Google, Yahoo accused of funding piracy

Google and Yahoo's advertising networks are accused of financially supporting those who pirate music and movies online, according to a report from the University of Southern California.

The school's Annenberg Innovation Lab studied which ad networks placed the most ads on sites accused of infringing music and film copyrights and today issued a list of the top 10. Google is No. 2, and Yahoo came in at No. 6.

OpenX, a company based in Pasadena, Calif., that supplies digital and mobile advertising tools, was the top advertiser on pirate sites, the report said. To help compile the list … Read more

Interact with OS X screensavers

Apple includes a number of screensavers in OS X that provide you with options to exercise your display and prevent LCD ghosting, CRT burn-in (if you still use a CRT monitor), or other persistent images from being a nuisance. As with most screen savers, you can deactivate them by moving your mouse or pressing a button on your keyboard; however, this may not always be the case, and depending on the screensaver being used you may instead find the screensaver will persist even when some inputs are pressed.

Advance photos in slideshows Apple includes a number of slideshow screensavers that … Read more

How to hide purchased apps using iTunes

Downloading almost every promotional app or game you come across in the App Store is a good idea, but it's also one that will result in your purchase history being littered with random apps. Some of them you'll need to use one day; others you'll never look at again. Anyone who has tried viewing their purchased history on an iOS device knows how long it takes for the list to appear -- it's ridiculous.

To clear up your purchased history, you'll need access to a computer with iTunes installed and a few minutes of your … Read more

The new year is in gear

Welcome to 2013. We're getting ready to welcome America to a trifecta of supersize TV events in the next 40 days:

January 20: AFC Championship Game February 3: Super Bowl XLVII February 10: The 55th Grammy Awards

We call these "tent pole" events because they get most of America watching CBS, bringing them under our "big tent." The value of big event TV is more than just the audience gathered and the advertising dollars collected; it's the hugely valuable exposure we get for marketing our shows and building awareness for millions and millions of … Read more

TV in Ultra HD, new designs at CES 2013

Wednesday's CNET Update bends it like Samsung:

Today's roundup looks ahead to the International Consumer Electronics Show, which kicks off next week in Las Vegas. Many companies are already teasing to what will be unveiled:

- Samsung is touting a new TV design, which could be vertical.

- Ultra HD 4K TVs will be big, literally. Westinghouse will be showing its 110-inch 4K LED TV.

- Future LG televisions will no longer have florescent backlights, making LED the standard across all of the company's LCD TVs. LG will also showcase new smart TV features, including voice commands. … Read more

Moebius House a super-sized strip of math wonder

The Moebius House doesn't look or sound real. It's designed to be built on a Korean island in a forest growing on volcanic rock. It's inspired by the unending brain teaser known as a Mobius strip.

Design firm Planning Korea has tackled some creative projects in the past, including designs for a mega-bridge over the Han River and a cocoon-shaped house that looks like it could hide a giant insect inside. It's no wonder those same architects saw a Mobius strip as a good basis for a house.… Read more

Samsung Evolution Kit makes smart TVs smarter

Last year Samsung promised that certain of its 2012 Smart TVs would get an upgrade called a "Smart Evolution Kit," and yesterday the company announced the upgrade would be available soon.

Buyers of the LED-based UN75ES9000, UNES8000, and UNES7500 LED TVs, as well as the PNE8000 and PNE7000 plasmas, will soon be able to buy the kit at a price between $200 and $300, Samsung told CNET. It installs by simply sliding into a slot on the back of the TVs.

The kit is basically a brain transplant for the TVs. It includes a new A15 quad-core 1.… Read more

Soundmatters debuts FoxL Dash 7, superslim Bluetooth speaker

A lot of people know about the Jawbone Jambox, but few know that Soundmatters, which makes the FoxLv2 speaker, provides the driver technology for the Jambox.

At CES, the company will be showing off a very slim Bluetooth speaker -- or mini sound bar, as the company describes it -- the FoxL Dash 7.

It comes in three different colors, lists for $249, and should be available late in January. If you preorder it, Soundmatters is offering a $30 discount, bringing the price down to $219. That's still a bit steep, but if past products are any indication, the … Read more

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Congress speaks, tech investors party -- like it's 2013

Well, it took long enough.

But after finally clinching a (literally) last-minute deal to break a weeks-long deadlock over the so-called fiscal cliff, tech investors had a field day on the first day of trading for 2013.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index closed up more than 3 percent on the day, led by the usual roster of big names with Google finishing at $723.25, up 2.24 percent and Apple gaining almost 3 percent to close at $548.07. Facebook, which for much of the spring and summer had been a neglected stock, continued its recent climb, finishing up … Read more

Records made of ice, cool again

You don't have to be the Audiophiliac (CNET's resident hi-fi guru Steve Guttenberg) to know that vinyl is cool again, but one band has taken this idea to its extreme.

Swedish indie band Shout Out Louds has announced that the first 10 copies of its new single "Blue Ice" will be made out of, appropriately, ice.

The band, with the help of the TBWA ad agency, created a silicone mold from which the listener could freeze their own 7-inch single. Apparently normal tap water resulted in air bubbles and other contaminants that could make the needle skip out of the groove, so the band includes a bottle of distilled water in the package.… Read more