For a relatively low budget and some time, you can make something that matches or beats the performance of a considerably more expensive commercial subwoofer. The reasons for this are simple, commercial subwoofer manufacturers have to compromise to some degree with the size of the cabinet and the cost of components to be able to make something that appeals to the masses and is also cost effective so they make a profit. Of course when you’re building your own DIY subwoofer, then you shouldn’t have to worry about these things and can concentrate on getting the best performance you can get for your money. The other nice thing about making your own is if you are creative you can have it looking however you want. I’ve included some pictures of inventive DIY subwoofers that people have made

Why do I need a subwoofer?

If you’re lucky enough to have an elderly relative—a parent or grandparent—who is still looking forward to letters from you (let’s say) but you haven’t written a letter (read: snail mail) in about a decade, then you have a very sad and unfortunately all too common situation of disconnect.

“If I could, I would fire off an e-mail to Gamma Jane at any time of the day,” you whimper. “Heck, I could fire off six. If it’s a slow day at work.” But writing a letter that then needs to be printed out, folded into an envelope, affixed with a stamp (is there a post office even near you, do you know?) and then taking off time from work to track down a mailbox—well, it’s a miracle poor Gamma Jane hears from you ever.

Voila, Presto! (Or, I suppose that should be, Abracadabra, Presto, to use a phrase more culturally in tune with this ancient demographic audience.) But anyway,Presto!

Presto is a combination printing mailbox and mail delivery service that lets you use the convenience of email to communicate with loved ones who don’t use a computer or the Internet.

What Presto does for the loving but too-busy-to-write relative of an internet-challenged oldster (ICO) is allow you—and all your lazy good for nothing siblings—to communicate with your loved one using the tool you use everyday—e-mail. No, the ICO doesn’t have to own a computer or a keyboard or a router. He or she doesn’t have to have Internet service. Presto is a printer that goes in the ICO’s house (my mother keeps hers in the dining room so she never misses an e-mail from me or my brothers.)

You schedule “deliveries” either three or six times a day—your choice, and when you write your loved one a letter, it is delivered at the next delivery time in the schedule. Not only can you write your Gamma Jane as easily and conveniently (for you) as you would to any friend or e-mail contact, but you can also send her photos and articles you find on the Internet that, being internet-challenged, she wouldn’t normally have access to.

Can anyone say “win-win”?

You rake in the credit for being in touch a lot more than you have in the past. And the ICO enjoys contact from the outside world much more than they could expect to from once-a-day postal mail service. And since you don’t write snail mail any more anyway—make that once a month!

1.) Intel Ivy Bridge. The successor of the Sandy Bridge platform, Ivy Bridge looks to reduce power consumption by up to 37% at the same level of performance. This comes as mobile technology continues to gain in popularity, with battery life still being at the top of most people’s list of complaints.

Ivy Bridge introduces Intel’s overly hyped technology “Tri-Gate” transistor technology, which, simply put, makes the transistor “3D”. 3D TVs, 3D phones, 3D game consoles and now 3D transistors! According to Intel, the “Tri-Gate” design reduces leakage and consumes less power, whilst maintaining similar performance. Planar or “2D” transistors have just one face in contact with the gate; now it has three, which means the electrons come into contact with the gate better. Intel hopes to release the Ivy Bridge line-up, along with the Panther Point chipset in April, following a number of delays. We can all expect to see improved battery life in mobile devices powered by these processors, and reduced power consumption in computers, with the i53470T boasting a TDP of just 35 watts.

2.) iPad 3. Apple achieved global success with their first iPad back in 2010, setting the standard for future tablet computers. The iPad 2 faced growing competition from the likes of Samsung, Asus and Amazon, as the market for tablets boomed in the latter half of a 2011. This growing trend for the tablet market is set to continue this year, and Apple’s 3rd generation tablet should arrive this year.

What can you expect from the iPad 3? How about an 8 megapixel rear camera with 1080p video recording, a dual core processor in the region of 1.5 GHz, 1.5GB of RAM. Software-wise, the upcoming iPad will sport iOS 5, and Siri is also likely to make an appearance.

