match

Athlete body-match app locates your Olympic doppelganger

As I watch the Olympics, I imagine myself in the competition. I'm swimming for a medal, rocketing through the 100-meter dash, and rowing my heart out.

There are some problems with my flights of fancy. I don't have a swimmer's build, a runner's height, or a rower's stamina. To find my best Olympic sport match, I have to turn to the BBC's Olympic athlete body matcher.

Enter your height and weight and it will show you where you are on a plot of Olympic athletes and which Olympian you are closest to in size. The athletes range from a tiny gymnast to a hulking shot putter.… Read more

Get started with Amazon's scan-and-match Cloud Player feature

Amazon just announced a pretty big update to its Cloud Player service. The enhancements include scan and match, increased storage, and the free upgrading of lesser audio tracks to 256 Kbps.

With the new service, gone are the days of 5GB of free storage. You can now store all of your Amazon purchased music, along with 250 songs purchased elsewhere for free. Or, you can pay the $25 fee for 250,000 songs worth of storage per year.

The scan-and-match service will scan your computer's hard drive for music, and then match your music catalog with Amazon's catalog. … Read more

Duplicate music woes? Let iTunes Match clean up the mess!

Years ago, I went digital with my music. I ripped all my CDs, bringing everything into Windows Media Player. I didn't start with the iPod. The Rio Karma was my main MP3 player. Over the years, my music library moved from computer to computer. It migrated into iTunes (and into iPods, iPhones, iPads....). It gained new music from purchases or the occasional rare CD that I'd buy. And my music got really messy.

I shouldn't really care that somehow, I ended up with two or three different copies of the same songs. What does it really matter, … Read more

Get a bare-bones matching game in Angry Birds Matching

Lovers of Angry Birds might be excited to find Angry Birds Matching, a spin-off puzzle game. However, we can't say this program is much to get excited about. It's an extremely basic -- and not particularly interesting -- puzzle game that is only related to Angry Birds inasmuch as it's ripped off the game's characters. If you like Angry Birds, stick to the original, and if you like puzzle games, there are innumerable options out there that are both more fun and more challenging.

The format of Angry Birds Matching will be familiar to anyone who'… Read more

How to turn off Auto-Renew for iTunes Match

I happily plunked down $25 when iTunes Match was released last November. I loved the idea of accessing my iTunes music library from my iPhone and iPad. Since then, however, I ponied up for Spotify Premium, which I greatly prefer to iTunes Match. Between Spotify and Pandora, I rarely find myself firing up iTunes, and I can't remember the last time I used iTunes Match to tunnel into my iTunes library from my iPhone or iPad.

I suspected that my iTunes Match subscription would auto-renew after a year, and it turns out my suspicions were correct. If you do nothing, you'll drop another $25 for another year of iTunes Match. It's easy to turn off auto-renew for iTunes Match, if you know where to look.… Read more

Zynga's Matching with Friends for iOS is likely to be a hit

Matching with Friends (2.99, full version - Free, ad-supported version) is another in a long line of Zynga apps that let you play turn-based games with a friend on mobile devices. But instead of playing word games loosely based on Hangman, Scrabble, or Boggle, this time you'll be strategically placing matching colored blocks on a gameboard, then sending your move to a friend.

Like other Zynga games, Matching with Friends makes getting connected with your friends easy. Upon launch you'll be asked to sign in through either your Facebook or Twitter account. Once logged in, you can search for other players from your friends list or get automatically matched with a random player.… Read more

Amazon's music cloud is licensed by all top labels

Amazon's cloud music service is fully licensed by the top-four record labels, numerous sources have told CNET.

The labels and Amazon aren't talking, but my sources say Amazon is expected to roll out new features for the company's cloud-music offering in the United States sometime in July.

We reported on Tuesday that Amazon had wrapped up cloud deals with Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and EMI, and was in negotiations with Warner Music Group. Information is coming in now that Warner Music Group was actually among the first to sign.

The ways in which the licenses … Read more

Who says Silicon Valley forgets you if you're over 40?

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--It's nearly 10 a.m. in the City Council chambers here, and 43 people are waiting for their turn to speak.

These are not citizens with civic matters on their minds; divided into two lines that stretch out from either side of the podium in the center of the room, these veterans of Google, Cisco, NASA, Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo, Microsoft, Boeing, Sun, and others, are here looking for a new lease on their professional lives.

One by one, they lean into the microphone to introduce themselves. They mention where they've worked in the past, list their skills, … Read more

The importance of tracking prices after you buy

True story. A couple weeks ago I purchased a Sigmac LE55ABD 55-inch HDTV from Wal-Mart for $899. That being a particularly good deal on a 55-inch TV with 3D, my intention was to write about it -- but the model has been out of stock since I received it, so I've held off.

Of course, I've been checking Wal-Mart's site almost daily because I'm keen to write my review. (Wal-Mart is currently the only store that stocks this model.) Yesterday, I discovered that the LE55ABD was still unavailable -- but the price had dropped to $549. … Read more