PAPER

No need for a pencil

Dots Free is a free game that lets you play the classic pencil-and-paper game Dots and Boxes (aka Dots and Dashes, the Dot Game, Squares, and so on).

Players take turns placing horizontal or vertical lines between dots on a five-by-seven grid, and the player that places the last line to close off a box scores a point and takes another turn. In Dots Free, you can play with one or two players (or, if you're particularly risk averse, you can even watch the game play by itself), and you can choose between Easy and Medium artificial intelligence settings. … Read more

Don't recycle this coffee cup

There are many options for the modern coffee drinker. Gone are the days when the choice was simply between regular or decaf. Now, we can walk into any coffee joint and be presented with a laundry list of choices. Whether you are "hammerhead" type of coffee drinker, or would rather opt for the smooth drinking cafe au lait, chances are your local caffeinated watering hole has you covered.

For those on the go, the choices are also plentiful. Portable thermal carafes come in all shapes and sizes. Most independent cafe's will fill up your own personal cup … Read more

E-notes: Like Post-its, only reusable

Does the world really need Post-it 2.0? Ask those of us with Post-its habitually plastered on our monitors, walls, backs, and foreheads, and we'd probably be hard-pressed to come up with suggestions for improving the classic attachable notes.

Still, the designers at Sequoia Studio have come up with an inventive concept product called E-notes. The notes use tactile and flexible electronic paper technology and are powered by a solar captor. They can be stuck and unstuck to surfaces easily using a glue inspired by the adhesive that keeps the gravity-defying gecko in place. The best part? They can … Read more

PrintWhatYouLike makes any site printer friendly

There's nothing worse than trying to print a two-page article from the Web and have it print out in a half-inch column across 37 sheets of paper. It happens all the time, and if the site you're on doesn't have a special printer friendly option, your only other method was to use special software, or attempt to save the page as a PDF then print it out later.

A service called PrintWhatYouLike takes all the work out of this, and does you one better by letting you select only the parts of the page you want to … Read more

Canon's latest Pixma printers do triple duty

Canon introduced two new Pixma printers on Monday, August 11, the Pixma MP480 and Pixma MP190. Both of them are all-in-one printers, meaning they also do triple duty as scanners and copiers. These new models are supposedly ideal for both work and home, and include several new features that make the printing, scanning, and copying processes much easier for the end user. In addition, they also take on a slightly updated look from previous Pixma printers, with a sleek, but versatile, style incorporating flip-top LCD screens and a matte silver and black palette.

The $70 Pixma MP190 is a low-level … Read more

Public paper towel convenience now private

The kitchen tool I have to replenish most often is paper towels. Thankfully, most brands now have the "select-a-size" half-sheet towels, so I can wipe up without being as wasteful, but it seems as if I still use more than I need. Although most of them are put to good use, many paper towels inevitably fall victim to accidental spoilage, like when I steady the roll with my left hand to tear off a sheet, leaving saucy fingerprints on the row of towels that are going to be used next. If the point of paper towels is to … Read more

Pixily turns stacks of paper into search-friendly scans

Pixily is a cool scan-by-mail service that launched in early June. Like Shoeboxed, which I checked out last month, Pixily is all about taking paper clutter out of your life by scanning it in for you and making it both searchable, and able to be organized into buckets. The big difference between the two services is that Pixily is focused less on receipts and finances, and more on day-to-day papers like insurance claims, long cell phone bills (with call lists on them) and little things like birthday cards.

Everything that's scanned goes through optical character recognition (OCR), so you … Read more

EFF YO CUBE

Mark is an associate producer on Loaded. He took a three week vacation during the busiest time of the year for our team. We had to redesign the set, film off site, move all office furniture for re-carpeting, and cover the 3G iPhone launch all without him. We haven't slept in weeks. This is a little friendly retribution!

Lexmarks offers three new back-to-school multifunction printers

Convergence is the key to staying ahead in the technology game, so it's no surprise that printer vendors are offering more and more printers that do quadruple duty as scanner, copier, and fax machine. Today, Lexmark caters to the back-to-school shoppers with a handful of new All-in-Ones that are competitively priced but include all the features you'd find in their larger counterparts.

The $99 X5650 AiO is a printer, scanner, copier, and fax machine with an auto-document feeder for scanning/copying stacks of paper. It can reportedly print up to 25 black pages per minute and 18 color. … Read more

Featured Freeware: GreenPrint World

GreenPrint World is a free Windows utility that helps eliminate wasted pages while printing. Installation takes some time since it requires Visual C++ 2005, which is included if necessary. GreenPrint will also put four new programs into your Windows start-up menu, add a browser helper object for Internet Explorer, and add three printers (GreenPrint PDF, GreenPrint MailPDF, and GreenPrint). During installation, GreenPrint will ask you to select a default printer, but the printer can be easily changed later from the GreenPrint interface.

After installation, you can print from any application to GreenPrint, which will automatically remove pages from your printout … Read more