Reviews

I picked a beautiful day to road-test Earth's WeatherBug Elite app. It was a late-summer day on which the National Weather Service had just issued a Red Flag fire weather warning for my brush-fire-prone, tinder-dry neighborhood. Android weather app WeatherBug provides a set of current conditions, fo...

Mousepad is a notepad-like graphical text editor for Xfce based on the Leafpad text editor that runs on any Linux desktop. It is very handy as a go-to tool when you do not have any heavy lifting to do. If you are looking for a text editor that functions more like a lightweight word processor, then l...

With ubiquitous Google Maps installed as standard on smartphone OS market leader Android's devices, why anyone would need anything else? Well, the principal benefit of an app like BackCountry Navigator Pro GPS is that it provides offline access to topographic maps, which represent terrain using grap...

The latest release earlier this month of the K Desktop Environment, or KDE, is a solid upgrade that could very well win back the hearts and fingers of Linux users who wandered off to other, less powerful desktop shells. I am particularly impressed with its smooth integration into the dedicated KDE d...

IP Cam Viewer Pro lets you view and control an Internet protocol camera through Android OS on a phone or tablet. App features include SSL encryption, pan tilt and zoom, relays for lights and garage doors, and recording functions. DVRs and network video recorders also can be controlled. Included are...

The latest incarnation of the XFCE desktop proves once again that when you delve into the wonders of the Linux OS, something old definitely becomes something new again. The Linux Mint 13 team has released a specially flavored distro built around the latest version of the XFCE interface. This is not...

Instapaper is finally available on the Android platform. If you're unfamiliar with the iPhone-originating app, it's an offline reader with a difference. I've always had a problem with offline readers. Offline readers, like the good-looking Pulse, function by pulling in XML feeds online. They are es...

Dia is an editor for diagrams, graphs and charts. It is the perfect tool to use for explaining a process or procedure in a concise, standardized visual representation. You will find numerous diagramming applications in both the commercial realm for Windows PCs and the free open source marketplace. M...

It wasn't too long ago that you'd have to pore over shortwave radio schedule listings, cross referencing time of day, with frequency in kilohertz, in order to listen to long range, overseas broadcasts -- picking out the words from the spooky radio harmonics. Then along came the Internet, which allow...

Converting media files is often one of the messiest chores that audio and video fans must tolerate, but WinFF is one of the simplest methods I have found to convert audio and video file formats to make them compatible on my growing collection of mobile media platforms. Unlike other excellent single-...

"My esteemed colleague, it is with much reverence that I am humbly, yet secretly, contacting you to tell you of great fortune that has come my way. My most honorable relative has kindly left me, in his will, eighty gold bars. Unfortunately, due to circumstances, I have to regretfully sell on the ...

TreeLine is a unique information manager that combines the characteristics of both a traditional outliner and a PIM. Use it to stow away contact information, bookmarks, text snippets, bibliography, task lists, or whatever else you track or catalog. Regardless of what you call it, this application l...

Here's a likely familiar summer scenario for many Americans: You've been driving all day, and it's getting late. You're tired. You're ready for a hotel bed in an unknown town coming up ahead. My modus operandi has always been to watch for billboards advertising upcoming motels with rates. Or, I mig...

GanttProject is an impressive project management tool that can be a useful alternative to similar applications locked onto other OS platforms. For enterprise and small-business users, GanttProject's cross-platform access and easy data portability make it a winning choice for Linux users. Compared to...

If you've been getting into flashing ROMs on your devices, you're familiar with the palava that goes with it: booting to recovery, swapping cards, adb, fastboot, renaming zip files, and the rest of it. ROM Manager, from ClockworkMod, the recovery software maker, claims to largely alleviate the kerfu...