Gibbs ponders Microsoft's new OS for the home and reviews two cool startups on Kickstarter

This week we start with something that has both intrigued and amused me: Microsoft Research has a new operating system in the works targeted at home automation called, with glaring dullness, HomeOS.

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Cool hacks: DIY cellphones and a magic trackpad rethink

There's something of the hacker in all IT people ... there has to be because you spend so much of your time figuring out how things work and how to fix said things when they break (which is usually far too often).

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Gibbs is having fun with remote access and flying toys.

Ah, what a week it's been. Ravelling the unravelled and fixing stuff I thought was fixed.

So, my first find of the week: I'm moving all of my Windows desktop boxes out into a rack and the only machines I'll have in my office will be an iMac and a small flock of laptops and pad-style devicess. Nice. But what Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) client to use on my iMac so I can access my PCs?

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Gibbs offers another techie smorgasbord with searching, scanning and pinging

We start this week with a real geek out: If you have ever had to weigh the benefits and tradeoffs of Apache as an application server (for example, using Tomcat vs.

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Gibbs looks at a mature OS X app uninstaller and an alpha release of a Windows automation tool

If you should have, as many of us do, a love-hate relationship with the PHP programming language but have yet to fully articulate what you don't like about it, then you need to read "PHP: a fractal of bad design" by "Eevee" who describes himself as "just some guy who loves hacking." An outstanding, exhaustive and exhausting rant!

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Five cool geek projects that could change your life. Or at the very least get you excited.

At the end of last week I slipped on a wet floor, did a wild, balletic (or so I thought) attempt to recover, and wrenched my knee and leg. The next four days were a blur of X-rays and Vicodin. Luckily nothing broken, but I've had better weekends.

I spent much of Saturday and Sunday browsing the Web and adding to my growing list of "Stuff I Must Write About". As an experiment, this week I'm going to give you a tasting menu of products and services you really should check out ...

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The new Lytro camera implements a really novel technology: Light field imaging.

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Gibbs couldn't rely on WiFi to get his Apple TV hooked up so he went powerline.

Last week here in Gearhead I discussed my ongoing saga of trying to get decent IP DSL service from AT&T U-Verse.

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A few weeks ago here in the above ground portions of the Gibbs Universal Industries Secret Underground Bunker we got hooked on the British series "Downton Abbey".

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Gibbs continues to wrestle with AT&T over his DSL service

For the last few weeks I've been wrestling with my new AT&T U-Verse DSL service and outlined my travails here in Gearhead (here and here) after which you might have assumed all would be well, that AT&T would have pulled out all the stops and sorted out my issues. Alas, this week I'm no happier and, apparently, neither are many of you.

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