personalized

A newly uncovered patent design from HTC indicates that the "quietly brilliant" hardware maker could be secretly working on a personal media player.

Initially discovered and detailed by Patent Bolt, the filing reveals that the company applied for the patent in 2011, and the device appears to have a design that falls in line with HTC's recent smartphone offerings.

The front face of the unit has speakers across both the top and the bottom, leading me to expect stereo sound. The backside has yet another set of speakers, as well as a camera and the familiar HTC … Read more

The capability for a smartphone or tablet to also double as a hot spot has quickly become an expected feature of every new device -- the new iPad included. As you may have read in Jessica Dolcourt's post, Verizon includes the hot-spot feature with the iPad data plans, while AT&T doesn't support it...yet.

Using your iPad as a hot spot will allow you to share the iPad's data connection with up to five devices, including your iPhone (FaceTime over LTE, anyone?).

To set up a hot spot on your iPad, start by opening Settings … Read more

Personal Information Managers, or PIMs, are among the most useful freeware a busy person could wish for. SEO Note is a free PIM that uses a simple tree view for maximum flexibility. It saves your personal and business notes and contacts as articles in plain text, rich text, or HTML files. You can quickly access your important data via searching, bookmarks, and the tree view. With Tool Tips, Quick Start Guides, FAQs, Forums, and more on the Help menu, it offers plenty of assistance, but it's also fairly intuitive. The developer compares SEO Note's functionality to a simpler … Read more

With such an overwhelming number of products flooding the Google Play Store (aka the Android Market), Appreciate helps you cut through the clutter to find the apps that are tailored to your tastes. It's free, simple, and it works.

Appreciate takes inventory of the apps you have installed on your device, those you've uninstalled, and your usage habits across them all. It even takes into account your demographic and Facebook friends if you make that info available. After plugging the data into its formula, Appreciate serves up a menu of recommended apps for you to download, with new … Read more

Despite the overwhelming appeal of being able to tether your iPhone to your laptop via the Personal Hotspot feature included in iOS, the cost of doing so keeps many iPhone owners from getting the most out of their device. Tether, however, has a solution.

Back in November, Tether was able to briefly get an app approved on Apple's App Store. The $14.99 app allowed users to bypass the Personal Hotspot method of setting up a tether for their laptops and instead use a USB cable and Tether's software. The app, iTether, was quickly pulled.… Read more

The PC market is likely to see another sluggish year but is poised for a rebound in 2013.

Global PC shipments will hit 368 million in 2012, Gartner forecast today, just a 4.4 percent gain from last year. Though not a huge bump, this year will at least show an improvement over 2011 when shipments totaled 352.8 million units, just a half a percentage point gain over 2010.

PC vendors have faced a difficult climate with a lethargic economy, supply constraints, and especially competition from smartphones and tablets.

"The use of applications such as e-mail, social networking, … Read more

Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded:

The optimist in me wants to say this week will go down as a turning point in the struggle to protect the privacy of user information. The pessimist in me says wait and see--yes, there are glimmers of hope that change is afoot, but this is an industry with a spotty track record.

Last week, a firestorm hovered over Path, after it was found to be uploading and storing user data from iPhone address books without requesting permission. The company subsequently changed its policy and apologized to users. But the selective outrage irked Michael Arrington, the blogger-turned-investor whose CrunchFund has … Read more

This year, Sony's refresh of its entry-level E-Series Walkman line is much different from previous generations.

The new NW-E060 series--due in Japan on February 11--will only come in 2GB (NW-E062) and 4GB (NW-E063) options, which is far less capacity than its predecessor (which went up to 16GB). What is truly noteworthy is the inclusion of digital noise-cancelling, which is a feature previously only available in its high-end Walkman audio players. Music playback with this option enabled is rather amazing, as it nearly removes disruptive ambient noise in its entirety.

Battery life is a healthy 30 hours for MP3 playback (24 hours with noise cancelling on), but that figure is 20 hours less than the previous model. Similarly, the screen is only a 1.4-inch LCD, once again a downgrade from the 2.0-inch screen used in the past. I am wondering if the cost of integrating digital noise-cancelling contributed to these cuts. On the other hand, maybe the gurus at Sony finally realized they were selling several MP3 players that were too similar and wanted to differentiate.… Read more