Till date Firefox along with FEBE satisfied all my needs, but doing backups using FEBE wasn’t easy and had its own share of disadvantages. Also over the years Chrome, Safari also have started to contribute quite a lot to my browser share. So what do I do?

I download and run the portable app FavBackup on my machine. In short this is what FavBackup does:

FavBackup is a simple solution for you to backup and restore web browser settings and other data on Windows 7/Vista/XP/2000 systems. No installation required.

FavBackup supports IE 6-8, Firefox 2-3.5, Opera9 or 10, Safari 3 or 4, Google Chrome 1-4, Flock 2.0-2.5.

Here are some screenshots of FavBackup in action :

See how simple FavBackup makes the process of doing browser backups? So the next time you reinstall Windows, or accidently delete some data, FavBackup will always be there for you. In its current incarnation here are some of the known bugs in FavBackup.

• General: Restoring backups directly from DVD/CD drive can give error. Copy backup to your PC first.
• Windows XP: When using low screen resolution, scrollbars might appear.

Download FavBackup | Image Credit : John Loo | Via HowtoGeek

photo credit: psd

Who said Linux can’t look pretty? For long its been said that Linux is the most boring OS ever and is not user friendly. I’ve been a linux user for sometime and I can say that my experience with it was nothing short of marvelous. Linux offers you unlimited amount of control as to how can you customize your desktop.

Scoring around the net I found some really fantastic desktops and here is what I feel are the best of what I’ve seen. Certainly not the most exhaustive list, but they are reminiscent to the fact that Linux can look pretty good if you know how to make it look good.

Without further delay, here are my favorite Linux desktops, and I’m sure they are some of the prettiest you’ll ever see.

Note : Click on the images for bigger screenshots

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Are you a Linux user? Please show us your desktops.. It will be go a long way in promoting Linux as a User friendly OS. If you have come across other cool looking Linux desktops, please share them as well.

Way to go Tux!!

photo credit: carrotcreative 

As Twitter continues to explode at a rate faster than any other web2.0 app that we’ve ever seen. The reason why Twitter has done so well because of the simple API that Twitter has and the number of apps that have been built on it. I thought with the growing popularity of Twitter it would be a nice idea to showcase some of the best clients for Twitter that have actually outdone Twitter itself.

Here they are in what I feel is the best order. From the worst of the best to the best of the best Twitter apps that rule the world. Read on….

Yes Twitteroo was the first Twitter client I used on my Windows Box. Its got a beautiful interface and is fun to use. The buttons and other options are easily accessible and replying to tweets is pretty easy. Overall I’d give Twitteroo a 3.5/5. Wondering why? Read the pros and cons

Pros

• A User friendly interface.
• Good features.

Cons

• A Memory Hog, eats up RAM like all the RAM is for itself.
• Windows Only.

Snitter was one of the first Twitter clients to run on Adobe AIR platform. Developed by designer genius Jonathan Snook, Snitter has one of the best UI’s I’ve come across in a Twitter client. As usual nothing out of the ordinary in terms of features, but Snitter definitely beats Twitteroo in UI and accessibility.

Pros

• Awesome Adobe AIR interface.
• Fun to use, variety of skins and skinnable via CSS as well.
• Keyboard shortcuts.

Cons

• Keyboard Shortcuts not so obvious.
• Switching streams from drop down menu is not so Web2ish..

Twitterrific is the original Twitter client for MacOSX. Its stood the test of time with all the competing clients that run on Adobe AIR. Has a super sexy UI that will instantly make you fall in love with it. Runs super fast and is the least buggy of all the clients mentioned as yet.

Pros

• Super Sexy Interface.
• Keyboard Shortcuts.

Cons

• Mac OSX Only.

While the picture I’ve uploaded here for Twhirl is the smallest yet, let me assure its no small client. A lot of people I know swear by Twhirl. With nifty features like Friendfeed integration and a sexy UI, Twhirl is your best bet if you are looking for a Twitter client. But we’re still on Number 4, so there is one more to go.

