preview

Gaming preview: Who should buy the Nintendo DSi and who shouldn't

With estimated unit sales approaching 100 million worldwide, Nintendo has proven itself time and time again as the industry ruler of the portable console market. With the DSi--the second refresh of the Nintendo DS--we're starting to see the company move in an evolutionary direction with its flagship handheld.

The DSi takes with it most of the features the DS Lite had to offer, but adds new multimedia capabilities. The DSi has been on sale in Japan since November 1 of last year and has already sold well over an astonishing 1 million units. Now that Nintendo has announced that the DSi will go on sale April 5 in North America, it certainly leaves everyone asking one big question, "Should I buy one?"

First, let's look at what exactly separates the new DSi from the DS Lite. In terms of actual form-factor, the difference between the two portables is negligible. The DSi is slightly slimmer, but you're not going to see the massive change in size like we saw when Nintendo upgraded the original DS to the DS Lite. What you may notice is that both screens are a quarter of an inch larger. The DSi hardware also actually eliminates the Game Boy Advance slot found on the Lite, so you won't be able to play older Game Boy Advance games or DS titles that make use of the port, such as "Guitar Hero: On Tour." … Read more

Docstoc releases Docshots: A pop-up document viewer

Docstoc has a new service for site owners that makes Web documents more readily accessible. Called Docshots, it presents any linked document in a pop-up viewer that site visitors can read without leaving the page.

If you've ever seen the pop-up thumbnail previews from Snap.com, the idea behind Docshots is the same. You simply hover your mouse over the link and the viewer pops up. Presumably the people visiting your page won't leave and forget to come back if they can read it right there. It also cuts down on any embedded Docstoc Flash viewers that can … Read more

CES 2009 preview: HDTV

This year's CES will bring the usual array of extremely large, easy-to-blog HDTVs, although we're not sure anybody will top the 150-inch Panasonic plasma from last year. More interesting is a group of new trends that, compared with items like "1080p" and "HDMI 1.3" from previous years, could actually prove exciting. OK fine, they're nothing compared with Macworld, but they're as exciting as HDTVs get.

Eco-friendly: Oil prices might be falling with the financial crisis, but with a new, more environmentally conscious president and general belt-tightening, the American public may finally … Read more

CES 2009 preview: Home audio

The 2009 Consumer Electronics Show will be the sixth consecutive CES event I've attended. And for most of those, we've had to write up previews of what we're expecting or anticipating at the show as a whole, or in one category. Looking back at those pieces, you can see how far a lot of the technology has come in just half a decade (2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008). Indeed, plenty of features, options, and product categories we take for granted today didn't really exist just five years ago. But you can also note how some predictions … Read more

CES 2009 preview: Home video

For the last few years, the format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray monopolized home video coverage at CES. Now that HD DVD is dead, we can finally get back to focusing on new technology, rather than which studios are backing which format. Blu-ray should have a big presence, along with its new competitors, Internet-powered video-on-demand boxes.

Blu-ray goes mainstream

It's hard to believe, but just one year ago, HD DVD was selling tons of $99 players, Blu-ray players cost an unreasonable $400 or more, and we were advising buyers to hold off going Blu because the format wasn'… Read more

Look before you leap

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a thumbnail image of every search result is at least worth the 50 or so in a search result summary. When you search Google, Yahoo, or Bing, SearchPreview (formerly GooglePreview) displays a thumbnail preview of your Web site results next to their descriptions, so you can confirm or rule out the site at a glance.

The SearchPreview add-on includes a few customization options, like limiting the maximum number of returned images one a page, and including popularity rankings. In our tests, SearchPreview is accurate and didn't hinder performance. It does sprinkle … Read more

Speed up Google search in Firefox

Quiz time: What do CustomizeGoogle, GooglePreview, and McAfee SiteAdvisor have in common?

Answer: The ability to improve on Google search in the Firefox browser. For example, does this scenario sound familiar: You accidentally click on a sponsored link and have to return to the main results page to try again?

How about this one: You wasted 10 minutes clicking through search results because you can't remember the link by name, but think you can identify it by sight (so you check them all)? Or worst yet: You stumble on a dangerous link and get bogged down with malware that … Read more

Wednesday in the park with the Nikon D90

The Nikon D90 arrived on Wednesday, and since we've had some great weather this week here in NYC, I immediately headed out to Madison Square Park to shoot a few hundred photos and start to get a feel for the camera. Then I passed it back to Matt F. for some initial performance testing. (Here's a slide show with some photo samples.) My first impression? For a sub-$1,000 model, the D90 is verrrrry nice.

First up, the D90's movie capture. I shot the flags blowing in the breeze and a fountain that I typically use to test camcorder and camera video. (Unfortunately, I can't display those here without compressing them in a way that defeats the purpose of showing them.) The clips themselves look OK, although for some reason Nikon bumps up the saturation beyond the photo settings, and I wish the camera shot 30fps instead of 24. You also need three hands if you plan to use the zoom--which requires manually focusing--because it's hard to hold this relatively heavy dSLR out in front of you steadily while videos shooting in Live View. But I like the creative potential of the mode and look forward to shooting with it some more. … Read more

Surf your bookmarks by thumbnail with Bookmark Previews

While not nearly as cool as the Muxtape playlist viewer we wrote about a few months back, if you're looking to add a little extra eye candy to your bookmarks folder, it's worth checking out an extension called Bookmarks Preview. When installed, it adds two new views to your bookmarks folder that let you surf your bookmarked sites with small thumbnail previews. You can either view them in a large grid, or Apple Cover Flow-style, which will scale up each thumbnail to a maximum of about 440 pixels wide.

Each time you bookmark a new site a thumbnail … Read more

CES 2008: Cameras and camcorders

Though the International Consumer Electronics Show is not a big one for camera announcements, we usually see a generous handful. Camera manufacturers tend to choose CES to announce the really cheap and the really odd models, especially those with more multitasking, multimedia tendencies. But this CES looks to be a big year for digital-photo frames: bigger and smaller, more connected, more mobile, and more versatile.

Flashback: 2007 Before we had even gotten a chance to test it, we expected big things from our Best of CES 2007 pick, the Sony Handycam HDR-HC7. Our take: "HD camcorders are the big … Read more