Laptop

In context: While virtual reality headsets are still struggling to find their place, they are at least available to users from various companies. However, whatever happened to augmented reality? The complementary technology has barely landed in the consumer space other than a few gimmicky apps and games that use a mobile phone’s camera and screen rather than wearable glasses or a headset.

A startup called Sightful wants to change that with a unique laptop called “Spacetop.” Founded by former Magic Leap executives Tamir Berliner and Tomer Kahan, Sightful looks to ditch most notebook computers’ standard LED or OLED displays and replace them with lightweight AR glasses.

Spacetop consists of a tethered set of AR lenses, a keyboard, and a front-facing webcam. The computer components, powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 processor and an Adreno 650 GPU, are self-contained within the keyboard. It also comes with 8GB RAM and 256GB of storage.

Spacetop is ultralight, weighing in at only 3.3 pounds. If you want to use your imagination, that’s like carrying around a MacBook Air (2.7 pounds) and a 100-inch monitor weighing only 9.6 ounces. Its small footprint also fits nicely into a backpack.

The frames of the Spacetop’s glasses underwent many iterations to ensure they were comfortable to wear for extended periods. Wired notes that when it tested the device, the frames didn’t smudge makeup, snag hair or leave marks on the face. Customers can even order prescription lenses for free, at least with the “invite-only” early adopter offer.

As mentioned, the device creates a 100-inch virtual display, making multitasking a breeze. I use a 45-inch monitor to have all my programs on one desktop, eliminating the need to tab through them. So 100 inches of real estate should be enough for anybody, leaving room to spare.

For connectivity, Spacetop sports two USB-C ports with 65-watt charging support, one 10 Gbps SuperSpeed USB port, and a DisplayPort 1.4 port for when you want to connect to a physical monitor. It also comes with Bluetooth 5.1, WiFi 6, and 5G (Sub-6) support for wireless connectivity.

One of the Spacetop’s most significant drawbacks is its battery life. It can only run for 5 hours of continuous use and charges from 0 to 85 percent in about two hours. Another caveat is that it is not Windows-based. Instead, it runs on a proprietary operating system unimaginatively called “Spacetop OS.” Not having the Windows environment might be a deal-breaker for some, but Sightful says that it can still run almost any application.

“If it’s accessible on the web, it works with Spacetop.”

This includes Google Workspace, Slack, and Microsoft 365, to name a few. It is clearly not meant for everybody. You won’t be playing many PC games or doing graphics-intensive work, but it should be just fine for tasks like browsing the web, word processing, messaging, and other low-impact work. Think Chromebook with AR goggles, and that’s pretty much what you can expect from Spacetop.

Spacetop is available now, but Sightful only sells them by request and does not advertise the price. However, Wired said they go for about $2,000. Interested customers should fill out an application on Sightful’s website , which includes questions regarding personal needs and computing habits (nothing too invasive).

In a world where you can have 3D scenes rendered in real time as your smartphone’s background, plain black wallpaper isn’t the most eye-catching option. However, black backgrounds can offer battery life improvements over colored wallpaper… or can they?

OLED vs. LCD: It Depends on Your Screen

On many displays, such as the computer screen you might be reading this article on, using a black background wallpaper won’t save you any battery life. That has to do with the difference between an OLED display and an LCD display .

With an LCD display, no matter what color a pixel is—dark black or blinding white—there’s a backlight at the back of your screen, and it’s constantly outputting light. The black pixels block more of the backlight, but the light is still there, using power.

However, this doesn’t apply if you’re using a device with an OLED or AMOLED display. OLED screens don’t have a solid backlight. Each pixel on an OLED screen is an “organic light emitting diode” that produces its own light. Therefore, if you display a black pixel, the diode simply doesn’t light up.

In other words, if you use a black background on an OLED or AMOLED display, your display will produce less light. This does help save battery power, but it’s not going to make a significant difference.

The good news is that while your computer likely uses an LCD display, your smartphone very likely is OLED. Many iPhones since the iPhone X in 2017 feature OLED displays, and the majority of mid-range to high-end Android devices also feature OLED—especially Samsung Galaxy phones.

How to Make the iPhone Wallpaper Black

First, download this pure black wallpaper , then go to Settings > Wallpaper > Add New Wallpaper.

Tap the “Photos” option and select the black wallpaper.

Finally, tap “Add” in the top right and then choose “Set as Wallpaper Pair” to use the wallpaper on both the lock screen and home screen.

How to Set a Plain Black Background on Android

First, download this pure black wallpaper , then go to Settings > Wallpaper & Style > Change Wallpaper.

Next, choose the “My Photos” or “Gallery” option and select the black wallpaper.

Lastly, make sure to select both the Lock Screen and Home Screen and confirm the wallpaper.

Changing the wallpaper to plain black may save a small amount of battery power, but there are much better ways to make bigger battery-saving improvements. Check out our guides for saving battery life on iPhones and improving battery life on Android devices .

Whether you are new to using the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox or a long-time fan, Greasefire provides a quick and easy way to find User Scripts for your favorite websites without having to search userscripts.org.

