ie8 fix

driving

Apple's Find My iPhone app gets driving directions

Apple today made a slight new addition to its Find My iPhone software (iTunes), with a tweak that gives owners driving directions right to a lost device.

Under the previous system, users saw only the precise location on a map with the option to refresh. The new update shows your device's location just like a point of interest within Apple's maps software, with the option to fire up driving directions by tapping a car icon.

In practice this means you can now hunt down a device's location without having to guesstimate a location and switch over to … Read more

Microsoft, Apple in battle over App Store fees -- report

Microsoft and Apple are fighting a behind-the-scenes battle over App Store revenue sharing, The Next Web reports.

Apple is currently blocking any Microsoft SkyDrive updates in its App Store until the software giant agrees to share revenue generated through its application, the site reports, citing sources who claim to have knowledge of the disagreement.

Microsoft currently offers its SkyDrive storage app to iOS users. The company rolled out the ability for users to purchase more storage from within the application. However, upon doing so, Microsoft decided that it wouldn't share 30 percent of the revenue generated through those transactions … Read more

Get a Toshiba 1TB portable USB 3.0 hard drive for $69.99

My cheapskate senses tell me not to post this, because it's so very likely to sell out right around the time I click "publish," but I just can't help it. (That's why I'm padding today's post with two bonus deals.)

Today only, and while supplies last, Best Buy has the Toshiba Canvio 1TB portable USB 3.0 hard drive for $69.99 shipped (plus sales tax where applicable). That's $20 off the regular price -- not a mammoth savings, I grant you, but still a great deal on a great drive.

What … Read more

Self-driving cars win legal approvals

Self-driving cars have long been the dream of futurists, but they came one huge step closer to reality this year, as California became the third state to legalize autonomous vehicles, and Nevada issued the first license for testing on public streets and highways. Google released a demo video of one of its autonomous vehicles carting a blind man around town in May.

How realistic is it that you'll soon spot a driverless car in the next lane over? Probably not very. But testing will certainly continue in 2013, and Google's Sergey Brin is optimistic, predicting that consumers will … Read more

Manage fonts in Windows with Cfont Pro

Windows accepts nearly every kind of font, but managing them is a different story. Freeware font managers can fill the need, and there are plenty to choose from. Veign's Cfont Pro is a powerful tool for viewing and managing your system's fonts. It can install and uninstall font packages, print and export font data, and even repair common registry errors that can affect fonts. Its Preview mode lets you see fonts before actually installing them, and a SlideShow mode displlays installed fonts one by one. Cfont Pro's extras include a glyph viewer and a Zoomer tool that … Read more

Digital storage basics, Part 3: Backup vs. redundancy

Editors' note: This post is part of an ongoing series, for the other parts, check out the related stories. This post was updated on March 29, 2013, to add more information on backing up.

One of a storage device's most important roles, if not the most important, is to keep the information stored on it safe, especially from hardware failure. Redundancy and backup are the two popular types of data protection. They are not the same, however, and it's important to understand the differences between the two.

Redundancy

In a nutshell, redundancy in consumer-grade digital storage means using … Read more

Lots of little 'lectrics at the LA Auto Show (roundup)

Take a look around the 2012 LA Auto Show and you'll see quite a few compact, fully-electric vehicles. Having spent much time creeping along at 20 mph on Los Angeles' gridlocked highways and stopping-and-going on its crowded streets this week, I can think of no better city to get excited about EVs.

We've rounded up the biggest players in this year's small EV class, many of which are currently available to consumers or will be sometime in 2013.

Chevrolet Spark EV

Chevrolet follows up its Volt with the smaller, simpler Spark EV. Based on the smallest model … Read more

Startup paid Black Friday shoppers to snap up cheap hard drives

Retailers have engineered Black Friday to whip consumers into a buying frenzy, but it turns out it can be good for startups looking for a good deal, too.

Backblaze, the online backup company that headed off a hard-drive price-hike crisis by enlisting friends and family as deputy procurement officers, found itself scouring the ads for good deals again during the holiday buying season. The result: another round of "drive farming" by people willing to help the company.

This time, though, the drive farming was open to the first 200 people who signed up to participate, and Backblaze paid … Read more

Save files to Google Drive with Chrome add-on Save to Drive

This Chrome extension is particularly useful for Chromebook users and anyone who uses Google Drive to store their files more so than their hard drive. If either of these profiles describes you, then I would urge you to give Save to Drive a try. It's dead simple to use and provides useful functionality for storing any image you stumble across in Chrome, along with HTML5 video and audio files.

When you spot such a file you'd like to keep, right-click it. With Save to Drive installed, you'll see a line -- Save image to Google Drive -- … Read more

Windows 8 sales off to brisk start

Wednesday's CNET Update is watching Windows:

A Microsoft executive revealed that 40 million licenses of Windows 8 have been sold since it came out last month. These numbers include both consumers and manufacturers, so Windows 8 isn't in 40 million homes. But to compare, Windows 7 hit sales of 60 million the first two months. Some say Windows 8 is off to an awkward start, and there is a learning curve with the new system.

Also in today's tech news roundup:

- Gmail works with Google Drive to let users send 10GB files.

- Vimeo makes it … Read more