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Blender Graphics Editor Slices, Dices and Amazes August 29, 2012 
Blender is such a highly specialized and powerful rendering app that at least two Linux distros are built around it. This cross-platform 3D graphics application matches features and performance of the leading commercial equivalent software packages. Professional-strength rendering software is not a tool for tinkerers.
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WeatherBug: Sunny Interface, Cloudy Info Sources August 24, 2012 
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, forecasts and maps. Extreme weather alerts and social network sharing functions are built-in too.
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For Modest Mousepad, Simplicity Is Both Virtue and Vexation August 22, 2012 
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 look elsewhere.
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BackCountry Nav Is a Good - but Not Sufficient - Guide August 17, 2012 
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 graphical contour lines, aiding in outdoor-activity navigation.
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KDE 4.9: As Pretty and Peppy as a Linux Desktop Can Be August 15, 2012 
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 distribution in Linux Mint 13.
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IP Cam Viewer Pro: Well Worth a Bit of Configuration Hassle August 10, 2012 
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.
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XFCE Makes Mint Even Fresher August 08, 2012 
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.
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Instapaper: A Nice Way to Save Web Pages for a Rainy Day August 03, 2012 
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.
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Dia Does Diagrams Dutifully and Beautifully August 01, 2012
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.
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TuneIn to the Good New Radio Days July 27, 2012 
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 allowed for a continuous stream of mellifluous programming to be place-shifted anywhere.
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WinFF Makes Multi-File Conversion Painless July 25, 2012 
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.
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Scam Detector Can't Work Magic but It Can Make You Smarter July 20, 2012 
"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 gold to a trusted overseas beneficiary..." and so on.
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Information Grows Strong Roots With TreeLine July 18, 2012 
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 lets you store any kind of information and retrieve it with ease.
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Hotels.com Steers Toward Savings - if You Can Find the Hotel July 13, 2012 
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 might exit the freeway at an obvious motel cluster and drive around looking for the best rate.
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GanttProject Packs Prodigious Planning Power July 11, 2012 
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.
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ROM Manager Makes Device Maintenance a Pleasure July 06, 2012 
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 kerfuffle by providing a one-stop app that launches and automates many of these tasks.
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Image Editing Is a Snap With Pinta July 03, 2012 
Pinta, a raster image editor, is the app equivalent of a diamond in the rough. Years of testing and reviewing open source and commercial software taught me never to assume that a relatively new application is not worthy of attention. That lesson proved true with this youngster of an app.
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Plex for Android Is Pretty - but Pixelated, Plodding and Painful to Use June 29, 2012 
Plex is a good looking media platform for running media files on Google TV, tablets,
phones and so on. Online channels include Hulu, Vimeo and more. On looks and apparent tight integration between my existing Android-based devices, I decided to check out Plex's two Android apps. I was interested in particular in how well they integrate Android tablets and Google TV.
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7-Zip Stuffs Data Tight, but It's Hard to Get a Grip on This Zipper June 27, 2012 
7-Zip and p7Zip belong to a family of file compression utilities that are among the best available for Linux/Unix. So you would think that the development communities would offer to Linux users what is available in similar compression apps on the Windows and Mac platforms. Think again!
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HD Widgets Turn Ugly UIs Into Things of Beauty June 22, 2012 
HTC is on its fourth incarnation of Sense, and in my opinion, no one has come close. In fact, they've got nowhere near. However, a browse around the Play Store will uncover downloadable themes, sets of widgets and UIs, one of which is HD Widgets Beta from Cloud TV.
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