Reviews

All Things Appy: Top 5 Firefox Social Networking Tools
May 22, 2013

This week we take a look at the top five must-have social networking tools for the Mozilla Firefox desktop environment. Social networks have taken mobile by storm, but the PC is still a player -- particularly based on its copious screen real estate. Aggregation across social networks, one-click helpers, easy search, sharing, and detailed image viewing present themselves well in this field.

Midnight Commander Will Whip Your Files Into Shape
May 22, 2013

Midnight Commander is one of those original computing tools that keeps getting better with age. It may be old school, but its file managing capabilities keep it at the head of its class. Midnight Commander is a text-mode file manager that runs in a terminal. It uses a two-panel interface and a subshell for command execution. It is reminiscent of the Norton Commander file manager.

MX Player Pro Lets You Bypass the Fiddling and Enjoy the Movie
May 17, 2013

I often run into issues playing video media on mobile devices. It's haunted me since the days of Windows Mobile on the Palm Treo -- remember those early smartphones? Believe it or not, it's still an issue years later with current tablets and smartphones. The problems that I've encountered have generally manifested themselves as either the file not playing or audio and video being out of sync.

Cut Yourself a Tasty Slice of Gnome-Pie App Launcher
May 15, 2013

Gnome-Pie could be one of the best user interfaces for accessing menus on any Linux desktop. It is a radial visual application that keeps your hands on the keyboard or the mouse to quickly launch any application. Launching frequently used programs could not be easier or more fun. Gnome-Pie brings functional eye candy to the menu interface.

GrooVeIP's a Great Backup for Minute-Slurping Calls
May 10, 2013

My first question to the desk clerk at a hotel in a strange country is no longer, "What time does the restaurant close?" It's more often, "Where I can get a SIM card?" $2-a-minute voice and $10-a-megabyte Internet roaming in many parts of the world make acquiring a local card a must. I recently had a pleasant first morning in an Egyptian town center haggling for a data-only 3.75G SIM card.

Ubuntu's Raring Ringtail Is Kind of a Snore
May 08, 2013

The latest release of Canonical's Ubuntu Linux distro, version 13.04, or Raring Ringtail, comes with a big yawn factor. I get a growing sense that the company's rejections of users' criticisms of Ubuntu's native Unity desktop portray Canonical as Microsoft in a penguin suit. Regular Ubuntu users of previous versions will be satisfied with the new release.

Adobe Photoshop Touch Is Almost Picture Perfect
May 03, 2013

With tablets possibly on track to overtake PCs within a few years, one might wonder just how that's going to happen. Can tablets really perform as well as PCs in professional environments? I for one am still unpacking my laptop when it comes to power applications like imaging. Well, Adobe claims it now delivers its core Adobe Photoshop functionality in an app for Android tablets.

Buggy Install, No Support Take the Lead Out of Pencil
May 01, 2013

Pencil is an advanced drawing and animation tool that creates traditional, hand-drawn 2D animations and static sketches. Think of this animation/drawing application as an Etch A Sketch with colored sand on steroids. Pencil creates both bitmap and vector images. Finished animations can be exported as a PNG image. Animated sketches can be exported in several handy Flash or Movie file formats.

When It Comes to Installation, xPDF Has a Hex on It
April 24, 2013

If you are looking for a fast, reliable, trouble-free, lightweight PDF viewer, and you stumble upon xPDF in your distro's app listings -- keep stumbling. Chances are it will not run on your Linux configuration. In theory, xPDF is a promising alternative to PDF viewers available for the Linux desktop such as Adobe PDF Viewer, Okular and Evince. It is a fast and light application that does not exhibit sluggish performance.

Hailo Is a Hellaciously Good Taxi-Hailing App
April 19, 2013

Chicagoans and Bostonians, you have a new way of hailing a cab. It's called "Hailo," and it lets you grab a taxi by app command, rather than an arm raise at the curb. Hailo is coming soon to New York and Washington, D.C., and already is available in Toronto and several European cities. Hailo is different from some other taxi apps in that its relationship is with the individual driver, not with an entire fleet.

