Software That Does It All

Edit your photos, organize your finances, access your computer remotely, and do even more with these essential software packages and Web apps--a mix of established favorites and indispensable up-and-comers.

A computer is only as useful as the software you run on it, so you should keep your PC's software current--and not necessarily with the latest version of a program that's getting long in the tooth. Sometimes, switching to a new application can help you speed up your work or make your system more efficient.

PCWorld examined software tools for handling 11 categories of common (and essential) PC tasks: presentations, fi­­nancial planning, note taking, file management, photo editing, email, word processing, music organizing, remote access, cleanup/optimization, and backup. In each instance, we identified the dominant program, a promising challenger, and (where applicable) an online alternative. Our category coverage in­­vites you to consider the pros and cons of each type of contender: incumbents, up-and-comers, and Web apps.

Presentations
• Incumbent: Microsoft PowerPoint. The 600-pound gorilla in the world of presentations is Microsoft's PowerPoint (available as a component of various Microsoft Office bundles or separately for $140). The application is so dominant that the phrase “send me the PowerPoint” has become ubiquitous in business circles.

Prezi’s singlepane approach to creating presentations can take some getting used to, but the finished results can be remarkably effective.• Up-and-comer: Prezi. Easily the most interesting alternative to PowerPoint, Prezi has both local and online components. The free, public (and Web-only) version lets you create arguably better presentations than PowerPoint can de­­liver. Instead of being slide-based, Prezi uses a single-pane approach. The process may seem strange at first, but Prezi's tutorials and inline help will get you up to speed in a hurry. Prezi is collaborative, so multiple users can work on the same presentation simultaneously via Prezi Meeting. When it's time to give the presentation, you can play the show online (it's Flash-based) or download a .zip file, extract it, and play it lo­­cally using the included prezi.exe file. Signing up for the pro version of Prezi ($59 a year) entitles you to download Prezi Desktop, and you work on presentations locally.

Like PowerPoint, TransMedia's Glide Presenter adopts a slide-by-slide approach to creating presentations.• Web app: TransMedia Glide Presenter. Part of the browser-based Glide desktop operating system (free with 30GB of storage, or $50 a year with 250GB), Glide Presenter works in a slide-by-slide format. It's easy to use, and you can export creations as PowerPoint files or PDF files. You can stream audio and video in presentations, and create presentations collaboratively.

Financial Planning
• Incumbents: Intuit Quicken and Intuit Mint. Though Quicken (starts at $30) is desktop software and Mint is a free Web-based service, both offerings are go-to resources for budgeting, and both come from the same company: Intuit.

You Need A Budget keeps a running tab of your monthly expenditures in dozens of categories.• Up-and-comer: You Need A Budget. Part budgeting tutorial and part money management guide, this intuitive program walks you through setup and fund allocation, helping you add accounts and project spending in dozens of categories. YNAB then maintains a running tab of your spending, with graphs that illustrate how much you've spent over the months and how your net worth has progressed. Security-conscious users will appreciate that YNAB can't automatically download activity from your bank account. You can import OFX, QFX, and QIF files into the ledger, but YNAB encourages self-reporting because that approach forces you to think more concretely about your spending habits. You can try out You Need A Budget for free, but it costs $60 to keep. The price of admission also buys you entry into YNAB forums and financial-planning classes, where you can glean advice from experts.

HelloWallet is a free, Web-based app that lets you track and rate your spending against goals you set.• Web app: HelloWallet. If you need to balance your books but you have trouble finding time to record everything you earn and spend, try HelloWallet. This free app syncs with online accounts and lets you flag spending as 'wish I hadn't', 'glad I did', 'had to', and so forth, so that you can identify expenditures to eliminate in the future. The site walks you through budget setup and notes how much, on average, other people in your city with your income spend in each ex­­pense category.


Note Taking
Evernote goes far beyond simple note taking to handle information organizing.• Incumbent: Evernote. A multipurpose tool for note taking, note syncing, offline bookmark creation, and information organizing, Evernote (free) keeps coming up with ways to make the data you need easier to keep track of. Its latest iOS apps, EvernoteHello and EvernoteFood, are designed to keep records on all of the people you meet and all of the food you eat.

