It’s that time again, time to review some of my cherry picked smaller stories of the week for those that might have missed them. This time round we’ve got an Adobe Flash update that doesn’t suck. OK, sucks a little less. Flash 10.1 beta was unleashed to the willing public with GPU video acceleration for certain Nvidia cards on Windows, but perhaps more importantly reduced CPU usage across all platforms. What does this mean? YouTube that doesn’t make your Mac or PC red-line that’s what. A step in the right direction Adobe, maybe Flash isn’t a lost cause after all. I’ve certainly seen some improvements on my netbook and Mac.

Talking of YouTube, Google introduced skippable pre-roll adverts this week to YouTube in an effort to finally make some meaningful money from its enormous purchase. It’s not the first time Google’s tried pre-roll adverts however, with previous efforts seeing a 70% bail rate before the video actually starts. Google’s hoping with skippable 15 second ads it will be able to see which ads fit and are acceptable with which content. Google also started the roll out of 1080p video for all the content that’s been uploaded in full HD. Couple this with the improvements Adobe is making to Flash and you might even be able to watch them without having to pack a Core i7!

Swindon is set to become the UK’s first free Wifi town rocking free WiFi across the entire city. Dubbed the ‘Swindon Mesh’, the £1 million wireless network will allow all residents completely free access to the internet. Residents who want greater speed, ‘up to 20Mbits’, will be able to pay Digital City UK for higher bandwidth, but a vast majority should be set with the free service. Those passing through will also be able to hook up via a PAYG scheme in which prices have yet to be set, let’s hope they’re at least competitive. Work starts December and Digital City UK is expecting to roll out the service to all Swindon residents come April 2010. Great, but sorry Swindon I still don’t want to live there, do you?

Talking of Wifi towns, the MPAA shut one down. Yes that’s right, the MPAA shut down a whole town’s municipal wifi after it detected a single copyright infringement. That’s what happens when you give companies the power to crush the little guy without due process or trial. So, if you’re expecting to connect for free in Coshocton, Ohio, sorry you’re out of luck for the foreseeable future just like the 100 or so active residents.

So we’ve seen the Beatles unleash music on apple shaped USB drives, but how about movies on flash drives? OK, you’ve got the odd movie distribution service via SD card, but I think novalty shaped flash drives with your favourite movies on them tops a lowly SD card. Yes that’s right, I’m talking about JJ Abram’s Star Trek hitting the small screen courtesy of some fancy flash drives. The movie comes pre-loaded onto a flash drive shaped like the new Star Trek logo so once you’re done watching the movie you can proudly display it as a piece of Star Trek memorabilia next to your model of the Enterprise and Warf’s head. Michael Bay fans haven’t been left out either with Transformers 2 set to follow soon on appropriately shaped flash drives. Yours for the bargain of £17.99 a pop. Think I’ll stick with the Blu-Ray but maybe that’s just me.

This week has also seen the shuttering of the Pirate Bay torrent tracker. Now it’s not all bad news for those amongst you who use BitTorrent as they’ve set up a Magnet link repository. For those uninitiated, BitTorrent has evolved to support a decentralised structure using the DHT and PEX protocols. Now what that means for you and your, umm, linux downloading friends is that you no longer need a .torrent location file to find and download files over the p2p network. In fact if you’re running one of the more up-to-date clients such as uTorrent or Azureus, you’ve had the magnet-link capability for a while and probably didn’t even know about it. The Pirate Bay is so certain that it’s search engine and magnet-link repository is the way forward for BitTorrent that it’s been canvassing other torrent trackers in an effort to get everyone to move over to the decentralised system. Whether this is a sinister plot by the Pirate Bay’s new owners or an honest to goodness evolution of piracy (and legal p2p) is unclear at this stage. What is clear is that this is an end of an era for BitTorrent and I don’t see it going away anytime soon.

