TimeLine Layout

April, 2016

  • 2 April

    FiiO’s sweet little $40 USB digital converter

    FiiO’s K1 USB digital converter has been buried under a pile of crap on my desk for months, but it’s not my fault. The K1 is so darned small it’s easy to lose track of, but now that I’ve gotten around to listening to it I’m here to spread the news: this super-affordable gizmo is …

    Read More »
  • 1 April

    April Fools’ Day 2016: Hamburger Helper’s Lefty drops hip

    Lefty, the longtime mascot for Hamburger Helper, has dreams that go beyond the food industry. He also wants to be a mover and a shaker (that’s a great pun if you think about it for a second) in the music industry. It’s an admirable and lofty dream for someone who’s just a white glove with a face on it. Related …

    Read More »
  • 1 April

    Massive, mind

    I would like to peek inside Ben Tardif’s dreams. I suspect everything’s in motion, spheres rocket through strange landscapes and marbles are the currency of imagination. Tardif is the creator of an epic machine called Marble Mountain. Marble Mountain sits in a small warehouse. It stands 8 feet (2.4 meters) tall and 12 feet (3.7 meters) wide. It’s mostly crafted …

    Read More »
  • 1 April

    Your Google Wallet card is about to die. Here’s what you need to know

    Google is shutting down its Wallet Cards, the physical debit cards for Google Wallet accounts. The debit cards let Wallet users spend money from their Wallet account when shopping at a retailer that doesn’t support contactless NFC payments. Google Wallet’s physical payment card is being retired. Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET When does support for Wallet Cards end? Wallet Cards will …

    Read More »
  • 1 April

    AT&T’s three budget

    Wallet-watchers: AT&T has just announced three new Samsung Galaxy phones that come in for well under $200. Their entry-level features won’t bowl you over, but they’re not meant to — these are strictly low-price plays. The $130 Samsung Galaxy Express Prime GoPhone goes on sale today, followed on May 6 by the $170 Samsung Galaxy J3 and $80 Galaxy Express …

    Read More »
  • 1 April

    My Apple gig: Helping ‘ePeople’ untangle the World Wide Web

    Back in the ’90s, when Webcams were hot and we used the World-Wide Web Worm as our preferred search engine, I worked for a tiny online village of Apple Mac users called eWorld. Apple dabbled in this easy-to use community between June 1994 and March 1996, and eWorld became my first full-time job in college. From 1995 to 1996, I …

    Read More »
  • 1 April

    Crave giveaway: Arccos Driver system for tracking your golf performance

    Congrats to Robert K. of Pulaski, Mississippi, for winning 32GB of computer memory from Crucial in last week’s giveaway. With the 2016 Masters tournament starting next week, you may have golf on the brain. Luckily, so do we. This week, we’re giving away an Arccos Driver, a brand new performance-tracking system from Arccos Golf. The system includes a tiny, super …

    Read More »
  • 1 April

    Owl vs. drone: We test the ultimate flying machines

    The DJI Phantom 4 may come packed with a tonne of intelligent flight modes to help you send it soaring through the sky, but what we really care about is how it stacks up against Mother Nature’s finest — a barn owl. In this special video we put beak against lens, wings against propellors and feathers against, well, plastic, in …

    Read More »
  • 1 April

    How to pair your Amazon Echo Dot with a Bluetooth speaker

    The Amazon Echo Dot has arrived, joining Amazon’s original Echo and the new Echo Tap in what is now a stable of smart, voice-powered products. If there was one complaint with the original Echo, it was that its speaker lacked oomph. The Dot’s has even less (because it’s tiny), but that’s OK because you can pair it with the external …

    Read More »
  • 1 April

    Not even Google’s Android can pull BlackBerry out of its tailspin

    We’re finally getting a clearer picture of whether people are giving BlackBerry another chance. And things don’t look good. BlackBerry said Friday that it sold 600,000 phones in its fiscal fourth quarter, well below Wall Street’s expectations of 850,000 and also below the 700,000 units it sold in the preceding quarter. Until now, things had been a little murky. BlackBerry’s …

    Read More »