CamScanner Delivers Document Freedom on the Go

If you’ve been trying to keep an aging all-in-one printer out of the graveyard, forget it. Move on. I’ve been banging my head against the wall with a bunch of space-hogging Dell printers. I had an 8-year-old, office-grey laser printer for manuscripts and an equally old and grumpy faded-white scanner-fax-printer inkjet combo for which the cartridge nozzles kept drying out, still half full of ink.



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PCLinuxOS Makes Desktop Linux Look Good

PCLinuxOS is as close as a distro can get to masking all the technical things that scare people away from the Linux OS. It makes installing and using the distro beginner-level easy. That says a lot for attracting both new and experienced users. PCLinuxOS offers several very good desktop options. It also makes a solid choice for more experienced Linux users.



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Silent Text: Basic Anonymity at a Hefty Price

The Tibetan government, law firms in Thailand and human rights groups in Sudan are all using a relatively new encrypted communications tool — one that fits easily, if not cheaply, onto your smartphone. Silent Circle is an encrypted voice, video, text and file-transfer protocol that’s available in app forms for Android devices, among others.



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Ubuntu’s Saucy Salamander is a Slick but Spiritless Upgrade

Ubuntu’s latest desktop OS release, Ubuntu 13.10, is more of a plain-Jane release than its “Saucy Salamander” nickname might otherwise suggest. This release comes six months after the Raring Ringtail version, which was also a bit of a yawner in terms of offering any must-have-the-upgrade enthusiasm. Like the last release, Ubuntu 13.10 also does not deliver much “wow.”



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Linux Lite Is Heavy on Features and Usability

In a computing world distracted by distro overload, Linux Lite is a lightweight Linux OS that has no trouble handling a heavy workload. Long gone are the days when it took hours to install and set up Linux on a computer, but most Linux distros still need a bit of configuration to adjust the massive desktop options to your liking.



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Brave Blustery Climes With WeatherPro in Tow

I recently took a look at MeteoEarth, a rather spectacular Google Earth-like animated weather app. This visual, 3D globe-spinning weather app for Android provides zoom-in weather visualizations of the kind seen on TV — and indeed, the publisher is a provider of weather-in-motion graphics to broadcasters. Well, MeteoEarth’s visually stimulating show-off app has an all-rounder cousin, WeatherPro.



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Chromium OS Vanilla Is a Plain-Jane Browser-Based Distro

The Chromium OS Vanilla Build by Hexxeh is a no-frills approach to trying out the concept of a browser-based Linux operating system without buying a branded Google Chromebook. It boots from a USB drive on any compatible computer. Unlike CR OS, Chromium OS boots into the Chrome browser environment. It does not have a full Linux desktop under it to run other Linux applications.



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Chromium OS Vanilla Is a Plain-Jane Browser-Based Distro

The Chromium OS Vanilla Build by Hexxeh is a no-frills approach to trying out the concept of a browser-based Linux operating system without buying a branded Google Chromebook. It boots from a USB drive on any compatible computer. Unlike CR OS, Chromium OS boots into the Chrome browser environment. It does not have a full Linux desktop under it to run other Linux applications.



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LiveHive Offers Plenty of Pros for Collaborators on the Go

If you’ve ever been involved with any kind of work-related group project, you’ll know what a nightmare it is to collaborate via email. The management of file versions alone is enough to introduce ambiguity and quickly hiccup the whole thing. Plus, if you’re not careful, it’s possible to start an entire email thread questioning what file version you’re supposed to be looking at.



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Kdenlive Delivers Near-Pro Video Editing – If You Have the Right Stuff

Kdenlive is a multitrack, nonlinear video-editing suite packed with some of the most recent video technologies. This application can be a great tool if you have serious video work to do, but you need to fully test it before attempting any mission-critical editing tasks. Kdenlive takes some effort to learn. That’s especially the case if you have little experience with other video-editing software.



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