Facebook, everyone’s favourite stalker hangout has made yet another move to conquer your life away from the computer this week. The PS3 saw an update that includes a somewhat weak browser based Facebook integration a rather rushed effort on Sony’s part to match the Xbox 360 which has proper Facebook and Twitter integration. OK, you might want to brag about your Achievements or Trophies to your mates on Stalkerbook or Twatter, but seriously, who is going to sit in front of their TV and use this on an 8-foot interface? I mean the Xbox doesn’t even have a web browser so how are you going to check out the links and pics that your friends send out via TwitFace?

Talking of Facebook, if the fuzz ever comes a knocking, your inane status updates could count as an alibi. Yes, you heard right, a 19-year old Harlem resident was cleared of charges resulting from a mugging in Brooklyn by an alibi provided a status update made on Facebook from his Dad’s house at the time of the crime. Am I the only one who could see this as being really easy to fake? You could just automate a status update, VNC into your computer or just get someone else to update on your profile for you from your computer. Still the courts subpoenaed Facebook for the IP address of the computer that made the status update, which of course pointed to his Father’s house where he claimed to be at the time of the mugging.

Last but not least from my picks of the week, Google Chrome OS. OK, it’s basically an OS built inside Chrome browser. I’m not surprised, that’s exactly what I thought it was going to be. What I am surprised about is that it won’t run on everything, Google doesn’t even support HDDs! I get that it’s meant to totally rely on the cloud for all data and applications, but not even supporting HDDs for local storage? Let’s just say it’s probably not aimed at me, or you reading this for that matter, but perhaps, maybe those non-tech-savvy buying netbooks might get used to it, I’m not sure though.

You’re the proud owner of an Original or iPhone 3G, but you just can’t help but ogle your mates 3GS ever since he got it. With it’s fancy new compass, voice recognition and video recording, your Original/3G is starting to look a bit tired. Problem is, you’ve got at least another couple of months on your contract left and the networks are charging extortionate amounts for early upgrade. You could try buying a PAYG iPhone 3GS and sell your old and busted iPhone taking the hit on the difference, but that’s probably just as much as the early termination/upgrade fee O2/AT&T wants from you. So for the time being you’re stuck with an iPhone 3G.

OK, it’s not like that’s the end of the world, it’s still an incredibly capable device, plays some great games and can use almost all the apps that the 3GS can. But what about those features that set the 3GS apart? Well with a few apps and tweaks you too can get your 3G to do almost all of the new tricks the 3GS has and give your old trusty an extra burst of life.

First up, voice control. There’s not much in the new 3GS has that means it’s the only iPhone capable of using voice control, it’s just that Apple wanted to really set the 3GS apart from the 3G and Original iPhone with some unique features, voice control being one of them. Never fear though, because through the magic of the App Store your 3G or Original can also rock voice control. Vocalia, an app that essentially replicates the control and voice search functions built into the 3GS, is available for the pultry sum of £2.39. Featuring a HAL type eye which acts as your input button and indicator, the app translates your garbled speech into contact names, music tracks or even bookmarks. You can even use it just by lifting the phone to your ear just like the Google search app. With a quick vocalisation you can be calling your mate’s phone, playing an album, individual track or artist or browsing your favourite Geek site, at least that’s the premise.

Does it work? Yes, it does and pretty well. With a bit of prompting you can get it to narrow down and play whatever track you can remember, or pick any contact in your address book and call them. Is it useful? Simply put, No. I’ll elaborate on that a little, it’s as useful as any other speech recognition app for controlling computers or devices. Nine times out of ten, it’s easier and quicker just to reach over and hit a button. The voice control is the same on the 3GS, most people don’t use it because it’s not as quick as using your fingers and therefore is resigned to the ‘gimick’ side of things rather than being a real feature. The only exception I’ve found to the rule is the Google Voice search app, which normally saves me time, but even that I don’t use very often.

So don’t get me wrong, if you’re a fan of voice control then Vocalia works admirably, but I just don’t think it’s useful.

