Try Flavored Vinegars for Low-Calorie Flavor Boost in Your Recipes

Source: http://lifehacker.com/try-flavored-vinegars-for-low-calorie-flavor-boost-in-y-1677136348

If you're looking to boost the flavor in your food while keeping it healthy, check out infused vinegars. Flavored vinegars give everything a bit of a boost and just add a few calories.

Healthy foods like salads can become unhealthy calorie bombs if you use too much dressing. If you're getting bored with your recipes, instead of adding fat or chemicals, add some vinegar.

We've covered some make-your-own salad dressings before, but specialty vinegars add flavor to everything without many calories. Soups, marinades and anything that uses a little vinegar taste better with a different style. The Kitchn explains that balsamic is a good start, but there's more on the shelf:

While balsamic gets a lot of attention, red wine vinegar has a nice bite to it and rice wine vinegar has a sweetness that is great in a lot of salads or to pickle vegetables. I recently discovered brown rice vinegar which has a delicate sweetness and is wonderful in salad dressings, as is apple cider or champagne vinegar.

Many upscale malls and even supermarkets are getting on the flavored vinegar trends. I have a half dozen in my pantry right now ranging from sweet like chocolate and blood orange to spicy like harissa and chipotle. All you need is a tablespoon or so to change up your recipe.

7 Pantry Essentials That Help Me Eat Healthier | The Kitchn

Photo by N Wong.

It's Going To Be A Big Problem If The Apple Watch Can't Even Last A Day (AAPL)

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-watch-battery-life-2015-1

Imagine this scenario:

You wake up at 6 a.m. and go to the gym. Then it's off to work for eight or nine hours. Then dinner and maybe drinks. You're home by 11 p.m.

Is your Apple Watch dead?

Based on a report from 9to5Mac's Mark Gurman, the answer is probably yes, especially if you use the watch a lot.

Gurman reports that Apple has been targeting 2.5 to 4 hours of active use on the Apple Watch. (That means the screen is on.) If you include a mix of active use standby mode (when the screen is off), Apple is shooting for about 19 hours on a charge.

Gurman was careful to note that these were Apple's battery life targets as of 2014, so it's possible Apple has figured out a way to squeeze more out of the battery in time for the watch's launch in a few months.

Meanwhile, other smartwatches on the market can last a lot longer. For example, Samsung's Gear 2 watch can last up to three days on a charge with normal use.

When I brought this up on Twitter this week, a lot of people pointed out that you can just charge your Apple Watch midday at work, like many people do with their iPhones. But that defeats the purpose of what the Apple Watch is designed to do. 

As Apple's own promotional materials point out, the Apple Watch is first and foremost a watch. Everything else from fitness tracking to receiving texts is just gravy. But if Apple wants to replace your current watch, creating one that can't even make it through a full day of use isn't going to cut it. Regular watches last months, years, or forever (if you have a self-charging model). Based on Gurman's report, you'll be lucky if your Apple Watch is still going by the time you go to bed at night.

And removing your watch in the middle of the day to charge it means you're missing out on the device's fitness monitoring and other handy features.

Apple has been relatively quiet on the Apple Watch'! s batter y life so far. The official line is you'll have to charge it nightly. If you can truly make it the whole day on a charge, it probably won't be a problem for most people. But if the "active" usage is on the lower end of Apple's targets, battery life is going to be a big problem for the Apple Watch.

SEE ALSO: I Found My New Favorite iPhone Accessory

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NVIDIA's newest GPU crams in tons of power without a hefty price

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/22/nvidias-newest-gpu-crams-in-maxwell-power-without-a-hefty-price/

If you've been tempted by NVIDIA's high-end GTX 970 and 980 video cards, but couldn't justify their high prices, the company's latest entry is made for you. NVIDIA is rounding out its Maxwell family of video cards today with the GTX 960, a desktop GPU that it describes as hitting the "sweet spot" when it comes to price and performance. It's far more powerful than the entry-level GTX 750 and 750 Ti announced a year ago, but at $199 it's significantly cheaper than its high-end siblings (though some variations may be a tad more expensive). Just how powerful is the GTX 960? Enough for you to be able to play modern games like Watch Dogs and Assassin's Creed: Unity in 1080p with the highest settings and still get a silky smooth frame rate of 60 FPS -- at least, according to NVIDIA. Expect to see video card makers roll out their GTX 960 cards over the next few weeks.

