Stories by Yardena Arar

Sony Ericsson, Samsung Battle for Megapixel Supremacy

How many megapixels can you squeeze into a cell phone? On the eve of the big Mobile World Congress wireless telecom trade show here in Barcelona, Spain, the race is on. At pre-show press conferences, Samsung and Sony Ericsson between them unveiled th...

Belkin president disavows fake user review offers

The president of Belkin has disavowed the actions of an employee who apparently offered to pay for positive user reviews of the company's products-and for marking negative reviews as "unhelpful."

Fore! Garmin to debut GPS for golfers

Golfers, take note. Garmin's newest GPS line may not improve your handicap, but at least you'll know exactly where the greens are. The Approach G5, the first Garmin touch-screen handheld designed for golfers, will come preloaded with detailed maps fo...

Six common HDTV showroom pitfalls

Many shoppers are looking to take the HDTV plunge these holidays and beyond -- and stores eagerly await them.

RIM's BlackBerry Storm: awkward and disappointing

Research in Motion's BlackBerry Storm looks handsome enough, but it will disappoint prospective buyers hoping for a credible touch-based iPhone alternative.

Personal finance 2.0: A wealth of new Web apps

Using the Web to manage your money used to mean logging into a plethora of banks and other institutions to check balances and maybe pay bills. Now various next-generation Web services are building on these basics by offering one-stop account tracking...

10 ways to waste time on the web

Want to idle away a few minutes--or hours? These sites will help you test your knowledge, name that tune, or write a haiku. You'll wonder where the time went.

BuySafe

BuySafe.com rates e-commerce sites for security and privacy features, and offers merchants that it deems to be up to snuff the option of offering BuySafe's bonding service.

Still Nervous About Online Shopping? Really?

Last October, I wrote about Assurz, a service that-for a small up-front surcharge-would let you return anything you bought at a participating retailer, on very generous terms: no questions asked, a 90-day window, and no shipping charges or restocking...

Microsoft Surface surfaces in Las Vegas

For those who were wondering whether Microsoft's Surface tabletop touch-sensitive computers were going to be anything more than retail sales tools, here's an update: The Surface is making its debut as a bar coffee table in Las Vegas on 11 June.

Apple's $199 iPhone: How can it be so cheap?

Apple's announcement of a next-generation 3G iPhone wasn't a big surprise for most people at Monday's World Wide Developers Conference. But the low prices at which the new models will debut -- US$199 with 8GB of memory and US$299 with 16GB -- certain...

Computex tech demo: Wi-Fi instead of Bluetooth?

I'm a big fan of wireless mice, and at home -- where my only PCs are notebooks -- I've been using wireless optical notebook mice for years. All use a dongle, and while the dongles have been getting smaller, they're prone to breakage and sometimes I j...

New Web 2.0 services to try out now

The Web 2.0 Expo at San Francisco's Moscone Center West, doesn't take up a huge amount of space: Startups predominate, and most don't have money for big flashy booths. But there's more cool new technology per square foot here than at many big trade s...

RIM's BlackBerry Bold beats Apple to the 3G punch

Amid swirling rumours about the impending announcement of a 3G iPhone, Research in Motion today introduced its slickest, speediest, most powerful, and most connected BlackBerry to date: the BlackBerry Bold 9000.