Category: News

One of the key ways to speed up your productivity is to reduce the time it takes you to open programs. Constant use of the mouse and Start menu, and even desktop shortcuts, takes-up valuable keyboard time not to mention clutter your workspace. There’s a lot to be said to launching programs directly from your keyboard and cleaning up your desktop/Start Menu.

If you’re a Mac user, then you’re already used to this but we poor Windows users are still in the dark ages in this respect. Quite why Microsoft have never implemented a simple launcher for programs is a mystery. However, help is at hand via programs such as Launchy which is surely one of the best options out there. Launchy runs quietly in the background and as soon as you need to open something, just enter the name of the program in the field provided and off you go. If meanwhile you’ve got so many shortcuts on your desktop that it’s taking you longer and longer to open programs, then you need some way of organising them more efficiently. FSL Launcher does exactly this by filing your shortcuts under tabs although it still means you have to use the mouse to launch them. Or another nice little solution is Kana Launcher which reduces your desktop shortcuts to icons which sit in your system tray and expand when you hover the mouse over them.

Is your Start Menu cluttered as your desktop? If so, you’ll be spending more time scrolling through looking for programs than you need to. LaunchOnFly basically works as a simplified start menu allowing you to customise it only with your most important apps and programs and access them from the system tray. Finally, if you need something that you can use between machines with the same programs installed, then Remora USB Launch is a quick launcher that you can take anywhere on a USB stick. Once plugged in, you don’t need to even touch the desktop or Start Menu anymore meaning your workspace is cleaner and your programs launched more quickly.

Not only has NewsGator updated its line of products, but in a significant move, it has also decided to offer FeedDemon, NetNewsWire and NewsGator Go for free. The online service, which lets you get your news updates from anywhere will also be opened up to everyone.

The move comes at the right time, with Google Reader dominating the RSS market and having offered up a lot of updates recently, such as recommendations and sharing. As TechCrunch note, NewsGator had already secured $12 million of funding back in December, in a bid to keep its line of products competitive. The move towards freeware seems to be a way to grow the popularity of NewsGator apps even more, with revenue coming exclusively from sales of the NewsGator Enterprise Server (NGES). Over on his blog, Nick Bradbury of NewsGator gives two reasons for going free: getting the brand known and getting more attention data from users. Greg Reinacker, founder of NewsGator, goes into the details a little further:

What we’re working to do is to saturate the market with our clients. Anyone who wants a rich experience for consuming content, or anyone who uses multiple computers or devices and wants a best-of-breed experience on each can now use our clients. Using a Mac at home, along with an iPhone? NetNewsWire and our iPhone reader will sync up. Have a PC at the office? FeedDemon will sync with your other two applications. And they’ll all sync with NewsGator Online. It all just works.

He promises big changes in the coming months both in the clients and online services offered by NewsGator. I personally think this is great news. NetNewsWire was my first RSS reader, but I ditched it for Google Reader because it wasn’t free. Now I may just consider reinstalling it on my Mac.

Photo site Flickr has teamed up with online editing site Picnik to add some really cool functionality to your Flickr account. From now on, you can easily perform simple edits on any photo in your account, just by clicking a new ‘Edit’ button that has appeared on single image view mode. The editing features, familiar to anyone who has already played around with Picnik, are fairly basic like adjusting colour temperature, contrast, cropping, resizing and so on. But there is also a premium mode which allows for more artistic range of effects and frames which unfortunately is only available to Picnik premium members (not Flickr Pro account holders).

For those who haven’t tried Picnik before, it’s really a joy to use. Responsive, quick, effective and packed with tips and advice, it was probably already the best of the free online photo editors before teaming up with Flickr. The best comparison I can think of is the controls in Picasa for Windows or iPhoto on Mac: simple and intuitive. If you’ve got a Flickr account, go and check out the new features now. If you haven’t, go and create one!

Being able to access the news from your mobile is great, but it’s even better if you have an RSS reader so you don’t need to sift through lots of slow-loading sites to find the content you want to read. Simply install NewsCopier and you’ll get access to the latest headlines on your Windows Mobile via RSS.

Hungry for news from the biggest American newspapers? iActu USA can show you headlines for major national news sites like the New York Times or The Wall Street Journal in a sexy little widget. Whether it’s main stories, or special sections like sports or cooking, iActu USA will display all the latest news in clear lists. If you buy the full version you’ll also be able to print and zoom in on stories.

Sapiens is an application launcher that gives you quick access to anything on your Mac. The program exercises your memory by arranging applications in a certain way, which you’ll become accustomed to the more you use the program. It offers five different interface layouts and a handy “find as you type” feature to make any application reachable within seconds.

After a few months of invite-only beta testing, Joost has finally launched its first public version. Though still labeled as beta, Joost 1.0 features important new features such as new sign up and login modules, and a fully revamped user interface. But above all, we were excited to see loads of new content. So what are you waiting for? Join the future of television now!