You are welcome to share more open source applications that will be helpful and our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter and do not forget to become our fan on facebook as well.

PDF Split and Merge

PDF Split and Merge is an easy to use tool to merge and split pdf documents. Console and GUI versions are available. The GUI is written in Java Swing and it provides functions to select files and set options. It’s made over the iText library.

TightVNC

TightVNC is an improved version of VNC, great free remote-desktop tool. The improvements include bandwidth-friendly “Tight” encoding, file transfers in the Windows version, enhanced GUI, many bugfixes, and more.

WinSCP

WinSCP is a SFTP client and FTP client for Windows. Its main function is the secure file transfer between a local and a remote computer. It uses Secure Shell (SSH) and supports, in addition to Secure FTP, also legacy SCP protocol.

Notepad++

Notepad++, a source code editor and MS Windows Notepad replacement, has the mission to offer a greener environment. By optimizing its routines, it results in reducing CPU power consumption then reducing the world carbon dioxide emissions.

Launchy

Launchy is a free windows utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, your desktop icons, and your file manager. Launchy indexes and launches your applications, documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes.

7-Zip

7-Zip is a file archiver with the high compression ratio. The program supports 7z, ZIP, CAB, RAR, ARJ, LZH, CHM, GZIP, BZIP2, Z, TAR, CPIO, ISO, MSI, WIM, NSIS, RPM and DEB formats.

PortableApps

PortableApps.com allows you to carry your favorite computer programs and all of your bookmarks, settings, email and more with you on a portable device (USB flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive, CD, etc) and use them on any Windows computer.

AxCrypt

AxCrypt is the leading open source file encryption software for Windows. It integrates seamlessly with Windows to compress, encrypt, decrypt, store, send and work with individual files.

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We wrote about BumpTop last year when it launched for Windows, and now the impressive and unique re-imagination of the computer desktop is coming to the Mac faithful. We had a chance to chat with CEO Anand Agarawala about the launch of BumpTop on the Mac and some of the company’s future plans.

If you’re not already familiar with the concept, BumpTop essentially adds a three-dimensional “real world desktop” metaphor to your computer’s desktop. You can create visual “piles” of files and documents completely unrelated to their logical file structure — handy for keeping a “working stack” of items at the top of mind. You can make files physically larger or smaller by growing or shrinking them, giving you a quick and intuitive visual representation of their relative importance.

Thanks to the 3D view, you can also “sticky” items to the “walls” in addition to the primary desktop panel. There’s also a cool search feature that’s invoked simply by typing, making quick retrieval of key items a snap. Plus, you can of course customize the look and feel of each surface with your own background image or a complete theme if you wish.

What’s Unique About the Mac Version?

Importantly, the Mac version of BumpTop is not simply a port of the Windows version. It’s been built from the ground up to integrate seamlessly with Leopard, and plays nice with your existing setup. The app is integrated seamlessly into the Finder, meaning you can enjoy all the usual bells and whistles like Spaces, Expose, and Quick Look as usual.

BumpTop Mac also specifically supports multi-touch gestures for MacBook Pro and MacBook multi-touch trackpads. We talked a bit about how the forthcoming age of the tablet portends a sort of “renaissance of touch” that BumpTop seems to be fully prepared for.

Future Plans

Having already supported multi-touch gestures in the Windows version, future plans include exploring further into touch interfaces and how BumpTop can make the desktop a more intuitive experience in a touch environment. As new devices and form factors come online in the marketplace, the goal with BumpTop appears to be to embrace platforms as widely as possible.

Cloud computing also factors into the company’s roadmap, with some interesting new features in the works surrounding managing web content on your BumpTop desktop as well as local documents and files. Without getting too far into specific details that may change before feature release, it’s a good bet to anticipate some sort of widget platform emerging around BumpTop that brings more interactive and cloud-connected services into your BumpTop workspace.

For example, imagine a Facebook Wall that lives right on your desktop, providing new and unique ways to visualize your Facebook experience and associated data. Or, imagine drag and dropping a web page right into your desktop and being able to manipulate it locally as if viewing a “living page.”

No matter what specific concepts find their way into future versions of BumpTop, it’s an exciting new (and relatively rare) ambitious attempt to revitalize and rethink the desktop experience that was remained largely an unchanged paradigm for going on twenty years.

100 Free Pro Version Upgrades

The free version of BumpTop includes its core features, while the Pro version contains extra functionality including unlimited sticky notes, scroll wheel controls for flipping through document piles, the instant search feature, multi-touch trackpad support, and premium support service. BumpTop was kind enough to provide Mashable readers with 100 free upgrades to the Pro version:

The Pro version is a free upgrade to the first 100 people who signup at this special Mashable page: http://bumptop.com/press/mashable.php.

Enjoy, and let us know what you think of BumpTop for Mac.

Tags: 3D, bumptop, cloud computing, desktop, mac, macintosh, software, touchscreens

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The first thing you’ll notice after installing the 10.5 beta is that the interface has been completely re-done with Aero Glass for Windows 7 or Vista users. The menu bar has been rolled up into a single button similar to the way Office 2007 works, with easy access to all common functions all from one place.

Windows 7 users can now hover their mouse over the taskbar button and see previews of each of the open tabs, and moving your mouse over a specific tab will enable the Aero Peek effect and show the Opera window with the contents of that particular tab—just the way Internet Explorer 8 does. You can even middle-click on the thumbnail preview to close a tab.

The Jump List menu shows the items from your Speed Dial, lets you open a new tab, or start a new private browsing session in a separate tab. Once you’ve opened a new private tab—which you can also do by right-clicking on the new tab button on the right of the tab bar—the icon in the tab will change to indicate that you are in a private browsing session.

You can choose to open a separate window for private browsing, but being able to include that private tab without requiring a new window is a nice feature that you can’t currently do in any of the other mainstream browsers.

Opera 10.5 beta is a free download for Windows only; Unix and Mac builds will be available later this week.

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For those unfamiliar with Boot Camp, it’s the dual-booting tool that allows Mac users to install to and boot Windows partitions from their hard drives, and this update gives Mac users looking to dual-boot Windows 7 something to be happy about. Specifically:

This update adds support for Microsoft Windows 7 (Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate), addresses issues with the Apple trackpad, turns off the red digital audio port LED on laptop computers when it is not being used, and supports the Apple wireless keyboard and Apple Magic mouse.

Boot Camp is a free download, requires Mac OS X.

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Photo by el monstrito.

Want to do something nice for your loved ones? Keep in touch with them more often. If you’ve got friends or family members who aren’t so good about online communication, these apps and tips make video chat, simplified email, and photo sharing easier to do on a regular basis.

Making a web connection isn’t about “fixing” a relative’s computer—though that’s not a bad idea, next time you’re visiting. It’s about lowering the barriers for communication, for both yourself and the person on the other end, so you can get used to keeping in touch through the easiest available methods.

