test

Google announced on Friday the release of a number of updates to its Blogger publishing platform--well, sort of. The updates have gone into Blogger in Draft, the service's beta platform, with the expectation that they'll eventually become full features.

The updates will seem a bit humdrum for people who don't use Blogger, but for those who do, it's a set of important baby steps toward shaping the service to fit customer feedback. That's especially important for Google, as this is one niche of the Web where Mountain View doesn't have a huge lead: there … Read more

OK, I admit it. I want options, even though, most of the time I don't have much use for them. Take pocket-size external hard drives, for example. I want them to be compact, light, pretty, bus-powered, and especially I want them to support USB 2.0, FireWire 400, and FireWire 800. (I would take eSATA, too, though, that wouldn't make sense until it's bus-powered capable). However, the truth is, I've used mostly just the USB 2.0 connection for personal purposes. So today, I decided to find out if FireWire 400 and FireWire 800 are worth … Read more

On launch day, the Get Firefox site experienced an outage for at least an hour--just before Mozilla was expected to make the new version of its Web browser available for download. Reporter Stephen Shankland joined me in the podcast studio today to talk about what happened, and whether it'll affect Mozilla's goal to set a new software record.

About a dozen DNA companies have been issued cease-and-desist letters to stop selling their consumer genetic test kits. NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander finds a mysterious white substance in the Martian soil (Is anybody else channeling Jack Skellington after … Read more

More than a dozen companies that market genetic testing directly to consumers have been hit with cease-and-desist notices from California's Department of Public Health, following consumer complaints over the accuracy and cost of the tests, according to an Associated Press report.

The 13 companies that received the cease-and-desist notices include Navigenics and 23andMe, which counts Google and Genentech as its investors, according to the report.

Mountain View, Calif.-based 23andMe has been covered on CNET in the past--most recently last month--primarily because its co-founder Anne Wojcicki is married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

Health officials are focused … Read more

EPCOT CENTER, Fla.--Ah, lawyers.

I was sitting inside a small dome, antsy to get going on the special Segway tour of this famous theme park that I had arranged. But before they would let me or any of the others on the tour head out and ride around on our gyroscopic human transporters, we had to sit through more than half an hour of tedious, but entirely practical, training.

As our instructors told us how to get on and how to get off, how to speed up and how to slow down and so many other crucial things, I … Read more

A couple months back I attempted to test two 30-inch displays--the Samsung SyncMaster 305T and the Gateway XHD3000 Extreme HD-- at the same time using CNET Labs' current distribution amplifier (DA), the Extron Electronics D2 DA4 DVI D2 DA4 DVI. This device allows up to four displays to simultaneously view the same video signal from one system. For years we've used this device to not only speed up testing, but to do accurate direct comparisons as well. Unfortunately the native resolution for the aforementioned 30-inchers is 2,560x1,600, and the maximum resolution the Extron supports is only 1,920x1,200. So, without a means to test them simultaneously at their native resolutions I was stuck in a bind. I could have tested them one at a time, but since our testing--which includes DisplayMate--has a high level of subjectivity to it, it's always best to do direct simultaneous comparisons, instead of testing one display today and then waiting a couple days to test the next. Testing them simultaneously allows you to see the exact differences between the displays.

So I delayed the testing and the review for a few weeks. In the meantime I got in touch with a colleague at DisplayMate, Ray Soneira. He put me in contact with a company called Kramer. Kramer manufactures a number of distribution amplifiers including the Kramer VM-2DVI. This particular DA is Dual Link compatible and supports each 30-inch display's 2560x1600 resolution. So now I could test both 30-inch displays simultaneously at their native resolutions in DisplayMate and in our current games test, World of Warcraft. However whenever I attempted to run either our Kill Bill Vol. 1 DVD or our Swordfish BD on both displays at the same time, the DRM gods reared their ugly heads and denied me salvation. So when testing how each display handles disc-based movies, I was forced to evaluate each display one at a time. The Kramer VM-2DVI is not advanced enough to circumvent DRM tomfoolery, unfortunately. That said, we're still very pleased that the VM-2DVI allowed us to do the bulk of our testing as fairly and accurately as possible.

The issue of not being able to view certain disc-based movies simultaneously on two or more displays may not be an issue for long, as CNET Labs is considering moving away from using movies--and even games-- to evaluate the quality of a display. The reason being that video images generally move too quickly to do a picture quality comparison, whereas static images such as high-quality photos can be studied as long as necessary in order to examine their quality. No decision has been made as yet, though, but look for more on this in a future Inside CNET Labs post.… Read more

If you occasionally experience "ringing in the ears" after exposure to loud sounds or concerts, you may be losing your hearing. To find out where you stand check out Digital Recordings' hearing test CD. It can be used to set a baseline of your hearing, and if you're geeky enough, retest yourself the day after attending a loud concert, working with power tools, or riding a snowmobile. A few hours or even a day later your hearing acuity will be significantly reduced. It's kinda like a preview of what's to come, if you don't stop abusing your ears.

That short-term deafness is sometimes referred to as Temporary Threshold Shift (TTS). But repeated episodes of temporary hearing loss, with insufficient recovery times between exposures will eventually lead to permanent hearing loss. At that point there's no need to keep reading the Audiophiliac blog. … Read more

CBS' $280 million darling Last.fm has unveiled a small, somewhat unexciting portion of its services this morning called "Playground." The space will be a new test bed for works-in-progress features that aren't quite ready for prime time and need a little user testing to work out the kinks. While lacking in eye candy, some of the tools are actually quite useful for music discovery.

Starting today there are three to play with: multi-tag search, artist name variations, and a listing of the tracks that make it the most to the weekly top 10. Of the bunch, … Read more

I'm sitting here, reading my morning e-mail and what pops up but a press release for a new dating site that purports to be "exclusively for intelligent people."

Called, wonder of wonders, IntelligentPeople.com, the site says that to sign up you must first "pass the IQ test required for admission."

Now, my first instinct was to look at the calendar. It's not April Fools' Day, right? No, I think that happened already. Maybe the people behind this site weren't smart enough to notice that it's way past April 1.

Well, snark … Read more