speed

While it's got Sync, tabs on top, and a menu button, Firefox still lacks one feature that all the other major browsers have in one form or another: the "speed dial." Originally from Opera, the feature is the visual implementation of your most recently or most frequently visited Web sites on the new tab page. Firefox add-ons have stepped up to fill the dial void, but implementation in each is uneven.

Speed Dial 0.9.5.8 (download) is the most robust of the four add-ons we're looking at today. It's highly customizable, offering the … Read more

Those worried about what location information their phones are gathering might want to scrutinize their car navigation systems first.

Police in the Netherlands have used aggregate data from TomTom's satellite navigation systems to install speed cameras where drivers tend to exceed the speed limit, TomTom said yesterday. The practice doesn't involve any individual data, but TomTom is barring it in the future after customers objected.

The company's sat-nav systems can send position data back to TomTom, and the company uses the information for purposes such as routing people around traffic jams and providing accurate estimates of journey … Read more

The latest stable version of Opera 11 debuts today with a faster Turbo, an expanded Speed Dial, and some plug-in tweaks. Opera 11.10 for Windows (download), Mac (download), and Linux (download), also makes a handful of other changes to the browser, notably adding in more HTML5 support, mail client improvements, an updated rendering engine, and better battery management on laptops.

The changes to Opera Turbo and Speed Dial are the most apparent changes in Opera 11.10. The Norwegian company says that Turbo is four times faster than before, and Opera spokesman Thomas Ford said that those speed improvements … Read more

WinZip System Utilities Suite offers a one-stop shop for optimizing, defragging, and generally cleaning out your system--and it does a pretty great job, adding extras that will come in handy whenever you need to perform routine maintenance. The interface smartly mimics many of the utilities in this genre--with various tools on the left, and the main window showing the options for each tool--making it easy to clean each area of your system quickly.

Like many modern system utilities, WinZip offers the option to be as involved with the process as you want to be. From the Home screen, you can … Read more

A Web performance company has concluded that a high-end Android smartphone, Samsung's Nexus S, is faster at Web browsing than an iPhone 4. Apple, though, says the company's methodology has a significant problem.

Blaze Software concluded after loading 45,000 Web pages from Fortune 1000 companies over 3G and Wi-Fi that the Android phone is faster than the iPhone. The test concluded the Nexus S was 52 percent faster on average, beating out the iPhone 84 percent of the time.

Nonsense, said Apple.

"Their testing is flawed. They didn't actually test the Safari browser on the … Read more

Opera announced today the opening of its own mobile app store.

The new online Opera Mobile store is offering both paid and free apps designed for a variety of phones, including those running Java, Symbian, BlackBerry, Android, and Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS. The company launched the new store with help from mobile app marketplace Appia, which provided the storefront e-commerce technology.

Opera is specifically looking to reach users of its own mobile browser by setting up the store's mobile Web site as a Speed Dial link. Opening the site on a mobile device prompts users to either select … Read more

Editors' note: The video battery results for the Motorola Xoom were corrected from the original post. The original post contained results not in line with our final testing methodology. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.

During the deluge of iPad 2 coverage last week, you may have missed CNET's handy tablets table. In it we gave an overview of the major non-Windows tablets already released and those soon-to-be released.

For the few tablets we actually have in the CNET Labs, we're able to go a bit more in depth with what each has to offer. … Read more

Today's show title comes from the Sloppy Joe scene in "Billy Madison" and continues our weeklong tribute to Adam Sandler's comedic repertoire. We know how you kids like 'em shloppy!

Jeff uses the first bit of the episode to bemoan the Washington, D.C., legal system for its use of traffic-ticketing speed detectors in deserted 40 mph stretches of road.

Take a look at the video and let us know if you think Jeff's ticket is warranted, taking into consideration his admission of guilt on a live, recorded podcast that is definitely admissible in a court of law. Cool story bro!

Now onto the first of today's stories: game company THQ is organizing an anti-North Korean rally in San Francisco to protest the country's dictatorship and abhorrent human rights violations.

The walk from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Yerba Buena Gardens will feature speeches by economic experts, musicians, and the launching of 10,000 balloons.

But the other side of the story is that THQ is also throwing the rally to promote its upcoming shooter game called Homefront that puts the player in control of an American soldier challenging North Korean forces in a dystopian occupied United States. Keeping with last week's discussion of the violent realism in Call of Juarez, could this be another case of too real, too soon?… Read more

Update: This post was updated on March 1, 2011 to reflect graphical options we previously overlooked in the Dungeon Defenders game. We'd previously stated that the iPad version of the game had more aliasing than the Xoom, but overlooked an option in the game to smooth out the graphics and have since updated the 3D graphics section. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused. Thank you.

The tablet wars will be in full swing in the next couple of weeks. Last week, we witnessed the opening salvo with the release of Motorola's Xoom. The Xoom is … Read more