Gadgetory

it's Tuesday January 24 2012 i'm brigitte carry on sina com and it's time to get loaded a radiation storm hit earth tuesday morning the largest since 2005 the burst of charged particles from the Sun is causing glitches with some highly tuned GPS and communication systems especially in the north it may also cause fluctuations in the power grid aircraft are avoiding areas like the North Pole but for most of us there will be no noticeable effect on our everyday gadgets if you live in a northern state take a gander at the sky for the next two days some folks might catch a beautiful bright Aurora a few of these reports say Aurora's might even be visible from New York it's a computer a computer if it's printed on a sheet of plastic a Norway company called thin film electronics prints basic computing components on a strip of plastic called a smart tag the first use of this technology is to monitor temperature on perishable goods like foods or medicine it would be a cheaper solution than the alarm sensors used today vimeo the video posting site for the artsy crab is rolling out a redesign beginning tuesday users can sign up to be among the first to see the new look and features which will go live to everyone midway through the year some improvements to vimeo include increased loading speeds search and privacy options for those of you cool enough to have a nickname or known only by a pseudonym you can finally be allowed to socialize freely on the google plus network you see google plus always wanted people to use the real names but out of the 90 million users signing up many argue they were better known by another identity than the real name so google will now allow these pseudonyms like Madonna but google has to see some proof that it is an established identity online with a meaningful following so for all my followers today I will be changing my account to the name all my loved ones and homies use be skillet in other Google News Google's hotel finder tool which launched last summer has a new feature that lets users spine hotels by travel time to certain spots or which hotels are near a landmark it's only available in a handful of cities like New York Las Vegas Honolulu Paris London and Bangkok these areas partnered with local transit agencies to integrate their data into Google Maps it's a move that makes the online hotel booking industry more competitive for websites like hotels com or priceline but Priceline to is in the news the site is focusing more on selling fixed price hotel inventory and because of that Priceline has killed off William Shatner's character the priceline negotiator a role he's played on commercials for five years the latest commercial shows the negotiator falling off a cliff and a bus after saving the passengers no he can't be dead Jim maybe he just got beamed up the last second yeah that's it those are your headlines for today I'm Bridget Carey for cnet.com and you've just been loaded