STYLES

V-Moda has gained quite a reputation for its stylish, low-profile earbuds, so it's not terribly surprising that the company has decided to dip its toes into the full-size headphone waters. As would be expected, V-Moda's entry into the space is every bit as stylish as its ultraportable siblings.

The Crossfade LP headphones run about $250 and feature top-notch construction, plenty of features, and a comfy fit. Unfortunately, sound quality is not on par with the price point, so if that's your chief concern, these aren't the best option.

Read the V-Moda Crossfade LP review.

One of the glorious things about living in such a technologically advanced era is that we've reached a point where gadgets have become so ubiquitous that manufacturers are constantly striving to make them appealing to the individual eye. Clearly, getting your gear in line with your own personal style is key, but finding that happy balance between totally blah and way over-the-top is also important.

When taking the fashion approach to technology, mobile gadgets naturally spring to mind first. Namely because these are the items you have on your person all the time. Of course, style is important in … Read more

Cascading style sheets (CSS) are extensively used in websites to apply styling properties to specific HTML tags or categorized classes and tag IDs. This is why on many sites you will see items like links appear in custom colors instead of the default underlined blue text. In Safari you can easily include a user-supplied style sheet in which you can set custom styles for web pages that do not already have styles assigned for tags, allowing you to customize link colors and cursor behaviors, just to name a few.… Read more

I can't help but cringe every time I get an e-mail blast referring to "special" gadgets made "just for women!" Maybe this is because I was around during a time when this meant splashing some Pepto-pink paint onto an otherwise unchanged piece of tech. Or perhaps it's more that many of these efforts are still so often misguided. Show me one woman who likes shimmery tech with an interface made of bubble writing and I'll show you another who loves matte-black gear that uses only analog knobs.

Now, I'm not accusing Audio-Technica … Read more

Different games are made for different people. I can understand that. Nevertheless, it's disappointing that Nintendo addressed its new game, Style Savvy, exclusively to girls. An adaptation of a Japanese game that Nintendo has already found great success with, Style Savvy is entirely devoted to fashion. You buy clothes, you sell clothes, you dress up your avatar, and you open your own boutique to sell your fashion solutions to the world. When Nintendo sent its alerts and asked us here at CNET to check out the game, we were slightly less than excited about it. That doesn't seem like great news for a game that's front-and-center in Nintendo's holiday lineup, but then again, we're not the target audience.

I am far from interested in fashion, and the box design looked a lot like other DS shovelware released by many, many companies already. To be honest, my colleagues thought I was crazy to even be covering this game in the first place. Still, I was curious. I said I'd give it a try. And so a copy found its way into my DS. And, to my great surprise, it's still in there days later.

First off, this game is a retail/shopping simulator. The main focus is on greeting new customers, listening to their shopping requests, and then recommending a piece of clothing to fit their budgets. It might sound boring, but the reward is guessing right and getting a very satisfied customer who might buy even more, adding valuable income to your supply. With that money you buy more items from the design center (10,000 items cycled by season and randomness adds up to an Animal Crossing level of diversity). An in-game fashion magazine even shows off new fashion trends for the season, which parallels actual time.

The game starts you off as a store employee and then puts you in charge of your own store, where you try to succeed as well as you can. Everything you wear and how you behave also affects your performance, creating a surprisingly casual, yet deep, experience...and as you can see, I pretty much became hooked. I'm not embarrassed to admit that. The game is also controlled via stylus and with the DS turned on its side in "book" format. Its pace is slow enough for a subway ride, and the many small interactions create a persistent microgame that can be played in intervals as small as a minute.

My main issue, however, is that this game is officially targeted at girls.… Read more

Songtrix Silver offers to help newcomers and experienced musicians alike. With options to learn and create music, this program offers something to everyone.

Initially, we were overwhelmed by the various musical players, scales, and more that the program offers. Luckily, a series of short tutorials in the Help file gave every tool a clear role. Not being experienced musicians, we liked having the ability to choose a song from the collection and follow it note for note on a scale or on the screen's light-up keyboard. We felt that some prior understanding of notation would be necessary, but this … Read more

TextSoap is a powerful utility with a single purpose: to quickly clean up text from any source, so that you can reuse it in other applications. A godsend for software developers and Web designers who have to frequently work with a motley variety of text, TextSoap can almost instantly remove extra spaces and "garbage characters" while still maintaining text formatting--and it can also automatically convert formatting like bold and italics into its HTML equivalent by inserting tags.

The app's clean interface looks much like any simple text editor, but you'll find most of its power in … Read more

The power and features that make Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet the business world's standard can be daunting to new and infrequent users. EZ-Format for Excel makes Excel easy by separating data formatting, maintenance, and analysis tasks. It automates the task of formatting worksheets, enables improved, modifiable totaling, and simplifies common tasks such as splitting worksheets and applying row color. The program bundles the maker's EZ-Subtotal and EZ-Split add-ins as well, and it includes the functionality of the EZ-Stat statistical analysis software.

EZ-Format for Excel integrates seamlessly with Excel, appearing in the Add-Ins Ribbon on the Toolbar. An extensive … Read more

ObjectBar is a customizable toolbar that allows users to add and remove various elements. We found it to be a nice addition to our Windows experience.

The toolbar itself can be customized with an assortment of themes and skins, and the ability to tweak the toolbar's contents means that the interface can be just about whatever a user wants it to be. However, the interface with which the user manages the toolbar could be better designed. It's easy enough to add and remove programs, but other functions, including changing themes and skins, aren't so intuitive. The program'… Read more