• Up-and-comer: Microsoft OneNote. Microsoft's note-taking program comes bundled with the most basic version of Microsoft Office (it costs $80 when purchased by itself), and it's easily the most overlooked program in the 2010 Office Suite. That's too bad, because this little notepad makes capturing your thoughts incredibly easy. Press Windows-S to capture any portion of your computer screen and automatically drop the image into your notebook. It's a great way to generate Web clippings if you're shopping around for something. Also, you can click anywhere in the notebook and start typing, so your notes have more visual appeal than a simple list might have.

The online-only Springpad note-taking service saves storage space on your system and makes sharing easier.• Web app: Springpad. Some people believe that note taking works better online, because syncing is faster, notes don't take up local storage space, and sharing is easier. To exploit these advantages, Springpad's free Web service and mobile apps let you add not just notes but also links, photos, videos, and files to your box of “stuff”--in much the same way as Dropbox, but with a clear notebook and to-do list function. You can also check out files that your Springpad-using friends unlock, making it an easy way to share videos and create collaborative lists.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/248639/software_that_does_it_all.html#tk.hp_fv


By Friendly Computers Copyright: 2010-01-28


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Google to Combine Users' Data Across Its Services

Google will be able to combine data from several Google services when a Google Accounts user is signed in, as part of a rewritten set of privacy policies that the company announced on Tuesday.

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Google said it added the new capability so it can provide better and more targeted services. For example, by combining information from Google Calendar and Google Maps, the company could deliver reminders of a scheduled meeting that take into account how far the user is from the meeting location and how the traffic is on the way, said Alma Whitten, Google's director of privacy product and engineering, in a blog post on Tuesday.

The changes will take effect on March 1, and Google said it was starting to inform users about them via email and a homepage notice. They are included in a major update of Google's privacy policies that, among other things, will consolidate the policies for a majority of Google products into one policy. Taking more than 70 privacy documents, Google has combined more than 60 of them into that main policy, Whitten wrote. Google also said it has cut down on the Google Terms of Service and made them easier to read.

"We believe this new, simpler policy will make it easier for people to understand our privacy policies as well as enable Google to improve the services we offer," Whitten wrote. In addition, she said governments have called for shorter and simpler privacy rules, she wrote.

Privacy is a touchy issue for Internet-based services as they collect growing amounts of information about users. Google Buzz, the ill-fated predecessor to the company's recently introduced Google+ social networking service, drew fire for the way in which the company shared information and notified users about how it had shared.

Whitten pointed to the recently introduced "Search, plus Your World" feature as an example of combining information across services. Rolled out earlier this month, it lets Google Accounts users see posts from Google+ friends and other personal sources in the results of a search from Google's home page.

Other possible enhancements include more relevant search results and ads based on personal history. For example, Google could leave out fitness ads when delivering ads to a Google Accounts user who isn't "a gym person," Whitten wrote. Google services could also give spelling suggestions that take into account the spelling of the Google user's friends' names.

"In short, we'll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience," Whitten wrote.

In the blog post, Google said it still won't sell users' personal information or share it outside the company, except in rare cases such as being presented with a court order. Google said users will still be able to turn off Google ads altogether through its Ad Preferences Manager.

Stephen Lawson covers mobile, storage and networking technologies for The IDG News Service. Follow Stephen on Twitter at @sdlawsonmedia. Stephen's e-mail address is stephen_lawson@idg.com



By Friendly Computers Copyright: 2010-01-28


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Analyst Predicts 'Monster' iPhone 5 Launch in 2012

The iPhone 5 will launch in August and have a completely new form factor, an analyst has predicted.

Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray expects the launch to be a "monster", according to a note he sent out to investors this week and reported in Apple Insider.

The reasoning behind Munster's prediction is that clamor for the iPhone 4S has been massive, despite the fact that it wasn't a complete overhaul of the iPhone 4. A Morgan Stanley analyst made a similar prediction recently.