By Ryan-Morgan

By jesimpki

At the gadget industry’s annual crystal-ball convention, laptops look more like products of Aston Martin than Fisher-Price.

With sales of budget laptops plummeting, computer makers are swinging the pendulum toward sleeker, metallic and pricier portable PCs that they’re calling Ultrabooks. Many of these were shown for the first time here this week at the International Consumer Electronics Show.

Most PC giants have committed to building Ultrabooks. The laptops typically use flash memory instead of hard drives, have no disc readers in order to stay thin, and weigh less than three pounds.

Some computer makers see Ultrabooks as an evolution of the laptop in response to demands created by lightweight tablet computers. This view is even shared by PC companies that produce tablets of their own.

Similarly, Dell CEO Michael Dell told an audience in Bangalore, India, on Monday that tablets and smartphones are not a preferable way to browse the Web compared to computers. Dell has not had success in the smartphone market and failed in its brief foray into tablets, though the company plans to return this year,Reuters reports.

Lenovo, the second-largest PC maker, makes tablets based on Google’s Android software but has not had much success with them.

“The tablet is a niche market,” Yuanqing said. “People still cannot give up the keyboard and the larger screen.”

Ultrabooks often draw comparisons to Apple’s MacBook Air, which sells well in spite of the iPad’s continued dominance of the tablet computing market. Apple is expected to increase its sales of that line of laptops to 8.9 million next year, but competitors are expected to sell about 10 million Ultrabooks, according to International Strategy & Investment Group analyst Brian Marshall.

The Ultrabook’s prospects for bolstering the PC industry come at an opportune time. Global shipments of PCs fell 1.4% compared to the same three-month period last year, according to industry research firm Gartner. The rare decline comes amid a slowdown in computer demand from the United States and Europe, the Gartner report said.

Companies such as Dell and Acer, the third- and fourth-largest Windows PC vendors respectively, were major proponents of netbooks and happened to be among those hit the hardest. Analysts have suggested that the past success of netbooks was a fad born in a bleaker economy and that consumers are now turning away from lower-quality equipment.

Sprint Nextel plans to take a cautious approach rather than throwing its support behind the emerging Ultrabooks trend, Fared Adib, the company’s product chief, said in an interview. Sprint had sold cellular-equipped netbooks at its stores but got burned when customer interest evaporated.

“Instead of jumping in and being a first mover, sometimes be a follower,” Adib said.

Yet, the computer industry is embracing the Ultrabook, and at CES, the laptops have been met with enthusiasm.

Hewlett-Packard announced that the Envy 14 Spectre will arrive in stores on February 8 costing $1,400. The 14-inch laptop has reflective, black Gorilla Glass on its lid and weighs less than four pounds.

Lenovo showed off several new Ultrabooks at CES. All laptops are poised to be like Ultrabooks in the future, said Yuanqing, the Lenovo CEO. However, “the price is the main obstacle,” he said.

The IdeaPad Yoga from Lenovo, typically a bargain brand in the United States, won some fans at CES despite its $1,200 price tag. The laptop’s screen can bend backwards creating a stand for watching video or transforming into a traditional touchscreen tablet. It will be available in the second half of the year, after the launch of Microsoft’s Windows 8, Yuanqing said.

Dell’s Ultrabook may be the most practical option for many consumers. The XPS 13 has an aluminum lid and weighs about three pounds. It won major praise for its price, $999, and overall features, which includes the ability to download e-mail while the laptop is in sleep mode.

ARM Holdings, the mobile chip maker that will enter the PC market this year when Microsoft adopts its architecture in Windows 8, welcomes the move toward slimmer computers. But the Ultrabook is a creation of Intel, a competitor of ARM.

“Ultrabooks is really just a marketing concept built around the success of Apple’s fashionable products,” ARM CEO Warren East said in an interview. ARM was created as a joint venture in 1990 that included Apple, which now uses ARM chips in the iPhone and iPad, though not in laptops.

Intel had pressed its partners to invest in lighter, high-end laptops, and those negotiations are now paying off. To promote Ultrabooks at its CES news conference, Intel brought on Black Eyed Peas band member Will.i.am, who described Ultrabooks as “the new ghetto blaster.”