Pros

• Friendfeed Integration.
• A Clean and well laid out UI.

Cons

• Absence of Direct replies within the client
• Quite a memory hog.

And now is the time for the best of the best …

Spaz is a great-looking Twitter client, and to my eyes its the best of this bunch. I think it has the best interface, with tabs for your timeline, direct messages and replies, as well as access to your list of followers and profile information.

Pros

• Lovely gorgeous interface.
• Highly Skinnable via CSS.

Cons

• A Little Buggy.
• No Keyboard Shortcuts.

Well that completes it. All these Twitter clients make the Twitter experience completely enjoyable and addictive. Other notable mentions would be Hahlo, twitbin, Twitterfox, Digsby.

What do you think of these Twitter clients? Let us know in the comments.

Everyday I get emails from small startups asking me how to manage time and reduce their expenses. Well I’m not into this startup thingy but I thought I’d do these guys a favor, so I went hunting for the best free time tracking software and stumbled upon actiTIME.

In a nutshell actiTIME is basically :

“A clear and simple way to register time expenses, analyze employee performance, prepare timesheets for billing your customers”

I’ve tried out the demo and the web based app is highly functional and easy to use. You can collect timesheets by customers, projects and tasks. With awesome reporting capabilities and one of the best exporting options actiTIME is a must have tool for startups that are just starting out..

Have a look at this diagram that better illustrates the way actiTIME works..

Here’s a rundown into its features :

• Time expenses are recorded on by-customer and by-project basis
• Overtime and undertime calculations and reports
• Co-workers can share information using daily task comments
• Support of billable and non-billable task statuses
• Explicit reports for billing and management purposes
• Individual access rights management
• Entering/Modifying the time-track of other users
• Integration with Intuit QuickBooks®
• Data export in the CSV format

Because actiTIME doesn’t lock you in with the data like many other apps in this category do, it is championing the cause of Data Portability albeit in a different sense. Features like Quickbooks Integration are killer, since it is one of the most popular accounting softwares used worldwide.

I won’t go into the details into how this works, just head over to the actiTIME website and experience the demo to see it for yourself..

Considering that all this comes at the best price in the world, FREE! actiTIME is a must have tool for young startups that are still learning the tricks

Download actiTIME | View the Online Presentation on How actiTIME works

Nicholas Negroponte the founder of One Laptop Per Child Foundation yesterday unveiled the design of their upcoming XO Laptop. Dubbed to be the world’s cheapest laptop ever it is expected to retail about 75$. The designs that were unveiled totally blow the current market, as the design is simply amazing, and looks very user friendly. The only catch is that it will take them till 2010 to bring this design from the artist’s canvas to a real functional device.

The laptop to be called XO-2 will have dual touch screens and to keep the costs low they plan to use the same kind of screens that we find in DVD Players these days. The design showcases a lot of flexibility, for example when held vertically the laptop is more like a book with pages to the left and right, and while it is held horizontally it adds up as a hinged laptop or a tablet computer.

Here’s a excerpt from the official press release :

“The XO-2 laptop will be about half the size of the first generation device and will approximate the size of a book. The new design will make the XO laptop lighter and easier for children to carry with them to and from school or wherever they go. The XO-2 will continue to be in a green and white case and sport the XO logo in a multitude of colors that allow children to personalize the laptop as their own possession.” 

Here are some more images on what the XO-2 will end up looking like. Pretty futuristic and great looking if you’d ask me!!

Since we will all have to wait until 2010 to see this design in the form of a real functional device, I’m holding back my thoughts if this can be a success, because someone else can come and make a better cheaper laptop by then. Apart from that with the launch of iPhone, Touchscreens have evoked mixed responses, a lot of people seem to asking for Tactile feedback. Considering that these laptops will primarily be used by kids, tactile feedback could make quite a difference.

