bonus

Men in Black 3: Movie Touch brings pop-up everything to your iPad

You know how most movies appear letterboxed on your iPad? Those black bars are kind of a waste of space.

So what if you slid the movie upward and filled the empty bottom area with, you know, stuff? Things like actors' filmographies, still images and art from the movie, little bits of trivia, sharing and social-media options, and so on?

That's the idea behind Men in Black 3: Movie Touch, a free iPad app designed to enhance the experience of watching -- wait for it -- "Men in Black 3."

Although the app is free, it limits … Read more

iPad Mini, 4th-gen iPad reviews

While CNET's New York office works to get power back after the storm, we're bringing you the Update show from our San Francisco office. Wednesday's top tech stories include:

- Apple judgement day: Read CNET's reviews of the iPad Mini and the latest full-size iPad. The Wi-Fi versions of the Mini and updated iPad arrive in stores on Friday.

- Give 4G connection to an iPod Touch with a $99 Freedom Pop sleeve.

- If you're buying the deluxe Wii U game console bundle, Nintendo has a perk for downloading games: 10% of every dollar … Read more

Apple's latest top executives get $50M stock perks

Apple's newly-minted top executives will have good reason to stick around in the form of a hefty stock bonus that finishes vesting in four years.

New filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission show that Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of Mac Software Engineering, and Dan Riccio, Apple's senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, were both given 75,000 shares of company stock as part of their promotions last week.

Those grants, currently worth $50.62 million, vest at three separate points over the next four years. The first batch of 25,000 vests … Read more

Earn coins by catching fish

Fishing Joy is the iOS port of a popular Asian arcade game, ostensibly about catching fish with nets but really about quickly calculating probabilities, taking risks, and earning coins.

Fishing Joy is a pretty game, with a top-down view of colorful fish swimming around a tropical undersea environment. You want to catch the fish by firing a net at them, and you only have two controls: you can tap on where you want the net to go, and you can tap on your net cannon to determine your net's size rating, from 1 to 7. You're very likely … Read more

What's missing from the Kindle and Nook? Support for printed books

Having just come from the unveiling of the latest Nook e-readers, I'm feeling more than ever that the future of reading will come in tablet form. I'm already "that guy": I read all my latest books on my iPad via iBooks or the Kindle app. And yet, there's something big--something obvious--that e-readers are missing. It's something that magazines, newspapers, DVDs, and Blu-rays have already figured out.

A way to marry print books and digital ones.

I see bookstores around me closing every day. I'm part of the problem. Here's the vile thing I do: I browse through a bookstore like a vulture. I finger through books. When I find one I like, I buy it, right there, on my iPhone--on the Kindle. The bookstore loses the purchase. I'm a horrible person. And yet, I'll keep doing it. Because those big, bulky physical books don't come with download codes to get e-versions, and right now, I'd rather choose digital. There has to be another way.… Read more

Apple gives most of its top execs $60M bonuses

It's bonus season at Apple.

A flurry of new filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission show Apple's top executives getting bonuses with big payouts that hinge on them staying with the company through the end of 2016.

The company on Wednesday doled out 150,000 shares each to most of its senior vice presidents, short of recently-minted SVP Eddy Cue, who received a slightly smaller 100,000-share bonus, and design guru Jonathan Ive, who is an SVP, but does not fall under the SEC's section for directors, officers, and principal stockholders. That works out to just … Read more

Cook given 1 million share bonus as new Apple CEO

Following this week's management change at the very top of Apple, the company's board has awarded new Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook with a hefty bonus.

In an SEC filing that was posted to Apple's investor site this afternoon, the company notes that Cook has been given 1 million restricted shares of Apple stock, half of which will be vested in five years time. The rest will be vested in 2021, contingent upon Cook still being at the company:

"In connection with Mr. Cook's appointment as chief executive officer, the board awarded Mr. Cook 1,… Read more

Match colors and shapes for high scores

Shape Shift is a free, ad-supported puzzler, a classic color-matching game played on a grid, but with a couple of twists that make this app stand out.

The setup should look familiar to fans of the genre: you play on a 9-by-7 grid of colored blocks, and the goal is to match up--and take out--adjacent groups of four or more of the same color. In addition to being red, yellow, orange, green, or blue, each block also has a triangle, square, or circle on it, and you can swap any two blocks that share the same shape. The scoring and … Read more

Google gives employees 10 percent raise, cash

In an apparent move to stave off defections to competitors, Google announced it is giving all its employees a $1,000 cash bonus and a raise of 10 percent, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The raises, which take affect January 1, 2011, apply to all 25,000 employees at the Internet giant, according to an e-mail to employees penned by Google CEO Eric Schmidt and first revealed by Business Insider. "We want to make sure that you feel rewarded for your hard work," Schmidt wrote. "We want to continue to attract the best people … Read more