We love documenting our lives. If we didn’t, well, there probably wouldn’t be a hugely successful online behemoth called Facebook. And smartphone photography wouldn’t be the thriving phenomenon that it is today.

Smartphones accounted for more than a quarter of all photos shot in 2011, according to research from NPD. The iPhone has even been called the “snapshot camera of today” by celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz.

Handset manufacturers identified image capture as a key application for mobile devices early on, and have been iterating the sub-webcam-quality cameras that graced the original cellphones ever since. Today, smartphone cameras are enjoying a true renaissance, with sensors, software features and lenses that rival the quality that was once only available in dedicated cameras.

For 2012 and beyond, smartphone cameras will only improve further. Here are four key areas of development to watch.

New sensor technology

Smartphones are often used to take shots in low-light situations, but low-light capture has always been a glaring weak spot. Luckily, Sony recently developed a new CMOS sensor that will take the pain out of shooting stills and video in scenarios where ambient light is lacking.

Sony’s technology includes two features not normally present in cellphone camera sensors: RGBW Coding (which adds white pixels to the sensor to increase low-light sensitivity) and built-in HDR video (which shoots two different movies simultaneously, likely at varying ISO levels). The sensor will be available in 8-megapixel and 13-megapixel models toward the middle of this year.

The iPhone 4S currently features an 8-megapixel sensor made by Sony, so it’s entirely possible that this new Sony sensor could be tapped for Apple’s upcoming iPhone 5.

Sensor size is generally an important factor in final image quality, and we’ll continue to see sensor technology improving so that smartphones can take better and better images.

Name-brand optics

Nokia is taking a name-brand approach to defining its smartphone cameras in 2012. Carl Zeiss lenses grace the company’s high-endLumia 800 smartphone (which is currently available across the pond), as well as its follow-up, the Lumia 900, which will debut in the coming months.

“In my experience using them, the clarity and definition is far superior to your standard glass,” Jon Snyder, Wired’s associate photo editor, says of Carl Zeiss professional lenses. Snyder also says Zeiss’ lens construction is top-of-the-line. Snyder exclusively used Carl Zeiss lenses on a DSLR camera while shooting a documentary in Cairo in late 2011.

Now it’s true, just because a company makes superlative pro lenses, there’s no guarantee that it imbues the same quality in its mass-market smartphone glass. Nonetheless, simply by employing Zeiss lenses in its smartphones, Nokia sends a very clear message to consumers: Image quality matters to us. Your smartphone is a camera, plain and simple.

Carl Zeiss lenses were initially developed for microscopes in the mid 1800s, but soon found a home in photography and cinema as those industries rose to prominence.

“What we do is continuously enhance the optics, because the lens is at the beginning of the image chain,” a Carl Zeiss representative wrote on the Nokia Connects blog. “At the same time we use our imaging expertise to optimize all the components within the entire imaging chain because the lens is only one part of the whole story.”

Nokia believes this results in superior smartphone cameras on its devices, and from what I can tell from the models I’ve reviewed, the Zeiss-based cameras are at least on par with the best offerings from Samsung, HTC, and Motorola.

Packing in the pixels, pulling in the light

8 megapixels is the new standard for smartphone cameras. A number of smartphones that landed in late 2011 included 8-megapixel cameras, and we’re increasingly seeing handsets go beyond that — regardless of whether we need greater image resolution numbers at the end of the day.

Sony packs 12 megapixels into its Xperia S, which made its debut at CES earlier this month. Not to be bested, the HTC Titan II packs a 16-megapixel camera onto the rear of its 4.7-inch frame.

Should you be impressed? Probably not. The larger pixel counts just allow you to print out larger and larger images from the files you pull off of your smartphone. That’s right: Greater megapixel counts don’t directly translate into improved image quality.

So you may not need all those pixels at the end of the day. But what you might want to focus on is the capture of light rays. There’s a new camera technology that eschews the megapixel arms race in favor of capturing more points of light, and we could be seeing it make its way into smartphones in due time.

The Lytro is a plenoptic camera. It captures all the light (11 million rays of light, to be exact) in a single shot, and this allows you to play with the focus of a photo after it’s been taken. It’s a revolutionary step in the evolution of photography.

