speed

Only2Clicks does eye-friendly start pages

Only2Clicks is one of the few Web services I've seen lately whose name tells exactly what it does. The concept is pretty straightforward--set up your favorite Web sites, and the service will load them up in a grid, with photo thumbnails for each. You can add and remove any number of sites, and the thumbnails will be refreshed each time you reload the page. You can also re-organize the links with simple drag and drop. The idea is to set Only2Clicks as your start page, so you'll be able to quickly eyeball each site before figuring out where … Read more

Casio High Speed Camera

Casio may have the answer to every sport enthusiast's prayers. A camera that won't miss any of the action. With 60 frames per second and the ability to record and playback video at 300 frames per second, this could very well be the ultimate sports camera.

Casio showed off the as-yet-nameless prototype at the IFA consumer electronics trade show in Berlin. I must admit, I am a little giddy that this may actually be a real product. As a golf professional, I can't tell you how valuable this is. When trying to view a golf swing that … Read more

Speed up Adobe Reader

It's the most popular PDF software on the planet, but sometimes Adobe Reader can be slower than molasses to start up. Tom Merritt shows you how to use Adobe Reader SpeedUp to disable unnecessary plug-ins and help Adobe Reader open documents much more quickly.

2008 Cadillac CTS: Race ready?

The word "performance" seems to be thrown around a lot in the automotive world these days. With increasing expansion and competition within the luxury sport sedan category, manufacturers are eager to drop statistics about horsepower, torque, zero-to-60 speeds, and other numbers to woo (and maybe even slightly intimidate) potential buyers. But specifications alone can't convey the true spirit of a car; as Aristotle said, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. So it makes sense that the ideal road test subjects the car to a wide range of variables: twisty turns of varying camber, … Read more

A new use for Speed Dial!

Earlier this month, New York enacted an Air Passenger Bill of Rights. Among other things, it requires that airlines make minimal provisions for passengers stranded on the tarmac for more than three hours. If you've done any traveling with kids, you probably know how difficult it is to both pack light (a key strategy for successful travel generally) and to pack enough stuff so that if there's a delay, you can keep the little ones occupied. The New York law bounds the problem a little bit: if your longest leg is 6 hours, you can be relatively assured that your outbound leg from a New York airport won't add more than 3 hours to that. But as the US Customs and Border Patrol SNAFU at LAX confirms, airport authorities don't seem to get particularly concerned about tarmac waits of 6, 8, or 10 hours, be they outbound or inbound. I think that when traveling with children, that's a bit much. What's a parent to do?… Read more

IntraNets vs InterNets

For some reason the fact that intranets can significantly outperform Internets and in particular THE Internet is a shocking concept. It shouldn't be. An intranet is a contained network managed to optimize the performance to meet the needs of the participants on the network. Your corporate network in your local office is an intranet. You probably have IT people working hard to make sure its up and as fast as they can make it. Your home network is an intranet. Wired or wireless, you are probably able to get throughput that far exceeds the speed you get from your … Read more

Ducati takes memory for a spin

Maybe it's just us, but we never really thought digital storage products would ever be considered sexy enough to merit the attention from the likes of Ducati. But the motorcycling legend must see something we don't, because it's lent its famous name to SanDisk to stamp on a USB flash drive and memory cards, according to Fareastgizmos.

The marketing link is speed, as in data transfer rates, which we think will be lost on most true Ducati fans. The items do at least bear the company's signature red-and-black glossy color scheme, however, and the USB drive … Read more

ooVoo jumps into video and IM chat space

ooVoo is a free, standalone desktop chat application that has both a text and video chat capabilities. Its official launch is next week, but the beta has been available since mid April. I took it for a spin this morning and came away impressed.

There are a ton of chat clients out there, so one of the things it has done to differentiate itself is multiperson video chat. ooVoo can handle as many as six people in one video conference, which is two more than what iChat is capable of. Users can drop in and out of conversations, and the video windows will scale with a similar effect to iChat's "swoop." Along with video, users can chat among themselves with their computer's microphone or a headset. There are volume controls for both speakers and the microphone right in the chat window, a handy addition.

I found the video and audio to be fairly clear, even when topped off at six users. ooVoo's creators tell me that when running full six-user video, it will take up only half the bandwidth on a low-end DSL connection. Assuming you're not downloading or uploading large files in the background, your connection shouldn't drag to a halt.

In addition to live video and text chat, ooVoo doubles as a video e-mail service. Users can send each other video messages as long as a minute in length that are available right in the app or via e-mail. Users who get the e-mail are also provided a link that takes them to a live flash version of the video, so they can access it while away from their home machine.

For people interested in adding a quick way to be reached on their social networking profile or Web site, ooVoo gives users the option to embed a quick contact button that will automatically launch an ooVoo conversation if installed. I've posted an example image of this on the left side of this post.

ooVoo is not alone in the multiperson video chat space; competitor SightSpeed also offers a free video and text chat service. The main difference is that SightSpeed is aimed at businesses and limits video chat to four users at a time with a monthly subscription fee.

ooVoo is currently available only for Windows users, although the team is releasing a beta for Macs in about six weeks. Users on both platforms will be able to chat with one another using the same client.

You can download ooVoo over at CNET's Download.com. For more shots of the service, keep reading.… Read more

Speed Racer's 'Mach 5' comes to life

We extend our thanks in advance for your indulgence of our trip down memory lane this morning. Honest, we've tried to shake this nostalgia bug, but it keeps coming back--and this time we're not going to fight it, and you'll see why.

The Speed Racer car is real. That's right. The "Mach 5" has been brought to life in full glory from the '60s animation version (at least the body, anyway) for the Warner Bros. movie scheduled for release next year, according to Gizmodo. And thank goodness for that, because it's probably the … Read more