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Many Android devices ship with stripped-down office suite apps that offer limited functionality loosely based on the kind you'd get with Microsoft Office on your desktop. Having had a discussion recently with someone who now regularly travels without a laptop, depending solely on his Apple iPad for ...

Asking a seasoned Linux user what music player you should use is akin to bringing up questions about religion or politics with your drinking buddies. A much safer strategy is, don't ask and don't tell. But if you insist, let me throw a suggestion into the fray. Uncage Songbird. You might be pleasant...

I've always been a fan of antivirus maker AVG. That's primarily because of the intense pain I felt when renewing staple Norton Symantec AntiVirus subscriptions back in the day, when the PC was our sole method of connectivity and Norton was our sole method of antivirus protection. AVG came along in d...

YouTube is a great source for watching an eclectic collection of videos on music, human stupidity and worldly comedy. But I find it much too easy to go far afield as I click on "also watched" videos when viewing a particular topic line. Minitube solves that problem for me. Not only does Minitube bet...

Backing up data and restoring a crashed computer are two of those "I wish I hadda" moments in the life of every computer user. When you maintain a collection of computers for your job or organization, those tasks can be critical. One of the fastest and most reliable ways to restore an afflicted comp...

My interest in desktop eye candy vacillates with the seasons. The added productivity it brings to a particular desktop design is also a factor. Now that GNOME 3 forces a desktop without icons, I took a look at how useful the gDesklets Project might be. When it comes to little desktop applets or widg...

British Telecom has filed a lawsuit against Google, claiming the Android operating system infringes of six of its patents. The suit attacks Google on a number of fronts, including Google Maps, Google+ and Google Music. While the technology in question has been used by Google for years, it may have t...

Text editors are usually replacements for full-fledged word processing suites. They can offer very simple one-trick functionality such as Leafpad or multi-functional tabbed writing tools with even some semblance of character enhancements like Gedit. Or they can offer something completely different a...

HP announced Friday it will contribute webOS to the open source community. The decision seals the fate of the operating system, which HP acquired when it purchased Palm for $1.2 billion in April 2010. Since then, the Pre smartphone line running webOS flickered out, and HP's TouchPad tablet, launched...

Ever since the Galaxy Nexus, the Samsung-built Android phone that will usher in Ice Cream Sandwich, was announced in Hong Kong in October, the device has been making the headlines. On Thursday alone, there were stories about its launch in Canada, Verizon Wireless' excluding Google Wallet from the de...

Small packages can be deceptive, especially when it comes to evaluating desktop note-taking systems. Tomboy Notes can easily fool you into thinking you need a bigger, more powerful note-taking app. But the latest stable version 1.8.3 released on Nov. 14 offers enough heavy-duty features that you wi...

The connected car is on the verge of going where no vehicle has ever gone before. Presently, many cars enable drivers to pair their mobile music and phone devices with their vehicles' sound systems. But cars with telemetry that will connect to cloud-based navigation and entertainment services could ...

Believe it or not, antivirus software makers are now pitching solutions for our smartphones. Do you believe the hype? Statistics floating around the sea of press releases from antivirus merchants proclaim the end of innocence for our lovable little Android. He's grown up. The amount of malware aimed...

A little Wine with your Linux computing session can keep you using your favorite Microsoft Windows programs. What is Wine? Wine is a compatibility layer that's sometimes referred to as an emulator, though it's not "that kind" of emulator, according to the project's wiki. Wine doesn't do any CPU emul...

Henry Chesbrough and Eric von Hippel promoted the idea of open innovation as a new paradigm for corporations to reach beyond their own walls as they develop and bring to market new products and services. The idea covered a number of channels for work and ideas, including customers, users and partner...