Piper Jaffray's research suggests that 94 percent of iPhone users plan to upgrade to a new iPhone, Munster said. "This theme suggests iPhone 5, which we are expecting in August with a new form factor, will be a monster upgrade."

Munster increased his predictions for iPhone sales in the last quarter of 2011 from 26 million to 30 million, warning that the figure was still a conservative estimate.

In terms of the iPad, Munster thinks a third-generation model will launch in April and that Apple will have sold 13.5 million units in the quarter ending December 31, 2011. He also predicts that Apple will reveal Mac sales of around 5.2 million for the same period.

Apple will announce its financial results for the last quarter in a conference call on January 24.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/248223/analyst_predicts_monster_iphone_5_launch_in_2012.html#tk.hp_pop



By Friendly Computers Copyright: 2010-01-28


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Wikipedia Alternatives: What to Do When Wikipedia Goes Down

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has announced that the crowd-sourced encyclopedia will be going dark on Wednesday in protest of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) legislation.

Wales has advised students to "do their homework now" to avoid the downtime, but that's not your only option. If you really must do research tomorrow, here are five Wikipedia alternatives to keep you covered.

Encyclopedia Britannica Online

Remember regular encyclopedias? Britannica, formerly the most referenced encyclopedia on earth, offers up expert summaries of a wide range of topics online. Though it's been overshadowed by Wikipedia's crowd-sourced approach in recent years, Encyclopedia Britannica is still one of the most respected reference works in the world.

Scholarpedia

Scholarpedia uses the same software as Wikipedia, MediaWiki, but keeps the philosophy of a more traditional encyclopedia. Scholarpedia is written only by experts and as a result has less breadth but more depth than Wikipedia. Articles on Scholarpedia are better sourced and more stable than the average article on Wikipedia.

Infoplease

Infoplease started as a quiz show back in the 1930's before evolving into a yearly almanac. Now it's a huge online encyclopedia managed by educational publisher Pearson Education. Infoplease's main advanatage over Wikipedia is that it has a much larger selection of multimedia entries and tools.

Citizendium

Citizendium aims for a comfortable middle ground between the "anything goes" world of Wikipedia editing and the more formal inclusion process of traditional encyclopedias. Citizendium does allow for contributions from the public at large, but contributors must use their real names and conform to the site's rules and regulations or they will be banned from editing in the future.

The Free Dictionary Encyclopedia

If you've ever Googled for the definition of a word, you've probably run across Free Dictionary. In addition to dictionary functionality, the Website also offers an encyclopedia section with much longer explanations of over 100,000 people, places, and things.

If you can't accept a substitute for the real Wikipedia--and you have some prep time--you might consider downloading Wikipedia's offline archives. Wikipedia offers a 1.7GB archive of the entire Website that you can download and consult when the site is down.



By Friendly Computers Copyright: 2010-01-28


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Apple Keeps iPhone 4S Sales Online Only in China

Apple has been forced to suspend sales of the iPhone 4S in China after crowd trouble outside an Apple Store in Beijing.

Apple had said the store would open at 7am local time but it was still closed at 7.15am, according to the report. The store stayed closed for safety reasons, with a man telling the crowds that the iPhone 4S would not go on sale via a megaphone.

Apple canceled its sales at its Beijing stores, prompting a customer to throw eggs at one store. Source: IDG News ServiceHowever, the crowd -- many of whom had queued all night in temperatures dropping as low as minus nine degrees celcius -- didn't react well to the news, chanting "liars!" and "open the door!" before pelting the store with eggs.

Police were called to disperse the crowd and the store was cordoned off. Stores in the country that did open were said to have sold out of the iPhone 4S within hours and Apple confirmed that sales of the handset had been suspended "for the time being" in all of the company's five retail outlets in the country. (See also "Beijing's iPhone 4S Turmoil a Lesson to Apple, Say Analysts.").

At another store in Beijing's Xidan district, 60 migrant workers apparently queued all night to buy the iPhone 4S on behalf of resellers but were unable to get their hands on the device, meaning they didn't get paid, according to the report.

An Apple spokesman told All Things D that Chinese customers were still able to order the iPhone 4S online and through carrier partners.

