iT BOX

 ACT Policing's new forensic imaging technology prevents hours of traffic disruption after road crashes Two years ago, a car smashed into a tree on Hindmarsh Drive in Canberra's south. Three lanes of the busy road were closed for hours as police painstakingly assessed the scene to work out what had happened. That day in December 2019 has stayed with ACT Policing collision investigator Senior Constable Nathan Smorhun. "We would have been here probably five hours before leaving and going up to the hospital after that," he said. "And it's a tiring, just an exhausting, process to go through making sure that you have everything." The 28-year old man who was behind the wheel died a few days later. Senior Constable Smorhun said the impact of deaths like this on families motivated him to retrieve as many details from a crash scene as possible. "That's the whole reason I do this job," he said. "It's not about doing the calculations or comin...

 LG is working on a laptop with two touch panels: Check out the design South Korean tech giant LG is said to be working on a new laptop with touchpads on both sides of the keyboard. A patent for a laptop computer from LG appeared on the portal of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The patent appears to have been filed by LG on June 8, 2020, and published by WIPO on December 24, GizmoChina reports. The conceptual laptop keyboard is much smaller than those found in traditional laptops. “This model is a laptop with functional touchpads on both sides of the keyboard; it shows that the touchpads of the model in question have been converted into a numeric keypad and a functional keyboard that can adjust volume, screen brightness, etc.; letters, numbers, and icons on the Functional touch panels and lines cut into pieces of the article are not part of the claimed model,” LG’s patent filing reads. LG has also patented a new laptop with a 17-inch stowable screen. The screen...

How to translate emails in the Outlook app in Windows 10 How to translate emails in the Outlook app in Windows 10 Translating emails in the Outlook app in Windows 10 is easy. You don’t need to visit Bing or Google Translate, and can use a built-in Outlook Translator Add-in instead. Here’s how to get started. Sign in with your Microsoft or Work and School account and add the Translator for Outlook Add In to Outlook  by clicking here . Once added, you can open an email that needs translating and visit the  Translate Message  option in the Home tab. When you click this, the message will be auto-translated Applies to All Windows 10 Versions Sometimes you might end up in a situation where you could get an email sent to you in a different language from the one you speak. That can be for a variety of reasons, but did you know that you don’t need to visit Google or Bing translate to bring the email over into your own native language? With Translator for Outloo...

15 timesaving tips for Firefox power users This collection of tips will help you work more efficiently in Firefox, from enabling anti-tracking features to blocking cryptojacking to using the Side View experiment.  From the tips:  The later releases of Firefox have a lot of really handy, but somewhat hidden, features. One such feature allows you to search for a string of text on a web page simply by typing. In other words, you no longer have to hit the Control-F key combination. Although that may not sound like a huge timesaver, if you find yourself constantly searching through web pages during your busy day, cutting out seconds per page can add up. Besides, skipping that key combination could be a real boon to those who aren’t quite as adept on a keyboard.  However, this new feature isn’t enabled by default, and it doesn’t work on pages that require input (so if you’re typing on Google Docs, you still need to use Control-F.) But on non-input pages, all you need ...

Tokyo is a wonderfully frenetic city of lights, high rises and concentrated insanity. It's equal parts "Blade Runner," "The Fifth Element," "Ghost in the Shell" and, well, just about every other sci-fi movie you can think of. For years, Tokyo's Akihabara district was the place to score cheap electronics. As the Internet became a thing and manufacturing largely moved out of Japan, Akihabara became just another place to snag gadgets, albeit one with a lot of cool stores. Then the situation changed again, with the arrival of Yodobashi Camera. The Japanese chain is legendary for its stunningly massive stores and low prices. Think of it as a sort of Walmart on steroids that focuses on electronics. Stack eight Best Buys on top of each other, and you're only starting to get close. For any gadget fan, the area is amazing. Here's what it's like. Akihabara Denki Gai Day or night, the Akihabara Denki Gai (which translates to Ak...

I spent 90 minutes with HoloLens and walked away amazed Just a few short months ago, Microsoft took the wraps off their entry into what truly will be a next generation in computing, the HoloLens .  While work on the project started some two years ago , Microsoft only started showing off this interactive wearable device at the January 21st event that was supposed to be all about Windows 10 consumer, but turned out to be much more than that. In my first HoloLens experience, members of the press were given a somewhat similar tour, but with engineering hardware. That is, we were outfitted with a computing device the size of a book to hang around our neck, and tethered to computers in the room by a set of thick suspended cables.  This time, we wore the same hardware you've seen onstage at keynotes in January and again on Wednesday at Build - not exactly a finished product, but sleek compared to what came before it. One thing that was similar to the January event,...

Ottobox smart plug turns devices on and off based on usage patterns  Smart plugs can render an otherwise dumb device or appliance “smart,” allowing you to control a plugged-in appliance wirelessly via a smartphone app. You can even configure them to turn your appliances on or off based on certain rules or a pre-set schedule. But Washington, D.C.-based startup Ottomate’s smart plug, the Ottobox, is a bit different. The Bluetooth- and Wi-Fi-enabled Ottobox automates the whole process of turning devices and appliances on and off based on your schedule and usage patterns, while also helping you cut down on energy costs.   For instance, it can turn on the coffee maker and pre-heat your curling iron just before you typically use them each day. The company says the device needs around two weeks to fully familiarize itself with your schedule. It also has something called Cense that, well, senses when you’re around and automatically turns things on or off. For goo...

