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To be honest, I am not much for home improvements or do-it-yourself construction, but every homeowner occasionally needs to do a few things and one of the most basic tools you can own is a tape measure. I was given the chance to try out the eTape16, an advanced, digital tape measure, and it’s the perfect gadget for techno-geeks like myself.

It’s a sixteen foot tape measure, of course, but it has several built-in electronic options. First, it measures on a digital readout as well as the tape, so you get an exact measurement every time. Then you can press the memory button and it will memorize that measurement so you can take another, which it can also memorize.

Got a phone? With Bluetooth, you can use your smart phone to keep those measurements beyond there. You can even tell the tape to “zero” at a preset measurement point and take a new one. So, for instance, if you are using eight foot boards and need to measure out the total, you can “zero” at eight feet (no cut to be made on the first one) and keep measuring the entire length and have that eight feet subtratcted automatically, telling you how long the next one will be. If you’re no good at fractions like most of us, that’s awesome.

There are a lot of other cool features on this thing. It’s like a little measuring robot. It can convert measurement units on the fly, memorize inside or outside points for reference, and more.

Very cool stuff. Check it out on eTape16.com.

Human development expert Rashad Faqiha revealed that Saudis are “wasting” eight hours per day on the internet.

He noted that 7.6 million internet users in the Kingdom have accounts on Facebook, more than one million are on LinkedIn, and 4.8 million Saudi users are on Twitter. Saudi users also view YouTube videos 290 million times per day.

“Saudi youth must learn that time is valuable and should invest it in developing successful professional careers, rather than spending it on social networking websites. Smartphones have played a big role in the youth wasting their time,” he said during a seminar held at King Khaled University.

A study conducted by The Online Project, a social network brand management firm in the Middle East, showed that Facebook is the top social networking site visited by Saudi users. However, despite their preference for Facebook, Saudi users are more active on Twitter.

The ages of internet users in Saudi Arabia range from 24 to 35, with more than 7.6 million Facebook users. Of these, 26 per cent are female, while 74 per cent are male. Around 46 per cent are aged between 18 and 23, while 28 per cent are aged between 35 and 44. The study revealed that those older than 45 accounted for just 16 per cent.

The report indicated that five million people in the Kingdom use Facebook through their smartphones, with 32 per cent of them using Apple devices and 64 per cent using Android devices.

Meanwhile, more than half of Saudis use Facebook in Arabic, while around 72 per cent leave posts and comments in Arabic. About two per cent of the posts include emoticons, with the happy face emoticon used five times more often than the sad face.

China is among the world’s more restrictive countries when it comes to internet access. The “Great Firewall of China” is famous for the restrictions it places on the online activities of its citizens.

In fact, new data suggests that Google’s popular Gmail service is currently blocked in the country.

Web traffic research firm Dyn Research revealed that Gmail traffic is being blocked at the IP level, effectively making Gmail inaccessible in most parts of China. It noted that the disruption seems to have started on Christmas day.

Google’s Transparency Report showed a sharp decline in Gmail traffic on Christmas day. Although there was a bit of fluctuation, a prolonged period of flat-lining was observed.

Earl Zmijewski, vice president of data analytics at Dyn Research, said: “China has a number of ways they can block content. One of the crudest ways is to just block an IP address, and when you do that, you block all the content available at the IP.”

On Twitter, the research firm confirmed China’s IP-level block on Gmail when the site is served from Hong Kong. Zmijewski explained that this is significant because most of China’s Gmail access is routed through IP addresses in Hong Kong.

Google and China share a complicated relationship. In June, China blocked access to Google ahead of the 25^th anniversary of the massacre at Tiananmen Square.

Prior to that, the country blocked access to Google services in 2012 and 2009. Meanwhile, Google stated publicly in 2010 that it would stop censoring its search engine within China.

Over the Holidays, I received a HEX TL Wireless Speaker (SP900), often referred to as “concert stacks” by 808, which makes the speakers. These are two-way speakers that work wirelessly via Bluetooth to fill a room with sound.

The speakers include a dedicated tweeter, a full-frequency driver, and a rear bass resonator in a two-way acoustic box. If you’re an audiophile, you should check out these speakers for your phone, computer, or to extend your house stereo or TV.

Even better, they’re portable. You can power them either from a wall outlet or with 8 AA batteries (last roughly 10-12 hours) and input can be from Bluetooth or an aux input (headphone plug). I’ve tried it with my iPhone, notebook, and tablet as well as my television and this speaker sounds great.

Three color options are available: black, red and white. The speaker stands about 8 inches high and is about 5 and a half inches wide and 3 inches deep. It sits on any shelf, the patio, or wherever you’d like it.

A very cool product and one of the best things I’ve tried all year. You can get these directly from the manufacturer, 808, at this link. Note that I was given one as a test product for review, but am recommending it whole-heartedly without reservation.

North Korea’s internet connection was severed on Tuesday, just days after the US government accused the reclusive nation of masterminding the debilitating cyber attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Although President Barack Obama vowed to retaliate on behalf of Sony, which is estimated to have incurred losses of about US$100 million as a result of the hack, the US government has remained silent on whether it was involved in the internet sabotage.

North Korea’s only four networks linking the country to the internet started experiencing intermittent problems on Monday, but on Tuesday, the connection had been completely cut off, said Doug Madory, the director for internet analysis at New Hampshire-based network-monitoring firm Dyn Research.

“I don’t know that someone is launching a cyber-attack against North Korea, but this isn’t normal for them. It is kind of out of the ordinary. This is not like anything I’ve seen before.”

According to Dan Holden, the director for security research at Arbor Networks in Massachusetts, the country seems to be suffering from a distributed denial-of-service attack.

This relatively simple cyber attack is not necessarily the work of the US. Any individual could accomplish something similar for a budget of around US$200, he explained.

“If the US government was going to do something, it would not be so blatant and it would be way worse. This could just be someone in the US who is ticked off because they’re unable to see the movie.”

Furthermore, it is very easy to cut North Korea’s net access due to the small number of hosts linking the Asian country to the internet, added Jose Nazario, Chief Scientist at security-software company Invincea Inc.

The availability of free porn on the internet has led to a significant decline in marriage rates in the US. This is the claim of research published in Germany’s Institute for the Study of Labour (IZA).

According to the study, the rate of marital formation in the US dropped by 39 per cent between 1950 and 2010, with a 17 per cent fall between 2000 and 2010 alone. Nowadays, the percentage of males aged 25 to 34 who have never tied the knot is higher by more than six-fold. For those aged between 35 and 44, the proportion of unmarried individuals was greater by more than four times.

“We asked ourselves, what is helping determine whether people are married or not?” said one of the study’s authors, Michael Malcolm, who is a professor from the University of West Chester in Pennsylvania.

Using information from the General Social Survey (GSS), the researchers analysed how men aged 18 to 35 surfed the internet between 2000 and 2004. Specifically, they looked into the time spent by each participant on the internet and how many of them viewed online porn within a specified period. They also took note of those who visited religious websites. In total, the study involved more than 1,500 participants.

“Broadly, higher Internet usage was associated with lower marriage rates. But pornography use in particular was more closely linked to those participants who were not married than any other form of Internet use. The opposite, for comparison, was true for religious website use, which was positively correlated with marriage.”