plug

Spotify is many things to many people, but one thing it lacks is an equalization feature for letting you adjust bands of bass, midrange, and treble.

Enter Equalify.me, a Spotify plug-in that nestles a 10-band equalizer neatly into the Spotify interface on Windows computers. It's free (donations accepted), and it works, as we know from putting it through its paces on bretberg101's public kraut/spacerock playlist (which, shockingly, lacks both Neu and Faust). In addition to the 10 EQ bands, you get a gain adjuster, which offers another way to control volume, and a toggle control that … Read more

Ever wanted to read personal documents on a Kindle? There's a plug-in for that.

Amazon released "Send to Kindle" today that let's users transfer personal documents from their PC to a Kindle. It seems that the divide between tablets and computers is ever shrinking.

Once downloaded and installed, the way the plug-in works is users can right-click on one or more documents, select print, then choose "Send to Kindle." The document will automatically be converted into a PDF. This plug-in can be used with any application that connects to a printer.

However, with Kindles … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Inventor Brian Tedesco holds up a nest of hopelessly entangled cell phone chargers the showroom floor, giving it a shake for dramatic effect.

"This is from a week at the Plaza hotel," he says.

"And this...is the solution."

Tedesco points to his new gadget, called Perch. It's a small go-between your wall and your gadget's AC adapter that beeps when you unplug your device from its charging cord.

The nag, which is a series of beeps at different chords, won't stop until you take your charger out of the unit, or … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Your home's electrical wiring is about to get supercharged for data speed, should you choose to use it as cabling of a computer network.

The HomePlug Powerline Alliance (HPA) announced today the availability of the HomePlug AV2 specification. This is the upgrade to the current HomePlug AV, used in Powerline AV 500 products such as the D-Link DHP-501AV, the Netgear XAV5001, or the D-Link DHP-540, that offers up to 500Mbps throughput speed.

HPA says that this new HomePlug technology enables significant performance and coverage for broadband networking over power-line wires while remaining fully interoperable with existing HomePlug AV-based … Read more

The cable for charging and transferring data from iPhones, iPods and iPads could soon undergo another major shift, switching to technology that could speed up both tasks.

In a freshly published patent application, picked up by Patently Apple this morning, Apple details a new type of cable that blends together increased power and faster data transfer technologies, including Thunderbolt.

While not going so far as to call out the technology by name, the patent application notes that the proposed cable could support DisplayPort and PCI Express--the two technologies that are bundled together in Thunderbolt's architecture.

Along with the faster … Read more

We discuss our personal tech hits and misses of 2011; what we loved, hated and was overrated. Also, Scott and Ty weigh in on what will most likely be going on at CES 2012; the who, the what, and the why.

… Read more

Volvo's V60 plug-in hybrid gets outstanding mileage but still has some spunk.

The company today said that the diesel electric "sport wagon" will be available early next year priced at 57,000 Euros, or $75,500 . It expects that 80 percent of the buyers will be companies, rather than individual consumers.

Volvo has taken a unique path in building a plug-in electric vehicle with a diesel engine. The car will drive about 30 miles in pure electric mode and then the 215 horsepower diesel engine, which powers the front wheels, will kick in.

The combination yields mileage … Read more

It's that time of year again.

If you're in the market for networking devices to upgrade your home's media-streaming capabilities, Black Friday is a great opportunity to fulfill that desire. As with everything else, not all networking devices are created equal. In fact when it comes to wireless routers, it's actually a better deal to pay the full price for one that works than getting a lemon for cheap.

But we're talking about getting the one that works for cheap here. And while I can't advise you on how great of a deal you'… Read more

DEARBORN, Mich.--Electrification is the biggest change to hit the auto industry in decades. But with little clarity on how the technology will play out in the future, automakers are laying down multiple billion-dollar bets.

After years of talking about plug-in electric vehicles, automakers can finally point to actual products, actual customers, and the beginnings of a charging infrastructure.

Yet automakers still don't know which products will resonate with consumers. The result is a spate of all-electric cars and a spectrum of hybrids built around different-size batteries.

What combination of battery and gas engine will be most popular with … Read more