custom

With most speakers or headphones, you're stuck with the designer's sound, but with the Logitech UE Personal Reference Monitors (PRM) you get to play headphone designer and dial in exactly the sound you want.

Each pair is totally unique; they're built with the individually designed equalization curves you selected. My PRMs sound absolutely amazing, but I'm a little biased, I designed them to please my ears! Every PRM buyer will do the same, and if they totally screw up and hate the result, Ultimate Ears will give them another try. Each PRM set is handmade in UE's facilities in California.

The price for this level of customization doesn't come cheap, though; the Personal Reference Monitors sell for $1,999. That's extreme, but so are $285,000 luxury cars. I cover the full gamut of audio, from affordable to the craziest expensive gear. … Read more

Start8 brings back the familiar start button to make your transition to Windows 8 a little bit easier. The first thing you'll notice when firing up your new Windows 8 PC is the lack of a Start button. For design reasons, Microsoft has removed the old Start menu in favor of the new Metro Start screen. Start8 aims to bring it back and help you make your move to the new Windows without compromising productivity.

The installation is light and fast, and setting up takes almost no time at all. Setup will ask whether you prefer the original Windows … Read more

If you want to give Facebook a piece of your mind, here's your chance.

Faced with all the usual concerns over Facebook's constant changes and privacy issues, the social network has rolled out a new customer satisfaction survey.

Spotted by AllFacebook, the survey is linked to a message at the top of the newsfeed for some users. The message reads, "We'd like to hear from you. Please take three to four minutes to tell us about your experience using Facebook."

A Facebook spokeswoman confirmed that Facebook is indeed circulating surveys. "Facebook runs variations of … Read more

Most programs you run on your computer are pretty smart when it comes to making sure you can see what's going on. If, for whatever reason, a program tries to open off of your desktop, it will usually catch itself and reset its position. Unfortunately, this isn't always the case -- sometimes you end up with an inaccessible window running off in space. Perhaps you sometimes have a second (or third) monitor hooked up to your computer that isn't there at the moment, or some bug occurred when the program was setting its position. If the program … Read more

While Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg wouldn't affirm whether or not Facebook could take on Google in the search arena, it's clear the social-networking giant thinks there's an untapped revenue stream in a social search product.

"I think people are surprised how much search is done on Facebook, you know, every day there's an enormous percentage of search. There's also a promise in the market that search could become more social that we don't think this has been met," she told CNBC this morning. "When you're looking for information, … Read more

Facebook, responding to worries about some of its recent advertising changes, shared some details about how it safeguards user information and said it created its new features with "privacy in mind."

Joey Tyson, Facebook privacy engineer, said yesterday in a blog post that while Facebook has designed its site to show ads that "help people discover products that are interesting to them," it also realizes that users trust the company to protect their information.

"Maintaining that trust is a top priority as we continue to grow," he said.

Tyson took pains in his blog … Read more

Skins let you totally change the look of apps like media players and image editors, but you can do the same and much more to Windows with Stardock's WindowBlinds. This program makes it easy to change the look of Windows without having to change everything manually in Appearance and Personalization. With preconfigured skins you can customize, WindowBlinds lets you create and customize Windows in ways the built-in tool could never match. WindowBlinds is free to try for 30 days, with a few options disabled.

WindowBlinds' user interface resembles a Windows feature, but with its own touches. It displays available … Read more

Nexus is Latin for both a group of things bound together and the act of binding them. That makes it the perfect name for Winstep's free Nexus Dock utility. Like other desktop docks, it has time and weather widgets, a screenshot tool, and quick access to Windows features like e-mail and the Start menu. But that's just the beginning of what this versatile app can do. It brings just about anything in your PC together on the desktop for instant access -- programs, utilities, files, folders, properties information, and so on -- and displays them in an interactive, … Read more

I'm a lucky guy; audio companies keep asking me to check out their gear, and that's not a bad way to make a living. Before you get too jealous, I have to listen to a lot of crap to find the good stuff. There's a lot of shipping to and fro, and that's not a fun part of my work. Every now and then something really special arrives, and that makes it all worthwhile.

The nice folks at Heir Audio sent over two models of universal-fit headphones, the 3.Ai and 4.Ai, and even before I popped 'em in my ears I thought they might be out of the ordinary.… Read more