generator

SAN FRANCISCO--In the coming months, Microsoft plans to significantly scale back Soapbox, the video site it once hoped might take on YouTube in the user-generated content arena.

In an interview on Tuesday, Microsoft Vice President Erik Jorgensen said Soapbox is one of the areas that Microsoft is pulling back on in the wake of a tough economic environment. His unit also recently pulled the plug on Microsoft Money, the company's personal finance software product.

Soapbox launched in 2006--the same year Google announced its deal to buy YouTube--but never emerged as a significant threat to the market leader. (… Read more

Random Number Generator Pro lives up to its title by providing users randomly selected numbers between specific parameters. While the program's function is a success, users may be immediately turned off by its interface.

With a cluttered black and white screen featuring several buttons controlling the high and low numbers, most users will think to immediately jump to the Help file. Unfortunately, the Help file doesn't provide much direction and barely even defines what each section of the screen does and how it results in random numbers. Confused users should simply try experimenting with this tangle of buttons … Read more

The ArcSoft Photo Book Screen Saver presents an attractive album-style display on your computer, provided you can ignore the fact that it's a blatant advertisement for ArcSoft's Print Creations photo products.

The concept behind the screensaver is a simple one, and ArcSoft executes it nicely. Users select a folder of photos they'd like to use, and the screensaver displays them as though they are arranged in a photo album, with the virtual pages turning at a speed that the user can adjust. In fact, the speed of the page-turns and the location of the photos are the … Read more

While 99 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds have profiles on social networks, only 22 percent use Twitter, according to a new survey from Pace University and the Participatory Media Network.

This is consistent with what some observers have said about Twitter's recent push from early-adopter territory into the mainstream: that it's catching on with a slightly older demographic than the teenagers and college students who formed Facebook's initial core.

But of those young people using Twitter, the survey found that 85 percent of them follow friends, 54 percent follow celebrities, 29 percent follow family members, and 29 … Read more

The 404 Podcast crew scored tickets for an advanced screening of JJ Abrams' new "Star Trek" movie! We had a lot of fun interviewing all the hard-core "Star Trek" fans, and even battled a few overzealous Enterprise crew members.

Will we successfully stump the Trekkies with our in-depth knowledge of Borg cube transwarp conduit projections, or will they overpower us with a temporal chroniton field? Watch the video below to find out!

Don't forget to check out our live videocast every morning at 11 a.m. ET or head over to CNETTV.com to watch … Read more

Command your own fleet of nerds with this replica of the original Star Trek communicator, and guess what? It also happens to double as a VOIP phone, meaning you can use it to actually talk to another human being using Skype, AOL Instant Messenger, iChat, etc...

Bad news, though: unfortunately, the device does not have built-in Wi-Fi, so you must use USB for connectivity...worst. communicator. ever. Good news, though! Whoever designed this replica had the foresight (and the fear of vengeful Trekkies everywhere) to include buttons that play sound effects from the original series and a real mesh flip … Read more

Wilson's out slaving for CNETTV at the Amazon Kindle DX unveiling, leaving Jeff and I to man the show sans laughter...we'll let you judge the outcome. Today we veryveryvery briefly touch on the biggie Kindle, and also discuss the dangers of gaming to the death, Apple's new iPhone replacement policy, Oprah's free chicken giveaway, and more!

We'd first like to thank Randall Bennett, former host of The 404, for having us on his new show Tech VI--check us out!

One story from today comes from our brothers in the East, and by "… Read more

Internet security is a priority for many users no matter how secretive their surfing. Hackers, with advanced password decoding software, are a major concern for many. Password Generator offers an opportunity to stay a step ahead of these predators, but we found a navigation flaw that was frustrating.

The program opens with a simple-to-navigate wizard that takes users through the steps of building a secure password. Users begin by entering standard password parameters, such as number of characters in the word, use of vowels, consonants, special characters and numbers. As these boxes are selected an example at the bottom changes … Read more

With all this hysteria about the pig sniffles, you'd think that an announcement about 100 million strange little organisms would be cause for alarm. That's not the case, however, when we're talking about the oddball life forms that players grow and control as part of video game Spore. The game created by industry legend Will Wright announced Monday that 100 million creatures have been created, far outrunning the number of species on Earth.

The game publisher, Electronic Arts, started counting last June. That's when it first released its Spore Creature Creator, several months ahead of the … Read more