In an interview with PC World, Lytro executive chairman Charles Chi talked about how the Lytro camera’s lightfield technology could potentially be implemented in a smartphone in the future.

“If we were to apply the technology in smartphones, that ecosystem is, of course, very complex, with some very large players there. It’s an industry that’s very different and driven based on operational excellence. For us to compete in there, we’d have to be a very different kind of company. So if we were to enter that space, it would definitely be through a partnership and a co-development of the technology, and ultimately some kind of licensing with the appropriate partner. ”

With all the excitement surrounding Lytro’s camera technology, it doesn’t seem far-fetched to think that a partnership could eventually develop with smartphone manufacturers.

Improvements on the software side

To differentiate their camera offerings from one another, many handset manufacturers are adding personalized touches to their camera software.

For instance, the HTC Rezound has settings that let you adjust the ISO, white balance and exposure, as well as the type of scene you’re shooting. You can also choose from 13 different Instagram-like filters. Features like this were once the sole province of dedicated cameras, and unavailable in phones. Many other smartphones are including different scene modes, and optimizing their cameras for night shots and action shots. They even offer panorama modes for capturing wide (or extra tall) compositions.

Apps, of course, provide an even higher degree of photograph customization and pro-quality photo editing abilities to smartphones.

Other features to look forward to in 2012?

“We’ll also likely see more features that have appeared in higher-end digital cameras, such as more sophisticated high-dynamic range or motion-blur reduction,” NPD analyst Ross Rubin told Wired. This will be done by combining multiple rapid-fire exposures into a single image.

On the video side of things, we could see video capture move to 1080p at a rate of 60 frames per second or higher. Once you enter 120fps territory, slow-motion video becomes a possibility as well.

The story is full of examples of horrifying working conditions in Foxconn’s factories that would never fly here in the United States. Here are some of the more troubling ones from the Times story:

Foxconn is a 24-hour operation. Employees work six days a week, sometimes in 12-hour shifts. They’re on their feet for so long that their legs begin to swell. There are underage workers. They live in crowded dorms on the factory’s campus. In recent years, there have been reports of workers leaping from buildings in apparent suicides.

And so on.

The story even describes the gruesome death of one Foxconn worker after an explosion in a facility that made iPads in Chengdu, China. The worker’s “skin was almost completely burned away” by the blast, the Times reports. He died a few days later with his family by his side.

Foxconn denies the reports that working conditions are like what the Times describes. Apple refuses to comment on the record, but a leaked e-mail from CEO Tim Cook to all Apple employees says the company is committed to worker safety and that it takes all those claims very seriously.

So knowing all that, should we be concerned about where our iPhones and other gadgets come from and how they’re made? Or is the human cost so far removed from us here in the United States that we’re willing to look over it in favor of whatever fancy new touchscreen gadget Apple releases next?

The issue even has some people throwing around the idea of a boycott. One effort, hosted on the website Change.org, has collected more than 145,000 signatures from people calling on Apple to better protect its workers.

While those efforts sound noble, there’s no way boycotting Apple gadgets will actually work.

Let’s start with why people keep snapping up Apple’s iPhones and iPads by the millions each week in the first place.

When it comes to smartphones and tablets, Apple still makes the best there are. With the iPhone and the iPad, the company set a new standard that other tech giants such as Google and Microsoft are still struggling to imitate. Apple can’t make them fast enough. On launch days, people queue up in massive lines so they can be one of the first to get a new iPhone or iPad.

Even if consumers do know about what it took to make their new gadget, as many likely do thanks to the widespread reports on working conditions overseas, it’s obviously not enough to keep them from getting caught up in the fervor of an Apple product launch.

I can’t see that ending just because of a new story in The New York Times or a proposed boycott.

But it’s not just about the massive popularity of Apple’s gadgets that keep people buying. It’s the price.

The latest and greatest iPhone model, the 4S, costs $199. iPads start at $499. One of the biggest reasons Apple can sell its stuff at such low prices is because they’re produced on the cheap in China, sometimes by sacrificing good working conditions to make it happen. (If you believe the reports.)

