online

JCPenney Chief Executive and former Apple Retail Chief Ron Johnson says physical retail's best days are still ahead of it and that online shopping won't keep growing forever.

In an interview at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colo., the executive said online retail will "level out," giving physical retail stores an opportunity to offer things to shoppers that can't be had through a digital screen.

In remaking JCPenney in the Apple retail store image, Johnson said he's treating the more than 1,100 stores like a startup and that he expects losses … Read more

I've been a Sirius Satellite Radio subscriber for ages, but I'm ready to pull the plug. I still think some of the music and talk channels are pretty good, but the sound quality has always been iffy. The treble sounds like it's underwater; it "swishes" and sounds garbled. I got around that by playing Sirius over my Tivoli PAL table radio, and since the PAL doesn't have a tweeter it softens the sound enough to make Sirius less irritating. The Tivoli is also on the other side of the room, and that helps to … Read more

With more than 900 million monthly active users, the question is why Facebook wouldn't aspire to be an online bank? Given Mark Zuckerberg's ambitions to build out the platform to the point where social infuses as many aspects of our daily online existence as possible, it's hardly a radical notion.

So it was that a report surfaced earlier today to the effect that Facebook is working with Australia's Commonwealth Bank on a way to allow bank transactions "to third parties as well as Facebook friends through the social media channel." That inspired the usual scrum, … Read more

Most teenagers use social-media sites and parents are wise to it, "friending" their kids and monitoring which sites they visit at an increased rate, according to a study presented at an educators conference today.

Seventy-six percent of teens are on social-media sites, with most -- 93 percent -- of them on Facebook, according to the Pew Internet study that examined the behavior of teens online.

And the usage increases with age -- a sign that parents are sticking tight to a rule that only teens 13-years-old and up can go on social-media sites, something such sites have been dinged for failing to police in the past. … Read more

There's a ton of video content on the Internet, from YouTube clips of ridiculous cats to full-length TV episodes and movies. There are even television channels that broadcast online and can be viewed anywhere in the world. This explosion in content was quickly followed by an explosion in software meant to wrangle all this video into one easily accessible place. Free Online TV is yet another competitor in this crowded field. Unfortunately, it suffers from some of the same drawbacks that many similar programs do, including numerous broken links to content.

Free Online TV has a basic Explorer-style interface. … Read more

Kayak Software is finally ready to test the IPO waters.

The online travel company announced today in a regulatory filing that it aims to raise as much as $87.5 million by selling 3.5 million shares for between $22 and $25 each. Shares will trade on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the ticker KYAK.

Kayak, which first filed to go public in 2010, effectively put its IPO in dry dock in May after company executives decided against holding its "roadshow" with would-be investors around Memorial Day as planned. Executives were reportedly worried about the willingness in the … Read more

The bottom line: Bitdefender Total Security 2013 remains one of the best high-end security suites around. This update gives you a fully isolated Web browser for secure financial transactions.

Review: Bitdefender Total Security 2013 presents a convincing alternative to its better-known competitors. It's a strong program, with all the major tools that users expect, and some additional useful tricks in its arsenal. When it comes to efficacy, Bitdefender isn't the best in every area, but it's definitely competitive.

Editors' note: Portions of this review are based on CNET's review of Bitdefender Total Security 2012.

Installation Bitdefender … Read more

Photo editing can be an extremely tedious and time-consuming process. Fortunately, many editing tasks can be performed automatically using batch-processing programs. BatchPhoto Enterprise is an easy-to-use program that can correct, adjust, resize, crop, and otherwise edit groups of images. It's not perfect, but we don't think we've encountered many programs that are more versatile and intuitive than BatchPhoto Enterprise.

BatchPhoto Enterprise opens with a wizard that walks users through the process of getting acquainted with the program, and copious documentation is provided, including video tutorials. Once we started using BatchPhoto Enterprise we were surprised by exactly how … Read more

We never know what to expect when reviewing Internet TV programs. Sometimes they provide access to a stunning amount of programming from around the world, and other times they are cluttered with channels that never load and end up being a colossal waste of time. Unfortunately, ChrisTV Online Free Edition falls into the latter category. Although it presents a wide array of channels from many different countries, most of them didn't work for us.

The program's installation process asked us for some personal information, including who owns the computer, how many people live in the household, how many … Read more