On to the second feature to replicate, Video recording. Now this one’s not quite as simple as just downloading an app. It’s not that it’s hard, but it certainly takes a little longer because to get video recording on your 3G or Original iPhone you have to jailbreak it. OK, before we start on this one, I have to admit I’m a huge fan of quite a few jailbreak only apps and features that Apple simply wouldn’t allow in the App Store. Whilst it is true that jailbreaking makes App Store piracy possible, it’s by no means the sole reason one would jailbreak their iPhone and so it’s unfair to label it with that moniker. With that bit of spiel out the way, I’d like to introduce you to Cycorder. Jay Freeman, the man behind many of the best jailbreak features and functions including Cydia, has authored a nice, free, ad-supported (pretty unobtrusively I might add) video recorder for the Original and 3G. While the quality of the recording is fairly limited by the relatively weak hardware available on the non-3GS iPhones, Cycorder makes the best out of it and in decent lighting you can get pretty good 15fps mobile phone videos out of your iPhone for free. We’re not talking movie quality here, but who really uses their phone for anything more than short clips of your mate bladdered out of his mind with a marker pen all over his face after an epic night out?

There are of course alternatives for pretty much everything on the iPhone and it would be unfair to talk about video recording and not mention Video Recorder for 3G. It’s billed as ‘a powerful iPhone orientated video recorder’ that can record to .mov and upload it to YouTube. Sounds great, but there’s a snag and it’s a pretty hefty $19.95 price tag. For the kind of videos you can actually get out of your iPhone I think $20 is pretty steep, especially when Cycorder gets the job done in a very Apple like, minimal fuss, maximum enjoyment kind of way.

So we come to the final feature that really stands out as being different between the iPhone 3G and the 3GS, the compass. OK, you’ve got a faster processor and slightly (and I mean slightly) better battery life, but the compass is truly something different. Unfortunately this is where software alone cannot make any difference. The onboard compass allows you to know which direction your facing (when it works) in the maps app and here’s where a little dosh can help iPhone 3G users out (sorry Original users I’m afraid the lack of GPS kind of rules you out of this one, mind you I understand raw skyhook isn’t all that bad if you can read road names). For the cost of a cheap cup of coffee, you can purchase yourself a handy dandy Pocket Compass, which combined with the Google Maps app should see you to your destination no problem.

OK, that doesn’t help you out with augmented reality apps I admit, but if you sense of direction is as shocking as mine, a pocket compass can really come in handy for a 3G user like myself. You’ll probably find that a decent pocket compass is going to work better than a magnetometer anyway.

So that’s it, now your iPhone 3G, and to some extent your Original iPhone, has almost feature parity with Apple’s latest and greatest. At least it should help some people stave off the massive upgrade charges that networks are asking for and give your portable friend of choice some extra longevity. Myself, I’m going to hold out till the 4th Gen iPhone gets released because for me, the 3GS was just a spec bump. I’m expecting something bigger out of Apple this time round.

The holidays are just around the corner, and with this tough economy its hard to figure out what to give your loves ones. What’s a geek to do?! (dum DUM DUM!!!!)

Well, do not fear, Jessica is here! I am here to provide you with a list of geeky gift ideas to give to your geeky love ones. A list of 5 things that are inexpensive and expensive.

Literally, I come bearing gifts!

$1 – 10: Get the Hint Mini Sticky Notes (ThinkGeek & Urban Outfitters) $4.99-$6.00

Fuck Post-Its! this will communicate a strong message to yourself and others. Sometimes we cannot find the right words to communicate how we feel. We’ll these sticky suckers will do the trick!

For more gift ideas, READ AFTER THE BREAK!

$10 – 20: Ceramic Noodle Cup (ThinkGeek) $12.99

Who lives off of Cup Noodles or Ramen? If you do, and eat tons of it and dont want to ruin the planet even more by dumping styrofoam onto ducks, buy this. It’s handy, its dandy. It’s cute. Not only will you save the world like Captain Planet, you’ll look super Asian doing it.

