2.2

TechCrunch is reporting today that Android 2.2 "Froyo" will feature built-in USB tethering and Wi-Fi hot-spot capability. This is exciting news for Android users as it could potentially provide all phones with one of the great selling features of the forthcoming HTC Evo 4G from Sprint.

For those unfamiliar, mobile hot spots allow users to share their Internet connection with other devices such as laptops and portable gaming consoles. USB tethering is also rising in popularity, as many Android owners want to share their 3G connections with a Netbook while on the go.

As carriers begin rolling … Read more

Sometimes useful information is buried within a bunch of junk, and this is especially true when you're looking at text logs of just about anything. FLicKeR is one way to cut through the garbage and get to the good stuff. This simple tool can delete any line that's not relevant to your search; that assumes, of course, that you know what you're looking for.

The program's interface isn't much to look at, but it's intuitive. Users simply select the text file that they want to search and then choose words or phrases that they … Read more

Windows comes with its own screen-capture feature, but there's not much to it, and anyone who uses screen captures more than occasionally will quickly realize that they need a more robust tool for this task. Fortunately, there's SmartCapture. This simple program lets users customize their screen-capture experience, both before and after the capture is taken.

SmartCapture isn't the most intuitive program at first glance, but it didn't take us long to figure it out. The program's interface is plain, with its major features arranged in menus and buttons. SmartCapture allows users to create different "… Read more

Google I/O is only a few weeks away and the Android fanboys are getting anxious. At last year's event Google teased us with unreleased features like gesture search and the only phone on the market was the T-Mobile G1. Later in the year, some of these enhancements were rolled out as individual apps and OS upgrades, so as we near this year's two-day conference, which starts on May 19, questions are starting to pop up. What does Google have up its sleeve?

Most of the tech community is in agreement that Android 2.2 (Froyo) features will … Read more

Apple iPhone Configuration Utility hits version 2.2. The new version released on Tuesday includes support for the iPad.

Apple's utility isn't designed as an end-user troubleshooting tool--it's intended to help enterprise users create configuration profiles for device deployment--but it provides three functions that can be useful for anyone troubleshooting iPhone security settings.

We wrote about these uses last fall, and we recommend that you read it.

Mac OS X's Software Update tool provides the following description of the update:

"iPhone Configuration Utility lets you easily create, maintain, encrypt, and install configuration profiles, track and … Read more

Google Translate is a handy add-on for Chrome that allows users to translate Web pages between a wide variety of languages. Although it handles some languages better than others, in general, it's a quick and easy way to get translations of fairly high quality.

The add-on integrates well with Chrome, appearing as a small icon to the right of the address bar. Users can click on this to access a sleek menu at the top of the browser window, but the application can optionally detect when you're visiting a Web page not in your default language and offer … Read more

WebMail Notifier for Firefox is a basic add-on that checks e-mail for a variety of different types of e-mail accounts. There's nothing particularly exciting about it, but it works just fine if you need a simple e-mail alert that's well integrated with Firefox.

The program appears as a small envelope icon within Firefox's status bar. It's quite inconspicuous, which is nice. When there are unread messages the envelope turns from gray to yellow, and the number of messages appears to the right. An optional pop-up window shows a brief preview of newly received messages. We liked … Read more

Venture is a very basic board-style game in which users build companies, take over corporations, and manage their stock portfolios. Unfortunately, it's not very fun.

The program's interface is basic and not particularly attractive. Part of the point of computer games is that they can be more dynamic and interesting than board games, but Venture is based on a grid-style board on which users build their business empires. Unfortunately, the 3D renderings of the businesses are rudimentary in nature, and look a bit like someone's homework from an introductory AutoCAD class. A built-in Help file explains the … Read more

We've been hearing about Mozilla's Weave Sync add-on for Firefox (download) for some time. The Weave extension is Mozilla's in-house effort to store your bookmarks, tabs, history, passwords, and preferences on Mozilla's server--the end goal being to snap open Firefox on any computer (or even mobile phone) and get to your content without having to configure your settings or open pages anew.

Now that Mozilla has officially released version 1.0 of Weave Sync, we jumped right up to test it out on the desktop. The verdict? We wouldn't say it stinks, but Weave doesn'… Read more