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If you're willing to link to your social media accounts, you can get a customized newsfeed with Prismatic. This user-friendly app has a few flaws, but overall provides a good reading (and user) experience.

The uncluttered interface makes it easy to get started, and Prismatic makes the most of touch-screen technology to make navigation simple. As you start exploring the app, you'll get a quick overview of the controls, but helpful hints will also continue to pop up. As noted, you can sign in to Twitter, Facebook, and your other social media accounts so Prismatic can take note … Read more

Even though it may not have the same strategic flair as Plants and Zombies, the aspect of looking for the perfect aim and shoot in this app can serve just as well. Stupid Zombies 2 revives the same fun accuracy gaming experience of its predecessor, with more levels and upgraded gameplay.

The interface of Stupid Zombies 2 will look familiar to you. As for the game environment itself, you're given a shot gauge, the number of enemies to defeat, and a pause button. The primary objective of the game is to finish off all the zombies in a level … Read more

Hot keys can make your life easier, at least while you're at your computer. For instance, they can enter strings of text like your e-mail or street address, saving you time and reducing your typing effort. Moose-Tech's Speed Keys is a simple tool for automating typing tasks via hot keys. You can create Groups to manage your hot key combos, which can be log-in credentials, passwords, credit card data, phone numbers, or even instant-message phrases. Speed Keys is freeware, but the free version is limited to five items and 25 characters. However, the full version costs about what … Read more

Anvisoft's Cloud System Booster cleans and optimizes Windows-based systems by throwing out junk files, disabling unneeded services, and repairing registry errors. What sets it apart from similar tools is its use of cloud-based technology to make sure you're scanning your system with the most up-to-date user-supplied data on your software. You can customize scans by selecting only those tools and features you want to run, and you can schedule automatic cleaning. Its Chameleon skin-changing feature lets you customize the program's background with your own images with just a few clicks. Cloud System Booster is freeware that works … Read more

We are highly dependent on calendars; we have one on our wall, one on our phone, one in our bag, and one on the Internet. With Desktop Calendar, we can now have one on our desktop as well. Although this calendar has some room for improvement, we think it's a great choice if you want an attractive, easy-to-access calendar on your computer.

The calendar took up about two-thirds of our screen, appearing as a transparent grid that let our original desktop image show through. Adding an event was as easy as double-clicking on a particular day and entering our … Read more

Too many people who teach themselves to play the guitar end up learning how to form chords and strum, but not the theoretical underpinnings that are critical to understanding how music actually works. If you want to go beyond playing your favorite songs and gain the skills to improvise and write your own music, try Guitar and Bass. This comprehensive program will teach you plenty of music theory as it applies to fretted instruments and help you take your musicianship to the next level.

When we first opened Guitar and Bass the program asked us to select our instrument--options include … Read more

Perpetual Calendar from Vertex42 is an Excel spreadsheet that creates calendars for any year from 1900 to 9999, beginning with any month you like, holidays included. It's extremely easy to use: Simply enter the year, tweak any fields, and click Save or Print. It behaves like any Excel template.

Perpetual Calendar downloads as a compressed file but opens normally in Excel when extracted. The spreadsheet is clearly configured, with a large year display above a 12-month calendar. To the right is a list titled Events or Holidays; it included not only traditional holidays but also tax day and equinoxes … Read more

As wonderful as the Internet is, it has its seedy underbelly, too: Web sites that will rip you off, spam your e-mail account, infect your computer with malware, steal your identity, expose your kids to inappropriate content, and all kinds of other bad stuff. Wouldn't it be great if you could somehow know about other people's experiences with particular Web sites? That's the idea behind WOT, or Web of Trust, an online community that lets people share their Web experiences via extensions for a variety of different browsers. We tested the Chrome version of the extension and … Read more

Windows' built-in Disk Defragmenter does a pretty good job keeping your hard disks tidy, but it has limitations. To really squeeze every bit of performance and capacity out of your hard drives, USB drives, and other storage devices, you can turn to a specialized third-party app that picks up where Windows' standard defragmenter leaves off. ZoneLink's SystemUp Defrag is just such a tool. It uses proprietary defragmentation technology, including a three-zone optimization algorithm, eight different optimization methods, and automatic background defragmenting, to not only defragment your drives but also prevent them from being refragmented.

SystemUp Defrag's slick, competent … Read more