people

Homeless man designs amazing speakers

Kevin Nelson may be homeless, but his story isn't so different from countless other speaker designers I've met. Aspiring speaker designers never had it easy, but nowadays it's a lot tougher to break into the business.

Nelson says he first started building speakers when he was a kid in high school, tinkering with drivers and building cabinets. With a few investors lined up, and prospects looking good, he was planning on exhibiting his inventiveness at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last year.

The U.S. Navy veteran's personal life, however, took a turn for … Read more

Palm Pre wins Best of CES 2009 and People's Voice Award

On Saturday, CNET, in partnership with the Consumer Electronics Association, handed out its Best of CES 2009 Awards, including Best in Show and the People's Voice Award. And this year's big winner? The Palm Pre.

The Palm Pre smartphone took home both honors and became the first cell phone/smartphone to win the Best in Show since CNET started presenting the Best of CES awards in 2006. The Palm Pre went up against some stiff competition, including the Sony DSC-G3 and the Sony P-series Lifestyle PC. So why the Pre?

Well, it was a combination of things. First, … Read more

PeopleBrowsr smashes social feeds together

PeopleBrowsr is a new service that can show you all your activity streams from various social sites and nanoblogs, like Twitter and Friendfeed. It also adds additional features to Twitter, such as grouping your contacts. It solves some real problems, but I found it clunky to use.

Users of the AIR app TweetDeck will get PeopleBrowsr immediately. Like TweetDeck, PeopleBrowsr lets you open up multiple Twitter streams at once. You can see, for example, the Twitter stream from your friends, the stream of people replying to you, the stream from a continuously running search. PeopleBrowser displays three streams side-by-side. If … Read more

More people-searching coming to U.S. thanks to Yasni

Yasni, a people search site that was originally only available to European visitors, announced Thursday that it's launched a U.S. version of the site. The move is in step with competitor, 123people, which recently brought its service to the U.S.

According to the Yasni, the U.S. version of its site will allow visitors to search for people across the globe, provided information exists on the Web, and will scrape links, images, social networking profiles, blogs, news results, and videos to find the desired person. Yasni believes that information is what users covet most.

"We run … Read more

People-search sites Reunion.com, Wink to merge

Social network Reunion.com has made a new friend: people search service Wink. The two have merged in a new deal that promises to make it dramatically easier to find people on the Web.

Early next year, the merger will produce "an entirely new brand," the companies said. The two have not said what its name will be, nor have financial details been disclosed. With the dual technologies of Reunion and Wink, the companies say that they will be able to search more than 700 million social-networking profiles. They'll be able to search profiles on MySpace, Facebook, … Read more

123people launches U.S. site to help you find anyone

123people, a service that collects information available on the Web about people from sources like Flickr, Google, and Facebook, announced that it has started operating in the United States. Previous to the announcement, 123people was only available in Europe as it was working the kinks out in its beta.

"After months of private beta, tweaking, and adding new features to improve the high-powered people search, 123people launches to the U.S. public," a company representative wrote in a blog post. "Now anyone can search for everyone they want to know."

123people, which competes with other people-finding … Read more

NYT's TimesPeople feature enters public beta

The New York Times has started rolling out TimesPeople, a sharing-and-recommending tool that the publication first announced earlier this year. It's essentially an extension of the free user accounts that are already required to read the Times' Web site: You can now build up a friends list, recommend stories to people you know, and see what they've been recommending or commenting on.

In other words, it's a social news feed for Times readers. You can also sync it up with your Facebook account to push your feed--stories you've commented on or recommended--to your profile on the … Read more

Blu-ray releases for the week of August 12

This week we have Oliver's Stone's The Doors, with Val Kilmer's riveting portrayal of a volatile 60s icon, another Jean-Claude Van Damme film to add to the many other films in his cinematic canon, and Smart People, starring Ellen Page; you know, that actress who starred in that unknown, Oscar-winning indie film (sarcasm) called Juno.

7 Seconds (Sony) Beat the Devil (Blu-ray Only) Belly (Lionsgate) CJ7 (Sony) The Doors (Lionsgate) Elvis: Viva Las Vegas (CMT) Felon (Sony) Half Past Dead (Sony) Kiss of the Spider Woman (City Lights) Last Time I Saw Paris (Blu-ray Only) Maximum Risk (Sony) Prison Break: Season Three (Fox) The Secret (2008) (Walt Disney) Smart People (Walt Disney) xXx: State of the Union (Sony)… Read more

The 404 138: Where the show is now called The 202

Today's show starts off a bit rough. Wilson's still gone and our guests Rana Sobhany and Eric Litman are nowhere to be found, so it's the Jeff and Justin show for the first half. We do our normal thing and chat about old people getting it on until BAM! Rana and Eric arrive and all is well again. They give us the scoop on their newest business venture, Medialets, and we also discuss the YouTube versus Viacom lawsuit. Thanks for coming on the show, guys! Episode 138 Download today's podcast

'New York Times' goes social with TimesPeople

The New York Times has added a new feature to its Web site that takes a few cues from Facebook and Digg: TimesPeople, now in beta.

TimesPeople users can build up friends lists and can see a "news feed" of which stories their friends are recommending, sharing, and commenting on. Times online readers have been able to comment on stories, as well as rate reviewed restaurants and movies, for some time now, but recommending is new.

TimesPeople is currently available only as a Firefox browser plug-in, but software engineers told CNET News.com that it would eventually be … Read more