colors

How to manage Apple color panel favorites in OS X

Various applications in OS X support changing the color of elements such as text, annotations, and other markups or drawn objects. For instance, in Pages or TextEdit you can highlight a section of text and then set the color of that text using the color box in the toolbar.

This option is not uncommon, but while some programs offer a small selection of colors to choose from or have their own color settings implementations, those that use Apple's core technologies may give you access to the OS X color panel. This panel provides a variety of options for finding … Read more

TV and movies on new iPad look better, but not by much

When I directly compared the screens of old iPad 2 and the new iPad, I immediately noticed the improvement in resolution in text and some graphics, like the Apps icons. Being a TV reviewer, however, I was curious to see if there was any major improvement when watching movies and TV shows.

I spent a few hours this weekend looking at common video sources side-by-side, one on an old iPad 2 (1,024x768-pixel resolution) and one on the new iPad (2,048x1,536 pixels). Despite the massive boost in resolution, and what Apple claims is a 44 percent increase in … Read more

Is the 8GB Nook Tablet worth your $200?

There's a new line in the sand drawn for 7-inch tablet pricing, and that number is $199.

Barnes & Noble and Amazon were already locked in a fierce rivalry in the "bargain tablet" space with the $249 Nook Tablet and the $199 Kindle Fire. Barnes & Noble delivered better specs for that $50 premium (double the RAM, double the storage, and a microSD expansion slot). But now B&N has removed the price difference between the two products by releasing a new step-down Nook Tablet that levels the playing field on both specs--halving the internal storage … Read more

New $199 Nook Tablet to compete with Fire

Barnes & Noble has Amazon's Kindle Fire directly in its sights. Its latest ammunition: a $199 Nook Tablet with 8GB of memory.

The new version of the Nook Tablet--$50 cheaper and with half the memory of the original--now matches the Kindle Fire in price and memory specs. The book retailer hopes the lower price will make it more of a rival to Amazon's tablet, which has established itself as the No. 2 player behind Apple's iPad. Amazon has attracted customers through a lower-end price and a decent selection in its online store.

Barnes & Noble … Read more

Match your colors with Peacock Color Picker

Web designers and graphic artists know that when it comes to matching colors, guesswork won't do; to ensure a perfect match it only makes sense to use a program built for the task. Peacock Color Picker is not the most user-friendly option we've seen, but it's not a bad choice if you're looking for basic color-picking features.

The program's interface is sleek and attractive at first glance, but upon further exploration it turns out not to be particularly intuitive. The fact that there's no Help file means that users have to spend time playing … Read more

CNET Roadside Assistance 43: Considering the crazy colors of cars (podcast)

Classical music fan mourns the end of CDs in the car, U.K. vs. U.S. mpg--why so different? Give your older car a total tech transplant, and why Bluetooth is so complicated--still!

EPISODE 43 Subscribe with iTunes (audio) Subscribe with iTunes (video) Subscribe with RSS (audio) Subscribe with RSS (video)

Q&A: MacFixIt Answers

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which we answer questions e-mailed in by our readers.

This week people wrote in with questions about a change to system colors, how to access lost e-mails in Time Machine, cursor repetition not working after upgrading to Lion, and DiskWarrior not being able to fix damaged file resource headers. We continually answer e-mail questions, and though we present answers here, we welcome alternative approaches and views from readers and encourage you to post your own suggestions in the comments.

Question: Restoring system colors MacFixIt reader Margo asks:

The colours throughout my desktop icons and … Read more

Developer offers $5K prize for bootable Nook Tablet card

Do you have mad Android hacking skills? Put them to good use and you might just earn $5,000--or more.

N2A Cards LLC, best known for transforming Barnes & Noble Nook Color e-readers into full-blown Android tablets, has thrown down the gauntlet to the development community: first person to create a bootable Android microSD card for the Nook Tablet (the Color's successor) gets $2,500.

And if you do it before midnight on January 22, you get a $2,500 bonus.

Here's a summary of what the contest entails:

N2A Cards LLC will offer a $2,500 reward … Read more

Could LG's new 55-inch OLED be the best TV ever?

LG is expected to release the "world's largest" 55-inch OLED TV in 2012 that features four colors instead of the three-color RGB standard and promises better off-axis viewing than competitors.

Where Sharp added a yellow pixel to its Quattron technology, LG has added a white pixel to its OLED (organic light emitting diode) panel for a "brighter picture".

In terms of image quality, Sharp offers some stiff competition to the OLED, with its Elite Pro receiving a deeply impressive 9.5 rating from David Katzmaier last month

Traditionally, OLED offers higher contrast than both LCD … Read more