At the moment, XO-2 is the coolest looking laptop in town, yes even better than any of the laptops made by Cupertino based Apple. Fingers Crossed until 2010!! But Nonetheless I want to have one of these even if I don’t live in a third world country..

One last question, why wasn’t Amazon Kindle made into something like this?

Via Gizmodo

Linux has always been the operating system of the geeks and nerds. For some reason Linux has never been able to capture the market like Windows and OS X have managed to do. The main reason for this has been the so called unfriendliness of the Linux OS. But things are changing now with distros like Ubuntu etc..

For over 15 years now Linux users have been using Wine to run Windows Applications and Softwares natively. With Wine 1.0 scheduled for a early June release things are looking better for users looking to run Windows apps on Linux. That solves one half of the problem. But the other half hasn’t been solved until now that is..

What about people who would probably want to run Linux apps natively on Windows or Mac OSX. I know the question sounds silly but I know many people who would like to have a taste of Linux and Open Source Softwares before venturing into the geeky world of Linux.

Well the answer for the other half of the problem is LINA!. Yes LINA does the opposite of what WINE does, run Linux apps on Windows , OSX etc.. LINA which means Linux Anwhere is a open source project geared at running Linux apps on Windows and other OS’es so that users can have a glimpse of the beauty of Linux.

What is LINA?

With LINA, a single executable written and compiled for Linux can be run with native look and feel on Windows, Mac OS X, and UNIX operating systems. LINA is a thin virtual layer that enables developers to write and compile code using ordinary Linux tools, then run that code on a variety of operating systems.

With LINA we can get more and more Windows users to try out Linux apps. The most interesting thing is that all apps run through LINA are run with the native look and feel of the base OS be it Windows or OSX. This is the deal breaker actually. By running Linux with the native look and feel of Windows many organizations can install Open Source softwares to cut costs while keeping the workers comfortable in their work environment.

Once the employees get accustomed to Linux apps, the organization can then migrate to Linux to further cut costs. The added benefit is the high level of security that we have come to see with Linux in the recent times.

For users, LINA runs invisibly in the background, enabling them to install and run these Linux applications as if they were native to that users’ operating system.

Have a look at the screenshots below. The screenshots show the same Linux application running on Windows XP and Mac OSX.

If you are looking to test Linux apps natively on Windows and MacOSX look no further than LINA. Follow the links below to download LINA for your platform.

• LINA for Windows
• LINA for OSX

LINA surely does look like an interesting project. But of late development seems to have stalled. I hope that development of LINA goes on in full speed.

Visit the LINA Homepage

The Ubuntu team is at hard work and I must say I’m impressed with the work that has been done so far. Ubuntu 8.04 is on track to be shipped on April 24th 2008, and in the early stages of its development it continues to impress me with the new features being added..

This alpha release comes with HOT new features and improvements, like PulseAudio as the default sound system, the latest and greatest 2.6.24 Linux kernel and Xorg 7.3, with an emphasis on better autoconfiguration without config files

“The Ubuntu developers are moving very quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source Community has to offer. Hardy Heron Alpha 2 is the second alpha release of Ubuntu 8.04, and with this new alpha release comes a whole host of excellent new features.”

Well here is what is new in Ubuntu 8.04 Alpha :

• Xorg 7.3
• Linux kernel 2.6.24
• PulseAudio

With the release of Ubuntu 8.04 Alpha2, even  Kubuntu 8.04 Alpha 2 was released yesterday :

What’s new in Kubuntu 8.04 Alpha 2?

• KDE 4 RC 2
• Amarok 1.4.8
• Qt 4.3.3
• Digikam 0.9.3 RC 1
• Tasty Menu
• Speedcrunch 0.9
• KGmailNotifier
• Thinkpad Flashing for Kopete
• Rear Speaker Volume Support in KMix
• SMB Printer Browsing
• User Hard Disk Mounting
• Adobe Flash in Konqueror

If you wish to download Ubuntu 8.04 Alpha 2, you can grab it from here or incase you want Kubuntu 8.04 then you can download that from here. Please note that this is an Aplha release, so you can expect many bugs in the system.

