Tag: LINUX

Firefox 4 hit beta all the way back in July of 2010. After a series of delays (which largely appear to have arisen from playing catch-up with the quickly evolving Chrome), the latest version of the pioneering, open-source browser is finally here. It's faster and sleeker than previous versions, and features the incredible Panorama tab-organizer. Download it now for free. ...

InPrivate, Incognito, Private Browsing -- whatever they want to brand it -- all modern browsers offer a special mode designed to keep what you do online a secret from prying eyes. Despite different names and origins at different companies, they all work in basically similar ways: A new browser session is created that operates separately from your existing one, with its own history and cookies ...

It may not be top-secret or espionage-worthy, but the information we keep on laptops and smartphones is still something we all would like protected. Saved passwords, addresses, bank balances, friends' contact info -- all sorts of information could have potentially devastating effects in the hands of a crook. Large companies have long had the technology to remotely lock-down and wipe mobile ...

Symptoms: There are a range of telltale signs that your PC has been infiltrated by a binary ne'er-do-well, but, counterintuitively, the worst case scenario is when there are no obvious symptoms at all. For starters, you may have an infection if your PC or Internet throughput has become consistently sluggish, and a restart doesn't cure it. Frequent, random pop-up windows with ads or system ...

For gamers, getting lost isn't something to fear, as the thrill of discovering and escaping from unknown lands is integral to some of our most cherished gaming experiences. ('Myst,' anyone?) This week, we'll lose ourselves in five games that delve fearlessly into the unfamiliar. Rock-solid platformer 'Beacon' is perfect for speed running, and manages to capture both the excitement and ...

It's almost a brand new year, so we thought we'd say goodbye to 2010 with a round of indie and Flash platformers that hearken back to yesteryear while looking toward tomorrow. The genre that 'Super Mario Bros.' created 25 years ago is still going strong, and, whether you're a nostalgia hound or just a gamer who needs his twitch fix, these games aim for the throwback. Considering the visual ...

Vladimir Putin is throwing his weight behind the free and open-source software movement. The Russian prime minister has apparently signed an order to move the government to an infrastructure built on freely available, open-source software by the third quarter of 2014. The plan would see all major government systems transition to Linux starting in the second quarter of 2012. The move to open-source ...

Adblock Plus, one of our favorite extensions, is finally available for Chrome. It was only announced recently that the beloved extension would be coming to the Google browser -- but, to speed up the process, the Adblock Plus crew teamed up with the guys behind AdThwart, an ad-blocking add-on already available for Chrome. They changed the name to the more familiar Adblock Plus, and the two ...

The rumors were true. Google eBooks has officially launched here in the U.S., and just about everything you've heard about the service, originally said to be called Google Editions, has turned out to be spot-on. Largely cloud-based and able to be synced across devices via your Google account, eBookstore claims to offer the largest selection of any electronic reading outlet, largely thanks to ...

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 ...

The new HTML5-powered 'Booki.sh' e-reading app is entirely Web-based and, unlike Kindle, Nook or even Blio, can be viewed in any modern browser, regardless of platform. This means that PCs, Macs, Linux, Android, iOS and BlackBerry can all view content through Booki.sh. The app takes advantage of HTML5's rarely used offline storage to let you read without a wireless connection. As you can see in ...

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 ...

Reviewing the latest version of Ubuntu back in May, we mentioned that the Ubuntu One syncing service was integrated with a music store, allowing you to sync your song library across Ubuntu PCs and access it from the Web. In advance of Ubuntu 10.10, code-named Maverick Meerkat, Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu) has launched Ubuntu One Music for Android. The app allows streaming playback of any ...

Everything is a game these days. Foursquare hands you rewards for eating out, Xbox Live turns playing games into a game, and Epic Win turned to-do lists into experiential point-earning quests. 0Boxer extends the same idea, in a somewhat more basic form, to your e-mail inbox. Using it is simple; sign up at 0Boxer.com, install the add-on, then start using Gmail as usual. You'll then be awarded ...

'Graph Your Inbox' is an awesome, while possibly useless, Chrome extension that panders directly to our geekiest inclinations. It sits in the Chrome toolbar, and, when you click it, you're prompted to enter search terms. ("Creepy", "hate work" and "jellybeans" are fun to try.) It simply parses results from a Gmail search, so all of the same operators (e.g. label and 'from') will work. But rather ...