Like Geni and others, to get started you simply add family members using the … Read more

Ornate jewelry box or custom PC?

Consumer electronics makers looking to find their way into consumers' living rooms could learn a thing or two from Japanese custom PC manufacturer Universal Roaming.

Sony in particular has gone out of its way to make PCs and gadgets that blend nicely into the living room decor without being too gadgety. The result has been, well, mixed. See the Vaio TP25E (that weird round one) and the sleek Vaio LT29U all-in-one.

Universal Roaming takes a different approach, creating the Ryou PC series of small and lovely desktop PCs that appear more akin to decorative art than computers. They're not … Read more

U.S. venture funding up nearly 11 percent in 2007

Calling all entrepreneurs: follow the money.

If you did, that road down the IT path would likely lead you to clean-tech and Internet-specific businesses, according to results of the 2007 MoneyTree Report released Friday by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association.

U.S. venture capitalists invested a total of $29.4 billion in 2007, up 10.8 percent from the previous year. That marked the fourth consecutive year of growth. The number of deals reached 3,813 last year, a modest rise of 5 percent over a year earlier.

Clean-technology companies attracted $2.2 billion in investments last year, … Read more

SciVee.tv does how-to videos for science experiments

Are you a fan of Instructables or SuTree? Looking for a place with just science-related items? SciVee is a site for video clips of science experiments and processes that might be just up your alley. The service originally opened up to the public in late August but today is unveiling a newer, updated look with some new features to help users find and interact with content.

At its heart, the site has been designed with scientists (both established and fledgling) in mind, and according to an article yesterday by the Associated Press, creator Phil Bourne launched the site as a … Read more

The 'ETree': Holiday display for aliens

It's a curse of life in the 'burbs: Every year you swear your holiday lights will outshine the rest of the neighborhood, and every year the Joneses humiliate you with something new. No more.

We guarantee that they won't find anything like the "ETree" at Wal-Mart, K-mart, or any other mart in the United States. This bizarre floor lamp, created by designers of U.K.-based Nimble Critters, features 10 branches that can be contorted into whatever shape you wish, according to Technabob.

You'll pay a hefty price for originality, however, as a lamp like … Read more

Build a fancy looking family tree with Kindo

Kindo is a new genealogy site for users who want to create an online family tree. Like Geni and Amiglia, Kindo runs on Flash, and makes it dead simple to start building up your family tree with very little programming expertise whatsoever. You start with a mother, father, and child, and you can continue to work up and out, adding more people as you go along. To help aid in family tree creation, you can invite your family members to claim their profile, which will give them privileges to add and remove members from the tree.

Besides the very basic … Read more

Killer Download: Make space on your hard drive

When I bought a gaming PC for home use a little over a year ago, I bought a middle-of-the-road machine that had everything I needed with a little room to upgrade later on down the line. I got a 2.2GHz processor, a high-end (at the time) video card so I could play the latest games, 2 gigs of RAM (on the advice of a gamer friend), and I opted for a 120GB hard drive to save a little money.

At the time, it seemed like 120GB would be more than enough. After all, I can remember when a 1GB hard drive was the pinnacle of storage capacity--120GB ought to be able to hold anything right? Games these days generally take up a few gigs each so I thought I would never run out of space. I now know I was wrong. If you wait long enough, even the biggest hard drives will fill up.… Read more