"Unfortunately we were unable to open our store at Sanlitun due to the large crowd, and to ensure the safety of our customers and employees, iPhone will not available in our retail stores in Beijing and Shanghai for the time being. Customers can still order iPhone through the Apple Online Store, or buy at China Unicom and other authorized resellers," the spokesman said.



By Friendly Computers Copyright: 2010-01-28


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Up Close And Personal With The LG Viper And Sprint Galaxy Nexus

Sprint held a special event for journalists and analysts alike at the TAO nightclub in the Venetian Hotel Tuesday night. The main event? The carrier's brand new LTE Android smartphones. I managed to get my hands on both the LG Viper 4G and Sprint Galaxy Nexus at the event; while this is by no means a full review, I liked what I saw from Sprint's newest offerings.

Aside from support for Google Wallet, the Sprint Galaxy Nexus is identical to the version found on Verizon. You still have a dual-core 1.2GHz processor and the phone still comes with Android 4.0 (aka Ice Cream Sandwich). We weren’t able to test outits LTE performance, so we’ll have to wait until the phone launches in mid-2012 to test that aspect.

Unlike the Galaxy Nexus, the LG Viper is a new LTE phone that LG announced Monday morning. The Viper has a brushed-metal back, and it felt lightweight yet sturdy in hand. LG says it's an eco-friendly phone--35 percent of the plastic on the phone is recycled. The Viper has a 4-inch WVGA NOVA screen (a type of display technology), which Sprint tells me is brighter than what is on the Galaxy Nexus.



By Friendly Computers Copyright: 2010-01-28


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Google Chrome Finally Gets Malware Download Protection

Nine months after first being put into testing, the new version of Chrome will at last included filtering against inadvertently downloading malware executables, Google has announced.

Reported as being on the browser's long list as long ago as April 2011, the version 17 beta includes the ability to relate known malicious websites detected using the software's Safe Browsing API, blocking downloads hosted on such domains.

The release notes mention only .exe and .msi files as being covered, but the developers offer hope that this will be extended over the course of 2012. An earlier version touted improvements in malware-blocking, but other browsers still beat Chrome's capabilities.

"Remember, no technical mechanism can ever protect you completely from malicious downloads. You should always be careful about which files you download and consider the reputation of their source," said Google developer Dominic Hamon.

In other words, the effectiveness of the technology will always depend on the ability of the central Safe Browsing system to quickly detect which domains are suspect, and that's never going to be perfect.

The feature will also be able to block downloads from domains identified as being sources of malicious files, which covers legitimate domains that have been hijacked to host malware.

The benefit of the new security layer is to protect against files the user agrees to download without realising the danger in doing so, a common element of many fake antivirus programs to pick one scenario.

The Chrome 17 beta also shows off the software's new address bar which will in some cases be able to start loading web pages before the full address has been entered.

If the algorithms determine that the site is likely from the entered text, Chrome will be able to pre-render them, reducing loading times to near instant, Hamon said.

this article can be found at:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/247467/google_chrome_finally_gets_malware_download_protection.html#tk.hp_pop



By Friendly Computers Copyright: 2010-01-28


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5 Reasons to Look Forward to Windows 8 in 2012

2012 is finally here. Although Microsoft has not shared any details regarding an official launch date for Windows 8, all signs point to sometime this year. Windows 8 is still Windows at its core, but it is also a major departure from previous versions of the flagship operating system.

So, what can we expect with Windows 8 on the horizon? Is there any reason to get excited about what Windows 8 has to offer? Here is a look at five features and capabilities of Windows 8 that may change the way you do computing in 2012.

Ribbon UI

The controversial ribbon UI is spreading from Microsoft Office to take over the Windows operating system as well. While some users despise the ribbon UI and lament the loss of old-fashioned drop-down menus, many users embrace the more flexible, customizable, and useful interface of the ribbon.

I realize the traditional drop-down lists are "comfortable" because they're more familiar, but once you adapt to the ribbon UI it really does help you work more effectively and efficiently. I like it in Microsoft Office, and I am looking forward to it in Windows 8.



By Friendly Computers Copyright: 2010-01-28


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