$20 – 30: Nintendo Super Mario Brothers T-Shirt (Hot Topic) $22.00 – $24.00

The best thing about these shirts? They’re sick! You can dress it up, you can dress it down. No matter what you’ll be geek chic. You can’t go wrong.

$30 – 40: Giant Ear Bud Speakers (Urban Outfitters) $40.00

Ok, so you’re asking, “Jes, why this item?” Because! I have always wanted to see someone jog around the park or in the gym holding these giant things up to their ears. =) That is all.

$50 – ??: Lomo Lubitel 166+ (Lomography.com) $350.00

I have a thing about vintage items. They are worldly, and timeless. Just recently I got into lomography and if you are a photo fanatic like myself, this would an awesome present to give or receive. For once, fuck pixels, fuck resolution, and fuck a display screen.

Freddy vs Jason, King Kong vs Godzilla, The Donald vs Rosie. Some of the most recognizable names in history have also sparked some of the greatest rivalries of all time. The engineers at Apple and Microsoft are no different, going toe-to-toe many times over the past few decades. Apple creating their iPod line and Microsoft creating the Zune line. Now the two similar foes do battle in our arena; The Apple iPod touch 32GB vs. The Microsoft Zune HD 32GB.

We’re going to break this down over 4 rounds.

-Features/Screen
-Applications
-User Interface
-Overall

Applications

Round 2: Applications

The iPod touch has over 100,000 applications available for download, they vary in price from free to almost 900$. So far all apps for the Microsoft Zune HD have been free and there’s only a fraction of the total available in the Application store. The Apple iPod touch clearly wins this round, hands down.

Round 3: User Interface

When using both devices, ease of use is incredibly important. The graphical UI on both players is solid, although thumbing through the menu of the Microsoft Zune HD seemed to have just the slightest bit of lag. The Apple iPod touch’s menu is snappy and even when loading heavier apps doesn’t bow down under pressure. The Apple iPod touch barely squeaks out a win in this category.

Round 4: Overall

Both players are well made, well designed, and easy to use. They both have bright futures in the portable media player market. Only one can win though and this contest was incredibly close. While the Zune HD has a superior screen and lots of potential it was marginally beaten out by the iPod touch. Its large amount of apps and content makes it the clear winner. This battle may be over, but the war between portable Microsoft and Apple devices still rages on.

So what do you want for Christmas?

Christmas is just around the corner and surely you nerds and nerdettes have already started shopping for that special someone. With so many choices, how does one make a final decision to spend your hard earned cash? With dozens of companies vying for your attention here’s a quick guide to some of the coolest gadgets and toys the market has to offer in 2009.

1:The Titanium Spork, one of the strongest metals known to mankind meets one of the most vertile gastronomic tools ever invented. Its corrosion-resistant, light weight and super strong. From soup to steak, this baby will do it all,for $8.99 you cant go wrong (via Thinkgeek)

More gift ideas past the break.

Have you ever wondered what’s inside a zombie? Do you know a zombie survivalist obsessed with the Undead? The Dismember-Me Plush zombie is for you! The perfect gift for the zombie fanatic, all of his appendages are removable, including his Braiiiiiiiins! The coolest part about this plush? When you rip him in half it reveals ultra intestinal action! only 12.99!

You know every once in a while you feel like getting Medieval on your friends and coworkers… The Wooden War Engine Kit will help you accomplish such a goal. Kits vary from 19.99 to 34.99, and you can build trebuchets or catapaults that can launch paperclips or paper balls across your home or office with ease. All you need is a little glue, some strong fingers and the weapons the shaped history can now fit on your desk.

