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Subaru BRZ: Underpowered, under-tech, but overwhelmingly fun (CNET On Cars, Episode 16)

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Few cars have inspired as much hope as the Subaru BRZ: Hope that cars can still be unvarnished, affordable, and directly connected to the road and the driver. The BRZ isn't overwhelmingly powerful, it doesn't raise the bar on tech -- hell, it barely meets it in many areas -- but it's a lot of fun to drive in a classic fashion that harkens to the 240Z, 2000GT, and S2000.

2013 Subaru BRZ

We did a video on … Read more

XMBC lets you customize mouse functions

From everyday office work to Web browsing or even casual gaming, (X-Mouse Button Control) (XMBC, but not to be confused with the open-source media-center software XBMC) lets you control your computer mouse like a hardcore gamer. With customizable mapping features and numerous profiles setup, X-Mouse Button Control lets you do so much more than your standard pointing and clicking.

Most modern PC games let you customize the mapping of your keyboard and mouse buttons, but strangely, Windows provides very few options for tweaking your mouse functionality. The basic Mouse Control will only let you make minor adjustments to cursor sensitivity … Read more

IOHIDEventQueue error resulting in long Mac pauses

A familiar type of computer error is the kind in which all activity seems to freeze, there's no apparent response to keyboard input, and the mouse stops moving. When this happens on Macs you may see the spinning color wheel, or the system may show no indicator of a problem. While you might think the system has fully crashed and needs to be restarted, a few seconds later the system may continue to function normally again, only to pause again shortly thereafter.

This type of random pausing is generally due to an I/O (input/output) problem. Critical devices … Read more

Sony's Dash gets Netflix streaming

Sony's Chumby-like Dash was one of the pleasant surprises of CES 2010, and today the company announced that the device will feature a dedicated Netflix streaming application when it's released in April. It's a great addition to what Sony calls a "personal Internet viewer," which was already announced to be capable of streaming other Bravia Internet Video sources, such as YouTube, Pandora, Epicurious, Crackle, Livestrong, and Blip.tv.

We still feel like the $200 list price is a little on the high side, but Netflix streaming takes a lot of the pain out of that … Read more

HID Labs brings IT smarts to industrial lighting

HID Laboratories is the sort of company you get when you cross IT pros from Silicon Valley with lighting experts.

The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company plans on Tuesday to officially launch and detail its light fixture, called the SmartPod Luminaire, which it says reduces commercial and industrial lighting costs by 40 percent.

High-intensity discharge (HID) lighting systems are typically used in street lights, warehouses, big box retail stores, sports arenas, and other industrial spaces.

HID Labs' SmartPod is a solid-state replacement for the ballast which holds the wiring and controls the current to lamps. The SmartPod's chip allows … Read more