Knoppix Pulls a Lot More Than Its Own Weight
April 17, 2013

Knoppix is a lightweight Linux distro that is anything but light in its features and functions. It equals or exceeds the performance of all the desktop varieties I run in Ubuntu and Linux Mint. It also could easily replace the portability on a stick I get with Puppy Linux. Knoppix, much like Puppy Linux, provides a fully functional Linux distro that boots from a DVD or USB drive.

Tripit Trips Up at the First Sign of Anything Tricky
April 12, 2013

Tripit is a frequent flier travel organizer. It claims to sculpt your mishmash of itineraries, dinner arrangements and meetings into a functioning, unified whole -- all accessible through your mobile device. The idea is that you email your airline, and other itineraries to it, and it then "does the rest." That's a big claim, and in my experience big claims in new technology concepts often don't deliver.

Need a Great Archive Utility? Give PeaZip a Chance
April 10, 2013

PeaZip is a handy utility for reducing the size of large files and archiving different files into one big container. Unlike most file compression tools for Linux, PeaZip's user interface makes it easy to manage. When it comes to zipping and unzipping files, simplicity counts for most everything. PeaZip is a cross platform file and archive manager available for Linux, BSD and Windows platforms.

News360: Getting to Know You at a Snail's Pace
April 05, 2013

News360, a learning news aggregator for Android, has recently been updated. I decided to take a look. Uniquely, this app uses a thumbs-up button style of interaction in combination with collected statistics to provide stories that are supposed to be customized for you.

Chakra: A Simple, Strong Energy Center for Your Desktop
April 03, 2013

Chakra is an unusual Linux distro that rethinks what the Linux desktop should be. It gives users the tools to do it their way. This interesting approach to learning what makes Linux tick, however, is not a good starting point for first-time Linux users. I was intrigued with Chakra's ground-up reconstruction and the notion that developers need to keep it simple, stupid (also known as the KISS Principle.)

Relax and Sleep: Whatever Floats Your Dream Boat
March 29, 2013

Relax and Sleep Plus lets you choose and play ambient sounds that might help you sleep. I tried this app during a grueling jet-lagged visit to London. The UK has a seven-hour time difference from Los Angeles, which is my home base, so my day started there just as I normally would be going to sleep. For me, the net result of the time change was sleeplessness in the dead of local night.

Speedy Synapse Fires Up Searches and Launches
March 27, 2013

Synapse is a desktop utility that adds speed and convenience to finding files and launching applications. It does not eliminate the Linux distro's menu, favorites bar or panel icons. Instead, it cuts down on how often you resort to using them. A semantic-based tool that makes use of the Zeitgeist engine, Synapse is a graphical launcher that pops up when you call it with the Control-Space key combination.

All Things Appy: 5 Best Android News Apps
March 27, 2013

With the unexpected news that Google's RSS feed reader, Google Reader, is being put out to pasture, many users are scrambling to find new tools for news consumption. There are still plenty of excellent free news apps out there, and here's a look at the top five available for the Android platform. Google Currents is a pretty, magazine-like aggregator with a true offline solution that works well in airplane mode.

Pie Control Pro Is a GUI Delight
March 22, 2013

The early-90s Windows 3.11 operating system offered a graphical user interface that was a breakthrough for me. It was, in fact, my first GUI. I'd been using command-line, error-prone MS-DOS for two or three years before that, and it was a delight to suddenly be able to maximize screens, switch programs, and point around with a mouse, after living with the syntactically regimented MS-DOS.

Sigil's E-Book Editor Is a Bestseller
March 20, 2013

If you package e-books in the EPUB format, one of the handiest editing tools available is Sigil. The growing interest in mobile apps and e-reader devices such as Amazon's Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble's Nook is fueling the e-book business for both reading consumers and authors.