Month: September 2007

On his blog, Ed Colligan, CEO of Palm, announced today that they would cancel the Foleo project…for now. In what seems to be a strategic shift, Palm will instead ” focus all of (their) energies on delivering (their) next generation platform and the first smartphones that will bring this platform to market.” Ed Colligan further admitted that they still need quite “a number of improvements to make Foleo a world-class product” which they obviously wouldn’t be able to tend to with Foleo not being their priority at the moment. Palm will not completely kill off the project and, as their CEO wrote, a Foleo II willl hopefully be released at a later date, once the new platform is up and working properly.

Tom had already covered the announcement of the Foleo back in May, and had pointed out the mixed feelings among Palm users. The Foleo, a Linux-based ‘subnotebook’, was seen as the ideal companion to smartphones and the perfect device for professionals on the go. Lighter, smaller, cheaper and with better battery life than a traditional laptop, the Foleo would have been able to connect to the Internet via WiFi or a smartphone if the latter was not available. Still, many had pointed out how a subnotebook never really has managed to succeed, and that, at a projected price of $500, users can easily purchase a laptop of superior quality.

A slight disappointment then, but if it means that Palm will come up with a better Foleo in the future then giving it up for now is probably worth it.

I’ve just been reading about some interesting research from Indiana University which claims that women are much pickier than men when it comes to choosing a partner. The study reveals that females are much less willing to meet a guy after a first date than the man is, and that for most women, wealth is a key factor in choosing a partner. Being as I’m broke and repellently ugly I have to admit this news was a bit of a body blow. But then I remembered that all girls are a sucker for a bit of freeware or shareware and decided to put together a package of software that will instantly transform me into a babe magnet.

To start with, you’ll need to make sure that you and the lady that you’re lusting after are a good match. Download and install BioStat Professional, which analyzes your compatibility with another person based on the science of biorythms. If you find that you and the girl are a good match then tell her to install it and watch in amazement as she realises you’re ‘The One’.

Next, you need to start showing her that you’re a sensitive, caring man, so get downloading some slushy stuff and send it to her. I use Flourescent Beating Hearts, Blossoming Flowers Screensaver and the Winnie the Pooh Valentine theme, but any kind of romantic download will suffice. You could also try using the Unique Gift Maker to create a digital present for her, but only if you’re sure she’s worth it, because this can sometimes take up a couple of hours.

Hopefully this is all working well for you now, and your new squeeze now thinks you’re God’s gift to women. Careful though, because if you keep this up she’s going to start mentioning the dreaded ‘M’ word. If she keeps banging on about getting married then install Dream Day Wedding on her PC and she can have a pretend ceremony instead. This’ll save a lot of hassle down the line, I promise.

If none of these downloads have worked so far then you might have to resort to Plan ‘B’ – hypnotism. Using Virtual Hypnotist you can trick a woman into loving you through features such as voice recognition, speech synthesis, subliminal messages, completely customizable scripts, videos, audio, and more. If all else fails then simply download some wallpapers of hot chicks, put them on your desktop, and be done with it.

As more of us work away from the office these days, not me I must point out, it seems increasingly important to have control of your desktop PC at all times. This can be done by employing a good secretary or having a mobile software solution such as Remote Desktop for Mobiles. With this app you can send and receive emails, surf the internet, edit Word documents and search, save and transfer files. Pretty much everything you normally do when sat at your desk.

XHUb Media Center is a great application to enjoy any type of media straight from your Mac to your TV screen. Customize the interface by choosing from 21 skins, many sound effects and setting transition styles for all media. The quality of the program makes it a reall challenger to Apple’s Front Row.

Screenshot Captor enables you not only to capture anything on your screen in a variety of ways (active window, user-selected area, top-bottom webpage…), but also to edit the captured image by adding marks, arrows, text fields and even some nice filters and special effects like blurring or dropping shadows on given areas. And all of this for free!

I love singing my favorite songs out loud when I’m driving my car or doing house chores. This is why I like to read their lyrics at least once, so I can catch any missing word and learn them by heart over time. One of the easiest solutions is looking lyrics up on the Internet, as there are literally thousands of websites with vast lyrics collections. But today I found a great tool that can save me lots of browsing time: it’s called MiniLyrics and it finds the lyrics for almost any song you play on your PC, without having to touch a single button.

MiniLyrics is compatible with more than a dozen players, including Winamp, iTunes, Windows Media Player or XMplay amongst others. I tried it with Winamp, not sure if this was going to work out fine, but I must say I’m impressed. MiniLyrics was able to find every single song I played on Winamp, from British techno to Spanish cheesy summer hits, from Japanese pop to old disco hits. As soon as it finds the right song, the lyrics are displayed on a separate window which, of course, you can use for your own private karaoke sessions. Sometimes the program requires a little user intervention, like in the case of finding several results or if the file’s tags are not properly filled in. But then you only have to right click on the program’s interface and use the Search function. The whole process hardly takes a minute.

How is that possible? you might be wondering. It’s all thanks to a large community of users, who feed the MiniLyrics database with new lyrics everyday, so that other users like you and me can happily sing to their favorite bands. So if any time you find a song without lyrics, don’t be shy and add it yourself –you’ll make someone happy.