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Today, we talk about Valentine Day's best and worst dates with ace reporter Caroline McCarthy. Also, Time Warner and Viacom are coming to Hulu, Spielberg's new video game Boom Blox, and EA's GameShow. We also hear from some our loyal listeners about Optimash Prime.

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To every sweet there is a sour; to every storm cloud, there is a silver lining. We took care of the sour storm clouds first with a demonstration of the worst downloads of 2007 on CNET Download.com. I reiterate editor Peter Butler's disclaimer that the absolute worst downloads, stuffed with spyware or adware, never make it near our site.

The amusing mudslinging for misdirected software aside, may we now present Tom Merritt's ever-humorous take on the five most awesome downloads to break out in 2007. These applications that will save you time, and possibly a whole lot … Read more

On a regular basis, Mark Sikes and I comb the download catalog looking for the absolute worst downloads for Windows that we can find. We then turn over our findings to Tom Merritt at CNET TV, who turns our selections into a rousingly entertaining video.

The end-of-the-year edition is an especially exhaustive search. We have over 75,000 Windows products live on the Download.com site, and thousands more are submitted each week. Mark and I have done the dirty work so you don't have to, and Tom is ready to count them down is his inimitable style.

One … Read more

Pity poor me. Everyone else is out drinking spiked eggnog, full of holiday cheer, and here I am, stuck as the PC Grinch, casting snarks and aspersions upon software that intelligent, dedicated people have spent long, hard hours developing. However, the Download.com users occasionally demand blood, and if I'm the one who must bear the sacrificial knife, so be it.

Before I get to the list, I'll start with a disclaimer: These 10 programs are not the worst software programs in the world. These are simply the 10 programs that I had a major beef with in … Read more

Time may choose its person of the year, but here at CNET we take our time compiling lists that really matter. So recently I joined with my fellow cell phone reviewers to pick the best and worst handsets of 2007. Out of the 123 cell phones we reviewed this year (that number doesn't include all the smart phones we examined), we had some definite winners, and some definite losers.

I'm not going to reveal them all here; instead you'll have to click through to see my picks for the best cell phones of 2007, Bonnie Cha's … Read more

You've heard of summer movie flops, but sometimes software can fall just as flat. With the thousands of software programs we see every month on CNET Download.com, there are bound to be a few duds. CNET's Tom Merritt runs through the five worst downloads of summer 2007.

Before you Apple fans start sending me nasty e-mail, remember the context. With the überpopularity of the iPod, the success of the Intel Macs, and the overwhelming hype surrounding the iPhone, Apple has been riding high for a while.

That hasn't always been the case, however, and Tom Merritt counts down the five biggest Apple flops to prove it.

If you disagree with any of Tom's picks or have an idea for a Top 5 of your own, be sure to let me know about it in the comments.

We get thousands of fantastic software programs submitted to CNET Download.com, but there are always a few that don't live up to their billing. Tom Merritt walks you through a horror show of the worst new software released on CNET Download.com this year.