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The Consumer Electronics Association held its annual summer CEA Line Shows this week in midtown Manhattan, and we stopped by for a quick look around. This is a pale, pale shadow next to CES, but at least a few big manufacturers were there to show their wares. Check out the gallery to see what a mid-afternoon June wander through a quiet bunch of tech booths feels like. We came, we saw, we took a few photos, and we went home.

Arclab Thumb Studio provides users with an advanced program for sorting, resizing, and viewing their computer's digital photo collection. With smooth direction and well-planned design this will help a lot of people get organized.

This program's professional interface was a big plus for us. Users are shown a wizard-like tool featuring screens containing various project options, all in a smooth, easy-to-use flow. The screens are so simple to navigate that most users will not need to look at the User's Manual PDF that comes with the program. Actually designing a photo album, slideshow, or batch processing job … Read more

The ArcSoft Photo Book Screen Saver presents an attractive album-style display on your computer, provided you can ignore the fact that it's a blatant advertisement for ArcSoft's Print Creations photo products.

The concept behind the screensaver is a simple one, and ArcSoft executes it nicely. Users select a folder of photos they'd like to use, and the screensaver displays them as though they are arranged in a photo album, with the virtual pages turning at a speed that the user can adjust. In fact, the speed of the page-turns and the location of the photos are the … Read more

For almost 50 years, whenever Silicon Valley's budding entrepreneurs, engineers, and start-ups have needed parts for their latest electronics innovations, they've turned to the eclectic electronics surplus superstore, HSC Electronics--also known as Halted--to power their inventions.

Tech pioneers like Apple's Steve Wozniak, Atari's Nolan Bushnell, Intel's Ted Hoff, who helped develop the microprocessor, have all searched through Halted's vast inventory in search of the capacitors, inductors, wires, and transistors to bring their ideas to life.

Like the creative minds that have come here in search of success, the long shelves and deep boxes are … Read more

The other day we got an e-mail from Jim, a reader in LA, who wrote:

"My question regards the care and feeding of headphones. From the coconut-halves sets of my youth to the in-ear sets of today, I've never failed to kill a set of 'phones within a few months. Even the two Shure sets I bought in the past year (E2C and SE110) and have tried to treat very carefully, have developed cracks and shorts where they loop over the ear."

Ah, Jim, I share your pain. A few weeks ago, my trusty Shure E4Cs developed … Read more

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few months, you might have heard that "Battlestar Galactica" is airing its final episode Friday night. Along with the "Stargate" TV series, the show brought the Sci Fi channel (soon to be simply SyFy) back from the brink of playing back old "Twilight Zone" re-runs and in-house B-movies, and into the go-to place to see the latest special effects and watch an epic story that unfolded over four seasons.

As an homage to all the joy it's brought us over the years, … Read more

Often, asking Windows do your bidding is like disciplining a two-year-old child. You'll get your way in the end, but only after some resistance.

These six top-rated Windows applications optimize XP and Vista--everything from managing the programs that launch on start-up to freeing up your RAM cycles, to plucking out broken links in your Registry.

Ten years ago, Charlie Ayers met Larry Page at a bike shop in Palo Alto, Calif., to interview for a chef position at an Internet search start-up called Google. He was hired soon after as employee number 53. Ayers spent the next seven years redefining the idea of the corporate food environment, growing the Google cafe from a kitchen that served 50 people a day into a legendary network of cafeterias inside the Googleplex that serves thousands of meals daily, with organic ingredients sourced largely from local farmers.

In January 2009, after spending a few years traveling the world exploring … Read more

Last October we told you about a successor to the DS Lite, the Nintendo DSi. The DSi features two larger screens, two 0.3-megapixel cameras, and an SD card storage slot. In addition, the new DSi will allow users to download software and add-ons over the Internet from a specially designed DSi store.

The editors at CNET sister-site GameSpot were able to get their hands on a DSi and performed an in-depth analysis of the device as well as a physical comparison to the DS Lite. Check out some select photos from their feature in our slideshow.

While the DSi … Read more