This hub does double duty! Sure, you can plug your flash drives into it as needed, but stick this baby stick in the sun to recharge the internal battery to use it as an emergency power brick. Oh yea, and it also has an LED flashlight to boot! Available for $22.00.

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I’m a proud AMEX customer. I think they offer a superior card with unparalleled customer service. My only beef with them – how weak and janky their password support was.

Before today you could only have an eight character password with NO special characters. However today, if you log into your AMEX web account and try to change your password you can now select a password that is up to 20 characters long and have special characters.

As a service to yourself and to secure your account – generate a secure password and protect your account.

Kudos to AMEX for FINALLY bringing their password system up to snuff!

My buddy Dave Zatz happened to get one of new (and unfortunately locked down) iSpot 4G modems from Clearwire.  Problem is that since the modem is locked down only to accept the MAC address of an iDevice you can’t use it on a laptop or other device – Hardly fair, right?  To fix that its actually easy to switch the MAC address on your MacOS or Windows device to match that of an iOS device.

First of all, you need an iOS MAC address.  You can either use this one ( 00:1D:4F:13:E1:D9 ) or use one that you can easily find in a Google Image search.

For Mac:

• Launch Terminal from your Applications:Utilities folder.
• Enter ifconfig en1 | grep ether to find the current MAC address for your wireless network adapter.
• Make sure your Airport is turned on and input the following into the Terminal window to disassociate from all networks.
• Type in:

sudo /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/
Versions/Current/Resources/airport -z

• When asked input your administrative password, do so.
• Input the following command to change your MAC address:

sudo ifconfig en1 ether 00:1D:4F:13:E1:D9

• (or replace 00:1D:4F:13:E1:D9 with an address of your choice)
• To verify the change has completed successfully input ifconfig en1 | grep ether into the Terminal window.

There you go, your Mac’s MAC address has changed but restarting your computer will revert the MAC address to its default value.

Now for Windows:

All you need to do is download a free program called MACMakeup (download link here) to modify your MAC address.  Easy right?

So first we started with the Magic Mouse, now its possible to get Apple’s Magic Trackpad (the other $70 wonder) to work with Windows – thanks to a hidden update.

A little hackery from Apple’s Boot Camp Update the Magic Trackpads driver was extracted via WinRar resulting in a 32bit version and a 64bit version that you can install on any ordinary Windows PC that will enable all the scrolling ‘magic’ of the Magic Trackpad.

Works with Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 computers.

Download the 32 and 64bit drivers

Seems Apple has pulled the competitors “death grip” antenna tests off their website. Well MacTV has archived the footage and has made it available as a download here.

Click each link to get the HD video of their tests:

1. Samsung Omnia II
2. Motorola Droid X
3. iPhone 3Gs
4. HTC Droid Eris
5. Nokia N97 Mini
6. iPhone 4
7. Blackberry Bold

Enjoy!

How many times have you went to hang a picture and just nailed a nail into NOTHING? I can’t even count the times!

This is where the smart hammer comes in. The Wise Hammer takes things one step further with a stud sensor built into the base of the handle. A simple green LED lets you know when a stud is detected, and a small marking nub allows you to mark its location on the wall so you know exactly where to drive your nail. Available for $29.99.

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Take a look at these geek friendly Russian Nesting Dolls from designer
Art Lebedev. There is one each for bit, byte, kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte and terabyte in ascending size made to fit one within the next. Perfect for your budding lil’ geek’s low tech edutainment toy collection. Cost is about $35.

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Thanks to the newly announced “Magic Trackpad”, recent Apple notebooks have learned a few new tricks!.

In particular, recent MacBook and MacBook Pro models receive support for the inertial scrolling that debuted on Apple’s current MacBook Pro models, in addition to the new three-finger window dragging gesture that it included on the Magic Trackpad. The MacBook Air, as well as “Early 2008″ MacBook Pro models gain only inertial scrolling.

The following models are supported (according to the Apple support document):

MacBook
MacBook (13-inch, Early 2009)
MacBook (13-inch, Mid 2009)
MacBook (13-inch, Late 2009)
MacBook (13-inch, Aluminum, Late 2008)

MacBook Pro
MacBook Pro (17-inch, Mid 2010)
MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010)
MacBook Pro (17-inch, Mid 2009)
MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2.53 GHz, Mid 2009)
MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2009)
MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2009)
MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2009)
MacBook Pro (17-inch, Late 2008)

The following Mac portables support inertial scrolling after installing Magic Trackpad and Multi-Touch Trackpad Update 1.0:

MacBook Air
MacBook Air
MacBook Air (Mid 2009)

MacBook Pro
MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2008)
MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2008)

So, fire up your software updates!

Remember about a month ago AT&T found a software defect in Alcatel-Lucent equipment that caused upload speeds to be virtually throttled to 100 kbps/sec?

AT&T and Alcatel-Lucent jointly identified a software defect — triggered under certain conditions – that impacted uplink performance for Laptop Connect and smartphone customers using 3G HSUPA-capable wireless devices in markets with Alcatel-Lucent equipment. This impacts less than two percent of our wireless customer base. While Alcatel-Lucent develops the appropriate software fix, we are providing normal 3G uplink speeds and consistent performance for affected customers with HSUPA-capable devices.

Well, apparently the software patch has been pushed out to (or is being pushed out) to the towers as we speak.

Multiple speed tests have been submitted from various markets showing the upload speeds are in fact faster. Post your speeds in the comments.

UPDATE: AT&T has confirmed the patch is rolling out nationwide.

So, I’ve been busy in the last few weeks with UNEASYsilence. We launched a new iPhone App (Which REALLY took off – If you don’t already have it nab it now!), new mobile site, increased publishing frequency.

In the coming weeks I’m improving the app and it will begin to function as a complement to our site and a destination for all things tech. Stay Tuned.

With tens of thousands of unique visitors a day and over 20,000 RSS subscribers I enjoy running this site for you, the reader. It excites me to share a dialogue with people of different ages, countries and walks of life.

I think I’ve decided I want this site to stay a solo show. I think anything more then a singular voice will get lost in all the noise of digital news produced today. We don’t need to be the largest site – just one people love visiting! However, staying as a one man show, hearing feedback is very important.

Please use this post to comment on anything that you have on your mind. Remember keep it on point! As for Experiment23 (this websites parent company) we will continue to innovate cool products that “try to make the Internet better everyday!”