spots

Though gold may not fluctuate as much as the dollar, it's nice to keep track of how prices are doing. Gold/Silver Spot Price Widget delivers updates right to your home screen for both gold, platinum, and silver. It doesn't let you customize much about its appearance, but the prices are updated often and prove to be pretty accurate.

Gold/Silver Spot Price Widget features a simple, 2X2 whiteboard with the prices for gold, silver, and platinum. The price appears to be price per ounce, but it doesn't tell you how it's measuring the price or … Read more

Air bags, antilock brakes, and stability control. CD players, power locks and windows, and air conditioning. These are all features that at some point were optional (and sometimes costly) in vehicles, but over time we've come to expect them in every new car on the road -- whether that's due to legislation or changing buyer tastes. As cars continue to evolve, so grow our expectations of what should be included in the sticker price. I've rounded up a few optional car tech features that I'd like to see make the jump to being standard equipment.

Bluetooth … Read more

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The top-scoring cars of 2012 are, happily, an oddball assortment. If they were just a bunch of Audis and BMWs, I'd be as bored as you would. But cars with many different brands on their trunks came through this year, delivering great CNET ratings in a variety of price categories; though, of course, pricey cars do tend to have an advantage.

So if you want to see the year that was in cars and tech, sit back and enjoy this … Read more

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Some 15 years after its introduction, the Toyota Prius still defines the hybrid car business. It's an amazing dominance, comparable with the iPod's position in the portable media player market. Prius models outsell all other hybrids combined in the U.S. but that doesn't mean they always will. Enter the Ford C-Max. The name is about as goofy as "Prius," but the mission is serious: to give the Prius some real competition and perhaps push it … Read more

Hewlett-Packard has launched a new printer that can serve as a hot spot, though it's available only in India and China for now.

The HP Hotspot LaserJet Pro M1218nfs MFP lets up to eight people hop on to wirelessly connect their mobile devices to the Internet.

As a multifunction printer, the device comes with the usual print, copy, and scan features. It also offers several options for printing wirelessly, including Apple AirPrint, HP ePrint, and HP wireless direct. HP's Smart Install tries to ease the burden of installation by letting you set up the printer without the need … Read more

The extramarital affair scandal engulfing former CIA director David Petraeus has brought massive public attention to the convoluted U.S. laws governing e-mail privacy. We've got some quick tips for keeping your electronic communiques private.

Before getting into the more technical side of things, there are some simple behavioral changes you can make.

Always log out of your e-mail when you're done using it. This goes for any online service, including social networking sites. Logging out prevents a cached password from keeping you signed in even after the browser has been restarted.

Never use your preferred personal e-mail … Read more

You may or may not know that the International Space Station is visible from Earth with the naked eye. If you didn't know, NASA wants to make sure you do. The space agency has created a service that will send e-mail and text alerts when the ISS is above your location.

It's called "Spot the Station." The system allows you to give your e-mail address and receive notices when the ISS, the third brightest object in the sky after the sun and moon, is orbiting above your area. Given that the ISS passes over roughly 90 percent of the Earth's population, most people will have a chance to spot the space station sooner or later.… Read more

While it's easy to understand the benefits of using a Wi-Fi network, it's not always a simple process to get one set up correctly. NetSpot is a tool that aims to help you map and understand your existing network or plan and set up a new network.

The program's professional, easy-to-follow user interface guides you through the survey process. By using sample maps or hand-drawn maps, NetSpot users get visual feedback of their network's signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), with a simple color map. Red is used for the best SNR, and blue for worst. As the publisher … Read more

Modern luxury vehicles are available with a wide range of driver assistance technology and use a variety of sensors to power that tech. Lane departure warning systems use front-facing cameras to watch the lines painted on the road. Blind-spot monitoring uses sonar arrays to check the area around the vehicle for obstructions. Rear proximity detection also uses sonar arrays to detect objects behind a reversing vehicle. The 2013 Nissan Altima will be able handle all three of these functions with only one rear-facing camera.

Nissan's system uses a rear-facing camera that constantly watches the area behind and to the … Read more