If it’s that hard for you, it’s doubly hard for a person who didn’t constantly have a computer in front of them their whole careers. There are, thankfully, solutions that don’t require either side to invest far too much time and effort to get started with. The reward is time well spent with far-off family members, which will certainly pay dividends for a long time to come.

Set up their computer

The apps we want to use to connect are pretty easy to install, for the most part. But if sending a bunch of download links over email to a relative isn’t a realistic option, you can do the setting up yourself, from nearly anywhere in the world, with minimal pain. We’ve previously provided an in-depth list of tools for giving tech support or grabbing files from any system, but below are the two easiest solutions. (We’re not even going to pretend your relatives are using Linux, but, if they are, see if you can walk them through connecting to your reverse VNC setup.)

CrossLoop: (Windows) The How-To Geek loves this little remote-control app, and for good reason: It’s a VNC remote control app without all the back-end fiddling (“Do you know your IP address, Uncle Robert? Okay, type ‘cmd’ into the start bar …”). The client only has to install the software and tell you their access code, and you run the same app and connect from your end. The Geek’s site detailed the connection in a screenshot tour. It’s secure enough for a one-shot Skype setup or settings fiddling, because it requires a fairly complex code and doesn’t persist on the computer beyond your session and the next time they shut down.

LogMeIn Free: (Windows/Mac) It’s another fancy, all-in-one VNC client, but it works between PCs and Macs. Doesn’t offer the remote file transfer of CrossLoop, and is just a little more complicated for the relative you’re having install it to get going with it. Still, it claims and (generally) delivers “two-minute setup,” and, though intended for accessing your own home computer at the office and elsewhere, it’s still works as a tech support tool. There’s also LogMeIn Express, which is even more simple, fast, and support-oriented.

Make their system more accessible

If you’ve got remote access to a relatives’ computer, you can also make it easier for them to use. Bigger type, screen magnification, higher contrast themes, and other tools can make the computer an easier place to navigate for older relatives, but they might never discover those options on their own.

You can read up on the built-in accessibility tools inside OS X, in Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP.

Set up video chat

These days, nearly every laptop has a webcam and microphone built in, and USB-connected webcams are cheap and easy to set up. Video chat is a lot more personal than a phone call, and feels like the next best thing to jumping in your car and visiting. (It’s especially good for keeping up with the grandkids, nieces, and nephews as they continue to grow up so fast.)

Skype is the go-to pick for video chat—it works on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and it’s been designed to be fairly easy to install and get started without having to dive into the preferences and configuration settings. If you’re not there, either in-person or remotely, most computer users can set up Skype just by clicking Next, Next, OK all the way through the installation process, minus one pause to set up an account. They’ll end up with Skype automatically starting and logging them in when their computer boots into Windows, but that’s something you can undo later, or not worry too much about if they’ve got a decently new system.

If most of your relatives have Macs, iChat is probably easier to set up and use than Skype. It is, however, limited to Macs, and so a fairly limiting option for families not entirely descended from typeface designers (Kidding!).

If Skype isn’t going to work for your relatives, in terms of software setup, try the web-based TokBox. It’s free for both parties, it’s one of our readers’ favorite video chat applications, and the quality is surprisingly good for a web-based client. You can sign up your relative for an account ahead of time, then simply email them a link to the chat you’re initiating with them, along with their username and password.

Last, Gmail’s video chat functionality installs via a browser plug-in and works surprisingly well, too—provided everyone involved has a Gmail account.

Better email for everyone

You don’t always have time, or the right hair, to jump into a video chat. Sending an email is probably second nature to you, but some relatives hate their email—and you would, too, if you had it their way. Help them reconnect with the (type)written word.

The New York Times recommends a stripped-down email service called PawPawMail for computer unsavvy relatives, which any more tech-patient relative can set up for the email account that they’ve likely received from their cable, DSL, or other internet provider. It’s a nice, simplified interface for email, and probably far easier to use than Outlook Express, Windows Live Mail, or even Mail.app for Mac—the picture aggregation is a nice touch. Then again, it’s also $5 per month, so you’ll want to test it out before committing.

My own mother also grew to loathe desktop email clients, especially when Verizon tech support would have to talk her through SMTP setup when she spent time at our summer camp. The Verizon webmail interface just wasn’t cutting it, either. So, using Gina’s guide to consolidating multiple email addresses with Gmail, and Gmail’s mail and contact importer, I set her up with a Gmail account that used her same password and, more importantly, sent and received email transparently through Verizon.net. Her friends didn’t have to update their address books, and once she saw the magic of auto-complete, as-you-type contact names, she was hooked. I also set up sidebar labels, hooked to filters, that show her emails from her children, automatic notices of bills due, Netflix updates, and so on.

Photo sharing

My in-laws have a desktop computer in the living room, as well as a laptop. My wife and I would only occasionally receive digital photos from them, and they’d either be gigantic, 3 MB-each files, or tiny thumbnails forwarded from a photo developing service. While at their house at Thanksgiving, I showed them the Picasa desktop software (available on Windows and Macs), particularly the clever facial recognition and easy collage features. I set it up on their system, set it to always watch their desktop, downloads, and pictures folder, and returned home.

When we returned for the holidays, they had a special gift prepared for a son of theirs: a T-shirt featuring a photo collage of family members, assembled and ordered right from Picasa. I was pretty floored; these were folks I’ve long been the Computer Explainer for, but Picasa was intuitive enough for them to manage on their own, even into the advanced features. The main thing that required a little explanation was the somewhat quirky “holding”/thumbtack system, and its difference from “Starred” photos, but other than that, it’s a perfect photo simplifier: the left-hand folders are albums that show up automatically, the main window is filled with pictures, and photos are automatically knocked into manageable but visible size for emailing—and it’s even easier if you set up a Gmail holder account for the user.

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The rumor mill is churning today around a device that is not the Apple Tablet, for once. This time it’s Windows Mobile 7, Microsoft’s promised next-generation smartphone mobile operating system.

The idea of a “Microsoft Zune Phone Experience” has been floating for some time, and according to All Things Digital that rumor has been circulating anew. Microsoft is allegedly working on a mysterious project codenamed “Pink” that vaguely involves Windows Mobile and the Zune, MS’s portable music playing answer to the iPod.

To congeal all the rumors together, the analysis seems to suggest that Project Pink, a.k.a. the Zune Phone Experience, would theoretically be Microsoft’s answer to the Nexus One by Google: a phone developed with a heavy amount of direct input from its parent company. AllThingsD’s sources indicate that phone could debut as early as mid-February at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona or possibly one month later at the CTIA wireless trade show in Las Vegas.

Windows Mobile 7: Two Editions?

Meanwhile, WM Experts have compiled a number of Windows Mobile 7 (supposedly to be referred to officially as simply “Seven”) tidbits, perhaps most importantly the reported plan to offer at least two separate editions of the mobile operating system. A Business Edition (BE) would support cloud syncing with multiple devices, including your home or office PC.