The GTX 960 also delivers one of the more intriguing features from the beefier Maxwell cards: 4K-like gaming on 1080p screens. While it probably won't be powerful enough to play graphics-heavy games in 4K, it can run less intensive games like League of Legends at that higher resolution and translate the sharper textures into something usable for your 1080p monitor. The GTX 960 sports 1,024 CUDA cores (half of the GTX 980's cores, and a bit less than the 970's 1,664) with a base clock speed of 1.1GHz. NVIDIA's also left in plenty of overclocking headroom -- it claims you can bump the GPU up to 1.5GHz without much effort (assuming the card you're using has decent cooling).

In short, the GTX 960 is the NVIDIA card most gamers should be snapping up. It's replacing the three-year-old GTX 660, which is certainly due for an upgrade. And aside from just being more powerful, it also includes some features gamers might appreciate. It'll run MOBAs like League of Legends silently, and it only needs a single six-pin power connector, both on account of Maxwell's impressive power efficiency. And the GTX 960 supports NVIDIA's new MFAA (multi-frame anti-aliasing) feature, which delivers most of the benefits of traditional anti-aliasing without the performance hit. In a live demo running Far Cry 3, simply turning on 4X MFAA bumped the frame rate from 43 FPS to 53 FPS.

Filed under: Gaming, NVIDIA

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How small is an atom, really? (or how to make your head explode)

Source: http://sploid.gizmodo.com/how-atoms-are-so-weird-that-they-are-almost-impossible-1680999932

Kurzgesagt has a neat new explainer: "How small is an atom?" I watched it. It does a great job at giving you an idea of how small atoms are and how they work. But it doesn't matter, because my brain just plainly refuses to believe any of this. Hulk head hurt. Hulk smash atoms. Oops, Hulk make nuclear detonation.

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drag2share: Microsoft reveals the 'Surface Hub,' an 84-inch 4K all-in-one

source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/21/microsoft-reveals-the-surface-hub/?utm_source=Feed_Classic_Full&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Engadget&?ncid=rss_full

Today might be all about the next chapter in Windows, but there's something for the hardware-heads, too. Specifically the Surface Hub -- which joins Surface tablets, and Lumia smartphones on Redmond's roster of gear offerings. This beast is basically a large all-in-one PC (slash smart display) that is fully loaded with sensors, speakers, WiFi, NFC, microphones, cameras and more. The funniest thing? This huge device has been hiding in plain sight for the duration of Microsoft's keynote today.

While technically it's a regular Windows machine, it's fair to say that this is very much a business/collaboration tool. The most elaborate intelligent whiteboard you can imagine! No doubt, this is fruit from Microsoft's purchase of Perceptive Pixel, and of course, Redmond wants this to be the center of the modern workplace. For example, Hayete Gallot (senior director of business security), was careful to mention the special, large-screen apps that will come along with Windows 10 -- perfect for that 84-inch real estate. Naturally, Skype for Business is baked right in, too. And while business features can sometimes be a bit, y'know, dry... neat touches like being able to mark up presentations with a pen, and auto-sharing projects to attendees after a conference call do sound like a future of business we'd want to be part of. No details on when you can deck out your boardroom just yet though.

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Microsoft's HoloLens headset is a holographic display for Windows 10

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/21/microsofts-hololens-headset-gives-your-windows-10-pc-a-holograp/

Microsoft is building support for holographic displays into Windows 10, so it only makes sense that the company would make one of those displays, wouldn't it? Meet HoloLens, an official headset with see-through lenses that merges digital content with the physical. It includes spatial sound so that you can hear things happening behind you in the virtual world, and it even has a dedicated Holographic Processing Unit (HPU) to make sure everything works smoothly. The company is shy about just when it'll start selling HoloLens, but it should be available "in the Windows 10 time frame."

Filed under: Wearables, Software, Microsoft

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New amazing metal is so hydrophobic it makes water bounce like magic

Source: http://sploid.gizmodo.com/new-amazing-metal-is-so-hydrophobic-it-makes-water-boun-1680799039

Scientists at the University of Rochester have created a metal that is so extremely hydrophobic that the water bounces on it as if it were repelled by a magic force field. Instead of using chemical coatings they used lasers to etch a nanostructure on the metal itself. It will not wear off, like current less effective methods.

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Teenage Engineering will put a synth in your pocket for $59

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/21/teenage-engineering-pocket-operator-synths/

Teenage Engineering has carved out a niche in the electronic music world. Its OP-1 is a highly adaptable synth that puts industrial design on par with sound quality and features. If there's one thing the OP-1 isn't, it's affordable. The basic synth is priced at a cool $799, pitting it against considerably more-established options from Roland, Korg, Moog and others. With its latest products, however, the Swedish startup is looking to put a whole lot of music-making power in your hands for a very low price.

