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Hundreds of people lined up outside some Verizon Wireless stores to buy the new BlackBerry Storm on Friday, but many walked away empty handed.

The Storm, which has been hyped for months, went on sale Friday morning. The device is the first BlackBerry phone to have a touch screen, making it a strong competitor to the Apple iPhone on AT&T's network. Since Verizon Wireless announced it would be the exclusive U.S. carrier for the Storm, the wireless operator has been expecting it to be a hit. In fact, it's the only new phone the company … Read more

Verizon Wireless may have found its iPhone killer.

On Friday, Verizon will be the first and only wireless carrier in the U.S. to offer Research in Motion's new BlackBerry Storm. The device, which costs $199 with a two-year contract and a $50 mail-in rebate, is the first phone that could give Apple's iPhone--offered exclusively on AT&T's network for the same price--a run for its money.

I checked out the new touch-screen phone this week and have been playing around with it for a few days. My first impression is that it's pretty … Read more

A new Firefox extension aptly named "Flash Game Maximizer" is a must-have for any Flash game enthusiast. It does one thing, and does it well: letting you toggle between standard- and full-screen modes on any game--regardless of whether it has been coded with such an option.

Considering that Flash games are hosted all over the place, and rarely with a ubiquitous user interface, you're likely to run into a good number of them that must be played in whatever space they've been given on a Web page. With Flash Game Maximizer, however, you don't have … Read more

One of the first criticisms people had about the iPhone was that it was too hard to type effectively using the touch screen. It was all over the tech news sites and even here at CNET. Of course, as time went on and anyone who had the iPhone for a while figured out, you eventually got used it. Now, I can rattle off text messages and e-mails faster than I ever could using a regular mobile phone. But there are still some who find the keys on the touch screen too close together (or have large fingers) and no matter … Read more

Around the holiday season we get a lot of e-mails from readers agonizing over what TV to buy. With the economy the way it is, consumers aren't completely shying away from buying new TVs, but they're on tight budgets and appear to be predominantly interested in screen sizes 52 inches or smaller. The big problem with going bigger is that you jump into a whole new price class when you start looking at the Panasonic 58-inch plasma--and it gets worse when you check out Pioneer's 60-incher.

The exception to all this is DLP-based rear-projection HDTVs, where Samsung … Read more

Around the holiday season we get a lot of e-mails from readers agonizing over what TV to buy. With the economy the way it is, consumers aren't completely shying away from buying new TVs, but they're on tight budgets and appear to be predominantly interested screen sizes 52 inches or smaller. The big problem with going bigger is that you jump into a whole new price class when you start looking at the Panasonic 58-inch plasma--and it gets worse when you check out Pioneer's 60-incher. The exception to all this is DLP-based rear-projection HDTVs, where Samsung … Read more

Regular TV watchers have likely seen the Nikon commercial with Ashton Kutcher traipsing around a Hollywood cocktail party with a touch-screen camera--the Nikon Coolpix S60. (In case you haven't and simply must, here's the site dedicated to the campaign.) Turns out, that's exactly what the camera is good for.

The S60 is a good camera to take to a party, especially if you want to show it off. While handing it off to others might result in a few "how do I..." questions, it's easy enough to quickly drop it into an appropriate scene … Read more

TechSmith raises the bar with version 6 of Camtasia Studio, which was released Wednesday. While the essentials remain the same in this feature-stuffed software for creating and producing screen recordings, a few well-placed adjustments and capabilities make their mark in creating overall faster screencasts.

Among the changes, support for high-definition (Blu-ray) video, independently editable audio and video tracks, and time-saving hot keys are the most critical.

The ability to produce HD-quality screencasts (for the Web and mobile phones) is cool for those with HD computers, but on the technical side, the HD-friendly format (MPEG-4 AVC format with H.264 compression) … Read more

LOS ANGELES--In addition to getting to spend a few minutes playing around with Windows 7's new desktop, I had a chance to play around with its multitouch gestures.

The brief look came on a machine running a later build than the one Microsoft handed out to developers last week. More similar to the version that was shown onstage Tuesday, the machine I used had the new desktop featuring the Aero Peek and other features.

I thought it might help to show some of the features in a short video. (It was me holding a Flip video camera, so apologies … Read more