by Terrence O'Brien on November 18, 2010 at 11:00 AM

In our quest to digitize every last bit of our lives, one thing has escaped us: a streamlined system for taking and managing our notes. We've looked at Evernote, which is an impressive service with some top-notch software, but it had one major flaw in that we couldn't get it to stick; it just never worked for jotting down quick notes. Simplenote is the ideological opposite of Evernote. It lacks ...
by Terrence O'Brien on October 10, 2010 at 09:01 AM

PDFs viewing on an e-reader is a must-have feature. But there is a problem; many PDFs you'll find, whether passed out by professors or downloaded from free e-book sites like Project Gutenberg or Google Books, are poorly formatted for reading on the devices. There are often errant page headers and page numbers that end up in seemingly random spots of the text. You might occasionally encounter ...
by Terrence O'Brien on September 25, 2010 at 07:00 AM

Solitaire is one of the few computer games not to have seen much in the way of improvement or innovation. In fact, since it became the world's most popular timewaster with the release of Windows 3.1, electronic versions of solitaire have become pretty much indistinguishable from one another (outside of the occasional fresh coat of paint). 'Awesome Solitaire' for the iPhone doesn't mess with the ...
by Terrence O'Brien on September 15, 2010 at 04:25 PM

It's no secret that Internet Explorer has been the lame duck of the browser market since Firefox landed on the scene. One of the first things most tech-savvy people do with new PCs is install Google Chrome or The Fox, and with good reason. Though IE7 and IE8 did a lot to modernize the look and basic feature set of the default Windows browser, the truth is that, under the hood, it still couldn't ...
by Terrence O'Brien on September 7, 2010 at 12:20 PM

If you want to shave a few bucks off your electric bill and save a couple trees, the most common methods involve buying all new appliances and just turning everything off all the time. But you can actually trim your bills and reduce your carbon footprint with a simple piece of software called Granola. This little applet sits in the system tray of your Linux or Windows PC, monitors how much energy ...
by Terrence O'Brien on August 20, 2010 at 02:17 PM

When it comes to managing your e-book collection, there aren't a whole lot of options out there. If you want to organize a large library of e-books, especially ones that you're not buying or downloading directly from your e-reader's manufacturer, then there's really only one viable choice: Calibre. Not only does it organize your collection and load it onto your e-reader, but it will do so ...
by Matt Evans on August 16, 2010 at 01:35 PM

It's no secret that the Android Market is considerably smaller than Apple's App Store, but this shouldn't get Android users down when searching for the Twitter app that will maximize their micro-blogging. There are more than enough high-quality Twitter apps available in the Market, and, as Android continues to grow, the offerings will only get better. Here's a list of some apps that let us tweet ...
by Terrence O'Brien on August 2, 2010 at 12:46 PM

There are a number of tools that we simply can't live without. For instance, we'd be lost without the ability to quickly take, manipulate and share screenshots with each other. A good screen capture app is essential for adding images to blog posts, sharing ideas and mocking the occasional typo. But you don't need to be a blogger to make good use of such a tool; they're great for capturing images ...
by Caleb Johnson on July 20, 2010 at 02:20 PM

During the iPhone's nascent stages, users had limited choices when it came to Twitter applications. But now, there are myriad services that allow you to blast 140-character tweets, and keep up with your buddies, too. So now, the problem is weeding out the pretenders from the contenders – not that we're complaining.
So to help you decide which app is best for you, we're offering a brief ...
by Switched Staff on July 19, 2010 at 02:28 PM

The browser add-on debate has been raging for years. Do those helpful little plug-ins help productivity or just grind your browser to a halt? Frankly, we can't live without them, and we think you might enjoy some of our favorite helpful additions, as well. With Chrome finally having a solid community of developers pumping out extensions, we thought it a perfect time to pick 13 essential plug-ins ...
by Terrence O'Brien on June 23, 2010 at 09:10 AM

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Chances are, you're well aware that the new iOS 4, formerly "iPhone OS 4," was officially released Monday. And, if you're one of those with a compatible device, you've probably been eagerly anticipating the boost. While the vast majority of reported upgrades have been painless, there have been rumblings around the ...
by Terrence O'Brien on June 14, 2010 at 12:40 PM

What is it: Rapportive is a browser add-on for Chrome and Firefox that adds information from social networks and other sources to your contacts in Gmail. Once installed, it looks up information from around the Web about people who send you e-mails, and displays it in a sidebar.
What we like: The right-hand sidebar in Gmail is largely a waste of space. It's primarily empty, occasionally ...
by Matthew Zuras on May 12, 2010 at 02:10 PM

Readers, we should've been prepared for disappointment. After expectations for the iPad had run so high that there was veritable anger from the tech world when the limitations of the device were announced, we should've known that we ought to lower the bar for Condé Nast's digital editions. The iPad version of Vanity Fair just debuted, and we spent a little hands-on time with the app, trying ...
by Terrence O'Brien on May 6, 2010 at 12:48 PM

What it is:
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When we suggest that readers download software, we normally pick programs that are known for user friendliness. HijackThis is not user-friendly. In fact, it's downright dangerous in the wrong hands. Yet, its power for locating and removing malware is unrivaled, thanks to its catch-all approach that doesn't bother to determine what is good or bad, but merely tells you what is on ...
by Terrence O'Brien on April 26, 2010 at 01:14 PM

What it is:
Microsoft Security Essentials is a free anti-malware and anti-virus package, designed to compete with both commercial and free offerings like AVG and Norton.
What we like:
First, and most obviously, we like the price point; it's hard to argue with free. But no matter how free an app is, if it sucks, there's no reason to install it. Thankfully, there is plenty more to like about ...