Apple recently launched their App Store, and there are people left and right saying that it’s horrible. It’s not that it doesn’t work, or has lack of choice, or is difficult to use. People are complaining about it because it’s a strong indicator the software market is moving away from traditional retail boxed. My opinion on it is this:...

Facebook apps for the most part are junk. However there are a few diamonds in the rough that are actually useful. Here are 8 of them.  MyCalendar Events like people’s birthdays, meetings and other social stuff is part of what Facebook is all about. The MyCalendar app gives you a far superior way centralize all that information in Facebook instead of...

2010 has had a bit of a rocky start. Apple’s iPad isn’t even for sale yet and everybody hates it. Google Buzz has ignited such a privacy firestorm that many claim it’s the worst product launch the big G has had in 12 years. Ouch. Microsoft continues on its trend of choosing the worst possible product names, this time with Windows Phone 7...

When most people think of apps that run from the USB stick alone, they think of PortableApps. However there is another choice, and it’s called LiberKey. I will admit up front that this doesn’t look as good as PortableApps does, however I will say it runs faster and is easier to get to the apps you want quicker. The first notable difference is that...

Tiny applications run faster because they require far less computing power. They’re useful for several types of computer users. If you run a slower computer box, the less resource an app uses, the better. If you have a slower internet connection, smaller apps that access the internet typically make far less demands on bandwidth. If you’re a gamer,...

Software bloat is unfortunately all too common in many of the apps that we use, with two of the biggest offenders being email clients and instant messaging programs. While it’s true you could use web-enabled versions of these apps, sometimes this is just as bad because it causes the browser (no matter which you use) to use a lot of memory in short...

Before the dot-com crash of the early 2000s, the industry was replete with internet business moguls of the time stating (or rather, yelling) GIVE EVERYTHING AWAY! THE CUSTOMER WILL RECIPROCATE! Well, we all know that went over like a lead zeppelin. Nobody reciprocated at all and the industry took its lumps in grand fashion (to the tune of losing their...

In this series I’m going to covers the ins and outs of using Linux as your primary home computer operating system. It will cover in a realistic sense what you can and moreover cannot do with it. This is not going to be a technical explanation of how the Linux file system works but rather it’s immediate differences between it and...

You’ve heard time and time again from Linux fans that "Linux can do anything Windows can do". Is this true? Yes. However what the Linux fans usually don’t mention is how to do the stuff you do in Windows in Linux. Bear in mind that "equivalent" in this context is a subjective term, because more often than not the apps you use in...

Over the weekend I finally decided to check out Microsoft Office Live Small Business. I wanted to see what it was all about and what I could actually do with it. Note: This is not to be confused with Microsoft Office Live Workspace on the same site. This is labeled as “an online extension of Microsoft Office” – and that’s totally...

Text editors are obviously not very exciting in the world of computers, however there are times when they’re absolutely necessary to get things done. For example, if you have ever dabbled in programming, used HTML, custom-made your own Cascading Style Sheet or the like, an advanced and fast text editor is required otherwise it takes twice as long to get...

Nothing will slow down your computer faster than bulky apps. Go light and you’ll be able to do stuff faster. Fast is good. MP3, WAV player: Old version of WinAMP (v2.81) WinAMP v2.81 is the last version of the player before the introduced video support and then (as far as I’m concerned) it went all downhill from there. This music file player does the...