nova

Hi, I'm Catherine Hwang, a partner manager at CNET Downloads, where I manage software publisher relationships for Upload.com. Last month, we teamed up with Lavasoft to bring you an exclusive offer on one of the most popular security suites on CNET Downloads. This month, we partnered with Roxio, Novastor and ChicaLogic to bring you exclusive deals your mom might find useful.

Today only, you can help your mom easily create and share life's favorite events through Roxio PhotoShow for just $19.99 (originally $39.99). With those precious memories created with Roxio PhotoShow, you can help back … Read more

This week on preGAME, we welcome special guest Robin Yang from Candystand.com to the show. Robin tells us about the highly addictive games at Candystand and walks us through one of the new titles, UMAG.

Robin is also here today to help us check out a handful of iPad games! That's right, on today's episode we're only looking at iPad video games. We demo N.O.V.A. HD, Resident Evil 4, Metal Gear Solid Touch, and Mirror's Edge. If you're thinking about getting an iPad for gaming, this is definitely the video to watch; we break down the highs and lows of iPad gaming and debate whether the system has legs as a portable console.

Also on today's show we'll chat about the new Xbox 360 memory card update that allows users to use USB cards to save games and media. Next we'll show you a new accessory from Japan that will turn your PS3 Slim into a portable system!

Ever wonder whatever happened to Duke Nukem Forever? We'll find out as we get our hands on some leaked footage of everyone's favorite game that never was. Finally, we'll look at what's possibly the most poorly conceived Sonic the Hedgehog level ever constructed. Let's hope this one doesn't make it to the final game due out this summer.… Read more

This coming weekend, our country will be celebrating the annual Fourth of July holiday. And what better way to celebrate the rich history of the USA than with a week long tribute to some of the most bad ass American automobiles ever made? I sure can't think of a better way, so here we go with the Super Muscle Car Shootout!

This web video is actually a trailer for the Muscle Car Shootout that aired on the Speed Channel in 2006, but the cars showcased here are simply timeless. Some of the most powerful American performance car classics are … Read more

Editors' note, October 3, 2012: This is an update of a poll from May 16, 2009.

I recently visited EarsNova, a high-end store in NYC, and heard one of the best-sounding hi-fis in my experience. The store's big Rockport Technologies speakers, Constellation Audio amplifiers, and dCS Digital gear reached beyond merely reproducing music, and with my eyes closed, the music sounded as close to lifelike as I've heard. The sound floated free of the speakers; it was effortlessly clear. The illusion worked best with orchestral music, but a few purely acoustic singer-songwriter CDs were almost as palpably realistic. And that's the goal: blurring the line between hi-fi and real, live music; that's what great sound sounds like to me. Lifelike rock recordings are harder to pull off, mostly because they almost always are so heavily processed and compressed they can't sound realistic.

You don't need to be an audiophile to hear the difference between average-sounding and great-sounding recordings, but you do have to listen. Really listen.

First try this experiment and set a benchmark: Listen to someone playing an acoustic guitar, in your room. Then play a recording of an acoustic guitar. Notice any difference in the sound quality between the two? Yeah, it's not even close. If your real, live guitar player can sing, next compare the sound of that person's voice to the recording's vocal. The recording's singer will most likely sound small, tonally thin, like the voice is coming out of tiny boxes. It might be hard to tell the singer has a flesh-and-blood body connected to that voice. The live guitar sounds big and clear -- very clear -- without any edge or harshness. Few recordings of guitar sound like the real thing.

My point here is to first establish a standard of what good sound sounds like to me. I like recordings that sound realistic. After all, if the musician on the record is playing a Gretsch Synchromatic 400 Acoustic Archtop guitar, I'd like to hear its unique sound. But if the producer and engineer recorded the Gretsch through a pickup instead of a microphone, equalized its sound, compressed its dynamic range, added digital reverb, and processed it to death -- there won't be much left to the Gretsch's sound. Then it's just a generic guitar, which is why I would describe the sound of the recording as "bad." … Read more

Every home kitchen is different, and every home cook appreciates options. When kitchen appliance makers cater to choice while providing quality results, home cooks everywhere are free to perfect their craft without fear of unnecessary equipment failure. The first place to start in any kitchen is the oven. BlueStar Freestanding Ranges offer a multitude of options, while providing features that are designed to provide performance.

The freestanding ovens come in four categories, which can be broken down into three convection models and one standard oven. The Nova Burner models feature convection ranges, while the Culinary Series uses a more conventional … Read more

Stephen Wolfram has a track record of scientific breakthroughs and some controversy. He received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Caltech in 1979 when he was 20 and has focused most of his career on probing complex systems. In 1988 he launched Mathematica, powerful computational software that has become the gold standard in its field. In 2002, Wolfram produced a 1,280-page tome, A New Kind of Science, based on a decade of exploration in cellular automata and complex systems. The book stirred up a lot of debate in scientific circles. Legendary physicist Freeman Dyson described the tome as &… Read more

We're just a couple of days away from CES 2009, but rumors are already starting to fly about the new Palm Nova smartphone that is set to debut on January 8. Citing a "trusted source," CrunchGear reports that the first Nova device will have a slider design with a full QWERTY keyboard and portrait-oriented touch screen. Not surprisingly, it's been compared to the iPhone and will supposedly be outsourced to HTC like the Palm Treo Pro.

In addition, the new operating system has been described as "amazing," with full personal information management (PIM) and … Read more

Palm is rumored to be launching a smartphone on Thursday that runs Nova, its next-generation operating system, according to a report Sunday on CrunchGear.

The report, which cites "a trusted source," says the device will have a full QWERTY keyboard that will slide under the touch screen.

Palm's next-generation operating system has been delayed several times but is regarded as crucial to the company's chances of regaining a foothold in the mobile-computing market.

Nova, based on Linux, is expected to bring the Palm brand operating system into the modern era of computing. The beginning of Palm'… Read more

It's been a while since Palm has caused a stir, but the company certainly has people talking with its planned January 8 CES event. As CNET News reporter Tom Krazit reported last week, it's expected that Palm will preview its new operating system, codenamed Nova, at CES 2009, and the rumors look to be true based on new information from a Business Week article.

According to Peter Burrows at Business Week, Palm will unveil Nova and the first of a family of products in Vegas, but it's not looking to go after the iPhone or BlackBerry. Instead, … Read more