words

There are countless ways to scan the news on an iPhone, and even a handful of ways to listen to it. But newly updated Snackr effectively does both, reading aloud the latest headlines and news summaries from a variety of sources--including some personal ones.

In other words, it's like a news "snack"--get it? The app provides five minutes' worth of current headlines, but also lets you shift to other channels for more targeted news: top stories, business, entertainment, and technology.

You can also create your own channels derived from nine broad categories, including sports, science, gaming, … Read more

Is Microsoft cooking up a version of Office for the iPad? News site The Daily says yes, Microsoft doesn't exactly say no but claims that The Daily's story is inaccurate.

Yesterday, The Daily's Matt Hickey reported that he had seen a working prototype of Office on the iPad and that sources indicated the app would soon be sent to Apple for approval.

Microsoft quickly went into denial mode, saying The Daily's story was "based on inaccurate rumors and speculation" and that the photo displayed by The Daily is "not a real picture of … Read more

Audiobooks are a great way to pass the time on long drives. Audiobook prices, on the other hand, are a great way to drain your wallet.

For example, want to listen to the Steve Jobs bio? It'll cost you $29.95 at iTunes. And Stephen King's latest, the wholly engrossing "11/22/63," runs $44.95.

Fortunately, good listening material doesn't have to break the bank. Thanks to various resources and services, you can slash your monthly audiobook bill while actually increasing your consumption. Here are my five favorite options:

1. Audible If you like … Read more

When we reviewed Tomahawk Gold from NativeWinds, we found it to be a very good integrated PDF and word processing program: fast, light, and portable, yet ready for business. Tomahawk PDF+ ("PDF Plus") is a freeware version of Tomahawk Gold. Some of the premium tool's features are disabled in PDF+. For example, it can create PDFs and convert documents to PDF, but it can't open PDFs created by some other programs, including Adobe PDFs. However, it can extract data from many of those documents with its PDF Extractor and Image Manager.

PDF+'s user interface is … Read more

Wordle is a simple Web app that's useful for creating eye-popping "word clouds" just by inputting text.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but with Wordle, a thousand words is worth a word cloud. (Try saying that out loud a thousand times.)

Wordle lets you create custom word clouds like the ones found on blogs and other Internet content sites. A word cloud is a popular visualization of words typically associated with Internet keywords and text data. They are most commonly used to highlight popular or trending terms based on frequency of use and prominence.

In … Read more

Scramble With Friends (99 cents), a new game from Zynga, has rocketed to the top of the iTunes App Store with classic Boggle-like gameplay so you can challenge your friends.

Gaming company Zynga has enjoyed huge success with hit iOS games including Words with Friends, Hanging with Friends, and Texas hold-'em game Zynga Poker. A new word game from the company took the tried and true classic board game, Boggle, and made it into an iPhone-friendly multiplayer game that's as addictive and fun as the original.

Like Boggle, the object of the game is to find as many … Read more

About a week ago I featured Kingsoft Office Suite Professional 2012 in a bonus deal. Since then I've been test-driving the software on an old laptop. And you know what? I like it!

I mention this because although the Kingsoft Professional giveaway is over, you can still get Kingsoft Office Suite Free 2012 for, well, free. Update: This program is for Windows.

Until last week, I'd never heard of Kingsoft or this product. I had, however, tried all the usual freebie Microsoft Office alternatives: OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Lotus Symphony, Google Docs, and so on.

They're all OK--good enough, … Read more

iPad owners searching for software to create Microsoft Office documents now have a new and free app.

The iPad app CloudOn lets you create, edit, and view Microsoft documents using online versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Your documents are stored in the cloud via your DropBox account, letting you access them whenever you're online.

Although it officially hit the App Store on January 3, CloudOn was subsequently taken down when the company bumped into technical difficulties as a result of huge demand. But CloudOn has since caught up with its service issues and is once again ripe for download … Read more

There's plenty of live video broadcasting platforms to choose on the Web these days, but today we're chatting with one of the pioneers.

Justin Kan is one of the co-founders of Justin.TV, and he drops by our studio today for a full episode about the origins of life streaming and how the site paved the road to Justin's new project for live video gaming, TwitchTV.

We'll also talk to Justin about his participation in Y Combinator, a start-up incubator that helps green entrepreneurs through the first three months of genesis.

The boot camp gives founders the seed funding they need for general living expenses, allowing them to focus on the business idea. YC also guides them through the media pitching process and how to grab the attention of venture capitalists and seed investors.

Some of the headline-grabbing companies to grow from Y Combinator include Scribd, Loopt, Grubwithus, and Justin.TV itself.

Tune in to hear about how TwitchTV is bringing competitive gaming to a much larger audience, not to mention a few tips on what it takes to earn a spot in the next Y Combinator batch!… Read more