Telling time can be such a drag, the whole mechanism of telling time hasn’t changed much in the past century; until now. The USB Flash Watch has a massive 8GB flash drive stealthily hidden inside the watch, which makes moving your secret porn collection from place to place easy. The watch has a quartz timing system built in and fits snugly against the hand for a comfortable feel. For 49.99 it’s a steal!

We all remember the scene in The Empire Strikes Back where Han Solo Saves Luke Skywalkers life from the colds of the Planet Hoth by cutting open their now dead tauntaun and stuffs Luke inside to keep him warm, well now you can experience that same sensation with the Tauntaun Sleeping Bag. Measuring 33”by 67” its large enough to fit most reasonably sized adults, has a built in head pillow and a light saber zipper to open up your beast quickly and easily. Even in the coldest conditions, for 99$ this sleeping bag will keep your young JedI Knights warm and cozy. (via thinkgeek)

Have a Happy Holiday!

Need another way to spend your day slacking off and losing money? Well, another Woot Off! is going on right now. See if you can get some deals in before Black Friday. Oh, and don’t try to get a random bag of crap.  I’ve been trying for 5 years and finally gave up on it. It’s crap I tell you! (Yes, I’m whining.)

Go to Woot.com and spam that refresh button.

NASA is giving everyone a chance right now to see what goes on before and during a shuttle liftoff with the Atlantis crew. God speed to those crew members.

Welcome to Pixelated Geek’s Weekly Tech Wrap-up, a quick and humorous run through of some smaller stories from the world of consumer electronics and technology.

First batter up is the hideous looking OpenOffice Mouse. This beast features a full 18 buttons, 63 programmable profiles and even an analogue joystick! What more could you want from an instant carpel tunnel surgery inducing monstrosity? How about a soon to hit street price of $75 (£45)? Obviously not a fan of the Magic Mouse, a World of Warcraft-loving gamer decided his mouse didn’t have enough buttons and went ahead and set up a company to do it better. WarMouse is aiming this at the OpenOffice, MMO playing crowd and they might go potty over it, but I think I’ll stick to my trusty Logitech thanks.

This week Mozilla had a party to celebrate Firefox turning the big 5-nothing. Yes that’s right, the browser of choice for the web savvy, but Google hating, user really is five years old. The project which grew out of the death of the Mozilla suite (aka Netscape Navigator) celebrated its fifth birthday by being crowned the vulnerability king and not in a good way. A recent study found that Firefox suffered from 44% of the total vulnerabilities affecting today’s browsers. Safari, which includes Mobile Safari came in second and the normal culprit of the browser wars, Internet Explorer, came in at number three. The winner in all this happens to be the least used browser of the mainstream, Opera. Now I know there are Opera fanboys about and for good reason, it’s fast and reliable, but it goes to show there’s safety through minority.

Speaking of vulnerabilities, this week it’s emerged that there’s a new threat from the computer virus. Your normal everyday virus either wants to steal information from you, send out a load of spam or turn your computer into part of a botnet. Although that’s pretty inconvenient and could potentially be damaging to your finances or identity, it doesn’t come close to causing jail time for the infected.

A new type of virus has started to crop up which paedophiles use to essentially store their collections of kiddy porn on your computer. Now this is pretty disturbing just from the thought of kiddy porn being on your computer and some hideous person accessing it for their ‘needs’. But you might be shocked to know that it could even lead to you facing a conviction for paedophilia because who’s going to believe ‘a virus did it’ claim? It all comes down to the fact that the exams that courts do on your computer are costly and they don’t like paying for them meaning they’re often skipped. In essence unless you fork out a pretty penny for the exam you could be convicted straight up for having kiddy porn on your ‘puter. So next time you click on that .exe or browse that dodgy website with the ‘free stuff’ just think twice and always use protection.

NEC this week showed off its Tele Scouter glasses in Tokyo. The glasses work by projecting information directly on the wearers retina providing a HUD type overlay. If that wasn’t fantastic enough, NEC aims integrate this technology with real-time spoken language translation, which would give the wearer the ability to read translated text projected into their eye balls when someone speaks to them in a foreign language.