Those cheap production costs are why a lot of the anger comes from the fact that Apple is a massively profitable company. Right now it has almost $100 billion sitting in the bank. It could use some of that cash to put more pressure on Foxconn and others to improve working conditions overseas.

A successful boycott could force Apple to make those changes, but consumers will have to sacrifice something, too.

In a poll from the Times that ran with its Foxconn story last week, most consumers thought companies such as Apple should make products in the U.S. but still absorb the added manufacturing costs.

In other words, consumers don’t want to pay more for iPhones and iPads than they already do just to ensure factory workers get better working conditions. It’s all about money.

So even if Apple moved production to the U.S. or managed to heavily invest in China and improve working conditions there, it would likely result in higher prices for consumers. For a profit-driven company such as Apple, there’s almost no chance it would want to absorb those costs itself.

Yes, a lot of the heat on this issue has been put on Apple. But keep in mind it’s not alone. Foxconn and similar manufacturers in Asia make gadgets for several other major consumer brands. It’s not like suddenly switching from the iPhone to another smartphone will improve the lives of those who make it.

You may feel guilty buying an Apple product, but the problem won’t be fixed until all electronics makers change, too.

In the end, consumers would be the ones who have to pay to make working conditions better for the people who make your iPhone. And it seems unlikely there are enough of you out there willing to do that.

But more often than not it’s a backdrop for obnoxious behavior, and you, gentle readers, just don’t stop giving us reasons to wag our fingers at you.

We’re not talking about the content of your digital missives (though plenty of you could stand to take a course in Spelling 101 or How to Avoid Coming Across as Brusque and/or Angry).

No, we’re addressing the very way you use e-mail, the logistics of hurtling e-mails into the tangled switchboard of the Web. Here, three blatantly annoying sins to avoid before hitting send.

1. Abusing the reply-all button

Ninety percent of mass announcements are annoying in the first place, according to a statistic we just made up. Don’t be that dummy who piles spam atop spam by replying all and saying something inane or meant for the sender.

As one reader complained, “I find those ‘Jane Doe wants to add her most sincere congrats to Mary Smith on the occasion of her selection for…’ messages mightily irritating when they’re sent to all 900 recipients on the original announcement message. I don’t care what Jane says to the honoree AND I wish she would not say it to the world (me).”

Granted, the sender should have BCC’ed everyone in the first place, thus preventing a mouthy recipient from spamming the entire list, but until we reach a utopian era when everyone comports themselves politely online, we’ve got to do the best we can to stop the madness.

2. Mixing work and play

Your friends and acquaintances may occasionally play the role of career contacts, but remember: Work e-mails and personal e-mails are not interchangeable.

Let’s walk through an example: Say you realize your friend’s techie boyfriend should, for professional reasons, receive the press release your assistant is sending out for your upcoming Tweets and Beats presentation (tag line: “where social networks and drum circles collide”).

If you’ve only communicated in casual group e-mails up until this point, you may be tempted just lazily to add his Gmail to your list. In a word: Don’t.

Instead, send him a quick note asking for his work address and mention that you’re planning to send an event announcement his way; that way he won’t be picking out work-related e-mails amid his nonbusiness conversations, and — bonus — he’ll keep an eye out when the press release hits his inbox. (And catching his eye is critical: Last year, the typical corporate e-mail user sent and received 105 e-mails per day, and 19% of those that made it past the spam filter were, in fact, spam, according to research firm Radicati.)

3. Sending an eight- to 12-page preamble of formatting debris

So you’ve just encountered a warning about the health risks of paintballing or a series of photos of albino dolphins, and you absolutely must forward it on. As we’ve noted, you should begin by really asking yourself if your recipients care to see this.

(What’s that, you say they’ve never responded? Never thanked you for the chain letter? Never forwarded you a forward themselves? Then, 99 to 1, they wish you’d leave them off the list.)

But if you’re going to send away, you rebel you, at least do your hapless recipients the courtesy of deleting the equivalent of phlegmy throat-clearing: lines upon lines that look something like this (ahem):

Begin forwarded message:

From: [an e-mail address you don't know]

Date: December 26, 2011 11:24:10 AM CST

To: [approximately 18 lines of e-mails you don't know]

Subject: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: YOU’VE GOT TO SEE THIS!!