A Seven Media Edition (ME) is rumored to include more Zune-like features, such as a similar media player, HD video, possibly streaming TV, Xbox Live integration, Facebook and Twitter interfaces (similar to what is already live on the Xbox 360), and support for Silverlight and Mediaroom. The support for Xbox Live dovetails nicely with some earlier job postings from Redmond looking for new hires to bring the XBLA experience to the Windows Mobile platform.

The Million-Dollar Question: When?

It would make sense for Microsoft to finally integrate what are primarily three separate experiences and divisions: Windows Mobile, the Zune and the Xbox. That kind of synergy could be exactly what the company needs to steal back some of the thunder it’s slowly lost to new smartphone platforms like the iPhone, and now, increasingly, Android. Still, all signs point to a long wait until we see Seven running on any production device — perhaps as late as 2011.

With the Mobile World Congress and CTIA events just around the corner, though, we’ll hopefully get some more clarity on all the above, plus a better sense of the timeline we’ll be looking at for WinMo7. Are you a current or past Windows Mobile user? What should Microsoft do to come out swinging in the next version of its mobile OS?

[img credit: WM Power User (please note they are leaked screenshots and may not represent the final version of Windows Mobile 7)]

Tags: CTIA2010, microsoft, MWC2010, Project Pink, Seven, windows mobile, windows mobile 7, winmo7, xbla, xbox, Xbox 360, XBox live, zune, Zune Phone, zune phone experience

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The goal of creating a minimalist desktop is to eliminate the distractions and focus on just the tools that you need to actually get things done. Today we’ll take a look at how you can set up your PC to focus on the tools that get things done.

Clear Off Your Desktop

The first thing you need to do is get rid of all that clutter on your desktop. The easiest way to do so is by simply right-clicking on the desktop and un-checking Show Desktop Icons.

Looking at a nice clean desktop is great, but you’ll still see all the files in open and save dialogs, or while you’re browsing around your computer. You should make a point of cleaning up your system of all the junk files you don’t need; if you aren’t sure, you can always put them into a single archive folder elsewhere on your PC. We like using tools like our own Belvedere to automate your PC maintenance and keep your system clean.

One additional trick I like to do is hide any files or folders that I don’t ever need to use, which is especially helpful in modern versions of Windows that won’t let you delete many of the folders in your Users folder—instead you can simply hide them via the Properties dialog.

Auto-Hide Your Taskbar or Dock

Now that your desktop is nice and clean, the biggest distraction is staring you right in the face: the taskbar or dock with all your open apps. If you find yourself switching to your email inbox dozens of times while you are supposed to be working on something else because you can’t resist clicking on your email’s taskbar item, it’s probably time to hide your taskbar. In Windows, it’s easy to do from the Taskbar properties screen (right-click taskbar -> Properties), and on your Mac you can set your Dock to Hide in the preferences. If you’re using a third-party dock, the setting is probably in the options panel somewhere.

If you’re rocking multiple monitors, an additional trick that I use is setting your primary screen as the “Extended” one in the display setup, which puts the taskbar on a different window so you won’t accidentally trigger it, and it takes more effort to check it. This even helps if you don’t auto-hide the taskbar, just to get the taskbar out of your immediate field of vision.

Get Rid of Unnecessary Notifications

Hiding the taskbar doesn’t help enough if all of your applications are popping up all the time trying to get your attention. Windows 7 has a new Action Center that lets you fine-tune the notifications, including allowing tray icons or popup notifications on a per-application basis, but for XP or Vista you can always take the route of disabling all notification balloons entirely.

Of course, not all applications use the native Windows notifications, but they usually allow you to tweak the notification levels in their preferences. One of the biggest offenders for wasting your time are the desktop email notifications for Microsoft Outlook, but those can be easily disabled or tweaked.

Use the Keyboard to Launch Applications and Automate Tasks

Rather than using gaudy application-launching docks that overload your system with icon clutter, it’s much simpler to use the keyboard to launch applications with a few keystrokes. There’s loads of great application launchers to choose from, like Launchy for Windows, Quicksilver for Macs, or Gnome-Do for Linux, but if you’re using Windows 7 you may need to go no further than the built-in Start menu search engine.

You can take it a step further by using AutoHotkey to turn any action into a keyboard shortcut, like launching your email client, opening your home page, or sending keystrokes to an application. Text-replacement applications like Texter save you time by automating tasks like inserting your signature or formatting a URL, and once you get used to using them, you will be sold on the benefits.

Switch Contexts by Killing Tasks Quickly

If you really need to get something done, it’s usually a good idea to close down your web browsers, instant messaging client, Twitter distractions, or even your email application. Rather than manually closing them all down, it’s much easier to create an AutoHotkey script or a batch file to kill them all at once.

You can use the taskkill utility to instantly close down an application, even from an AutoHotkey script. Just create a new script similar to the following, which will instantly close Chrome, TweetDeck, and Internet Explorer when you press the Win+F12 shortcut key. Savvy AHK users will note that you can also use the WinKill function instead, or if you don’t want to kill the applications and would rather simulate clicking the close button, you can use the WinClose function.

#F12:: {
 Run, taskkill /f /im chrome.exe
 Run, taskkill /f /im tweetdeck.exe
 Run, taskkill /f /im iexplore.exe
 Return
}

You probably won’t want to kill an application that doesn’t automatically save your files, but all modern browsers have session saving and crash recovery features, so even if you kill the browser, all your tabs should show up the next time you open it.

Keep Everything Online in Dropbox

Not only is Dropbox an excellent way to backup your files, sync them across multiple PCs, or access them from anywhere—it’s also a good way to force yourself to keep everything important in one place, making the PC you are sitting at a less important component to your ability to actually get things done.

You can take it a step further and install portable versions of your applications into your Dropbox folder. This way you can access the same utilities from every PC you’re on, keeping everything nice and organized and in a single place.

The How-To Geek focuses on using his PC to actually get things done. His geeky posts can be found daily here on Lifehacker, How-To Geek, Productive Geek, and Twitter.

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The main update, as the Firefox Extension Guru puts it, is a fix to a JavaScript bug in the Linux build of Firefox 3.6 release candidate, which is fixed in this second release. Otherwise, Windows and Mac users get a quick re-build of the web browser, along with some reassurance that Firefox 3.6 is moving along on schedule, due to officially release on January 26.

Like previous 3.6 releases, this build does include no-restart-needed Personas theme capabilities, add-on and plug-in security updates, improved rendering, JavaScript, and startup performance, and better support for the game-changing HTML5 specifications. If you’re using extensions that haven’t updated yet and you want to keep on-board, you can make them work with Firefox 3.6.

Firefox 3.6 Release Candidate 2 is a free download for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems.

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It’s no secret that we don’t like Internet Explorer 6 (IE6), the outdated 10+ year old browser still used by 15-25% of people on the web. Last year, we called for IE6 to die so that the web could move on with new innovations such as HTML 5.

Now Internet Explorer, specifically IE6, is under fire again after a critical IE vulnerability was implicated for the attack on Google’s infrastructure by Chinese hackers. While IE6 criticism is not a new phenomenon, last week’s events give those of us who advocate for the abolition of IE6 (myself included) new ammunition.

