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Portable search

Over time, our browsers become a reflection of us, with specific bookmarks, feeds, and other customizations that match our tastes. For that reason, we love the idea of taking our customized browser with us on a USB drive wherever we go. Maxthon Portable let us do just that. Due to its lack of import options for other popular browsers, though, you'll need to spend a little time with it to get it right where you want it.

As its name suggests, the program can be launched from a USB drive or similar portable device. The browser interface is clean … Read more

Broken record

Good record-keeping is an important part of any business, and people typically end up using multiple programs to take care of it. BusinessTracker is a simple program that aims to meet a lot of your record-keeping needs in one place. Although we like the idea of the program, it wasn't as easy to use as we hoped it would be.

The program's interface is plain and fairly intuitive, although not quite as intuitive as the program's documentation would suggest. BusinessTracker's functions are arranged in a tree hierarchy down the left side of the interface. There are … Read more

Bare-bones payroll

Even if you use a payroll company to pay your employees, in many cases you're still legally obligated to keep your own payroll records. We've encountered several programs that let users do that with varying levels of success. Personal Payroll Manager, we're sorry to say, is among the worst. While it technically does keep track of your payroll records, it's difficult to use and lacks important features.

We had trouble getting Personal Payroll Manager to open at first; it requires Microsoft Access, and when we tried to launch Personal Payroll Manager, we had to manually select … Read more

YouSendIt delivers unlimited cloud storage

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 4G will launch this Thursday, Apple forces developers to update their apps to remove external links to e-books and subscriptions, and YouSendIt offers unlimited cloud-based storage for less than you'd expect.

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded:

YouSendIt launches unlimited cloud storage Apply with LinkedIn Apple forces developers to update apps Apple & AT&T gearing up for iPhone 5 launch Samsung launching Galaxy Tab 10.1 4G Subscribe: iTunes (MP3) | iTunes (320x180) | iTunes (HD) | RSS (MP3) | RSS (320x180) | RSS HD

Android Atlas Weekly 55: Over 4.5 billion served (Podcast)

How is the Android Market like McDonalds? What's up with all of the missing Gingerbread updates? and What does Google Plus mean for ye Android faithful?

News

Rumor: Samsung Nexus Prime to be first Ice Cream Sandwich phone http://cnet.co/mfqF1M

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 4G up for preorder http://phandroid.com/2011/06/29/samsung-galaxy-tab-10-1-4g-now-on-pre-order-at-verizon-starting-at-529/

Yet another Facebook phone http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19736_7-20075421-251/htc-status-announced-for-at-t-and-facebook-fanatics/

T-Mobile MyTouch 4G Slide is all about the camera http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19736_7-20074689-251/new-t-mobile-mytouch-4g-slide-ready-for-close-up/… Read more

Flashy cards

There's a reason that flashcards have remained such a popular educational tool: they work. L.A. Flash Cards is an easy-to-use program that takes all of the useful simplicity of physical flashcards and adds helpful features like audio to make your flashcards extra effective. Whether you're learning a foreign language or trying to memorize a set of words or facts for another purpose, L.A. Flash Cards can do things a set of handwritten index cards never could.

The program's interface isn't the most intuitive thing we've ever seen, but it didn't take us … Read more

Perfect panoramas

There is something kind of magical about creating panoramic images. If all goes as planned, you take several separate photos and then use a piece of software to stitch them seamlessly into one. The best programs do this with little effort on the part of the user and return images that don't betray their piecemeal origins. Image Composite Editor is just such a program. It's easy enough for anyone to use, but the end result is better than we've seen from other, more complex programs.

Image Composite Editor has a plain, uncluttered interface, and creating a panorama … Read more

CSV editor

Comma separated value (CSV) files store tabular data as text files. Lots of programs use them, including spreadsheets, e-mail clients, and databases. CSVed is freeware that can manipulate any CSV file with any separator. It can add, delete, edit, and insert items; import and export data; remove duplicates; join and split columns; add, delete, and rearrange columns; search and sort; and more.

CSVed has a full-featured interface with a four-in-one toolbar, a navigation/clipboard sidebar, and a main document view above a handy editing panel that is tabbed with all the program's major functions. There's a Font manager, … Read more

Electronics deal finder

Comparison shopping for electronics is one of the Web's most popular pastimes. Dynamite Data's Dynamite Deals for Firefox is a free add-on that automatically searches for the best deal in electronics and other merchandise from several of the Web's largest retailers, including Newegg, Buy.com, and NextWarehouse, displaying comparison prices in a small pop-up window.

Dynamite Deals places a small stick of dynamite on Firefox's address bar. To use it, you simply browse to a single product page on a supported merchant's site and click the stick of dynamite. We browsed to a merchant's … Read more

Free Employee Scheduler

These days, small businesses can use a break wherever they can find one. Free business software that performs as well as pricey packages seems a good place to start looking. We've found one: DRoster Freeware Standard from Kappix. It's a full-featured employee scheduling suite that happens to be free. It's highly flexible and almost completely customizable. It has the ability to create, schedule, and track assignments; create, print, and export reports; plan shifts and schedules; and back up data to an included Firebird database. It sounds like a lot, and it is, but DRoster is far from … Read more