AT&T-owned prepaid carrier Cricket Wireless has slashed the prices of a number of its smartphones for the holiday shopping season. Starting Friday and running through January 7, 2016, customers can walk away with phones that are effectively free. The end of the year typically sees smartphone vendors and carriers competing aggressively for new customers. Black …

Editors’ note: This giveaway has a Twitter component. Please read the rules below carefully. We’ve turned off comments on this article to avoid confusion. Congratulations to Brian M. of Eagle, Idaho, for winning a Blast Motion Easton Power Sensor in last week’s giveaway. This week’s giveaway is a fitness package, to help you stay motivated during the darker winter months. …

Visually speaking, Windows 10 isn’t that different from Windows 8 — but for some reason, Microsoft elected to make the new operating system’s title bars white, with no option to change them. Thankfully, that option has been restored as part of the Windows 10 update that’s rolling out today. Ready to bring a little color back to your windows? Here’s …

Apple, known for keeping its products simple and elegant, may be getting away from the simple part, at least when it comes to developers. It wasn’t so long ago that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs liked to point out Google’s Android , with developers forced to make multiple versions of their apps to support the varying Android devices. It turns out …

“Hey Cortana, how many dollarydoos will it cost me to get to Bondi Beach?” While it may take some time for Cortana to pick up the full Australian lexicon, Microsoft has announced that its “personal digital assistant” will be available on Windows 10 devices in Australia from today. Just like Apple’s voice assistant Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana learns the speech patterns …

Firefox is now officially an iOS app. Launched on Apple’s App Store Thursday, Firefox is the latest major mobile browser available to iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users. Apple’s built-in Safari is the default browser for iOS, the software that powers those Apple devices, and Google’s Chrome has long been available for them. Opera also makes a browser for Apple’s …

Verizon Wireless is giving its globetrotting customers a break. The nation’s largest wireless carrier on Thursday introduced TravelPass, an option that lets subscribers use the call minutes, texts and data from their existing phone plans while traveling. Even customers with unlimited voice and text messages will get that capability when abroad. TravelPass, which is available now, costs $2 a day …

When you come across a link in an app on your iPhone or iPad, sometimes the link opens a page in an app’s own built-in browser and other times it opens a Safari-based page in the app via iOS’s Safari View Controller. The latter is a better experience because it remembers any accounts you are logged into in Safari and …

Spotify knows which bands you’re listening to. Now it aims to tell you when they’ll be in town. The music-streaming service has a new feature for iPhone and Android users that will generate listings for users based on location and listening preferences. Starting Thursday, you can open the Browse tab on Spotify and select “Concerts” to see a personalized list …

Erik Huggers is ready to jump-start Vevo. Six months ago, Huggers took command of the company, best known as home to many of the most popular music videos on the Internet. A revamp of its iPhone app, launched Thursday, is the prelude to more changes, he said, as Vevo updates its original content, considers new partners among social networks and …

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. Enlarge Image Vivitek Big TVs are getting cheaper all the time, but once you get past around 65 inches, prices skyrocket. If you …

Sennheiser’s new Orpheus electrostatic headphone system was designed without budgetary constraints or limits, so expectations among the audiophile cognoscenti are running high. For my listening session in New York City on Tuesday, I loaded a USB drive with familiar tunes to evaluate the Orpheus. I’ll tell you upfront the sound was, in many ways, more realistic than I’ve heard before. …

Apple is reportedly talking to US banks about introducing a payment system that would let people transfer money directly to each other via nearby smartphones. Apple’s patent application for an encrypted person-to-person payment system was published in July. Apple’s negotiations to build such a service include major banks such as J.P. Morgan Chase, Capital One Financial, Wells Fargo and US …

Amazon’s dark new sci-fi show “The Man in the High Castle” is too “expensive” and too “dangerous” for traditional TV broadcasters, according to the show’s writer and producer Frank Spotnitz. “The Man in the High Castle” is a 10-episode series funded by Amazon and available exclusively to viewers of Amazon Video. Based on a 1962 novel by Philip K. Dick, …

Android Wear watches have previously been stuck using either Wi-Fi or Bluetooth to connect to a smartphone to do most things. But now Google has added another option: cellular connectivity. Smartwatches are still limited in that they generally need to be synced to a smartphone to make and receive calls and messages and carry out certain other tasks. That poses …