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Internet news, solutions, and analysis for IT professionals, covering social media and internet-based applications and services

Internet Reviews

  • Review

    Check Internet connection speeds with NetSpeedMonitor

    Posted May 26, 2012 - 7:25 am

    These days, even the most powerful PC is not of much use without a solid Internet connection. And even if your connection is great, do you know how much data you consume, and at what rates? And can you tell which applications are connecting to the Internet, and where they're connecting to? NetSpeedMonitor is a small, unobtrusive donationware utility that can help you answer all of these questions.
  • Review

    Regain a long-missed Twitter feature with classic retweet

    Posted May 26, 2012 - 7:14 am

    Change is never easy, especially when it's one of your favorite services making the changes--and forcing them on you. But, if you're one of the many Twitter users still lamenting the loss of the old-style retweets in the new Twitter, you don't need to be sad any longer. Classic Retweet, a simple Firefox add-on and Google Chrome extension, can return you to the glory days of Twitter's retweet feature, allowing you to append your pithy comments to everything you retweet
  • Review

    Consider desktops in the cloud for BYOD

    Posted May 21, 2012 - 12:29 am

    Desktop-as-a-Service is an interesting way for IT execs to provide cloud-based Windows desktop sessions, as well as shared resources such as storage. DaaS can help companies roll out new desktops and support Bring Your Own Device policies.
  • Review

    Hands-on with Google Docs's new research tool

    Posted May 17, 2012 - 10:08 pm

    Google Docs has unveiled a new research tool meant to help writers streamline their browser-based research, making it easier for them to find and cite the information they need while composing text.
  • Review

    5 great Android apps for cloud admins

    Posted May 16, 2012 - 9:55 am

    If you administer cloud servers or services, such as those from Amazon Web Services or Rackspace, you might be relieved to learn that you don't need access to a notebook or desktop PC to perform routine administrative tasks.
  • Review

    Review: Quickoffice Connect is a poor iCloud clone

    Posted May 5, 2012 - 7:30 am

    Stick with the original Quickoffice HD app and either Dropbox or Box instead for a more reliable, cheaper alternative
  • Review

    See what people are saying about your business with VenueSeen

    Posted May 2, 2012 - 12:35 pm

    If you own or run a small local business or a franchise such as a restaurant or shop, you probably care about your reputation. Word-of-mouth marketing it nothing new: People are social, and tend to share their experiences. But with new tools such as FourSquare, Instagram, and Facebook, people don't just share: They broadcast, and you should be listening. VenueSeen (plans start at $20/month; 14-day free trial) lets you listen to what people say about your business and look at the photos they share.
  • Review

    Autodial with your keyboard and Dial Directly for Skype

    Posted April 28, 2012 - 7:13 am

    Sick and tired of all that clicking and typing it takes to dial a number in Skype? Give your fingers a break with Dial Directly for Skype, a little utility that allows you to initiate Skype calls by simply pressing a combination of keys. But while it may save your fingers some effort--and may save you the embarrassment of a wrong number--Dial Directly may cost you some time.
  • Review

    Dell simplifies the blade server

    Posted April 28, 2012 - 7:02 am

    Dell's PowerEdge C6220 squeezes four two-socket servers into 2RU, delivering blade server density at a rack-mount price
  • Review

    Real-time wiki Hackpad makes Web collaboration fast and easy

    Posted April 14, 2012 - 7:41 am

    In software, "new" all too often means "complicated." New tools often tempt us with futuristic features and promises of improved productivity, but learning to use them can be a confusing experience, not to mention the time lost while trying to get up to speed. So when I see a tool that is truly new, but also manages to be simpler and more streamlined than the current alternatives, I am truly impressed. Hackpad is one such tool: A new breed of Wiki that shows how much simpler and fluid wikis can be.
  • Review

    Find out what happens to your Outlook emails with Track Your Sent

    Posted April 14, 2012 - 7:40 am

    The folks at Caelo Software, makers of some excellent tools for organizing your Outlook email, are at it again with Track Your Sent. Unlike the company's NEO Pro, Track Your Sent is not an overall email organizer. Instead, it takes aim at a narrow part of your email experience: the messages you send. Although plenty of email utilities help bring order to your inbox, your sent items folder is often overlooked, left to drown under the weight of its own unorganized mess. Not anymore.
  • Review

