When listening to a particularly enjoyable song on Apple Music, two buttons vie for your attention: the heart and the plus sign. Should you tap the heart to like the song, or should you tap the “+” to add it somewhere? And while we’re on the topic, what’s the story with the star button that …

A while back we told you about Charlie, a free app that monitors your calendar and researches contacts you’re meeting with. An hour before the scheduled time, it sends you notable information about the person you’re meeting and the company he or she works for. Now, Charlie has released a Chrome extension designed to make it easier to connect with …

The consolidation of fitness apps continues. Runkeeper on Friday announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Japanese footwear manufacturer Asics. The popular fitness app is the latest to be bought by a large athletic apparel company. Under Armour purchased MapMyFitness for $150 million in November of 2013, followed by acquisitions of both Endomondo and …

You have hundreds of different types of files on your PC, and probably multiple programs that can open each one. Windows makes it easy for you to open up these files by setting up default programs for each file type — images files, for example, will open by default in the Windows 10 Photos app. But what if you’re not …

Windows 10 is pretty new, but that doesn’t mean we’re not already looking for ways to speed it up. One built-in feature that can help us accomplish this is “fast startup,” which combines the hibernation and shutdown properties to give you a slightly speedier boot-up experience. Fast startup is sort of like shutdown light — when fast startup is enabled, …

I strapped a familiar-looking Oculus Rift headset over my eyes. This one’s been doctored: Around the lenses, a ring of sensors has been implanted. In front of me, what appears to be a foot away, there’s a screen. I see my own eyes, looking back at me. And they’re dilating. Eyefluence is a startup that claims it’s cracked the code …

Nextbit’s Robin is ready to leave the nest. There aren’t many in the flock. The San Francisco startup, which captivated Kickstarter last year by promising a phone that taps the cloud for massive amounts of storage, will open its online store in the coming days. Enlarge Image The Robin phone promises 100GB of cloud storage. CNET Chief Design Officer Scott …

5G is coming. Eventually. The fifth generation of wireless technology heralds a significant speed boost for Internet connections. On a 5G network, you could download the latest “Star Wars” film in seconds, not the minutes needed on today’s networks. Its expected ubiquity will also help connect millions of devices, from lightbulbs to farm gear, allowing them to talk to one …

Internet radio giant Pandora may be looking to switch channels. The music-streaming service has held talks about selling the company and is working with Morgan Stanley to line up potential buyers, sources tell The New York Times. Talks are said to be in a preliminary stage and may not lead to a sale, the Times’ unidentified sources said. Pandora declined …

Hibernation is a state you can put your computer in instead of shutting it down or putting it to sleep. When your computer hibernates, it takes a snapshot of your system files and drivers and saves that snapshot to your hard drive before shutting down. This allows your computer to start up faster, because it doesn’t need to re-establish those …

Of all the ways tech companies are gunning to drive virtual reality, Google may be working on something no one else has done yet: make the experience self-sufficient. The search giant is developing a stand-alone headset, which would be the first VR goggle that isn’t powered by a smartphone, laptop or gaming console, according to a report Thursday by The …

CNET’s Cheapskate scours the Web for great deals on PCs, phones, gadgets and much more. Questions about the Cheapskate blog? Find the answers on our FAQ page. And find more great buys on the CNET Deals page. TV remote. DVR remote. Roku remote. Sound bar remote. That’s a lot of remotes cluttering up your coffee table. Sure, sometimes you can …

T-Mobile introduced its Binge On feature late last year. The program allows anyone with a data plan of 3GB or more to stream unlimited video that won’t count against your data cap. The list includes Netflix, HBO, Amazon Video, Sling TV and dozens of other streaming services. The major exception is YouTube. Binge On automatically reduces streaming video quality (over …

The Timeline feature in Google Maps is relatively accurate when it comes to tracking where you’ve been. It’s especially useful if you misplaced a personal item sometime during your day, like a credit card, an ID or your wallet. Google Maps already has a solution for editing locations that are incorrect within your Timeline (businesses that are close together usually …

Your Instagram video from a day at the beach got a lot of likes, but how many people actually viewed it? Instagram will soon tell you. In the next several weeks, you’ll start to see the number of views below any videos you share. Below videos in your stream you’ll see the number of views, plus you can also see …