Facebook plans artsy photo filters? Groan.

Hipstamatic is one of many applications that let people use filters to add effects to photos. (Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET) I'm probably going against the will of the people here, but sighed heavily this morning when I read in the New York Times that Facebook plans to release filters to give photos artsy effects. You know what I'm talking about--the shots with the heavily darkened corners that old cameras produced, the desaturated...

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New Aurora 8 works on memory, guts, and add-ons

Mozilla upgraded its developer's edition of Firefox today to version 8, including changing how forced third-party add-ons are handled and debuting a series of under-the-hood tweaks that continue a renewed assault on performance gains made in Firefox 7 Beta. Firefox 8 Aurora can be downloaded for Windows, Mac and Linux, and it marks the first release of Aurora for Android. Firefox's new add-on confirmation window, debuting in Aurora 8. (Credit:...

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Apple to face fast Android tablets

 around the CES 2012 timeframe," Nvidia said in a statement to CNET on Friday. It's safe to presume that Nvidia isn't just blowing smoke. Its processors today power all of the most popular Android Honeycomb tablets, including the Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, Toshiba Thrive, and Acer Iconia Tab A500. Future Sony tablets will use Tegra too. Nvidia claims its upcoming quad-core processor will offer higher performance while being more...

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Amazon cloud outage downs Netflix, Quora

Amazon Web Services' cloud-computing infrastructure experienced a brief network outage this evening that knocked offline popular sites such as Netflix, Quora, Reddit, and Foursquare. The network connectivity issues struck Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) at Amazon's northern Virginia site, which handles AWS operations for the U.S. East Coast at 7:39 p.m. PDT and were resolved about 25 minutes later, according to the Amazon Web Services Health...

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Vizio launches 8-inch tablet for $299

The 8-inch Vizio tablet costs $299. (Credit: Vizio) Vizio has launched its 8-inch tablet at a price that could make it a key player in the Android tablet space. Customers looking to get their hands on the device can head over to Sam's Club, Wal-Mart, Costco, and Amazon, among other retailers, and pick up the tablet for $299. Vizio's decision to drop the price of its tablet to $299 comes as a surprise. In June, reports surfaced, claiming Wal-Mart...

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Apple sued over speedy Mac OS X startup

                     Mac OS X is being cited in a new suit against Apple.                    (Credit: Apple) Apple has been sued for the Mac OS X startup process. Operating Systems Solutions, a Florida company, recently sued Apple in the U.S. District Court...

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Apple launches sub-$1,000 iMac

Is a new, cheaper iMac launching next week?(Credit: Apple) Apple has quietly launched a cheaper iMac more than a week before earlier reports expected. Apple's new offering costs $999, and comes with a 3.1GHz dual-core Intel Core i3 processor and a 250GB hard drive. The computer is running the AMD Radeon HD 6750M graphics card. The cheaper iMac is designed for education institutions only, which means individuals cannot purchase the computer at...

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Apple iPhone tops smartphone charts in 2nd quarter

Apple reigns supreme in the second quarter, according to IDC. (Credit: IDC Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker) In one short year, Apple has toppled Nokia and taken control of the worldwide smartphone market. According to research firm IDC, Apple's sales of 20.3 million iPhones worldwide during the second quarter of 2011 helped the company secure 19.1 percent market share and lead all other vendors. The company's shipments grew 141.7 percent compared...

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