preview

Are you a Mac user who wants to pull a photo off your iPhone, iPad, or Android device quickly, without having to go through iPhoto? There's an easy way to do that, built into your Mac: the Preview app.

For ages, I was frustrated that the Mac wouldn't let me browse my iPhone or Android phone to drag-and-drop pictures I wanted, in the way that I could when plugging them into my Windows PC.

If only I could browse like on the PC

On the PC, my phones appear like a drive within Windows Explorer, which is wonderful:… Read more

The Preview application in OS X has an excellent option for capturing handwritten signatures and inserting them into PDF documents. This is great for signing forms, letters, and other items that require a signature. The process for doing so simply involves capturing a written signature with a Web cam, after which you can append them to any PDF document open in Preview.

Signatures that you associate with Preview in this manner are stored in an encrypted form, which is great for security but also means that Preview is the only program that can access them. Even though an inserted signature … Read more

Legal forms, letters, and other documents are progressively migrating to digital media; however, the need for applying a signature to them is often still a requirement. While you can print these forms out, sign them and then fax, scan, or e-mail them after signing, another option is to apply a digitally saved version of your signature.

While one approach to doing this is to scan a document containing your signature and then crop it out and paste it in-line with your form, this requires that you keep the image of your signature readily available, and unless you have used transparencies, … Read more

BlackBerry still has its following of loyalists but their numbers have dwindled. Even enterprise customers have transitioned to the iPhone and Android phones, a place that used to be dominated by BlackBerry.

The BlackBerry Z10 is the company's first all-touch-screen phone with a sleek design and a bigger, higher-resolution screen. Its new operating system is based purely on gestures without a physical button.

The iPhone 5 has continued to be a beast in the Prizefight ring. Even though the Samsung Galaxy S3 has surpassed the iPhone 5 in CNET editors' minds, we're facing the Z10 off against the … Read more

Apple's Preview program in OS X is a very convenient tool for quickly editing image and PDF files. It supports a number of options for annotating images and adjusting colors, cropping, and otherwise editing them, it can also be used to quickly convert an image to another format.

Preview supports reading most common image format types, and likewise allows you to export them to these same types, so even if Preview is not set to be your default program for handling images, you can still use it to quickly make an image conversion.

To do this, right-click the image … Read more

Sony's February 20 event in New York City will likely mark the announcement of the PlayStation 4 and simultaneously usher in the next generation of console gaming. (Sorry, Wii U, but you're more last-gen than next-gen.)

Rumors mills are also churning out details confidently declaring that the Xbox 360 successor will also see the light of day before June's big E3 gaming show in Los Angeles.

Perhaps the biggest news? Both consoles could make their debuts -- gasp -- this year. That's a hyperspeed acceleration in … Read more

Apple reports its first-quarter earnings this week, and the results could not be more closely watched for signs of the company's health and future.

The story is well-known by now. Shares of Apple's stock have been on the decline, going from $702 in late September to a close at an even $500 last week. That's a 28.4 percent drop in just over four months. Positive results -- and a look ahead when Apple puts out its numbers Wednesday -- could turn that trend.

Apple forecast $52 billion in revenue and earnings of $11.75 per share … Read more

The television industry has been in flux during the last few years. Marquee Japanese names such as Panasonic, Sharp, and Sony are struggling, new technologies like voice and gesture control and 3D aren't compelling enough to warrant upgrades, and demand is expected to stay flat for 2013. Amid this atmosphere of regrouping and consolidation, there are likely to be very few surprises at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

What we're going to see at the show are several technologies that debuted at previous shows, such as OLED and 4K. We doubt any new display … Read more

Windows accepts nearly every kind of font, but managing them is a different story. Freeware font managers can fill the need, and there are plenty to choose from. Veign's Cfont Pro is a powerful tool for viewing and managing your system's fonts. It can install and uninstall font packages, print and export font data, and even repair common registry errors that can affect fonts. Its Preview mode lets you see fonts before actually installing them, and a SlideShow mode displlays installed fonts one by one. Cfont Pro's extras include a glyph viewer and a Zoomer tool that … Read more