professional

The head of foam on a beer is important. Too much, and you're stuck with a mouth full of fluff. Too little, and you're wondering if the carbonation is correct. Buy a Professional Beer Foam Making Mug from Brando, and you may take control of your beer head destiny.

Press down on a little lever, and watch the beer go whoosh and foam up at the top. Brando refers to it as "joys for all people." The under-21 crowd could always use it to add some head to root beer, I suppose.… Read more

The dating Web site eHarmony got hit by the same group that released a list of LinkedIn member passwords yesterday, so be sure to change your passwords for both if you have accounts.

Buzzfeed also parsed through the list of leaked passwords to reveal some pretty depressing sentiments from employees. While many accounts used overly simplistic passwords like "LinkedIn" or "password1," some of the more disturbing pass phrases include things like "suicide," "solonely," "iwishiwasdead," and "divorce." They're still not very strong in terms of security, so be sure to add a special character or a number during the bleak changeover.… Read more

Microsoft could be aiming to simplify Windows 8 by trimming the number of editions, or SKUs, sold to the public.

Two files from Hewlett-Packard's Web site uncovered by blogger Stephen Chapman from CNET sister site ZDNet appear to indicate how many Windows 8 editions Microsoft will sell. The files list the specific flavors of Windows supported by drivers for an HP laptop smart card reader. HP has since removed the references to Windows 8 from the files, but images of Google-cached versions saved by Chapman show just the six following SKUs:

Arfa Karim, the youngest girl ever to become a Microsoft Certified Professional, passed away in her native country of Pakistan on Saturday owing to complications from an epileptic seizure and cardiac arrest. She would have turned 17 next month.

Granted the MCP title in 2004, Karim was only 9 years old at the time, making her the youngest MCP in Pakistan and reportedly the second youngest in the world, just behind India's Mridul Seth, who became an MCP at the age of 8. Her excitement about technology first bubbled up after her father bought her a PC, mainly to … Read more

Nikon hits the important highlights with this replacement for the D3S: improved autofocus, increased durability, better performance, and more-competitive video capabilities.

Updated 1/10/12 with slideshow.

We've been anticipating this one for a while--Nikon Rumors pretty much nailed it down on December 19--but a copy of Réponses Photo surfaced with the story just ahead of Nikon's formal announcement.

According to the magazine, the D4 will replace the D3S; unlike Canon, Nikon doesn't seem to be merging its vertical-gripped pro bodies into a single line. It should also be available before the 1D X, as well as cheaper, supposedly shipping in February for about $6,000. The lower price is unsurprising given the slightly slower burst and less magnified viewfinder, which are the features in a dSLR for which it's increasingly expensive to eke out 1 more frame or a fraction of a multiple. In fact, it reportedly will retain the (quite good) viewfinder from the D3S.

Here are the specs as far as I know them (I will backfill with more details when they become available): updated at time of announce:… Read more

In the advanced, technologically adept society we've carved out for ourselves, it's not the most difficult thing in the world for monitor vendors to produce monitors that perform well, fit for graphics artist professionals.

As long as the resources are available, the process of slapping a P-IPS panel into a 24-inch or larger screen (a combo that usually yields high performance) has become commonplace.

So, with good performance becoming an expected thing, monitor vendors have no choice but to entice buyers in other ways. With depth of customization, connection options, ergonomic support, and price being the most efficient of those ways.

Here are five monitors that combine the best in performance, connections, customization, and value. If you get paid to create or augment visuals on a computer, you'll definitely want to check these out. … Read more

The Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2011, held last weekend at the Denver Marriott Tech Center Hotel, showcased a vast array of affordable and high-end audio designs. Hundreds of manufacturers from North America, Europe, and Asia were represented at the show. RMAF has a very different vibe than the Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas every January--RMAF is more of a grassroots affair.

I noted a trend to more stylish audiophile speakers, like the 28-inch tall Davone Ray ($7,500/pair) and the curvy, aluminum-bodied Dali Fazon F5 ($4,495/pair). Most bona fide high-end speakers are big and bulky … Read more

BranchOut, the Facebook-friendly professional network that aspires to kill LinkedIn, is branching out itself. It's pushing its pages out to their own Google-friendly URLs and giving users their own vanity domains.

If you'd like to grab your branchout name, the company has made an early reservation system available to the first 500 people who e-mail cnet@branchout.com. Send a note there and they'll send you back instructions to claim your URL, presumably something nice you can put on your resume, like branchout.com/JoeBob

I like BranchOut's positioning. It's setting itself up as the jobs network for everyone, not just for the professional class that's already on LinkedIn. CEO Rick Marini is going after classes of workers, like soldiers returning from deployment and students new to the job market, who aren't on LinkedIn and who are not about to be. Their world is Facebook. And as work and professional lives are merging, Marini wants to bring the professional network to them, instead of seeing them go elsewhere to get it, where they'll have to rebuild their connections.

"They're all playing FarmVille," Marini says of people starting job searches. He's just giving them a job network where they're already hanging out. It's priced right for these users, too: free. … Read more

There's an endless supply of Web-based tools that can convert just about any measurement from one unit to another. If you need to convert really obscure units, though, or need a conversion tool on a regular basis, try Unit Conversion Professional from Inventive Design. It's a free Flash-based tool that converts more than 800 pairs of units in 32 categories. It also includes a calculator and a library of scientific formulas.

Unit Conversion Professional's dialog-style interface opens with its menu page, which offers two scrolling lists, View Formulas and Convert Units. The conversion units are categorized from … Read more