OK, I know that sounds a bit fishy, but we’re nowhere near April and it’s not inconceivable that with advances in voice recognition this kind of system could revolutionise the way we communicate in foreign countries. For the time being NEC said the Tele Scouter glasses could be implemented using facial recognition to give salesmen an overview of a particular clients recent purchases. NEC hopes to have the glasses tested and available in November 2010. I just hope they can build in a bit of Terminator style augmented reality for the ultimate wearable computer system. Forget Layar and the other phone based augmented reality apps, having info beamed into your eyes is definitely the way forward.

Rupert Murdoch, you know that old guy who’s been in Time magazine a couple of times and keeps ranting about things that he obviously doesn’t understand, hit the headlines this week for his ham-fisted abuse of Google. Murdock insists that Google is profiteering off of stolen News Corp content. What he seems to not understand is that yes, Google does make money from search, and perhaps search including News Corp articles, but when someone searches for something in his articles they end up going to that article on his website. Surely the fact that they can’t capitalise on that is their own problem? Murdoch even went as far as to say:

‘If they’re just search people…. They don’t suddenly become loyal readers’

Murdock wants to make all of News Corps online content paid for and make users access it directly. Well for one, I don’t see that actually working (would you pay for The Sun, a tabloid newspaper that you only read on the tube or at lunch, online?). And second of all, if you don’t want people to be able to search your articles, then why not block search engine spider access? It’s pretty simple, you just put a ‘don’t access this’ in the Robots.txt file on your domain and the search engine will ignore it.

Google itself responded to these accusations with a statement to the effect of ‘Whatever man’ telling Mr. Murdoch that all he needs to do is tell Google to not index his sites and just as easy as that they’d be removed. What I don’t think Murdock understands about all this is that without Google and other search engines leading users to the content, not many are actually going to find and read the content. OK, a few dedicated people might read it like a newspaper, browsing around it, but at the end of the day News Corp content for the most part is hardly unique. People will just go somewhere else rather than pay for the most part.

In other search news, Google has finished testing of its new back end search architecture, nicknamed Google Caffeinated, and will start rolling it out across its data centres in the near future. You won’t notice anything different about the Google search page, but you might about your searches. Polls have shown that generally people think their searches are better with Google Caffeinated over regular old Google. Will your searches will be better? I guess that will depend on your use of Google, but overall Google Caffeinated seems like a win for all. Whether you’ll notice however is debatable.

One of my favourite programs this week is going HD. The new series of Top Gear starts Sunday and is being broadcast in both SD and HD. For those in the UK with Virgin, Sky or FreeSat it’ll surely make the rampaging challenges and beautiful cars even more visceral. For those stuck with SD TV, you’ll probably be able to get it in HD on iPlayer, which shows quite a lot of programs these days in HD. After all almost all programs recorded for TV are currently shot in HD only to be converted later to SD with a lot of image processing.

Talking about TV, Channel 4 is running a 3D week next week in the UK with vintage 3D films and shows being shown in all their glory. Admittedly, the technology Channel 4 are using to broadcast in 3D isn’t the most up-to-date but free’s free right? Derren Brown will feature and there’s also a ‘greatest’ 3D moments from TV, film and music videos show. The highlight of the week, however, has to be the first ever broadcast of the Queen’s coronation in 3D, allowing viewers to step back in time and be in some small way, a part of it. Now I don’t know about you but I’m not that fussed about Derren Brown in 3D, but the royalist in me is pretty stoked about Queenie in 3D. Get on over to your nearest Sainsbury’s to get some funky glasses to watch C4’s 3D week, you might have to prise them out of the cold dead fingers of the customer services rep, but I’m sure it’s going to be worth it.

If you’ve been offended by the Weekly Tech Wrap Up, feel you’ve been wronged in some way or just plain want to complain, post below or email the author.

