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Smart Suggestor is a free browser widget designed to speed up and improve your searching, sharing, and shopping activities. It can suggest similar sites to the one you're visiting, translate pages quickly, share sites via popular social media such as Facebook and Twitter, access Google Maps and similar features, and alert you to price changes when you're shopping. We tried the Firefox extension, but Smart Suggestor is also available for IE and Chrome.

OK, we know how you feel about software that adds toolbars to your browser: you like one or two of the features but don't … Read more

Smart Suggestor is a free browser widget designed to speed up and improve your searching, sharing, and shopping activities. It can suggest similar sites to the one you're visiting, translate pages quickly, share sites via popular social media such as Facebook and Twitter, access Google Maps and similar features, and alert you to price changes when you're shopping. We tried the Firefox extension, but Smart Suggestor is also available for IE and Chrome.

OK, we know how you feel about software that adds toolbars to your browser: you like one or two of the features but don't … Read more

Fifteen years is a pretty good life span for many pets. Tamagotchi is celebrating the birth of its digital critters with a limited-edition anniversary model.

In case you missed the Tamagotchi craze, they are little egg-shaped gadgets with small screens that house electronic pets. Each one starts from an egg, and has to be fed, cleaned up after, and disciplined as it goes through its virtual lifecycle.

Bandai's Tamagotchi spawned the sale of 78 million units and taught a lot of kids about the virtual joys, tribulations, and sorrows of digital parenthood.

Tamagotchi may be 105 in dog years, but it has learned a few new tricks along the way. The Tamagotchi iD L 15th Anniversary Model features a full-color screen with new characters and games.… Read more

Samsung is readying a 2GHz chip with amped up graphics, offering more evidence of a wave of high-resolution tablets to come.

The Exynos 5250 dual-core chip is based on the latest and greatest Cortex-A15 ARM design. And just in case you're not sure what kind of device the chip is targeted at, Samsung leaves no doubt. The 5250 is "designed specifically for high-end tablets," according to Samsung's press release.

But let's get the nuts and bolts out of the way first. It uses 32-nanometer "high-k metal gate" process technology (translation: smaller chip geometries … Read more

Stayfocused is a free productivity tool based on the Pomodoro Technique, an ergonomically friendly time management method based on alternating work periods and breaks. The recommended interval is 25 minutes of work to 5 minutes of break time, though each can be changed to suit. The tool creates Tasks, which can do just about anything you need them to, such as launch applications, open a document, open a Web site, and set a background. The built-in Task Report tool makes it easy to track and report your time.

The program's installation includes Microsoft Visual Studio Report Viewer. The main … Read more

Desktop gadgets are simple little tools that add simple little features to the desktop in Windows 7 and Vista. Simple, yes, but extremely useful. The most popular gadgets are clocks, calendars weather displays, Web feeds--stuff you need often and want fast. Clocks make great gadgets because there are so many ways to improve on the box-standard Windows system tray clock. We took a peek at ActiveX Clock Gadget, a free digital clock display that automatically changes hues. It works on 32-bit editions of Windows Vista and 7 with up-to-date ActiveX controls, or you can download a version for Windows XP.… Read more

PC Brother Software Administrator Free is a free utility for managing programs. It can terminate running processes, perhaps disastrously, and uninstall programs. In fact, it offers to uninstall your free programs and replace them with paid software that's every bit as good, though some of the programs it recommends are inexpensive or free. Many are expensive, though, and the download link doesn't tell you how much a program costs before installing it.

PC Brother Software Administrator Free's interface bears a family resemblance, not just to the developer's other tools but to similar freeware. It has three … Read more

I've been a big fan of Samsung's laptop designs, going back to the QX401 last year. While I had spent extensive time with the sleek Series 9 and diminutive Series 3, I was away on vacation when the Series 7 was first introduced. Now that one has arrived at CNET's offices, it seemed like a good time to do a quick first take, based on my first few minutes with the laptop.

Sleek metal: clean cut, brushed lines, very solid. The Series 7 is more impressive than I expected, more along the lines of an Apple MacBook Pro, and the way the HP Envy looked to our eyes for the first time. It's also a wide laptop, but that keyboard goes edge to edge. … Read more

When you're faced with renaming large batches of files, you have some options. We think you could do worse than to put Advanced Renamer Portable (ARen) on the job. It's portable freeware that can add, remove, replace, append, and otherwise alter the names of large batches of files or folders. It uses several renaming methods, including options designed specifically for multimedia files like images and songs. Since that's what most people seem to have the most of on their system, we like the program's emphasis.

ARen's interface is cleanly configured with grayish-brownish tones similar to … Read more