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Hands-on with Ilford's Gold Silk inkjet paper

Those who enjoy the beauty of a high-quality black-and-white print will appreciate Ilford's newest member of its Galerie line of inkjet photo papers, the Galerie Gold Fibre Silk. It's a professional-grade inkjet photo paper, with characteristics resembling a traditional fiber-based black-and-white print. Designed for use only with photo inkjet printers that utilize pigment-based inks, such as Epson's UltraChrome or Canon's Lucia inks. Professional photographers and anyone passionate about black-and-white printing, especially all those familiar with fiber prints from a darkroom, will enjoy the look and feel of it.

Ilford Gold Fiber Silk inkjet paper is a … Read more

CNET's top-5 LED-based monitors

Over the last few months I've seen a flood of LED-based monitors released, and by "flood" I mean like four. Thing is, four is a huge improvement over the first half of the year where we saw fewer than half that number of LED-backlit monitors come through these offices.

While I'm as excited as the next person about the prospects of LED-based displays, not all of them live up to their promise of brighter screens, thinner panels, and more accurate colors.

There are a few that do and a couple others that come close. I've … Read more

Some assistance for the new 27-inch, Quad Core, Late 2009 iMacs

Apple has just released a few knowledge base articles to help users with issues they may experience when setting up and using their new iMac. These articles cover using the correct Mac OS X system software, what to do if your startup keys do not work with your wireless keyboard, and migrating from Mac OS X 10.5 with wireless migration.… Read more

Zvox's Z-Base 525: Above average sonics, unique design

Surround sound and its accouterments tend to dominate a living room, requiring an AV receiver, several speakers, stands, and wires to make the whole thing work. That's why many people choose to skip surround sound, opting instead for the tinny acoustics of their TV speakers.

Single-speaker solutions like the Zvox Z-Base 525 represent a middle ground approach, promising much better audio than your TV without all the fuss. The Z-Base 525 is particularly fuss-free; its unique design makes it look like nothing more than a pedestal for your HDTV. Even better, the Z-Base sounds better than most sound bars … Read more

Zvox's biggest, best-sounding TV speaker

Sound bar speakers vastly simplify home theater setup and installation, but their sound quality always falls short of bona fide 5.1-channel speaker-subwoofer-based systems. The single-box Zvox Z-Base575 get closer to that ideal than most.

The problem with sound bars is they're too small. Even pricey bars like Yamaha's YSP-3050 ($1,199 MSRP) can't generate full-blown home theater impact. And it's a bit bigger than average (31.5 inches wide by 6.1 inches high by 6 inches deep), but films like "Mission: Impossible III" sound tepid over the YSP-3050. The film's explosive effects lack the excitement you'd get from a 5.1 system. Yamaha's technology is amazing, but it can't produce high-impact sound from skinny cabinets. I'm not singling out Yamaha here; Denon, Marantz, Polk, Samsung, and Sony sound bars all--to varying degrees--squash dynamic range of movies.

Stepping up to the YSP-4000 ($1,600 MSRP) won't make that big a difference; in my CNET review I noted that it stumbled with big special effect-driven flicks like "Mission: Impossible III." The explosions fell flat, the bass was rumbly, and the Yamaha couldn't play loud at all. Hooking up an Acoustic Research HT60 subwoofer to add extra muscle helped a little, but the YSP-4000 still lacked punch.

Part of the problem is that almost all sound bar speakers are too small. Zvox's Z-Base575 is big and very, very deep. How deep is it? Sixteen inches! So unlike other surround bar speaker systems that can either be wall-mounted or set on a shelf, the Z-Base575 was designed to be used as a base under your TV. Don't worry, the sturdy medium-density fiberboard cabinet can support heavyweight displays. … Read more

Instant conversion maker

MConvert quickly calculates complex mathematic formulas. By performing this difficult task users can ensure accuracy and save time.

We instantly started converting our facts and figures thanks to the program's intuitive layout and its well-marked command buttons. We imagined all the practical home and school possibilities while choosing between dozens of everyday and scientific conversions ranging from temperature conversion, distance, volume, mass, time, currency, area, and more. We were relieved to find all the guesswork taken out of conversion, since the program lists all possible alternatives (for example, the currency converter lists dozens of monetary units, while temperature lists … Read more

Apple buys map service to compete with Google?

We may now have a better idea of why Apple objects to Google Latitude.

It appears that Apple has purchased PlaceBase, a company that produced a maps API called Pushpin and offered a mapping service much like Google Maps. The evidence, dug up by ComputerWorld's Seth Weintraub, first appeared in the form of a tweet in July by Fred Lalonde, the founder of Openspaces.org, a company that used PlaceBase's software, stating that Apple had purchased PlaceBase:

Apple bought PlaceBase - all hush hush. Pushpin site taken offline. Hyperlocal iPhone?

The next clue apparently came from Jaron Waldman, … Read more

JamBase updates concert-finding iPhone app

JamBase, one of the first and certainly most famous online concert-listing services, released its free iPhone app last October. It was a simple affair: you entered your ZIP code and the app returned a list of live music shows in your area over the next few days. If you had a list of favorite artists stored at the JamBase Web site, it would track those artists for you. Since then, competing apps like Bandloop and iConcertCal have upped the ante with more sophisticated interfaces and GPS targeting, which lets them find nearby shows without forcing you to enter any data. … Read more

Clear the path to the goal

Boxed In is a simple but still tricky arcade-puzzle game in which you help a cute cartoon robot escape from increasingly complex levels by pushing boxes around. Using the app's slow-paced, swipe-based interface, you can move the robot up, down, left, or right--but you can only push boxes, not pull them, so you'll have to plan out your moves well in advance to clear a path to each level's exit, while collecting required "gears" and using boxes to deactivate force fields along the way.

The interface can seem sluggish at first, but thankfully an undo … Read more