Amy Vernon
Amy Vernon
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
Comcast plans to take its television on demand feature one step further: to your mobile devices.The U.S. cable company recently started offering wireless Internet service in some cities, jointly with Clearwire Corp., using WiMax technology. It has its sights squarely set on mobile phone/data providers, such as...
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Now you can pretend you have bionic hearing.Sound ID just came out with a new Bluetooth headset (the Sound ID 400) with all sorts of funky features that could give people the impression that you can actually hear anything said, anywhere.First off, there's "PersonalSound." You get three "custom hearing choices" in addition to automatic volume...
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AT&T will become the next entrant into the realm of streaming television and movies, with a slew of content partnerships and the launch of a new website, AT&T Entertainment.The "video entertainment" will be available through partnerships with networks and studios that include ABC, Bravo, CBS Entertainment, CBS News, CNBC, NBC, Oxygen,...
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Talk about a brag book. Toshiba is releasing a new line of credit card-thin hard disk drives, with up to 160GB of capacity — enough to store upwards of 45,000 digital photos, 42,000 digital music files or 130 digital videos. The smallest is 60GB - remember how just a few years ago, 1GB seemed like unending storage space? The MKxx34GAL family...
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Sprint and AT&T have announced dueling phone plan changes geared toward making you feel you as if you can call anyone, anywhere, anytime and not pay an extra cent.Sprint's plan is moving past its "calling circles" and is called the Any Mobile, Anytime plan. Basically, it's unlimited calling between mobile phones...
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Look for Firefox 4.0 late next year, likely around October, according to a draft roadmap Mozilla updated on its wiki.According to the wiki, this is what users should expect: Process separation for chrome and content, new extensibility mechanism through APIs, revised UI on all platforms platform enhancements content and chrome in separate process...
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Now there's one less reason to turn off the TV - you can access the Internet through your Wii, for free (again).Those who got the Wii when it first launched in November 2006 will remember the Internet Channel came as a free download at the time. It allows Wii owners to surf the net on their televisions. The Wii Remote allows users to...
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Nintendo announced a slew of releases today, including the launch of Wii Fit Plus and new colors for the DSi.Starting Sept. 13, Nintendo will sell white and pink versions of the DSi system, in addition to the blue and black already out there. Perhaps they figured more girls would be likely to buy if they had pink? Unclear, but just like the...
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Next time your college professor glances at his phone or stops to type something on his laptop, check your Twitter stream.A survey of about 1,958 higher education professionals - professors, instructors, deans and others - across the nation found that nearly a third are using Twitter in some way, shape or form. Even so, more than half said...
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Broadband speeds in the United States have incrementally increased in the past couple of years and if things don't improve soon, it'll take 15 years for speeds here to catch up to where South Korea is today, according to a report released today.The Speed Matters Test was administered by the Communications Workers of...
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Apple's new OS, Snow Leopard, goes on sale Friday and can be pre-ordered online starting today.It's a pretty inexpensive upgrade - $29 for folks who work on OS X 10.5 Leopard. Snow Leopard, OS X 10.6, is said to refine "90 percent of the more than 1,000 projects that make up Mac OS X.The main refinements, according to Apple, appear to be in...
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Anyone who wants to work in one of Microsoft's new retail stores had better be in pretty good physical shape or start pumping iron now.The job description for sales associates says:Lifting/carrying 75 pounds (loading and unloading all those great products and carrying purchases out for our customers will be required!)A Microsoft employee in...
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For anyone who's had trouble shutting off his computer, who keeps saying she just needs to hit the Stumble bar "just one more time," who needs to fight just one more battle in World of Warcraft, there's a spot in Washington state to unwind and get away from it all.reStart Internet Addiction Recovery Program is on five...
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Logitech today announced two new mice that can be used almost anywhere, even on clear glass.The glass must be at least 4 millimeters thick, but I'd imagine it would be a little stressful to be computing on a table where the glass top was thinner, wondering if you're going to press too hard and bring the entire tabletop crashing to the ground...
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For a change, Microsoft Windows users in Great Britain aren't going to be charged more than their American counterparts.In fact, they're going to pay less for Windows 7 than folks in the U.S., according to a report on CNET UK.Full versions of Windows 7 Home Premium, in fact, will cost British buyers about half as much as it will Yanks. The...
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Qtrax - the legal, ad-supported free music download site - will begin its worldwide launch in October, starting with the Asia-Pacific region.For starters, it will operate in China (including Hong Kong), Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand. The official date is Oct. 29, a Thursday. By year's end, it...
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Internet Explorer 8 is the safest web browser on the market, according to a pair of studies sponsored by, um, Microsoft.One study focused on socially engineered malware and the other on phishing.In the first study, NSS Labs found that IE8 caught 81 percent of live threats, while Firefox 3 caught 27 percent...
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You have a leather-covered steering wheel in your car, why not in your house?That would appear to be the thinking behind Logitech's new G27 Racing Wheel. It is "designed to deliver the definitive sim racing experience." Just like a luxury car, this $299.99 (MSRP) gadget is designed to eliminate virtually all noise and...
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Sure, Apple's App Store has surpassed 1.5 billion downloads. But that's just the beginning, according to an analysis of the smartphone market. Frost & Sullivan released the analysis today, "An Insight into the U.S. Smartphone Application Storefront Market" and predicts downloads to smartphones from all app stores will hit 6.67 billion...
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More than half of computer viruses last a mere 24 hours.Panda Security's malware detection laboratory, PandaLabs, has been analyzing the nearly 37,000 samples of new viruses, worms, Trojans and other security threats that it receives each day and found that 52 percent of them work for just 24 hours. "After that timeframe, they become inactive...
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Just what the world has been waiting for: A Hello Kitty designer flash drive. Mimoco has been creating character-based USB flash drives in its Mimobot line. Favorites from Star Wars, Halo and other characters in the geek pantheon are staples of the line. Starting next month, Hello Kitty and her friends will join Darth Maul, Han Solo and Master...
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What might be the tiniest flash drive yet comes in emerald green or royal purple. Verbatim announced two new USB drives in the new "Tuff 'n' Tiny" family: an inch long, half an inch wide and as thick as a penny. The drives have support for Windows, Mac and Linux. The 8GB drive - that's the purple one - can store nearly eight hours of MPEG-1...
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