    Add slide shows to WordPress sites with SlideDeck

    Posted April 14, 2012 - 7:20 am

    According to usability guru Jakob Nielsen, when someone visits your website, you have 10 seconds to capture their attention before they decide to move on. Having a fresh slide show lets you combine images, animations, and bold typography to catch a visitor's eye and get them to click deeper into your site. SlideDeck (starting at $79 for a single site) is a sophisticated WordPress plug-in that lets you create high-quality, customizable slide shows that can pull in content from all over the Web, including Google+ Images, Instagram photos, Twitter timelines, Vimeo videos, and much more.
  • Review

    Finally! An Office cloud service for iPad worth using

    Posted April 12, 2012 - 6:12 am

    Products like OnLive Desktop have given desktop-as-a-service a bad name; CloudOn may fix that blemish
  • Review

    Hands on: Firefox 11 improves syncing

    Posted March 17, 2012 - 7:23 am

    Firefox 11 -- the latest version of Mozilla's popular browser, released on March 13 -- includes only modest improvements over Firefox 10.2, and is unlikely to motivate a large number of people to switch from competing browsers. The upgrade (which is available for several platforms, including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Android) now includes the ability to sync add-ons among multiple systems and to import bookmarks, history lists and other data from Chrome.
  • Review

    Free and affordable software to sync your work and your life

    Posted March 4, 2012 - 8:36 am

    If you're like plenty of people these days, you have more than just one computer--and I don't mean just a traditional desktop or laptop PC, but also a smartphone or a tablet. A smartphone is little more than a computer wrapped around a cell phone; and a tablet, of course, is merely a computer in a convenient portable package.
  • Review

    Lapdock: From avant-garde to awful

    Posted February 28, 2012 - 7:11 am

    Motorola's laptop dock for Android smartphones has terrible hardware -- and faces a new generation of post-PC competition
  • Review

    Node.js tools: Server-side JavaScript comes of age

    Posted February 22, 2012 - 7:16 am

    Node-inspired development environments and cloud platforms are rapidly remaking the Web application stack
  • Review

    Manage all your social media from HootSuite

    Posted February 18, 2012 - 8:29 am

    HootSuite is a Web-based service that offers a powerful set of tools for managing multiple social media accounts
  • Review

    Flexing NoSQL: MongoDB in review

    Posted February 8, 2012 - 7:15 am

    MongoDB shines with broad programming language support, SQL-like queries, and out-of-the-box scaling
  • Review

    Free, cloud-based word processor Zoho writer shows promise

    Posted February 7, 2012 - 8:39 am

    Zoho Writer is an online (with offline and syncing functionality) word processing application that offers a nice amount of functionality, especially given the limitations of the Web as a platform for productivity tools. After creating a free account with Zoho, you can access Zoho Writer. It looks a lot like most word processors, so if you've used any major program in this category, it will take no more than a few minutes of poking around to learn how to do things. This is good, because the "Help" is in the form of a FAQ, not a tutorial or index of functions.
  • Review

    OnLive's train wreck: Office on the iPad

    Posted February 7, 2012 - 7:11 am

    The OnLive Desktop service shows just how wrong desktop virtualization can be
  • Review

    Online backup services keep your data safe

    Posted February 6, 2012 - 3:26 pm

    It's a fact of modern life that archiving data is essential to prevent a data disaster. Still, something like one-third of computers are never backed up, according to 2,257 respondents in a recent Backblaze poll carried out by Harris Interactive. The survey came to the dismal conclusion that a scant 7% of users practice safe computing by archiving their systems on a daily (or nightly) basis.
  • Review

    Enterprise Hadoop: Big data processing made easier

    Posted January 18, 2012 - 7:21 am

    Amazon, Cloudera, Hortonworks, IBM, and MapR mix simpler setup of Hadoop clusters with proprietary twists and trade-offs
  • Review

    First look: Zend's PHP developer cloud

    Posted January 11, 2012 - 2:34 pm

    Zend Developer Cloud woos PHP developers with enterprise-grade development features, snapshots for easy recovery and project sharing, and promises of single-click cloud deployment
  • Review

    Three HTML5 animation tools: Adobe Edge, Sencha Animator, Tumult Hype

    Posted January 9, 2012 - 11:28 am

    Web interaction via HTML5 can be promising but difficult to learn. These three applications can make a developer's job simpler.
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