Oomi is a sensor-packed connected-home system looking to break the mold There’s no shortage of connected-home systems on the market, but most of them have two things in common: They over-rely on your smartphone to be the master controller, and pairing all the devices you wish to control is usually a painfully tedious process. The folks at Fantem think they have a better idea, and they’ve turned to Indiegogo to raise funds to bring their Oomi connected-home system to market. The heart of the Oomi system is the Oomi Cube and the Oomi Touch. The Cube is a combination hub, night-vision IP camera, environmental sensor (motion, vibration, sound, temperature, humidity, glass break, and ambient light), and infrared emitter (for controlling a home-theater system). The Touch is a dedicated 7.0-inch touchscreen tablet for controlling the system. There’s no need to rely on your smartphone’s too-small display, and the Touch has purpose-built hardware buttons that don’t exist on...

Sony's Android TV-powered 4K televisions are ridiculously thin   Four models from Sony’s 2015 Android TV-powered 4K television range are now available for pre-order, with shipping to begin in May. The Japanese electronics giant unveiled its 4K TV lineup for 2015 at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, but kept pricing and release information to itself, only saying the new sets would be available sometime in the spring. Those details are finally here and the TVs themselves aren’t far off. According to the company, all models in the X830C, X850C, X930C and X940C series are now available for pre-order and will begin shipping to customers in May, while the super-svelte X900C—slimmer than three U.S. quarters, pictured at top—and the X910 series models will be available in the summer. The entry-level X830C is available in 43- and 49-inch sizes, priced at $1,300 and $1600, respectively. Move a little further up and you’ll find the X850C series with 55- 65-...

Emoji are about to take over Instagram Instagram just made emoji posted within the app a lot more powerful. The company updated its iOS and Android apps Monday with the ability to add emoji hashtags to posts along with three brand-new filters. Previously, Instagram's hashtag feature did not support emoji, so comments or captions with the hashtag symbol and emoji were not searchable. Now, users can add emoji (or a string of emoji) to hashtags and posts that have been previously tagged with the characters will also show up in searches. "Over the past few years, emoji have become part of a universal visual language," the company wrote in a blog post. "With emoji hashtags, you can discover even more by adding them to your own photos and videos, searching them on the Explore page and tapping on them when you see them in captions." Monday's update also added three new filters to Instagram's toolkit: Reyes, Juno and Lark. Reyes is a ...

How to Clean Your Smartwatch the Right Way Smartwatches get dirty. Filthy, even. Like anything else you wear day in and day out, a smartwatch gets sweaty, clogged up with lint, and caked with grime. Gross. Cleaning a smartwatch, or a fitness tracker, for that matter, is actually a fairly simple project, as long as you know a little bit about the device. For example, if you have an Apple Watch, you need to know what kind of wristband you have, such as silicone, stainless steel, leather, or gold. Once you know your materials, you just have to pick the right cleaning supplies, and in many cases, you don't have to buy anything special. Many common household items will do. So let's talk about supplies first.   Supplies Depending on what kind of smartwatch you have and the material of the band, you'll need a few different things to clean them. Here's a list of possible supplies, and note that a lot of them are common household items: water mild li...

Intel Compute Stick review  ntel's Compute Stick, an entire PC crammed into an HDMI stick that fits in the palm of your hand, is nothing short of a landmark in computing. Fifty years of Moore's Law, which states that the number of transistors that can be crammed onto an integrated circuit doubles every two years, has resulted in a little plastic stick that plugs into any HDMI-equipped TV or computer display, transforming it into a full-fledged Windows 8.1 PC. Just don't get any crazy ideas about gaming on it — or, indeed, doing any intensive amount of multitasking — and the Compute Stick isn't half bad. I tested out the $150 Windows 8.1 version with a 1.3GHz Intel Atom quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. There's a microSD card slot on one side for additional storage expansion, and a full-sized USB 2.0 port and Micro USB port on the other for power. The Ubuntu 14.04 LTS OS model is physically identical — a black stick w...

How this startup helped the 'New York Times' create a virtual New York City Technology-powered visual storytelling is the new frontier in journalism. But that doesn't just refer to video-streaming apps such as Snapchat and Periscope; there are also ways you can report in virtual reality. For example, The New York Times recently collaborated with virtual reality production company Vrse to plunge readers into a stunning VR version of New York City. See also: Virtual reality app puts you at the scene of Trayvon Martin's shooting The film, "Walking New York," directed by Chris Milk, JR and Zach Richter, takes viewers into the creation of, ironically, a paper product: the latest New York Times Magazine cover. The cover features a work by artist JR plastered in the center of the Flat Iron District (or as local tech types know it, Silicon Alley), and was later photographed from an aerial position. The VR film swings viewers into vertigo-inducing aeri...