No.8Hacks

The Wellington Sevens, New Zealand's biggest, annual party in our capital city. An excuse to dress up, drink excessively and perhaps even watch a game or two. Thinking this would be a superb time to crank out my Tron Costume once again. I found this recent article showing an amazing pair of light up, el wire, equalizer glasses, which respond to the beat of surrounding music. A perfect addition to my Tron costume. ch00f kindly uploaded his schematics and parts list to his article allowing anyone to easily replicate his circuit. After a few tweaks of his design, I had my own pair of light up, sound reactive Shutter Shades.

One of my favourite online services of all time is Dropbox. If you aren't familiar with Dropbox, it is a program which you can download to your computer (Windows, Mac, or Linux) and it will seamlessly sync your documents with an online storage repository and any other computer you have Dropbox installed on. There is even Android and iOS apps for it, as well as a great web service, which has saved my life multiple times when I had left my Uni assignments at home. You will never need a USB stick again as long as you have access to a computer with internet. Dropbox gives users 2 GB free to any new user, with the option to pay for their 50 GB service. There is also a referral scheme which allows you to refer your friends to get an additional 250 MB per referral up to a maximum of 8 GB (16 GB for paid users). However as much as I rave about this fantastic service, I had only made few successful referrals. That was until I came across this article.

I'm grown up now. Despite how I look, feel and act; I am. I have finished uni, got a respectable full-time job, and hell I even have a LinkedIn profile which is like Facebook for grown-ups. And part of being a grown-up is owning a credit card. Everyone has heard of their friend's uncle's dentist who got a huge around-the-world trip paid for from his credit card points. It seems like they get awesome rewards just for having a credit card. If only it were that simple. I took in onto myself to compare the major New Zealand credit card providers to work out, which card would give me the greatest return in rewards based on an estimated annual spend. (Sounds like another crappy episode of Target.)

You have no doubt heard the line before; technology has invaded most areas of our lives often allowing for higher productivity and convenience. That being said however, there are still some areas where technology is not being leveraged to its' fullest extent. In order to promote the development of new ideas in such areas Snapper issued a challenge under the Summer of Tech to "demonstrate using Snapper technology to make every day life easier."

You can read all about Snapper and their technologies on their website but essentially they are the largest contactless payment system in New Zealand. People are issued with a Snapper card (the form factor of which resembles pretty much any other card you have in your wallet) which can then be used to make quick, secure and convenient payments to any third party supporting the technology providing the card has enough funds available to make the transaction.