numbers

Drivers in the United Kingdom will have another thing to worry about every time they pull up to the pump. In addition to wondering if they'll have enough money in the bank to pay for the exorbitant price of fuel, they may need to check if they paid their car insurance premium on time.

In an effort to crack down on auto insurance scofflaws, the British government wants to team up with gas stations to identify drivers who haven't paid their premiums, and prevent them from filling up. The proposed plan will use automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) … Read more

Hours after saying it sold a "record" number number of third-generation iPads this past weekend, Apple has given that record a tally.

Today the company said it has sold 3 million of the devices since launching on Friday in more than a dozen countries. That number does not include preorders of the device, which went live the day the product was announced.

"The new iPad is a blockbuster with three million sold--the strongest iPad launch yet," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, in a statement.

The news comes on the heels of Apple announcing plans to offer a quarterly dividend to shareholders, as well as a stock repurchasing program. In a call with analysts following the news, Apple CEO Tim Cook dodged a question about how many iPads the company had sold during its initial weekend on sale, saying only that it was "a record weekend." … Read more

Numbers for iOS works well for creating spreadsheets and organizing data while away from your desktop, with a multitude of useful tools and a smart interface design to make your spreadsheet work easier. On the iPhone the app works admirably, but the smaller screen size makes it a bit less easy to use than the iPad version.

The app comes with a Getting Started file that walks you through everything from basic spreadsheet use to more-complicated features using an intuitive tabbed interface. As you learn the various features, the Getting Started file directs you to try them on your own … Read more

This was a big week for Apple with the announcement of the new iPad, and though I got to play with it a little bit at the event Wednesday, I really can't wait to put it through its paces when it's finally released March 16.

With that said, the new iPad wasn't the only thing released on Wednesday; Apple also announced the availability of several updates to iOS apps, including the new iPhoto for iOS.

This week's collection of iOS apps is a little different than usual. Instead of a themed collection, I'm going to list the Apple apps released this week so you can have them all in one place. Click the name of the link to head to our download page, or click the link at the end of each one to read our hands-on articles about each of the apps.… Read more

Julia Sets are specific kinds of fractals that are of interest in some pretty complex mathematics. Named for their creator, French mathematician Gaston Julia, JuliaShapes is a free tool that generates Julia Sets using quaternion numbers, which can be represented as pairs of complex numbers and so are ideal for fractals. The math is complex but the tool is simple, with sliders for adjusting the fractal's parameters and high-quality rendering via anti-aliasing.

You can open multiple instances of JuliaShapes' simple, compact interface. Aside from sliders tweaking the View, Render, Julia settings, Light settings, and Generalised settings, the only buttons … Read more

Yesterday, we got some new numbers on the number of Vita hardware and software units sold, so I thought it would be a good time for a Vita launch recap, with a quick look at what's gone right and what's gone wrong.

First, the numbers Sony says it has sold more than 1.2 million Vita units worldwide since the portable launched in Japan on December 17. As CNET blogger Don Reisinger noted in his post, Sony didn't break down the sales figures by country, but acknowledged that this month's launch across the U.S. and … Read more

ICANN, the Internet overseer that's begun a process to expand Net domains dramatically beyond the likes of .com and .edu, said today 100 organizations have registered to get involved.

The expansion concerns generic top-level domains, or GTLDs. ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) spent years putting the new program together so the Internet could use Web and e-mail addresses ending in .paris, .canon, .hotel, and .eco.

As of Monday, 100 registrants successfully joined the program, but ICANN didn't say who they are or what GTLDs they're seeking to establish. Organizations have until March 29 … Read more

Apple offers a number of options for securing your data on a Mac, including enabling FileVault for whole disk encryption in Lion (or home folder encryption in prior versions of OS X), and encrypted disk images for securing collections of documents.

In addition, as with other software developers, Apple has included options to secure individual documents for some of its programs, such as those in its iWork productivity suite.

To do this in iWork, create or open a document in Pages, Numbers, or Keynote, and then open the inspector window by clicking its icon in the toolbar or by pressing … Read more

Sudoku seems so timeless that you'd be forgiven for thinking it's ancient, like backgammon and chess, but it originated in 1986, so it's newer than "Thriller" but older than the World Wide Web. Based on numbers, it's totally independent of language or culture, helping propel it to global popularity in newspapers, magazines, and software. Sudo Sudoku Puzzle Game is a free sudoku game offering classic sudoku puzzles in three levels of difficulty.

The puzzle's layout is very simple: a square, divided 3x3 into nine squares, each with nine squares itself. The numbers 1 … Read more