If you're like me, you spend a considerable portion of your holiday shopping poking around Amazon, hoping to zero in on the perfect gift for each person on your list. If you find jumping from one product to another via Amazon's "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" list isn't getting you anywhere, I suggest you give Yasiv a try.

Yasiv calls itself a "visual recommendation service." What it does is show you a web of related products in response to a search query. At the top of the page is a pull-down … Read more

You've probably noticed, or read, by now that Twitter and Instagram aren't really getting along all that well. Twitter originally blocked Instagram users' access to their Twitter friends. Then last week Instagram began disabling its integration with Twitter Cards, completely removing support as of yesterday.

Now, when you or someone you follow sends an Instagram photo to Twitter, you'll only see a link to the photo (as you can see in the screenshot above). In the past, you'd see the entire photo directly in your Twitter timeline when using any official Twitter app or the Web … Read more

When not blogging for CNET, I review laptops and other tech products. And I've come across a shocking number of laptops with what I can only describe as crappy touch pads, from poorly integrated mouse buttons to mouse buttons that are too stiff to unresponsive performance from the touch pad itself. If you are saddled with such a laptop, you may find that browser extension gleeBox lives up to its name.

gleeBox is available for Chrome and Safari (the gleeBox Firefox add-on is out of date). At its core, it lets you tab from one link to another on … Read more

Organizing events through Facebook for school activities, parent meetings, or just time with friends? If the address for the location of the event is long, or you having a lot of specific people to invite, doing so can become cumbersome.

Instead of trying to keep up with making a new event each day, week, or month, you can set up a repeat event of one you already have very easily.

You'll need to create an initial event, which can be done by clicking the Events link on the left-hand side of the Facebook Web page. Next, tap the Create … Read more

Quite some time ago, Twitter discontinued the ability to see tweets when you did a search through Google. The tweets were actually useful, because you could see who was talking about whatever you searched for, as well as gather additional information.

If you want to add the Twitter results back to Google search, you can do so with a simple extension. Just install a copy of HashPlug for your Chrome Web browser.

This extension will add the Twitter results into a small column to the right of your search results. The column updates with live tweets, but if you … Read more

As far as social networks go, I prefer Facebook to Twitter because I like seeing photos from my friends' daily lives. I don't like having to exit and then return to my News Feed, though, in order to view a larger image. With Photo Zoom for Facebook, I no longer have to.

Photo Zoom for Facebook is a Chrome extension that lets you view a larger version of images just by mousing over them. Hover over a zoomable image, which includes profile pictures and photos in photo albums but not thumbnails from shared news stories, and a pop-up window … Read more

Skype lets you pick between text, voice or even video to communicate. When using the text option, your message history is saved to the client forever, by default. This means that every single message you've sent to someone is being stored on your computer -- until you take action to delete it.

If your computer is only accessed by you, then the message history may not be an issue. However, if you are sharing a computer, or you're just worried that private data could fall into the wrong hands, then check out these quick steps to delete all … Read more

People use Facebook in very different ways. Most Facebook users update their status only a couple times a month or not at all, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center Internet & American Life Project. In fact, one in six Facebook users has never posted a status update.

On the other hand, women on Facebook average 21 updates per month, and men six updates each month, according to the survey, which was published last May.

As many Facebook users quickly learn, the social network is not without its risks. This is especially true for people whose Facebook … Read more

A small music app named Tubalr took off this week when its developer posted about his app on Reddit, asking simply, "It's not Pandora, Spotify, or Rdio... but it's something I've been making the past 2 years. What do you guys think?"

Three days and more than 2,500 comments later, a side project that earns no revenue suddenly has a bright future. According to Cody Jack Stewart, the man behind the app, Tubalr "makes searching YouTube for your favorite artists/bands simple and quick." After using Tubalr today, I would have to … Read more