Whether you work for a company that won’t get rid of IE6 or have parents that just don’t see the need to ugprade, here are five new reasons to upgrade or switch browsers:

1. Your security and your company’s security are at risk: There’s no other way to lay it out: if the security of Google, Yahoo, and around 20 other companies were compromised due to people still running IE6, then your security is at risk too. Upgrading after a hacker uses this exploit to steal your information is simply too late, especially if you hold sensitive customer data.

2. World governments are suggesting you switch browsers: Both Germany and France have issued warnings about Internet Explorer, asking citizens to switch to prevent the same type of breach that affected Google.

3. Even Microsoft wants you to drop IE6: The Microsoft Security Research & Defense Blog specifically addressed the flaw and the risk of attack by platform. The most important part of the post was that they “recommend users of IE6 on Windows XP upgrade to a new version of Internet Explorer and/or enable DEP.”

This isn’t the first time Microsoft has asked people to voluntarily upgrade, but it is the first time that it’s been in response to an exploit or vulnerability. Think of it like a recall: would you keep driving a car that Toyota, Ford, or GM says could malfunction? Don’t make the same mistake with your computer’s security.

4. Not wanting to upgrade from Windows XP isn’t a legitimate excuse anymore: One way to delete IE6 is to upgrade your OS — both Windows Vista and Windows 7 run upgraded versions of the IE browser.

We understood why people didn’t want to upgrade when their choice was Windows Vista, but now that a very stable, solid, and secure upgrade is on the market (Windows 7), there’s no excuse not to upgrade. Yes, it’ll cost you up front, but it’s far cheaper than having your data stolen.

5. This will not be the last massive IE6 security breach: This flaw was unknown before Google’s groundbreaking China announcement. And it’s not the first flaw ever found with the browser — there are at least 142 vulnerabilities in IE6, 22 of which are not yet patched. Would you use armor that had 142 weak spots?

Last week’s series of events drove home just how dangerous and idiotic it is to run the long-broken IE6 browser. It should be a wake-up call to IT departments and users around the world: if you keep running a browser from 2001, you are throwing your online security right out the window.

Tags: IE6, IE6 must die, internet explorer, microsoft, trending

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It is a very useful application specially when trying to decide "which font to use" for a specific text as it can "display outputs of a custom text with various fonts" in a grid.

The application has support for TrueType, OpenType & Adobe Type1 fonts.

NexusFont can help installing/uninstalling fonts, finding duplicates, anti-aliasing, renaming & more.

Also, it can export the preview lists as images which is a nice feature when sharing the options with clients, colleagues, etc.

Special Downloads:
Ajaxed Add-To-Basket Scenarios With jQuery And PHP
Free Admin Template For Web Applications
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Tags: OpenType, TrueType, Windows

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• Free Fonts Showcase: Font Squirrel
• Windows 2008 Hosting Discount Offer: Easy CGI
• Typeface Sharing: Open Font Library
• Typedia: Encyclopedia of Typefaces
• Turn Your Handwriting Into Fonts: YourFonts

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The new Windows MultiPoint Mouse Software Development Kit (SDK) 1.5 will allow software developers to create interactive applications that enable up to 25 students, each with their own mouse, to use a single PC at the same time.

Also introduced was Microsoft Mouse Mischief, a MultiPoint-enabled tool that teachers can use to create interactive PowerPoint classroom presentations.

The two solutions are aimed at helping schools get the most from shared computer resources, says Ira Snyder, general manager of Microsoft’s Startup Business Group.

“Around the world, most PCs in the educational environment are shared,” Snyder says. “Our focus is on making technology accessible and affordable to as large a number of students as possible, and Windows MultiPoint SDK 1.5 and Mouse Mischief will help us deliver on that.”

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Podcasting may have seen the biggest amount of new features this time around, with OPML importing, HTML information, download limiting, and update interval customization as some of the top improvements. The download limiting especially should improve performance and give you back some of your used memory if Amarok was using too much. In addition, podcasts now group better and can automatically download logos for each of your shows.

The Amarok developers threw in some fun new features, too, such as the return of custom labels and a new moodbar that lets you change the color of the progress bar to fit your current mood. Font settings are editable, lyrics are easier to tweak, and you can also filter your music by BPM. There are tons of new fixes for this release, so if you’d like to see more, check out the release notes for more information.

Amarok is a free download, for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X 10.5. Note, however, that Windows and Mac builds are not officially supported, and are “download at your own risk.”

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Mind-mapping tools are great for corralling snippets of information and brainstorming details into one place so you can see how they fit together in the big picture. If this is your first foray into the world of mind-mapping apps, you’ll find VUE easy to set up and use. (Our previous guide to mind mapping is a great resource to help you wrap your head around mind maps.)

You’ll need to register at the app’s web site for a free account before you can download the Windows, Mac, or Linux version of VUE at no cost. Once installed, you get get started right away setting up nodes containing ideas or concepts, then linking them with arrows to form relationships between them. You can also include clickable URLs, images, files, and more. Want to include videos and documents? Just drag them over and drop them on your map.

Unlike many other mind-mapping tools, VUE can go a step beyond the mind map, turning your brainstorms into slide presentations so you can share them with others. They’re laid out so viewers can walk through the information contained in your map in a way that helps them understand how the concepts are laid out. VUE has tons of features that are likely to appeal to novice and expert mind-mappers alike. Check out this demo video to get a better idea of what VUE can do for you.

VUE is a free download for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

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Once you’ve installed the utility, you can immediately begin taking a region capture of your screen with the Print Screen key—it’s the same functionality you’re used to from any number of great screen capture tools, but Screenpresso will guess the region you are trying to capture based on the position of your mouse, allowing you to capture just the content area of an application with a single click. You can still click and drag to select a specific region, but it’s a useful feature that could save you some time.

Once you’ve taken your screenshot, it will be saved into the history window, where you can access all of the screenshots you’ve taken, and either choose to share them with email or Twitter, or open them up in the included editor application, which lets you add arrows, shadows, text, or crop and resize the images.

There’s loads of other options to choose from, and while it’s still not quite got the polish of the reader favorite (and non-free) SnagIt screen capture tool, it’s a very capable free alternative that’s definitely worth a look. Screenpresso is a free download for Windows, though readers should note anonymous usage statistics can’t be turned off in the free version.

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FLS Launcher can be launched by clicking on the system tray icon or moving the mouse to the upper-left corner of the screen. Once open you are presented with a tab-based interface which you can customize with additional tabs and with icons for all your favorite applications. The tabs are navigable via the tab key or using the greater-than/less-than keys. You can drag, drop, cut, and paste shortcuts between your computer and the launcher, within the launcher tabs, and back out of the launcher.

