tips

Just about every home theater receiver comes with an automatic speaker setup and calibration system: Denon, Marantz, and Onkyo feature Audyssey; Pioneer has MCACC (multichannel acoustic calibration); Sony's is called DCAC (digital cinema auto calibration); and Yamaha's proprietary system goes by the name YPAO (Yamaha Parametric Room Acoustic Optimizer). The systems handle the basics like determining the sizes of all the speakers, setting speaker and subwoofer volume levels and the speaker-subwoofer crossover point, measuring the distances from the speakers to the listener, and checking that all of the speaker cables are correctly hooked up. Some autosetup systems also employ equalization to balance the frequency response of all the speakers, and they try to minimize room acoustic problems.

To accomplish these goals, the systems send test tones through all of the speakers and the subwoofer, and they all use a microphone to capture the sounds of the speakers. Autosetup is a great idea, but there's no guarantee you'll have a perfectly adjusted home theater sound after the test tones have run through all of their beeps, whooshes, and thumps. The volume levels of the speakers may not be perfectly adjusted, the speaker-to-listener distances may be inaccurate, and the subwoofer volume may be too loud or too low. In the worst cases, the autosetup sounds worse than doing no setup at all.

These malfunctions can be caused by a number of things: your room may not be quiet enough, microphone placement can have an effect, or your subwoofer's built-in volume control may be set too low or too high. I'd recommend checking that all of the speakers are wired "in-phase," meaning red/+ and black/- connections are consistent at the speaker and receiver ends. Some autosetup systems check the wiring, but try to get it right in the first place.

I recently met with Chris Kyriakakis, Audyssey's CTO and founder, to talk about new developments at Audyssey, and while I had his ear, I brought up my concerns about autosetup problems. He followed up with a list of tips that generally apply to most autosetup systems. There's a lot of useful information about Audyssey setup on the company's Web site.… Read more

In October 2006, security researcher H.D. Moore discovered a serious problem with the way applications running on Windows display rich text content.

He reported the vulnerability to Microsoft and nearly four years later it's still not fixed, despite the fact that it could be exploited to run malicious code on a PC and take control of it.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. According to the Zero Day Initiative, which serves as a broker between security researchers who find flaws and software companies who need to fix them, there are 122 outstanding vulnerabilities that have been reported … Read more

As of Wednesday, software vendors will have a deadline to fix vulnerabilities reported to them by TippingPoint's Zero Day Initiative rather than allowing holes to remain unpatched indefinitely.

Vendors will be required to fix the holes within six months, said Aaron Portnoy, manager of security research at TippingPoint, owned by Hewlett-Packard. TippingPoint runs the Zero Day Initiative, which acts a broker paying researchers for information on vulnerabilities and then providing the information to the vendors so they can fix them.

Extensions to the deadline will be given on a case by case basis, he said. If they don't … Read more

There's a silly but enduring bit of apocrypha about the alleged rural pastime of "cow tipping"--in which, supposedly, there are so few ways for mischievous young people in the boondocks to amuse themselves that they resort to knocking over cows standing in slumber. (Actually, cows don't sleep upright. Should you try to "tip" a standing cow, be forewarned: it isn't asleep.)

Fittingly, a recently launched Facebook-based game designed to make a statement about the supposed inanity of other Facebook games--like the now-antiquated "sheep throwing" of Slide's SuperPoke and the … Read more

E-mail. Inarguably, it's one of the most important technological innovations of our time. Love it or hate it, the majority of us can't do without it either professionally or personally--or both. Fielding and composing e-mail takes up an ungodly amount of my time, so I have a deep appreciation for the many intricacies and annoyances that can go along with it. What follows is a handful of guidelines that are meant to make e-mail a little less exasperating.

We all deal with an overabundance of useless e-mail in our in-boxes, so above everything else, DON'T be a spammer. There's no need to forward every little cutesie e-mail you get to every person on your contact list. If you happen across a particularly funny joke or compelling picture that you know a specific individual will enjoy, by all means add a little enjoyment to his or her day by sharing it. However, DO delete chain mail immediately--you'll be doing all of us a favor by keeping it out of circulation.

Also, DO remember that BCC is your friend and use it where appropriate. Be aware that when you're organizing plans for or disseminating information to a large group of people, there's generally no need for any of those individuals to reply to anyone but you. This should be an obvious guideline when it comes to professional communications that are not intended to inspire a discussion among the various recipients--press and marketing e-mails, for example--but it's also a nice courtesy for your friends and family in many cases. Not only does BCC keep recipients' e-mail addresses private, but it prevents them from receiving unwanted messages in response to the initial one.… Read more

Brian Tong shows you how to take advantage of iOS 4's new data-protection feature, put folders anywhere you want, and play with its new music playlist feature.

Brian Tong shows you how to turn off your cell phone's data, how to enhance your SMS experience, and a couple photo features.

When it comes to speakers, size does matter. Big speakers clobber little ones in two ways: they can play louder and make more bass. But since the market demands increasingly smaller speakers the question comes up: can small speakers ever sound better than big ones? Well, the answer is sometimes and in some ways, but great-sounding small speakers are never cheap.

The best-sounding small speakers I've heard in quite some time came from a pair of Anthony Gallo Acoustics Reference Strada speakers ($995 each). The speaker is comprised of two small, stainless steel spheres, each with a 4-inch woofer; the spheres straddle a cylindrical tweeter that produces exceptionally broad dispersion. The Strada doesn't make much bass, so I heard it with the matching Gallo TR-3 cylindrical subwoofer. The system was sweet, detailed, dynamically alive, and very, very natural sounding. But it costs over three grand and doesn't have the muscle of a hefty floorstanding speaker for the same or fewer dollars.

So if you plan on never, ever listening to loud music or having a party, and room-shaking bass isn't a priority, wee speakers might be the way to go. How tiny is tiny? Obviously, size is relative, but I'd rate any speaker that is either less than 7 inches high, or has a smaller than 4-inch woofer as a tiny speaker. If your room is large--say anything bigger than 15 by 20 feet (300 square feet)--don't even think of buying small speakers. … Read more

Researchers show cars can be hacked wirelessly. OnStar strikes back--can it use Android to whip Ford Sync? The latest Garmin Nuvifone is minus the fone part. The most powerful Porsche. Ever. And we drive the Infiniti FX35 "High-StyleUV".

• Researchers take control of a car wirelessly

• OnStar hopes Android will allow it to beat Ford Sync

• Garmin Nuvi 295W is a Nuvifone without the pesky phone

• Porsche GT2 RS is the most powerful ever.

• 17 hottest concept cars so far in 2010… Read more