This week’s Freeware Files come courtesy of podcast aficionado (and mother of the epic dream date winner from podcast #36 ) R. Ellen Ferare. Or, rather, you can thank her for the idea. We got to talking this past weekend and she noted that she’s been having trouble finding a legitimate way to search through her desktop for this, that, and the other. Obviously, Windows’ built-in search functionality just isn’t cutting it—and I don’t... 

Diaspora hasn’t gotten a lot of press since they wrapped up their rather creative attempt at fundraising , but the founders want you to know that not only have they been busy, but that they will have code ready for public consumption by September 15th. The ambitious anti-Facebook project was a concept pitched by a group of New York University programming students who aim to provide a service similar to Facebook, but with much tighter user... 

A recent survey hit my radar this weekend and, I must say, I’m not that surprised by the results. Contrary to my usual columns, I won’t bury the lede: Accenture polled 300 large organizations in both the public and private sectors and—surprise!—found that half of them are “fully committed” to using open-source software in their businesses. To be honest, I expected results more in line from the Zenoss survey I ran across this weekend,... 

Google has come out swinging in the wake of Oracle’s lawsuit against the search giant for their use of Java in Android. Google calls the lawsuit “baseless” and makes it clear that they will be seeing Oracle in court. The suit is indeed aimed at the Dalvik virtual machine that Android uses to compile and run Java code on the phone. Google said in their statement that technology like Dalvik, “goes beyond any one corporation.”... 

A homebrewed graphing calculator called Open SciCal promises to put a powerful machine built entirely from open source hardware into the pockets of quant jocks and statisticians. “This is for the alpha nerds of the geek kingdom,” says Matt Stack who built Open SciCal. “The calculator used to be the ultimate status symbol among the nerdiest of the nerds and I wanted to bring that back.” Open SciCal has a 4.3 inch color... 

Are you ready to rock?  I should hope so.  I’m giving your hands a rest and your ears a workout this week, for none of the apps in the ol’ “freeware roundup” this time around are actually downloadable.  That’s right.  Zero.  After you read this, you will spend the course of your week installing absolutely nothing. So what, then, am I profiling in this roundup? …  Read More →

For electronics hobbyists, the open source chipset BeagleBoard that packs as much punch as a smartphone processor might seem like the key to paradise. Yet it is the relatively underpowered 8-bit microcontroller Arduino that has captured the attention of DIYers. Arduino began as a project in Italy in 2005 and since then has turned into an open source hardware movement . There are thousands of Arduino projects today such as electric meters, guitar... 

Google has been tight-lipped about just when users would see a final version of the much anticipated Android 2.2 Froyo update. But the OS maker has today released the source code for Froyo to the open source community. Many users are speculating this means Froyo’s code is finalized and a real update is on the way. Google has previously just said the update would be available ’soon’. Google showed off the new version of the... 

Won’t somebody think of the children?  Or the editors? It seems that mass hysteria is breaking out across the Internet–or Slashdot , the only Internet a geek needs to know–about a new proposed treatment by HP and Yahoo in regards to that whirring hunk of metal and plastic in the corner of your room.  I’m not talking about WALL-E, nor Jeffrey , but your printer.  You know, that crude device that that basically transforms... 

I am a little disappointed with the Android operating system, not gonna lie. If you’ve been following my exploits over the past few weeks, you know that I’ve been in search of a new phone to replace that-which-was-sacrificed to the Maximum PC community in a vain effort to prove my loyalty to the PC platform. And by that, I mean the non-Windows platform, because my latest purchase–a fancy new Android-based phone–isn’t... 

There are a ton of apps out there that you can use to automate something you do on your PC. I mean, that’s the central conceit of software development as a whole, correct?  To somehow ease the time burden it takes one to do a particular task in what would otherwise be a manual, labor-intensive process?  Right. Well, when a number of new apps each seek to automate some facet of your everyday computing life, it should come as little surprise... 

I’m often surprised by what people find popular in the world of freeware and open-source applications, let alone Web apps. It’s tough to use the comments on Maximum PC’s website as an official barometer, as they don’t take page views, click-throughs, or raw downloads of whatever apps I/we recommend into account. Nevertheless, judging by the wrath, boundless joy, and heavy presence of spam-filter-nose-thumbing-signatures... 

Some of my favorite kinds of freeware apps to find (and install) are the ones that build new functionality into the Windows operating system.  I’m running Windows 7 right now, but even this latest version of Microsoft’s OS has substantial room for third-party improvements. It’s not difficult to find free or open-source apps to boost the common interactions one has with one’s operating system.  The tough part is in the... 

The long development of Firefox has left many a crashed browser in its wake. But a recent study undertaken by the Mozilla Metrics team shows that the relatively new Firefox 3.6 is much more stable than Firefox 3.5 . As each release matures, the rate of crashes goes down with each update. Version 3.6 has already surpassed 3.5 in overall stability, having gotten about 40% more stable since release. Another interesting statistic uncovered by the... 

At long last, the wait is finally over for Motorola Droid owners. Starting today, Verizon said it has begun rolling out the Android 2.1 update . Earlier this month, Droid owners were left in the dark as to when the update would ship, with Verizon only saying “TBD.” Android 2.1 introduces a bevy of enhancements, some of which include: Support for Yahoo Mail Pinch to Zoom support in the Browser, Maps, and Gallery Speech-to-Text in...