How to watch official BBC Olympics coverage from the US

Jordan Kahn

For Americans, coverage of the Olympics in London is mainly limited to NBC’s video stream offerings. Unfortunately, the network’s coverage, especially online, is receiving a ton of complaints as witnessed by the #nbcfail hashtag on Twitter. Fortunately, there is a way to bypass NBC altogether and take advantage of the BBC’s official live stream coverage from inside the U.S. of almost every major event. There is not much to it; all you have to do is use a DNS routing service to get around the BBC’s region blocked streams. Below is a quick guide courtesy of Lifehacker that uses the Unblock Us service. It is free for a week, and then it is $5 for the month.

First, you will have to sign up for the service on its website. Once that is finished, you can configure the service for BBC using the steps below:

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Use Mountain Lion’s new Wi-Fi Scan utility to optimize your home wireless network

Jordan Kahn

A new Wi-Fi scanner tool is in Mountain Lion’s refreshed Wi-Fi Diagnostics Utility, allowing users to easily discover Wi-Fi networks within range and view related data not available from Apple’s Wi-Fi menu bar item. Comparable to third-party Wi-Fi stumbler tool iStumbler, the scan tool provides data for BSSID, band, protocol, channel, signal strength, security, and more. It also has Active and Passive scan modes.

From the window, you can see what networks are in your area and their strength. Some maneuvering of base stations can increase coverage to the outermost areas of your house, and it is much, much easier to see slight differences in numerical signal vs. noise strength over those four waves Apple uses in its Wi-Fi menu.

Additionally, by looking at what Channel (1-13) your base station is on, compared to your neighbors (or other base stations in your house), you can often find the least used channel in your area to improve reception.

If you are interested in using the new Wi-Fi scanner tool, OSX Daily provided the necessary steps for quick access:
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Review: $80 Logitech Mini Boombox—the diminutive wireless speaker with huge sound and battery

Seth Weintraub

Last month, I put the full-sized Logitech Boombox up against the Jawbone Jambox in a $150 Bluetooth speaker battle. I liked both devices, but they had separate strengths and weaknesses and were best suited to different tasks. For instance, I liked the portability of the Jambox, its speakerphone capability, and charging via USB. I liked the sound and simplicity of the Logitech Boombox, but I did not like the proprietary AC adapter.

After the review, Logitech got ahold of me and said if I liked the Jambox and the Boombox, they made another product that I would love called the “Mini Boombox.” Unlike Logitech’s full-size Bluetooth speakers, the Mini charges via Mini-USB, can fit in the palm of your hand (or cargo pant pockets), and it acts as a speakerphone for an iPhone. This one retails for $100, but it can be found for $79.99 at both Amazon (with $30 of MP3s) and Best Buy.

How did it stack up against the two $150 Bluetooth speakers mentioned earlier?

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Tip: Bring Siri’s voice to your Mac with Samantha downloadable Voice for Lion

Jordan Kahn

Since the introduction of Nuance speech technology in OS X Lion, which provides several new voice options in system preferences for the System Voice, many have compared the voice of Nuance-powered Siri on iPhone 4S to the improved text-to-speech included as free downloads within Lion. As noted by Reddit user Moosehadley, what you might not have realized is the downloadable “Samantha” voice for Lion is the same as Siri’s in the United States. Here is how to download it:

Open System Preferences> Speech> Text to Speech>System Voice> Customize> and select “Samantha” from the list. Apple will ask you to confirm the 469MB install.

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That’s not a defibrillator, it’s OWC’s DIY SSD kit for 2011 iMacs

Jordan Kahn

iFixit introduced its iMac Mid 2011 Dual Hard Drive Kit ($69.95) last month for adding an SSD to both the 21.5-inch and 27-inch models. Meanwhile, OWC Macsales made its own kit available today for 2011 iMac users, which allows you to install any 2.5-inch Serial ATA SSD. The kit will work with most compatible SSDs, but OWC recommends its $99.97 OWC Mercury 6G SSD (up to 480GB) shown in the installation video below. As for the kit itself, it is now available through Macsales for $44.99. Here is what you will get:
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How to create a live-updating Photo Stream folder on your Mac, bypass iPhoto

Jordan Kahn

With iCloud’s Photo Stream feature, photos taken on a iOS device and photos imported to your computer are automatically sent to all your devices including Mac, iOS devices, Apple TV, and PC. On iOS, the photos are stored in the Photos.app and on Mac through iPhoto or Aperture. Understandably, launching iPhoto or Aperture just to pull a screenshot off an iOS device can be cumbersome. Most users would typically opt for Dropbox or email, which also requires several steps.

One way to avoid these steps is to create an auto-updating folder on your dock that allows access to Photo Stream images stored in the cloud. In this scenario, you will be able to instantly access photos on your Mac without having to use Dropbox or a similar solution. The Iconmaster (via LifeHacker) pointed us to an easy trick that allows you to save a search for PNG screenshots and filter them based on resolution and the type of image. The trick could also be used to access Photo Stream files depending on your search criteria.

After enabling Photo Stream on your devices, The Iconmaster walked us through how it works:

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