A donation version of the application is available but 90% of the features are available in the free one—the donation version adds in keyboard shortcuts and the ability to customize the mouse-over corner that activates the launcher. FLS Launcher is freeware, Windows only. Have a favorite launcher? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

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With the click of a keyboard shortcut, a cropping interface appears where it is possible to:

• set the area of the screenshot
• make it fullscreen
• copy to clipboard
• upload to the net & get a link
  
• edit it on a web-based service

Most of the similar tools instantly take a screenshot of the area you selected before clicking any approve button. LightShot makes it kindly, waits for you to arrange the area, shows you the size of it & a click is required which is better to prevent wrong screenshots.

The tool can work in every computer as it comes as a Windows desktop application, a Firefox add-on & an Internet Explorer add-on.

Special Downloads:
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What happened to Windows Mobile you ask? Well, putting it gently, and I’m sure the mobile OS still have plenty of fans out there that will defend it, it’s not worth mentioning anymore. Especially since there’s nothing about it to be mentioned these days.
(…)
Read the rest of Windows Mobile 7 to Get Delayed to 2011… Unless It Doesn’t [When Will Windows Mobile 7 be Launched?]

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I took my sweet time trying to figure out whether or not I wanted to switch from PC to Mac and during that time I was able to do quite a bit of research on whether or not it was possible to transfer my Windows license to Mac. To be honest, I didn’t find a whole lot of information regarding this topic except for 1 inaccurate blog post on Adobe’s website that claimed that a transfer would be free – which was not the case.

Leading up to this I called Adobe to confirm some of this information. What I learned was this: I COULD NOT transfer my Windows version of CS3 to Mac CS3 but I COULD transfer my CS3 license to a CS4 license. All I would have to do is sign a document stating that I would destroy my Windows copy and never use it again, send that document to the people at Adobe, and pay them the regular upgrade price of $599. Seems easy right? Well, it was, sort of.

Once you’ve come to the realization that you are going to have to pay a lot of money to do this, your first step should be to call Adobe Sales and ask them to process your order. If you’re in the US or Canada call:

1-800-585-0774
Monday-Friday
from 5:00am to 7:00pm
Pacific Time.

Once you’ve got them on the phone. Tell them what you want to do. They will want your serial number. If you registered it, they should have it on file. Once that is done they will ask for your credit card number to place the order. Then, they will place your order on hold until you have submitted their LOD Form. To do that you will have to print it, sign it, scan it, and then email it to them by logging onto their site. At that point they will be able to process your order but in order for that to happen it will have to be approved by some one in customer service.

I don’t like to wait, so after I submitted my form, I called them to see if it was received.  They said that it was but the sales office could no longer help me so they transferred me to customer service (make sure you get the number) then you will have to speak to some one from there. They will tell you that a Senior Customer Service agent will need to approve the request and that it will take a few days to do. Don’t take their word for it. Do your best to push the order along. Remember, you’re paying them $599. They should be in a hurry to do this.

Eventually my order went through. I received an email telling me my order had been processed and another email telling me that my order had been shipped. Once that happened, I received my copy within 2 days. To make your version of Adobe CS4 for Mac work they will send you a full-version of the software, not an upgrade. That is why they make you jump through so many hoops.

In all, I was pretty happy with the process. It did take a while to make the calls and fill out the forms but it was worth the $1200 I saved by upgrading instead of buying a new copy. Anyhow, I hope this article has helped put any of you potential Mac users at ease. Good luck and have fun with your new computer and software!

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• Is there a way to play games that require a CD-ROM but without the CD?
• Unlike with Vista, it’s been pretty quiet since the Windows 7 launch. Does that mean it’s a winner?
• Can anyone suggest a good VPN or proxy solution that is either cheap or free?
• How can I hide the new tab button Firefox 3.5.7?
• I’m currently very happy with my 720p HDTV, so how many years until I need to get a 1080p set?
• Does anyone have a good method for troubleshooting in-wall Ethernet cables?

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• WineBottler Turns Windows Programs into Standalone OS X Applications (Mac)
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• Driver Magician Free Today Only, Normally $30 (Windows)
  Windows: Keeping all your data backed up is a smart move, but what about the device drivers that are sometimes hard to pin down after a re-install? Driver Magician, a free download today, backs up and restores your Windows drivers.
• Boxee Beta Officially Available for All Platforms (Windows/Mac/Linux/Apple TV)
  Windows/Mac/Linux/Apple TV: Boxee-the XBMC media center spin-off that took web video by storm-has just released its first public beta into the wild. The new release comes with a new look, improved features, and a few new tricks up its sleeve.
• Sleep Cycle Analyzes Your Sleep Patterns for a Better Wake-Up (iPhone/iPod touch)
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• Digital Janitor Automatically Tidies Up Your Windows Folders (Windows)
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• Firefox 3.5.7 Update Addresses Stability Issue, Tweaks How Updates Work (Windows/Mac/Linux)
  Firefox users, expect your browser to prompt you with a minor update sometime in the next day or so; Mozilla has just released Firefox 3.5.7, a tiny update addressing a common stability issue and changing the way major updates are presented to users.
• Skype 4.2 Beta Makes HD-Quality Video Calls (Windows)
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  iPhone: If you’re a Facebook user who also happens to own an iPhone, the social network’s iPhone app is one of the best out there, and today it got a little better, adding push notifications and contact syncing to your Address Book.

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Firefox 3.6 has been a much-delayed release, but the release candidate means that the final release is just around the corner. The Firefox 3.6 release comes packed with Personas built-in (the no-restart theming functionality), better tools to keep plug-ins up to date, improved performance, and improvements for HTML5. (Speaking of, here’s HTML5 will change the way you use the web.)

Update: If you are using the about:config hack to change extension compatibility, it’s going to break with the new version, but we have you covered with the tip to make your extensions work with Firefox 3.6.

Firefox 3.6 RC1 is a free download for early adopters, works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

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RGBMusicLab is a portable application, available for Windows or Mac, that takes the RGB color values of an image and converts them, based on intensity, into sound. You have a high degree of control over the output of RGBMusicLab. You can adjust the size of the mosaic it creates for pieces of greater or lesser complexity, select from over a hundred instruments and sound effects that the Red, Green, and Blue color values will be represented by, and whether or not the individual color channels will play independently or harmonize, among other options.

The results won’t be a carefully orchestrated concerto, but we certainly had fun loading different types of photos into RGBMusicLab and seeing what the outcome was—Christina Hendrick’s photo, seen above, created a dynamic Broadway-musical-esque number and a photo of a tropical beach yielded a piece that started off fast and furious and then slowed to soothing melody. RGBMusicLab is freeware and available for Windows and Mac OS X.

Have a novel tool for turning one media into another? Created a particularly interesting piece with RGBMusic Lab? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

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• The Best Times to Buy Anything, All Year Round
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• Web 2.0 Suicide Machine Offs Your Online Identity
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• How to Survive a Job That Makes You Miserable
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Signed,
Tired in Tacoma

Photo by Tallent Show.

Dear Tired,

You’re right to be concerned about shutting down your computer at night—it’s a huge energy drain, otherwise. Leaving it on overnight once or twice isn’t a big deal, but over the course of several weeks and months it can have a significant impact on your electricity bill.