The Pocket Operator (PO) series is a set of three miniature battery-powered synths, all priced at $59. There's the PO-12 "Rhythm" drum machine, the PO-14 "Sub" bass synth, and the PO-16 "Factory" melody unit. All three have 16-step sequencing and a selection of 16 sounds to choose from, and also offer 16 additional effects. There aren't any official videos available just yet (we'll update the article when they become available), but you can check out a clip of musician Cuckoo playing with a prototype PO-12 (which has been known about for some time) after the break.

Video of a prototype OP-12 -- the final version has a display and more effects.

As you'd expect from Teenage Engineering, the POs are very pretty. Powered by two AAA batteries, the synths are totally stripped back. Each is just a circuit board with a display and a number of mechanical switches and knobs. They do have the built-in speakers, 3.5mm in and outs, parameter locks and sync functionality you'd expect from a pocket synth, but the whole vibe is very barebones.

Teenage Engineering is collaborating with fellow Swedish brand Cheap Monday -- best known for clothing Williamsburg's finest in skin-tight jeans and all manner of knitwear -- to bring its POs to market. Cheap Monday has its branding on each of the POs, and is also offering a range of Teenage Engineering-themed graphic tees and pins for displaying your brand allegiance. In addition to the clothing tie-ins, it's producing a more-functional case (priced at $39) for protecting your synths. All of the gear will launch tomorrow, timed with the start of NAMM trade show -- at $177 for the full suite, we expect them to sell very well.

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drag2share: âProgressive Insurance's Driver Tracking Tool Is Ridiculously Insecure

source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/vip/~3/k6JPBX7Nyl0/progressive-insurances-driver-tracking-tool-is-ridicul-1680720690

Progressive Insurance offers customers the option to plug a device into their cars' OBDII ports to track their driving and lower their insurance rates. Unsurprisingly, it's about as secure as a Tiffany necklace left on a sidewalk. But that doesn't mean the dongle will turn your car into a killer robot.

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drag2share: Microsoft May Be Working On A Strange New Gadget That's A Mix Between A Smartphone And A Laptop (MSFT)

source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/pC_iaievQPs/microsoft-may-be-working-on-a-strange-new-gadget-thats-a-mix-between-a-smartphone-and-a-laptop-2015-1

We're going to learn a lot about the next version of Windows on Wednesday.

Presumably, we'll find out when the preview build will launch, new features aimed at consumers rather than enterprise users, and changes to how the Windows Store works. 

But what we haven't heard about yet are the new types of hardware we can expect to see in 2015 that take advantage of Microsoft's new Windows.

One of those devices may be a hybrid gadget that's a mix between a smartphone and a laptop that would run on Windows, according to a report from The Information. That device won't be unveiled this week, but Microsoft may introduce other new Windows-based gadgets on stage at its event tomorrow.

This phone-laptop hybrid would consist of a smartphone that would plug into a shell with a larger screen and keyboard, according to The Information. Microsoft is likely to market this gadget towards enterprise users.

It sounds a lot like the Asus Transformer Book V, which allows you to dock your smartpone on the laptop's lid and run both Android and Windows at the same time.

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Bloomberg: HTC M9 With 20MP Camera and First Smartwatch Coming March

Source: http://gizmodo.com/bloomberg-htc-m9-with-20mp-camera-and-first-smartwatch-1680364079

Bloomberg is reporting that HTC will launch a new flagship phone in March, with heavily updated camera and audio features, alongside its first ever smartwatch.

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drag2share: Deep-fried graphene may be the key to long-lasting batteries

source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/18/deep-fried-graphene/?utm_source=Feed_Classic_Full&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Engadget&?ncid=rss_full

The deep frying process isn't just useful for livening up your food -- it might also be the ticket to better batteries in your mobile devices. South Korean researchers have created highly conductive, stable electrode materials by spraying graphene oxide droplets into a very hot blend of acid and organic solvent, much like you'd dip chicken into oil. The resulting "pom-poms" (what you see above) aren't at all tasty, but their open 3D structure makes them far better for transferring electrical charges than plain graphene.

Other scientists have developed 3D graphene before, with similar energy capacitance. However, this deep-fry method is a lot easier to translate to mass production -- it's simple and scales easily to larger batches. This is just one piece of the puzzle (albeit an important one), so it'll be a while before you see batteries based on this trick. Should everything pan out, though, your future smartphone or electric car may last much longer thanks to some carbon-based cuisine.

[Image credit: Chemical Materials]

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