chime

A good portion of my adolescence was devoted to re-creating "Star Trek" props from household items. I still have my Lego flip communicator.

Now I can save myself a lot of time, effort, and Legos by dropping $30 on ThinkGeek's Star Trek Electronic Door Chime.

A DIY "Star Trek" door can be done. This guy made one. If you don't have the patience for that kind of elaborate project, you can settle for the ThinkGeek door chime's swooshing sound effects instead.… Read more

Until someone figures out how to cram more than 24 hours into a day, people have a limited amount of time. Most of us don't spend 100 percent of it on the Internet. And we don't devote all of the time we do spend on the Net to social networking.

Already, by my count, there are four major social networks: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus, with Facebook presumably consuming a disproportionate amount of all time that people spend on these sites. Might there be room for one more big-time contender?

That's the question posed by Chime.in, … Read more

Serial entrepreneur and investor Bill Gross is "completely smitten" with social media.

"The way it's connecting the planet, it's a new connective tissue for knowledge sharing," he told CNET during an interview last week. "It's really, really unbelievable."

As Gross sees it, the only hurdles today's social networks face are relevance and monetization. Not surprisingly, his latest social offering, dubbed Chime.in, is an effort to address both issues. Chime.in will formally launch today at 11:05 a.m. PST--timed to coincide with a live demo by Bill Gross … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature from MacFixIt in which we answer questions e-mailed to us by our readers. We have been getting many questions from our readers, and we hope to share our correspondence so everyone may benefit from and contribute to them. This week we have questions about application names being announced on launch, managing the boot chime volume, and properly implementing Web exports from iPhoto and Aperture.… Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature from MacFixIt where our editors answer questions e-mailed to us by our readers. It has been a while since we issued an installment of "MacFixIt Answers," but we hope to bring it around more frequently. This week we have questions on the difference between firmware and software, managing the boot chime volume, and changing the default background in OS X.… Read more

The doorbell may be the next ring tone. Already we've seen a way to customize the otherwise boring chime with your own MP3s, and now there's more elaborate hardware coming out to match this ill-advised home accessory.

The "iChime " is a unit that can be programmed to play either a choice of about 50 pre-loaded songs and sounds or your own tunes, tranferred from an iPod or computer. (Just a wild guess, but you'll probably want the latter.)

Gizmodiva says all it takes is "an easy two-wire replacement," though we're skeptical given … Read more

Forget "Clocky," the "Sonic Bomb," and the flying alarm clock. The last thing we need in the morning is something that shatters our eardrums or requires us to chase it around the room to shut the damn thing off.

At our advanced age, any of these could easily shorten our lives with coronary issues. A far more civilized way to awaken is the gentle tones of a "Wind Chime Alarm Clock" and, naturally, its continuous snooze functions. (Our definition of the snooze button: Unplug clock, go back to sleep.)

But if you must get … Read more