The good news: You’ve got lots of options for making sure your machine shuts down at night, even if you’ve already gone to bed. Windows, Mac OS X, and some Linux operating systems come with an auto-shut down feature baked right in, but there are plenty of free, feature-packed after market utilities you can try, so let’s start with those first.

Previously mentioned Smart Shutdown for Windows gives you lots of options before turning off your computer for the evening. Set it to complete certain tasks like emptying the Recycle Bin or close all your apps before turning off your machine, then decide how long you want your computer to be idle before Smart Shutdown leaps into action. If you’re a Mac user, then iWannaSleep will do the same thing for you. Linux users can turn to previously mentioned Auto Shutdown for Firefox.

Some apps you may already have on your computer do double duty—they’ll complete a task while you’re off doing other things and shut down your system when they’re done. Many popular BitTorrent apps, for instance, can do that for you, as can the computer maintenance app CCleaner.

Want to skip fancy software and just stick with your operating system’s native functionality for automatically shutting down your computer? Go for it! Mac users need to dip into System Preferences and set up the Energy Saver option to shut down the system at an appointed time. It’ll even wake it up again if you’d like.

The Spinning Donut has a great little tutorial on scheduling and automatic system shutdown on Windows XP and Vista. nixCraft explains how a couple of simple command line tweaks get the job done on your Linux box.

Still on the fence about whether you even need to shut down your computer every night? Read up on the subject and decide for yourself.

Love,
Lifehacker

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“Could be,” in this case, because MailBrowser, which is basically a Firefox or Internet Explorer sidebar that’s aware of what you’re looking at in Gmail or Google Apps, is somewhat of a mixed bag, with the total payout depending on how you use Gmail. If having a complete backup of your IMAP history cached locally for easy message access sounds appealing, your sidebar is going to hold a lot of helpful data. You get a complete list of everyone you’ve ever contacted, from one or more Gmail/Apps accounts, and you can tag contacts to make them friendly to searching and sorting.

As for file attachments, MailBrowser is even more helpful on that front. Because your files are cached and stored locally, you can use any desktop search software, or just Windows’ own file indexing, to find the stuff you’ve been sent. MailBrowser also provides thumbnail previews of the files you’re digging through, so it’s easy to pin down the Word document you’re looking for.

Then again, MailBrowser takes a seriously long time to download the average account, as you might expect, and isn’t always on point when it comes to handling multiple accounts, multi-person emails, or even people who have emailed more than one account you’ve hooked up.

If having your attachments and contact information at your fingertips, and locally cached, is a valuable resource for your Google-Mail-addicted ways, you could do worse than MailBrowser. It’s a free download for Windows and Mac systems, and requires Firefox 3.0 or later or Internet Explorer 7 or 8.

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Once you’ve installed the application, you can create a snip of a page by expanding the widget to full-size view, browsing to the site you want to snip, and then just positioning the square over the portion you’d like to see. Click the scissors icon, and you’ll have a widget that you can place anywhere on your desktop. You can create multiple snips and put them wherever you’d like, set the links to open in a new window, and even disable automatic page refreshing if you choose.

The widget toolbar will auto-hide once you’ve switched focus to something else, so they appear to be sitting right on the desktop background—it’s a great way to put your web-based todo list on your desktop, especially for XP users that miss the Active Desktop feature that was removed in Windows 7 and Vista. Snippage is a free download for Windows and Mac, requires the Adobe AIR platform.

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We got a look at some screenshots and video from the unveiling, but we’ve been able to use early release versions of the Boxee beta on both Linux and Windows systems since then. Here’s Howcast’s helpful video, showing off some features and offering tips on getting started

And here’s what’s jumped out at us about this nifty little piece of software.

Click on any of the images in this post for a larger view.

Smoother playback and streaming, at least on Windows

Boxee is meant to be used on a media-minded, HDMI-connected mini-computer (a.k.a. a “Home Theater PC,” or HTPC), or perhaps a laptop hooked up to an HDTV. There’s a dedicated device, the Boxee Box coming in 2010 for “under $200.” The Boxee team has also recommended a few devices that are small, relatively cheap, and utilize the NVIDIA ION graphics chip to provide HD-quality video without requiring other high-end hardware.

I’d already built a cheap-but-powerful Boxee setup, but for the beta release, I switched that ASRock Ion 330 to a Windows 7 installation, with Boxee set to load on startup. I did that because Windows is the main platform where Adobe “Labs” Flash 10.1 offers 3D acceleration for Hulu and other web video streams—although the Boxee Box will see accelerated Flash as well. It’s also the best big-picture platform because Netflix requires Microsoft’s Silverlight software to stream—not available, as you might guess, for Linux.

Running the Boxee beta on Windows 7, I’ve been very, very pleased with both downloaded video files and streaming content. Watching Hulu or other decently-high-quality video is akin to watching standard definition television, while streaming HD videos from Vimeo or YouTube feels like living in the future. Adobe will eventually (we’d hope) add hardware acceleration to its Mac and Linux Flash players, and Netflix may well make its way onto Linux systems. For the time being, though, the specially built Boxee Box or a Windows setup seem like the road to high-definition happiness.

Focus on content, not sites

In the Boxee alpha, when you wanted to watch a movie on Netflix, you launched the Netflix button, then navigated through that app’s own interface to pick a movie or TV episode. When you were looking for a TV show, you’d head to the TV menu, pick the CBS, WB, or Hulu Feeds button (when it worked), then click-click-click to your show, and your episode.

Now when I want to check out that season finale episode of Glee I’ve been meaning to get around to (forever), I can head to TV Shows, start typing in G-L, and select it from the as-you-type results on the right. Boxee will ask if I want to stream this episode through Fox’s own site or Hulu, let me know if they’re ad-supported or not, and give me the alternate option of queuing this episode up, if I’m not ready for the sit-down yet.

It works this way for movies, too. Start typing in H-A-N, and if you wanted to stream Hancock over Netflix, head over and click on it. If you’re on a laptop, or using Boxee’s kinda awesome QWERTY remote in the future, it’s easy, and clicking out two letters on a virtual keyboard isn’t so bad with a standard remote, either.

The very handy Queue

Boxee’s Queue feature makes this find-and-click process even easier. If I’ve added Glee to My Shows, it will automatically show up in my Queue, the right-most column on the start screen. If I happened to see a link to the Hulu page for that episode in my web travels, I could queue it up with a bookmarklet. Or, if I’m really into my serial musical dramedies, I could add Glee to the ever-present pop-up menu. When you get to Glee‘s page, the episodes you’ve already watched through Boxee have dimmed titles, which is quite helpful as well.

The Apps and social hooks

If Boxee did nothing but play back your video files and hook up to Netflix or Hulu, it would be, well, XBMC Live, or just an open-source Windows Media Center. What differentiates Boxee is its support for independent app development, giving all kinds of niche, mashup, and just plain cool sites a home on your TV.