Note: Greasemonkey extension required (link at bottom of article).

Using Greasefire

Here is what the “Right Click Menu” looks like with just Greasemonkey installed…

Once you have installed Greasefire you will be able to easily see if there are any scripts available or not for your favorite websites. Here you can see the results for a website that had no scripts available.

Now for a website that does have scripts available…you will be able to see an immediate difference in the “Status Bar Icon”.

Here is a close-up of “Status Bar Icon”…right clicking shows that there are 310 scripts available. To see the scripts that are available simply click on the “# scripts available” listing.

Clicking on the “# scripts available” listing will open a new window where you can scroll through the list of scripts available and view the “Details & Source” for each script. Notice that there is also a “Ranking” available for each script. For our example we chose to install the “ice blue google skin” using the “Install Button Bar” in the lower right corner…

Once you click on the “Install Button Bar” you will be presented with a window like this. At this point you can confirm the installation, view the script source, or cancel the installation.

A quick check of our “Right Click Menu” shows that our new script successfully installed and is active.

Refreshing our search page shows a “shifting” in the color scheme for the links…a nice change from the default blue color.

Options

The options for Greasefire are very simple…choose the number of days between updates for the user scripts index/data base or you can choose to update manually ahead of schedule.

Conclusion

Greasefire simplifies discovering new user scripts for all of your favorite websites and definitely makes a nice addition to any Firefox browser with Greasemonkey installed.

Links

Download the Greasefire extension (Mozilla Add-ons)

Download the Greasefire extension (Extension Homepage)

Download the Greasemonkey extension (Mozilla Add-ons)

Download the Greasemonkey extension (Extension Homepage)

Remember The Milk is an extremely useful tool for people who use task lists. If you use Firefox or Chrome you can add some fun graphics to your account with The Remember The Milk Cow user script.

Note: Requires the Greasemonkey extension (link provided below). The author also states that this script should work with Google Chrome.

Before

No matter how many tasks you have due today things pretty much look the same in your online Remember The Milk account. If you want to add a little fun to your account all you need is a user script.

Installing the User Script

The Remember The Milk Cow user script is not hosted at userscripts.org at the moment so you will need to visit the author’s blog to install it. Click on the rememberthemilkcow.user.js file link to get things started.

The install process will proceed just the same as scripts from userscripts.org. Notice that the script has been set up to work on both the unencrypted and encrypted versions of Remember The Milk.

After

Now is where the fun begins. For our example we chose to show the All Tasks tab but the script will display the appropriate graphic for each tab based on the number of tasks due. If you have no tasks or just one due the RTM Cow is happy.

When you have two to three tasks due the RTM Cow has the normal quiet expression.

Once you have four to five tasks due the RTM Cow becomes sad.

At six to seven task the RTM Cow looks scared.

Once you reach eight or more tasks the poor RTM Cow starts to look manic!

Conclusion

The Remember The Milk Cow user script can add a bit of fun to your workday and having something to smile about can make a nice difference. To learn more about the Greasemonkey extension see our article here .

Links

Add the Remember The Milk Cow user script to Firefox

Download the Greasemonkey extension (Mozilla Add-ons)

Are you tired of the default look for search results at Google? If you want a different and customized pleasing look for them, then join us as we look at the GoogleMonkeyR User Script.

Note: User Style Scripts & User Scripts can be added to most browsers but we are using Firefox & the Greasemonkey extension for our example here.

Before

Here is the standard look for search results at Google…not bad but it really does not stand out that well either.

Installing the User Script

You may be asking yourself what makes this particular user script different from others. Take a look at the list of goodies that you get access to and you will understand:

• Multiple columns of results
• Removes “Sponsored Links”
• Add numbers to the results
• Auto-load more results
• Removes web search dialogues
• Open links in a new tab
• Favicons
• GooglePreview
• Self updating
• Can be configured from a simple user dialogue

To get started click on the Webpage Install Button.

Once you click on the Webpage Install Button you will see the following window asking for confirmation to add the user script to Firefox. Click Install to complete the process.

GoogleMonkeyR in Action

Refreshing the same search page shown above shows a noticeable difference already. The light blue background makes the search results stand out a bit better. This is an improvement from before but you will definitely want to have a look to see just how far you can go…

Right click on the Greasemonkey Status Bar Icon , go to User Script Commands , and select GoogleMonkeyR Preferences.

Once you have clicked on GoogleMonkeyR Preferences the search page will be shaded out and you will have access to the user script’s preferences. This is where you can really make your search results unique looking!

Here are the changes that we started out with…

After refreshing our search results things looked even better.

A look at the entire page of results with our browser maximized and set for two columns.

If you have the Auto load more results Option enabled new results will be added very quickly as you scroll down.

Our set of search results after adding Favicons & GooglePreview Images.

Conclusion

If you have been wanting a more dramatic and pleasing look for the search results at Google then you can not go wrong with the GoogleMonkeyR User Script. Change as little or as much as you want to get that perfect look in your browser.

Link

Install the GoogleMonkeyR User Script

Download the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox (Mozilla Add-ons)