friday

Friday Poll: Did stances on tech issues sway your vote?

Some major technology-related political hot potatoes have been tossed around this past year. The Stop Online Piracy Act may have gotten the most attention.

CNET broke down the presidential candidates' stances on a variety of tech issues before the election. For example, when it came to SOPA, Romney spoke out against it, while Obama danced a little more delicately around the issue.

The election will be shaping the direction of tech-related legislation for several years to come. It has already had an impact by weeding out three SOPA-sponsoring congressmen.

As an informed geek voter, how much did tech issues sway … Read more

The secret Black Friday confessions of a certified cheapskate

Because I'm The Cheapskate, this is the time of year when people nudge me and say, "Bet you're getting pretty excited about Black Friday, huh?"

You know Black Friday: it's the day after Thanksgiving, the day when stores, both brick-and-mortar and click-and-order, serve up the very best deals of the year, slashing prices so low you'll be willing to freeze your butt off in an overnight line like you were waiting for Stones tickets.

But, frankly, I'm not that excited. In fact, allow me to confess: only once in my life have I … Read more

Friday Poll: Which e-mail service do you use?

Selecting an e-mail provider is a very personal choice, like picking out a deodorant or a mobile operating system or pledging your allegiance to a particular king in "Game of Thrones." You may be a longtime Gmailer or an old school Hotmailer or a dedicated Yahooer.

New numbers from ComScore show Gmail has topped Hotmail as the most popular e-mail service in the world with 287.9 million unique worldwide visitors in October. Hotmail edged in just under that at 286.2 million unique visitors. Yahoo Mail took top honors in the United States with 76.7 million visitors.… Read more

Friday Poll: Are you ashamed of your BlackBerry?

Has the BlackBerry become the tech equivalent of a pimple?

That was the suggestion in a New York Times article this week quoting a few BlackBerry owners who say their old RIM smartphones have become a point of shame in their daily lives.

Rachel Crosby, a Los Angeles sales rep, told the paper that she goes as far as to hide her BlackBerry from view at parties and conferences for fear clients will judge her for it.

This got us wondering if most BlackBerry users actually feel the same way. … Read more

Holiday season may be merry for electronics bargain hunters

It may be a very merry holiday season for consumers seeking big bargains on electronics.

IHS iSuppli, a market research firm, says consumer-electronics companies will likely make "extremely steep" price cuts to attract buyers during the key holiday selling season.

That means the consumer-electronics industry is going to post only "scant" 1.3 percent revenue growth this year, according to IHS, but consumers may be getting some pretty great deals.

Buyers have largely been cautious with spending because of worries about the weak global economy, but companies are hoping attractive prices will help boost demand.

Here'… Read more

Friday Poll: Do you still carry a dedicated MP3 player?

With Apple's new round of iPods comes a fresh round of questions about the usefulness of dedicated MP3 players. Smartphones these days can all hold a decent amount of MP3s and we carry them with us wherever we go. Do we need a portable device just for music?

The excitement surrounding new iPods is a fraction of that surrounding new iPhones, but Apple keeps dutifully updating the line with new colors, shapes, and capabilities. There are still plenty of other MP3 players from other brands available, too.

I have an old-generation iPod Touch that sits in an alarm clock … Read more

Friday Poll: How much of the debate did you follow on Twitter?

Twitter launched a new star during the presidential debate on Wednesday, but he wasn't wearing a suit and tie. Big Bird from "Sesame Street" was the subject of an explosion of tweets after the topic of cutting funding to PBS came up between President Obama and his Republican rival Mitt Romney.

There was a point during the debate where the phrase "Big Bird" was tweeted 17,000 times a minute. That's some serious action for a fictional creature. He also spawned a slew of satirical accounts. This all just goes to show how Twitter … Read more

Friday Poll: Would you ever wait in an iPhone line?

Hush. Be quiet or you'll startle them. We are observing the annual migration of the Apple fanboys. Magnificent herds gather in patient lines, awaiting the arrival of their newest pack member, the iPhone 5.

It's Friday, but, more importantly, it's iPhone 5 release day. You might be in line, reading news about all the people in line, or back from waiting in line (you lucky dog) with your shiny new smartphone.

I've done my time in an Apple line before, way back when the iPad 2 came out. In my day, we had to wait 5,000 hours in the freezing cold with no shoes, climb Mount Everest to reach the Apple Store at the top, walk back home uphill, and sacrifice a goat to the Verizon gods to get the 3G turned on.… Read more

Friday Poll: Are we in the ho-hum era for smartphones?

The iPhone 5 boasts some undeniable improvements over the previous generation. Thinner, lighter, and faster are all good things, though they may not get geeks flooding into the streets and dancing with sheer exuberance.

CNET's Roger Cheng goes into detail on why he thinks the new iPhone is ho-hum and won't wow anyone. In short, he doesn't see anything groundbreaking about it.

CNET reader Renegade Knight sums up the feelings of a lot of iPhone fans: "It's a good phone. Radical redesign of a working design is bad juju. Just keep improving it incrementally and you are far better off than trying to hit a home run with a radical change every year."… Read more