There are too many to try and name or catalog here in total, but in my own house, the Facebook and Flickr photo apps have become a relaxing way of keeping up on what friends are up to. Failblog and The Daily Kitten‘s apps provide shamelessly effective quick-hit entertainment, and I watched the entirety of The Guild‘s third season through Boxee on my TV. If I’m blogging from the living room, I can have Pandora piped through our speakers, or listen to NPR through its own app, or through the RadioTime tuner. As Boxee becomes more available and accessible to the average home, more apps are bound to come along.

And your friends, too, who get hooked up with Boxee will make the experience more enjoyable. Not that I don’t think the Boxee team lacks for cultural cachet, but they’re the only people, out of the 10 I’m friended to through Boxee, that manage to push anything into my recommended/rated feed. When more of your friends and fellow media lovers start using it, you’re bound to enjoy bumping into little surprises on Boxee a whole lot more.

What’s still missing

So Boxee’s taken a big step toward making their software more content-focused and accessible, but they could go farther.

• Hulu can remember where you left off in a video while you’re signed in, and it would be great if Boxee could do that, too—on any video site. This isn’t some overnight JavaScript hack, but, still, it’s one of the last big differences between your DVD/Blu-Ray player and web video.
• Video files that we download from around the internet have a huge variety of naming schemes. Jason’s detailed some techniques for helping the “scraper” in XBMC, and Boxee, recognize and organize your files in his guide to turbo-charging your XBMC installation, but more work on getting Boxee’s local file organizer to instantly locate and categorize TV shows and movies is always appreciated.
• Boxee still includes an automatic torrent downloader, and a web-server-based remote control scheme, but they’re both tucked away deep in the system options. Why not come out of the server room ghetto and make Boxee a remote-controlled BitTorrent champion, just like uTorrent?

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Over at The How-To Geek they’ve put together a tutorial for using the Local Group Policy Editor to create a whitelist of applications. Rather than go through the hassle of trying to lock down everything on a computer to keep customers or kids from causing trouble, you can make a whitelist specifying the applications they can access.

Fire up the editor by typing gpedit.msc in the run dialogue and navigating to User Configuration\Administrative Templates\System and then scroll down to “Run only specified Windows applications”. From there you can enable the feature and build your list of allowed applications. If you want a step-by-step guide, check out the link below for ample screenshots and tips.

Have a tip for using a built-in Windows tool instead of a third-party app? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

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SpeakerShare requires only Bonjour for Windows, which installs itself when you install iTunes, but can also be implemented separately. It also needs a sound card that has a DirectSound, “wave output,” or other means of broadcasting itself—generally, the stock Windows sound drivers don’t provide this, so you might have to track down your soundboard/card manufacturer. After that, though, using SpeakerShare is as simple as starting it on one computer, hitting a button, then starting SpeakerShare on the computer that’s receiving and hitting “Connect.” It worked between two Windows systems on my home network, and, unless you run into sound driver problems, it will probably work for your systems, too.

SpeakerShare is a free download for Windows systems only, requires the Bonjour software to run.

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Right after showing off their new Windows 7 setup that include the new Pavilion Elite HPE desktop PC and the multitouch-capable L2105tm LCD monitor, HP have just added to their workstation lineup with the new HP Z200. Although an entry-level workstation that resembles with the company’s more expensive versions (Z400, Z600 and Z800), the new HP Z200 allows customization with your choice of Intel Core i3, Core i5 dual-core and quad-core Xeon 3400 processors.

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Read the rest of HP Z200 Entry-Level Workstation Announced at CES 2010 [Z200 Workstation to Run on Core i3, Core i5 Dual-core & Quad-core Xeon 3400]

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At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the good folks from HP have announced a neat Windows 7 setup for those looking to take advantage of the multitouch capabilities of the operating system — we’re talking about the HP Pavilion Elite HPE (high performance edition) desktop computer and the 21.5-inch multi-touch capable HP Compaq L2105tm LCD.

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Read the rest of HP Pavilion Elite HPE Desktop & HP Compaq L2105tm Multitouch LCD Setup [Cool Windows 7 PC with Multitouch Coming from HP]

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Just when you were complaining that your Skype video calls lack on video quality, today we just learned that the company has ventured into a new world by announcing that the new Skype 4.2 Beta for Windows is bringing 720p HD-quality chats that will allow for much higher details(1280 x 720 resolution at up to 30 fps) via PCs or HD webcams connected to HDTVs.

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Read the rest of Skype Promises 720p HD Video Calling on Skype 4.2 Beta for Windows, Soon [LG & Panasonic HDTV Support to Be Announced at CES 2010]

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Although your Windows installation disc may say “Home Premium Edition,” it still contains the other versions (such as Pro or Ultimate) on the disc—it just has a very small file called ei.cfg that tells the disc what version to install. The ei.cfg Removal Utility creates a new ISO of your install disc that ignores this file, thus letting you choose what edition you want when you start the installer.

While this tool is especially useful for computer technicians who have to install Windows a lot, it’s also nice to have for those of us that tend to lose discs often—especially in this day and age of emailed product keys. Now, if you need to reinstall Windows but can’t find your disc, you can just borrow a friend’s—even if it’s an edition that’s different than yours. You just need let the installer know which edition matches your product key (Note: Your disc still needs to be the same kernel as your key (i.e. 32 or 64-bit).

The ei.cfg Removal Utility is a free download, Windows only, and requires a Windows 7 install disc to use. Thanks, Cody Ryan Harrod!

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A perfect tool for frequent Facebook uploaders, for example, Shrink Pic works with a number of applications (most browsers, Outlook, Thunderbird, Skype, and MSN Messenger, to name just a few) to monitor when you upload, attach, or send pictures via IM. When you do, it automatically resizes the images in the background based on user-defined settings, then uploads the smaller image (so you don’t have to wait several minutes for an upload to complete just to have it severely compressed at its destination anyway). It can even resize multiple photos in the same upload. The speed at which it resizes and the quality of the compression are nothing to sneeze at, either.

Shrink Pic saves the resized images in a temporary directory, so your originals are never touched—just copied. You can use any kind of compression level you want, as well as choose from 5 different photo types to check for. If you want to disable it, all you need to do is uncheck an option in your system tray—and re-enabling it is just as easy. You can even install a portable version to a USB drive, so you never have to resize images again—not even at other computers.

Shrink Pic is a free download, Windows only.

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If you’re running Windows 2000 and above—unfortunately excluding Windows Vista and Windows 7 home editions—you can easily restrict access to local drives by changing a flag in the Local Group Policy Editor, which is launched by typing gpedit.msc in the run box, and selecting which drives you would like to restrict. Over at How-To Geek they explain:

Now navigate to User Configuration \ Administrative Templates \ Windows Components \ Windows Explorer. Then on the right side under Setting, double click on Prevent access to drives from My Computer.

From there you can access the drive restriction options seen in the screenshot above and select which drives you would like to restrict. For a screen-by-screen walkthrough and additional tips, check out the full guide at How-To Geek. Have another trick or tip for Windows security using built-in tools? Let’s hear about it in the comments below.

