Category: software

  • Sony’s only removing crapware for business users

    I’ve owned several Sony laptops in my day. There’s still a long-dead but gorgeous purple Vaio 505 laptop in the closet upstairs. And one thing I knew whenever I bought a new Sony was that I’d be spending my first hour or two with the new machine not having fun but removing and uninstalling all…

  • Gold star for Syncopation developer and bug crusher Pearson

    A couple of weeks ago, I installed the free-trial version of a program called Syncopation to keep the iTunes music libraries on my laptop and desktop Macs in sync. It worked pretty well, as I noted in my July 3 review, but I did notice that one of the promised features — one I especially…

  • Useful info getting out on new iPhone apps like e-reader

    The iPhone coverage tsunami continues unabated and, thanks to the long-tail of new media and blogging, we can find people writing about just those aspects of this mega-story that we find most interesting. For example, the What’s on iPhone blog has a lengthy review up of the new Fictionwise e-book reader for iPhones and iPods…

  • Just one blogging app at the iPhone app store isn’t enough

    It’s definitely an all-iPhone, all-day kind of day with wall-to-wall coverage everywhere. I’m keeping up with the torrent of news at John Gruber’s Daring Fireball site as well as the most useful Mac aggregation site I’ve found, MacSurfer. There’s so much out there that I almost want to avoid writing anything more but one weird…

  • Fictionwise e-reader for iPhone equals new Kindle competitor

    Via a quick tweet from John Siracusa, I see that electronic book publisher Fictionwise has released a free e-book reader program for iPhones and iPod Touches (or should it be iPods Touch?) running Apple’s 2.0 operating system. This could be a big deal as Fictionwise is one of the more established players in the e-book…

  • Google browser sync: I’m not dead yet

    About a month ago, I noted the bad news that Google was ending development of one of the most useful Firefox add-ons ever, the Google browser sync extension. This nifty piece of code not only kept your bookmarks synced between different computers (across different operating systems, too) but also coordinated browsing history, cookies and passwords.…

  • Verizon wants more dough for occasional wireless modeming

    Sometimes you want to check your email and there’s no wifi and there’s no signal for your Sprint wireless broadband modem. Stuck? Maybe, but you think, well, gee, my Verizon Treo 700p with an unlimited data plan has EVDO and Bluetooth. Shouldn’t I be able to get online with that? Start off simple – try…

  • Syncopation is a good option for syncing iTunes libraries

    (Updated on 7/10) I have too many digital media files and they’re getting disorganized. I want to be able to add stuff to my iPod on the road, so my MacBook Pro is therefore my “main” iTunes library. I typically buy new digital music or TV shows on that laptop and rip CDs or DVDs…

  • Making my WordPress site legible on my crummy mobile phone

    Stuck with my Treo “smart” phone in an airport recently, I decided to navigate over here to my blog via its wimpy browser. The Treo is on Verizon’s 3rd-generation broadband service so even though I have a fair number of pictures on the front page, I figured all would be okay. Nope — the experience…

  • Android, iPhone and the push for a real mobile Internet

    Plenty of “news” today about the mobile Internet, prompted by this Wall Street Journal piece on Google’s Android mobile phone operating system.  The Journal’s story is chock full of details of the internal struggles of Android developers and carriers that may support Android phone. While Google had said phones running Android would be available in…