Reviews

APP REVIEW

Imeem for Android Will Rock Your G1

Imeem for Android is a music application from Imeem.com available for free at the Android Market. This application caught my eye as one of the early front-runners in popularity at the Android Market. I've been using it for about a month, and I listen just about daily. As a music app, it's faster and...

PRODUCT REVIEW

Sylvania Netbook With Ubuntu: A Good Mix

Given the many options out there, someone in the market for a portable computer may have a hard time deciding whether to go with an ultra-small netbook or a small-but-not-THAT-small notebook computer. If you want a netbook, you've got another choice ahead of you: Would you like that with Linux or Wi...

APP REVIEW

PicSay Gives Your Photos a Little Attitude

PicSay is one of the winners of the Android Developer Challenge, a contest Google set up to get a batch of decent apps into the Market in time for its launch. Cash prizes went to the devs who built the coolest apps for the platform. It's just an entertaining little app -- it's not likely you'll be u...

PRODUCT REVIEW

No Love, but Plenty of Like, for the G1

I've been using a T-Mobile G1 for about a month now, and while it's the best phone I've ever owned (yes, I bought it), I haven't yet found myself saying "I love this phone." I like it plenty, don't get me wrong, but like any device, it's got things about it that are frustrating and other things that...

The third full OpenOffice suite is out in the wild and attracting plenty of attention. OpenOffice.org 3.0 was released Monday -- and already, demand has been high enough to overwhelm the download servers and cause them to crash. The software suite, designed as an open source alternative to Microsoft...

The latest release of Barry Kauler's Puppy Linux version 4.0has a lot to bark about. Installed directly on a hard drive, it lacks some of the bells and whistles found in more popular Linux desktop versions. But run it from a USB drive in RAM, and Puppy growls impressively. The ability to carry an en...

After 15 years of development and beta testing, the first stable version of Wine is now available, its developers announced Tuesday. Wine is an open source implementation of the Windows application programming interface on top of X, OpenGL and Unix that allows Windows applications to run on other op...

Tuesday was D-Day for Mozilla with the scheduled launch of the third version of Firefox, its open source Web browser. The company had billed the day as "Download Day" and aimed its sights on setting a Guinness World Record for the most downloads of an application in a 24-hour period. Over the weeken...

PRODUCT REVIEW

A Linux Server in the Palm of Your Hand

Japanese Linux computer firm Plat'Home has released a palm-sized, full-featured Linux-based server dubbed "OpenBlockS." This tiny marvel is no lightweight wanna-be replacement for a real Linux server. It can run most server applications that you would expect to run on a "normal" full-sized Linux box...

A mind map combines both the power of a picture with the suggestion of words. You may have seen mind maps, but you may not have known the name for them. Sometimes they look like clusters of bubbles; other times, like elaborate tree structures. Because mind mapping has been connected with business br...

PRODUCT REVIEW

Firefox 2.0: Subtle Changes, Big Difference

Browser usage numbers for 2006 are beginning to appear on the Web, and for the first time in many moons the market share of Microsoft's dominant offering, Internet Explorer, has dipped below 80 percent. While Internet Explorer's star was sinking, its chief competitor's, Mozilla Firefox, was ascendin...

PRODUCT REVIEW

Ubuntu Linux Is an Ideal Windows Replacement

Can you use a reliable, free operating system that can run on new or older computers? How about an operating system that comes packed with hundreds of software programs? Do you want to try out a fully functional OS that runs in a live CD session and can coexist with Windows or Mac operating systems ...

Everyone has heard the expression, "You get what you pay for." It suggests that the functionality of something is directly proportional to its price. But that rule of thumb is being turned on its head by open-source software. Open-source software is free, but it differs from "freeware" in some major...

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