—–Original Message—–

From: [another random yahoo you don't know]

To: [another half-page of e-mail addresses]

Sent: Sat, Dec 26, 2011 7:27 am

Subject: Fwd: Fwd: YOU’VE GOT TO SEE THIS!!

Unbelieveable, definitely read and forward on, what a joy.

…ad infinitum.

Delete all the headers in the body of your e-mail so the relevant material is at the top of the e-mail. Clean up that subject line so it doesn’t start on a stuttering F-sound.

In short, give your contacts one less reason to hate you, and maybe they’ll take that life-is-all-about-beautiful-relationships chain e-mail to heart.

By Andrea Bartz and Brenna Ehrlich, Special to CNN

When the Giants and Patriots take the field on Sunday in Indianapolis, they won’t be doing battle in soft leather helmets with no face masks. And there definitely won’t be some kid on the sideline ladling out water from a tin bucket to quench their thirst after a big play.

So, if the Super Bowl teams have embraced emerging technology, why shouldn’t you?

Sure, you could just sit there staring blankly at the screen, scooping salsa out of the jar with your fingers and saying, “Hey … wasn’t that … what’s-her-name?” after every surprise celebrity commercial appearance. But the tech and Web worlds want better for you.

Here are five techie tools that can help make you an all-pro couch potato on Sunday.

1. Official mobile app

The NFL has rolled out an app for the big game for both Apple and Android mobile devices.

Included are some features that would be most useful for people actually attending the game, such as real-time traffic and parking information and, perhaps most importantly, directions to the nearest restroom in Lucas Oil Stadium.

But any football fan can get some value from other features, like “NFL Huddle,” which pulls together social buzz about the game.

And here’s good news, particularly for those who shelled out for tickets, travel and hotel accommodations in Indy — both versions of the app are free.

2. Apps for the all-important commercials

If you’re one of those folks who wouldn’t know BenJarvus Green-Ellis from Osi Umenyiora, you’re probably more excited about what happens during breaks in the action. The mobile world has not forsaken you.

Both ”Super Ads: Super Bowl Commercials” and “A+ Super Bowl Commercials” bring all the best blockbusters ads from the Super Bowl together in one place (for iOS users, anyway).

And as the new ones roll out, you can be among the first to decide what worked and what didn’t. USA Today’s popular Ad Meter will be whirring in real time and can be accessed either on the paper’s website or its mobile app.

3. Google’s Game Day

What good is being able to seemingly find any piece of information in the universe in a mili-second if you don’t use it to share awesome guacamole recipes and the average hang time of NFC punters?

Google wants to chart your Super Sunday from wakeup to hangover with Game Day With Google. On a single page, users can get real-time information ranging from how to prepare party snacks to what to expect from Madonna’s halftime performance.

4. Twitter

OK … so this one isn’t going to be a new discovery to anyone reading this post. But in case you haven’t already invited the Twitterverse along to one of your Super Bowl gatherings, you’re missing out.

In short (and that’s Twitter in a nutshell, isn’t it?) the site is tailor-made for big events like championship games, awards shows, political speeches and the like. We assume you’re already following lots of smart and funny folks. Make sure you have Twitter pulled up on your tablet or smartphone and take a quick look to see what the most popular hashtags for the game are.

Then, let the commentary begin. Just don’t act surprised when the commercials get more Twitter action than the game itself.

5. An obscenely large TV

It won’t matter how good the game is — or how clever the commercials are — if your guests can’t see the action in all its glory, right? So maybe it’s time to spring for a new TV.

There are many nice options out there. But, may we humbly suggest the Panasonic TH-152UX1?

For starters, it has a 152-inch, 3D-compatible plasma screen. That’s the equivalent of nine 50-inch screens stacked on top of and alongside each other.

Be warned: It does weigh about 1,200 pounds, so make sure the wall you’re mounting it on is fairly sturdy.

And then, of course, there’s the price tag. It debuted early last year for about $500,000. But we bet it’s dropped a bit since then. So grab us one while you’re there. Or … on second thought, it would be lots cheaper to fly to Indy and pay outrageous scalpers’ prices to see the game in person.