Here is a screenshot of Ubuntu 8.04 in action, click on it to enlarge.

Via Softpedia

I just couldn’t prevent myself from trying it out, so I downloaded it, and trust me, it completely blew me off. I was using Joost till now to watch quality Video content online, but now Miro is going to replace Joost, Believe me, its that good.

Miro is way better than Joost in many aspects, and let me list out some of them…

• It’s open-source
• It’s DRM-free
• It’s friendly to all content creators, professional and user-generated alike
• It’s high definition
• It’s BitTorrent enabled
• It has 2,700 channels listed in the Miro Guide
• Of those 2,700, about 200 are from commercial broadcasters
• It connects you to all the video-sharing sites like YouTube, Revver etc.. 
• Miro uses the VLC video engine to play nearly every video format you’ve ever come across.

Miro beats Joost hands down in just about every department, but one place where Joost really shines is the professionally produced content. There is just no alternative to Joost if you are looking for high quality content.

Here are a few screenshots of Miro that I would like to share with you guys (damn its too sexy!!)  :

Guess what Joost  has finished uninstalling itself on my PC and Miro works like a charm. Thanks Miro team! So go ahead and download yourself a copy of Miro today (Works on Linux, OSX, Windows etc..)..

Mozilla Prism about which I had talked about earlier has just got a fresh release for Linux and Mac OSX. Prism is basically a stripped down version of Firefox that allows you to load a single page at a time. By using minimal resources Prism is able to deliver high performance. No tabs, no useful URL or navigation buttons. But Prism can come in handy if you like to keep a single web site like Gmail open all day, since it uses fewer resources than Firefox.

I Installed Prism on Ubuntu, and it seemed ok, except that it was still quite buggy. For example pressing the F11 button didn’t make Prism go full screen. There was also problems when I fired up pages that were Flash enabled. All in all it is a good release for Linux, expect the bugs to be ironed out in the future. Mac users tell me how Prism works for you.

You can download Prism from Mozilla Labs

Well today marked the day when another version of Ubuntu labeled as Gusty Gibbon present itself. Gusty has brought a lot of new features to the table and I just thought i should do a quick rundown through it..

Well here are some of the features that are worth a mention in Ubuntu :   

• Hardware management improvements – improved plug-and-play configuration for printers, as well as automatic firmware installation for Broadcom cards
• Improved support for display systems – For laptop users, full support external VGA (projector) support is available out-of-the-box with easy reconfiguration when hardware is switched. For power users this release includes the ability to manage multiple monitors
• Windows compatibility – Users with a dual partition can read from and and write to files that are on located in a Windows partition (including NTFS)
• Enhanced user interface – Simple 3D screen effects and graphics enhance the user experience
• Desktop search – gives users the ability to search their entire desktop, whether for files, folders, chat logs or photos. This capability includes the deskbar applet, a central location on users’ desktops for all local and web search operations
• Firefox plugins – automatic installation of popular Firefox plugins validated by Ubuntu for a richer, safer web-browsing experience

Notable changes in Ubuntu 7.10 are the latest GNOME Desktop, which provides much improved drag-and-drop support to the user interface, and Compiz, the whiz-bang 3-D desktop effects package, which is enabled by default.

Well I plan to install to Ubuntu sometime soon. I got it installed in the college and here are some screenshots for you to drool over, and yeah let me tell you onething, Ubuntu brings you the best of Mac OSX in terms of User Experience and the widespread compatibility like Windows. Well here are the screenshots :

Well I suggest you give Ubuntu a try and trust me you will fall in love with it.. Well here are the download links :

• Download Ubuntu
• Download Kubuntu
• Download Edubuntu