The ATI 5870 series

In recent years, few graphic cards have managed to capture the imagination of the PC building community. The recent release of the ATI 5800 series has turned the market on its end and people are lining up to get their grubby little paws on the latest iteration, the 5870 series. Its the first card on the market with native DirectX 11 graphics technology, the card boasts 2.15 billion 40 nanometer transistors, pumping out 2.75 teraflops of power,  1600 stream processors, a memory bandwidth of 153.6GB/sec and a clockspeed of 850mhz. The graphics powerhouse supports up to 3 displays simultaneously with independent refresh rates and resolutions or they can be combined into one large display using the new ATI Eyefinity system. Dual-Link DVI and displayport with a resolution of 2560×1600 is included as is HDMI 1.3 with a native resolution of 1920×1200.

5870

The 5870 can support up to four cards in CrossfireX mode for an incredible boost in power. This beauty definitely has the hunger of a beast, requiring at least 500 watts (600 is recommended for crossfire) to run a complete system. It also requires two six pin PCI-E connections. This baby is fantastically powerful, vastly outperforming its brethren, but this greatness comes at a terrible cost. Finding one of these beauties for sale has proven difficult. Retailers like Microcenter and Newegg have had a hard time keeping the cards in stock and with good reason; ATI has had major supply issues trying to churn this thing out. With demand well outpacing production, we may not see another large shipment of the 5870 till very close to the holidays. While this powerhouse does exist (and exist very well it does!) it certainly doesn’t feel like it does. Overall ATI’s new top dog very much lives up to its own hype and is king of the pack when it comes to graphics processors. Nvidia, the ball is in your court.

Shea Dog - Perscription - Gunnars

For the people who are lucky enough to read and not hear this, congratulations on having working eyes. We all take our eyes for granted, especially us nerds and geeks. For the computer programming or hacking geeks, you don’t mind staring at a screen full of code and text for hours on end. For you hardcore video gamers, you don’t mind drying out your eyes because blinking is for noobs and that fraction of a second can mean a disastrous and maybe embarrassing headshot. And for the web and graphic designers, you tend to get so close to the screen because you’re either using a touchscreen Wacom or you need to zoom in virtually as well as physically.

Yes. We are eye abusers and we just let it happen cause most people think regular prescription glasses or contacts will help. Sure, they help, but have you noticed sometimes that your eyes still dry out, you get headaches at the end of a long day of gaming, designing, or coding? Or how about your eyes getting so tired that you sometimes see double taillights on the car in front of you on the drive home from work.

I personally know that I’m an eye abuser.  From the time I wake up, to the time I go to bed. I abuse these eyes like crazy. When I wake up and smack that alarm, I immediately check my e-mail by looking at my iPhone screen. While I brush my teeth, which usually takes a long time cause I’m thorough, I read the morning news on the iReddit iPhone App. When I’m dressed and ready to go to work, I check more morning RSS feed news on my laptop. Then it’s off to work to abuse these eyes even more by designing web sites. When I get home from 8 hours of designing, I like to relax and play either League of Legends, DJ Hero, or post here on PixelatedGeek.

That’s my usual day of eye abusing.  If your day is kind of like mine, you might want to consider getting a pair of Gunnar Optiks.  The new company from Carlsbad, CA has been turning heads in the optometry world. They claim to help people with their “digital lives” by keeping their eyes more wet, making your eyes less stressed while staring at screens all day, and making your look cool. Ok, they don’t really note that last note, but I feel cool. I can personally say that these claims are legit.

Like I’ve said in earlier posts about Gunnars this is a great investment for your eyes and is better than a huge medical bill later on in life. I can’t say enough how good these really work. To any nerd or geek out there, get one and save your receipt. If you don’t feel a difference in say… about a week, then return them. But, if you do feel a difference, it’s because your eyes are thanking you.

Check out Gunnar Optiks line of frames.