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Notepad GNU has a lot to recommend on its own, including optional background transparency, loads of HTML and other code-minded plug-ins, a menu that can quickly send a file to a browser or other app (even Notepad++), and all the text tweaking tools you need without the Office integration nonsense you don’t. It doesn’t offer everything that Notepad++ does, but that’s kind of the point—it’s a different layout and setup, and one newcomers might find pretty useful.

The one drawback, for English speaking users at least, is the hit-and-miss translation of some of Notepad GNU’s more obscure features. You’ll be able to grope your way around in the linguistic dark, most likely, but if you speak Russian and like the app, by all means—offer to help with the translation.

Notepad GNU is a free download for Windows systems only. It comes packaged in a RAR container, oddly enough—you can easily unpack it for free using 7-Zip.

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Krento runs in the background from the system tray, and can be launched by either right-clicking the icon, clicking your mouse’s scroll wheel, hitting Windows + C, or double-clicking a toggled “pulsar”—basically a small, semi-transparent animated icon—in the corner of your screen. To launch a program, just click on its box (or “stone”, as Krento calls it). Or, if you don’t want to move from the keyboard, you can also hit ctrl + the function key that corresponds to the program. In the above-pictured case, for example, Ctrl + F5 for the Command Prompt.

To add programs to the launcher, just drag and drop them onto a stone. You can even create multiple “circles” for different categories of programs, so you’re not just limited to 12. Krento is also skinnable (it comes with a bunch of its own skins, but is also compatible with RocketDock skins), and takes up very little RAM and CPU, which is always nice—especially for something that looks this good.

Krento is a free download, Windows only.

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Why would MailDrop be useful, beyond what a Drobox user can already do with their automatic folders and web access? Because it monitors only a specific label or folder in your email account, MailDrop makes it very easy to back up important files that get sent to your inbox. If you set that folder in your Dropbox account to be shared with others, it’s also a one-click solution for getting important files to collaborators and friends. Finally, if you’re on a device without a decent browser or a native Dropbox client (we’re looking at you, BlackBerry), it’s not too hard to set up a filter or folder rule that automatically shuffles files you mail to yourself into your Dropbox account.

What about the application itself? It’s self-contained and portable, and runs in the Windows system tray, periodically checking an email address, via IMAP connection, for activity in a folder you specify. It’s set up from the get-go for easy Gmail access, but you can manually tweak its server, port, and SSL settings for any IMAP-compatible service. If you find it helpful, you’ll want to add it to your Start menu’s Startup folder and set up your email with a unique folder or label for MailDrop to monitor.

MailDrop is a free download for Windows systems only.

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Although it seemed like an obvious fit, for whatever reason Microsoft’s Xbox gaming division and its Windows Mobile division have heretofore been kept at arm’s length. Given competitor Apple’s roaring success with the iPhone as a portable gaming platform (recently winning our reader poll against Nintendo and Sony), and Microsoft’s comparative lack of a portable gaming strategy beyond a fledgling gaming focus for the Zune HD, this sector has been a hole waiting to be filled for some time.

Now that’s finally going to start happening, according to a recent job posting in Redmond, WA. The Principle Program Manager’s primary responsibility will be to further the following mission: “connecting players via the LIVE services on new devices beyond the console. We need a Principle Program Manager who can help drive the platform and bring Xbox LIVE enabled games to Windows Mobile.”

Another listing for a software test engineer focuses on mobile gaming as well. It seems clear Microsoft is finally making a push to get into the sector, certainly with the Windows Mobile platform and presumably with the Zune HD as well. The multi-device, multi-platform situation in the Microsoft camp will be a challenging one to simplify for consumers, and it will be interesting to see whether the company attempts to consolidate app marketplaces and content stores or whether devices will remain tethered to separate silos.

Will the Xbox Live Marketplace seamlessly integrate with the Windows Marketplace for Mobile, and will the Zune HD get a more proper app store or be able to tap into either of the other two marketplaces? It sounds like Microsoft is hiring some management whose task it may be to answer some of these questions. However it works out, Xbox LIVE gamers may look forward to seeing more of the XBLA console experience finally take root in Microsoft’s mobile division, at long last.

[via Engadget]

Tags: gadgets, gaming, microsoft, video games, windows mobile, xbla, xbox, XBox live, zune hd

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Although made official a while ago, the HTC HD2 is still making waves. The hot Windows Mobile 6.5 smartphone hasn’t been released in the USA yet but that’s not the only market still missing HTC’s flagship WinMo phone.
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Tim Anderson noted yesterday, “If the goal of .NET was to see off Java, it was at least partially successful. . . .  [E]nterprise Java became mired in complexity, making .NET an easy sell as a more productive alternative.  C# has steadily grown in popularity, and is now the first choice for most Windows development.  ASP.NET has been a popular business web framework.  The common language runtime has proved robust and flexible.”

But at the same time, “The ‘building block services’ idea fell flat on its face . . . at PDC in 2001 where Microsoft pushed its HailStorm idea the company was unable to sell the idea of itself as a universal service provider.  Two years later, at the PDC 2003 where it announced the ‘Three Pillars of Longhorn’ Microsoft attempted to deliver a version of Windows with a .NET user interface, and that too failed and had to be hurriedly replaced with what became Windows Vista.”

So, moving forward, developers may not want to bet the figurative farm on .NET.  It hasn’t had enough wins – or even been adopted to a significant degree by Microsoft itself – to be guaranteed a place in the spotlight for the next decade.

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Tim Anderson noted yesterday, “If the goal of .NET was to see off Java, it was at least partially successful. . . .  [E]nterprise Java became mired in complexity, making .NET an easy sell as a more productive alternative.  C# has steadily grown in popularity, and is now the first choice for most Windows development.  ASP.NET has been a popular business web framework.  The common language runtime has proved robust and flexible.”

But at the same time, “The ‘building block services’ idea fell flat on its face . . . at PDC in 2001 where Microsoft pushed its HailStorm idea the company was unable to sell the idea of itself as a universal service provider.  Two years later, at the PDC 2003 where it announced the ‘Three Pillars of Longhorn’ Microsoft attempted to deliver a version of Windows with a .NET user interface, and that too failed and had to be hurriedly replaced with what became Windows Vista.”

So, moving forward, developers may not want to bet the figurative farm on .NET.  It hasn’t had enough wins – or even been adopted to a significant degree by Microsoft itself – to be guaranteed a place in the spotlight for the next decade.

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I’ve now managed to install it successfully so here are a two tips that may safe you some hassle if you like me encounter a HTTP Error 404.3 – Not Found.

First off, I was using IIS 7.5. As you may know, you need to install the web server role onto Windows Server 2008 first and it seems that everything labeled IIS6 tools and compatibility tools should be installed as well, so do that first. Then when running the CF installer right click and ‘Run as Administrator’.

Once I did that it was plain sailing, but not much joy without those two boxes ticked.

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CherryPal has gone for the low-low-end of the tech market, with their new netbook named ‘Africa’. The Africa has a very limited set of specs, and can’t even run a full version of Windows, and instead offers a Linux OS, or Windows CE.

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