Software

So you just bought an iPod touch or iPhone and want to stock it with movies from your DVD library. There are countless commercial utilities that promise to rip DVDs, but I recommend trying HandBrake. This open-source (read: free) utility for Windows (download), Mac (download), and Linux converts your DVDs for viewing on iPods, iPhones, Sony PSPs, and other portable media players. It's by no means new, but I just had to share my newfound appreciation for it.

I recently picked up the hilarious Flight of the Conchords on DVD. I also just acquired an iPod touch (quite simply … Read more

Updated at 5:55 AM PT to include comments from Dell.

Dell is expanding its horizons a bit further.

The PC maker plans to acquire enterprise e-mail service MessageOne for $155 million in cash, the company said early Tuesday.

Though Dell has made very few acquisitions over its two decades in business, this one isn't that much of a stretch: Austin, Texas-based MessageOne, which manages the process of archiving, e-discovery, and long-term storage of e-mail, was founded by Adam Dell, the brother of the PC maker's CEO, Michael Dell.

To ensure fairness, the company says founder and chairman … Read more

The latest update to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard dropped Monday afternoon, with fixes for several different issues.

Apple posted a support document on its Web site and began informing Leopard users through the Software Update mechanism that Mac OS X 10.5.2 is now ready for public consumption. A combo update that includes some security patches is 343MB and can be downloaded immediately. The first update to Leopard, version 10.5.1, was released in November.

This time around, Apple has fixed some issues with Time Machine, the automatic backup software available in Leopard, as well as … Read more

Heading in a different direction from its main rivals, Ubuntu Linux will use KVM as its primary virtualization software.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server both use the Xen virtualization software, a "hypervisor" layer that lets multiple operating systems run on the same computer. In contrast, the KVM software runs on top of a version of Linux, the "host" operating system that provides a foundation for other "guest" operating systems to run in a virtual mode.

"We've chosen to settle on KVM as our main virtualization focus,&… Read more

About five years ago I installed the family version of Symantec's Norton Internet Security software on one of my PCs, rendering the machine unusable. Not only couldn't I get any access to the Internet, it was impossible to uninstall the program. I ended up having to reinstall the operating system and all my applications--except Norton Internet Security. At the time I said I would never again install a Symantec security program on any PC, but about a year ago I bought a PC that came with 90 days of Norton 360, and the program won me over. When … Read more

Notepad Plus Plus is a Notepad replacement with an eye toward programmers, although it should also appeal to the casual user who wants a cross between Notepad and WordPad. Notepad Plus Plus has some noticeable differences from WordPad. Support for tabs is key, letting users manage different documents simultaneously. Line-numbering is important, too, a feature that nobody mucking about in C should be without.

The interface is much simpler compared with some of its competitors. A familiar row of icons with their mouse-over labels sits at the top, and one row of tabs is just below that. The rest of … Read more

Ript is a new, free software application in beta development that lets you collect images and text from the Web, then compile and arrange them into pages you can print or share with friends and family. It's a simple freeware idea that makes sense...and it's from Oprah? Well, sort of. The publisher is the Oprah Winfrey-founded Oxygen Media, recently acquired by Universal.

Ript works via an overlay "Pile"--representing by a stack of documents--that sits on a layer on top of all your applications. You can work with your programs as you normally would, and … Read more

Hosted business application provider Workday said Wednesday that it has acquired Cape Clear to create an integration on-demand offering.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

Launched in 2006 by PeopleSoft founder Dave Duffield, Workday sells online versions of traditional ERP business applications, such as human resources management and accounting.

Cape Clear's standards-based integration software, called an enterprise service bus (ESB), will form the basis for an integration on-demand offering the company plans to add to its products. The integration service will allow people to exchange information between Workday applications and those from other providers, including Microsoft Office programs.

Workday said … Read more

Microsoft is working on a new development language, called 'D,' which will make it easier to model applications, Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet reports.

Her post describes D as a "declarative language aimed at non-developers."

Modeling and end-user programming are big themes in Microsoft's development tools work.

By creating models of applications, developers can speed up their development time and make it easier to deploy and operate those applications once they are live.

End-user programming, a long-held idea, is getting more realistic in the days of mashups where people combine data from different Web feeds onto a … Read more