pictures

It's easy to click away with your digital camera or phone and save tons of snapshots to your PC. If you've ever admired someone else's immaculately trimmed and framed digital pictures, there's no reason yours can't look the same; all you need is software that can create borders and frames for your images. But a tool that's too difficult to use is almost worse than no tool at all, especially if you spend a lot of time learning to use it but end up no further than when you started. Not all picture framing … Read more

Do you spend more time with a computer, smartphone, or tablet than your significant other? Your life serves as the elementary premise for a futuristic love story, "Her," in which the film's star, Joaquin Phoenix, falls in love with an interactive operating system.

The movie, directed by Spike Jonze and made in collaboration with Annapurna Pictures, also stars it girls Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, and Olivia Wilde. … Read more

TestDisk and PhotoRec from CG Security are freeware utilities bundled together in one portable download. TestDisk is a simple but powerful tool for analyzing and recovering disk partitions, including some unusual selections such as Xbox and Mac partitions. PhotoRec is designed to recover lost files from your digital camera's memory or any similar memory device. It can handle most memory types, including USB, CompactFlash, MMC, and SmartMedia as well as optical disks and your hard drives. Though PhotoRec and TestDisk are bundled, they're separate utilities with separate executables.

PhotoRec is designed to be totally safe to use, and … Read more

This year the gap between the picture quality of the best LED/LCD TVs and the best plasma TVs has grown wider than ever. Unless you're interested in overspending for buying a Sharp Elite, there's no 2012 LED TV that can come close to the picture quality of even midlevel plasmas like the Panasonic TC-PST50 and Samsung PNE6500.

But maybe you're simply not interested in plasma. If that's the case, then check out the following list of 2012 TVs that (A) employ an LCD panel illuminated by LEDs and (B) perform better than most such TVs. The list doesn't include the Elite and the Sony XBR-HX929 simply because they debuted in 2011; both are excellent performers, still current and exceedingly expensive. It also considers picture quality only, so if you're interested in seeing the best LED TVs overall, including some that scored well according to our other TV reviews criteria, here ya go.

The list appears in descending order of picture quality.… Read more

Anton Vickerman wanted to make one final and lasting statement before going off to prison for copyright violations. It appears he won't get to even do that.

Vickerman, 38, was the operator of Surfthechannel.com, a Web site that provided links to unauthorized copies of TV shows and movies. A British court on Tuesday sentenced Vickerman to four years in prison. He is believed to be the first person in the United Kingdom to be incarcerated for linking to pirated material.

On the eve of going to prison, Vickerman decided to leave a message on Surfthechannel.com, but he … Read more

The photos and videos coming from NASA and the Curiosity Rover on Mars are truly stunning. It's fun, exciting, and even a little puzzling at times to see the landscape and how another planet so far away compares to Earth.

Both the official NASA and Mars Curiosity Twitter accounts are great sources to keep up on the latest news and photos coming from the brave little rover so far from home. But, we can't sit and watch Twitter all day long, making the chance of missing a photo a real possibility.

While browsing If This Then That shared … Read more

Update (Wednesday, 2:18 p.m PT): The answer to Sunday's challenge -- which 45 people got right -- is Walt Disney Studios and Walt Disney Animation, in Burbank, Calif., as seen from near the Hollywood sign. My apologies for not publishing the answer sooner. Thanks to everyone who played today, and throughout this year's contest, and to all, please come back next year for the Road Trip 2013 Picture of the Day challenge.

Welcome to the final day of the Road Trip 2012 Picture of the Day contest. This is your last chance to win some cool … Read more

Update (Saturday, 7:55 p.m PT): The answer to today's challenge -- which 154 people got right -- is the Walt Disney Concert Hall, in Los Angeles. Thanks to everyone who played, and to all, please come back Sunday for the final Road Trip 2012 Picture of the Day challenge.

Welcome to the final weekend of the Road Trip 2012 Picture of the Day contest. This is your chance to win some cool prizes as you test your skills at recognizing pictures.

For the last eight-plus weeks, I've posted a new photograph from my various travels every … Read more