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ANDROID APP REVIEW

Slick Syncing May Sell You on Firefox for Android

I've taken to browsing the Web with a mobile device like a duck to water, despite the generally appalling user experience. I remember well the days of balancing hot and heavy Dell laptops on my middle, recumbent on a sofa -- peering awkwardly at an obscurely angled keyboard, lap getting hotter and h...

Mozilla Lures Devs to Firefox OS With Shiny New Toys

The Mozilla Foundation on Tuesday announced that smartphones running its Firefox OS will be available to developers in February. The preview phones are being produced in collaboration with Geeksphone and Telefonica. The idea is to entice devs to create apps for the Firefox OS. "These devices have no...

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XFCE Makes Mint Even Fresher

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. This is not...

Mozilla Stocks the Shelves for an App Store Grand Opening

The Mozilla Foundation will begin accepting developer submissions for its own app market at the Mobile World Congress, which will be held in Barcelona next week. The Mozilla Marketplace will let devs distribute and monetize their apps. It will also be the sole repository for cross-platform apps and ...

Mobile Nirvana: Syncing Smartphones, Tablets and PCs

The concept of mobile connectivity in today's multi-device world is changing. Connectivity means more than connecting our laptop computers to WiFi or 3G carrier networks wherever we go. Today people work on more than one computer. Increasingly, workers and consumers alike rely on a growing collectio...

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Music Management Takes Flight With Songbird

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...

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Ubuntu Upgrade a Mixed Bag at Best

Canonical will release its upgrade to Ubuntu 11.10 on Oct. 13. If you suffered through version 11.04 in hopes that something better would arrive in 11.10, you suffered in vain. For the typical user, very little of anything new is bundled into this latest Ubuntu upgrade. To be honest, my early hands-...

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For Fast, Light Web Browsing, Dillo’s No Dallier

Sometimes you find good things in small packages. At least that has been my experience with picking through the wares often buried in directories of open source software that feeds my Linux OS passion. Dillo, a little-known tiny Web browser, was an unexpected find. This baby browser has a very small...

Mozilla Targets Tablets With New Browser Designs

The Mozilla Foundation is enhancing the tablet version of its Firefox browser. It's leveraging Android Honeycomb but retaining familiar visual elements of Firefox such as the signature big back button and distinctive tab shape, according to a blog post by Ian Barlow, who works on Mozilla's mobile us...

Mozilla to Enterprise: We Never Meant to Make You Cry

Less than a month after Mozilla evangelist Aza Dotzler blew off enterprise users of the company's Firefox Web browser, triggering an avalanche of angry responses, the Mozilla Foundation is seeking to make nice with corporate America. The Foundation has announced that it's re-establishing the Mozilla...

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SeaMonkey: More Than Just a Firefox Clone

Mozilla.org's SeaMonkey Project was my first exposure to Web browsing when I started dabbling in the Linux OS. I have since played around with other browsers, including my workhorse favorite, Firefox, by the Mozilla folks. But I keep coming back to SeaMonkey for its simplicity and charm. SeaMonkey's...

Groklaw Calling It Quits After a Job Well Done

Groklaw will stop publishing new articles May 16 -- exactly eight years to the day after it was launched. This is because its reason for existence is gone, according to founder Pamela Jones. "In a simple sentence, the reason is this: The crisis SCO initiated over Linux is over, and Linux won," Jones...

FireFox 4 Lets Fly With New Speed, Privacy Features

Its logo depicting a wily flame-colored fox encircling the globe suggests that nonprofit Mozilla aims to set the world on fire with every new version of its free, open source Web browser Firefox, released in its fourth incarnation Tuesday. Available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android and Maemo, F...

Does Mozilla Have a Speed Problem?

The Firefox Web browser is about to go where it has never gone before. Firefox makers are changing their developmental strategy. This new approach will warp Mozilla.org's flagship browser through several release generations in less time than it took to advance from Firefox 3.0 to the not-yet-release...

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BookmarkBridge Looking Kind of Rickety

As a bookmark manager, BookmarkBridge has potential but falls short of fully carrying out its mission, and that's a big disappointment. Anyone who uses multiple Web browsers can put a top-notch bookmark synchronizing tool to good use. Installing beta versions of software is usually less of a risk wi...

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