processing

This free, open-source word processor strikes us as a worthy alternative to pricey, big-name products. AbiWord has a quick learning curve, since the interface is very similar to those in Word and WordPerfect.

You'll find just about all the features you need, including the ability to cut and paste, highlight, and a bevy of common formatting tools. Although we did miss a grammar-checking utility, AbiWord can check your spelling in many languages--you'll need to choose the appropriate foreign language dictionaries during installation. A huge plus is the ability to open and save Microsoft Word documents, though the program … Read more

Penzu, the stylish Web word processor we checked out about a year ago, is ready to make a business out of its hosted writing tools.

The company on Wednesday introduced a professional version of its service that costs $19 a year and fixes many of the gripes we originally had about its very pretty, but feature-light, offerings.

A pro membership now gets you all kinds of goodies, including a rich text editor, tags for organization, image hosting, 256-bit AES encryption on posts that you've locked, and themes that skin the entire interface to your liking. Pro users can also … Read more

Simon Scarle's giddy enthusiasm (see photo, at right) could be the result of getting to play with Xboxes on the job. More likely though, it's because his recent discovery about the console's graphical processing unit could save thousands of lives.

Scarle, a researcher at the University of Warwick, wanted to model how electrical excitations in the heart navigate around damaged cells to better understand and even predict cardiac arrhythmias.

To do this kind of parallel processing, researchers typically have to book expensive time on a dedicated cluster system or network of PCs; the Warwick team found that … Read more

Bulk Rename Utility takes the pain out of renaming and managing files and folders, assuming you can get past the frightening user interface. This free application can handle everything from simple search-and-replace to Perl 5 regular expressions, but it suffers from a cluttered user interface that fails to offer tool tips and, somewhat incredibly, abbreviates labels and button names.

The application window offers 13 primary functions, including inserting and appending text, auto-numbering, cropping characters, and moving/copying files. Additional menu bar drop-downs let you set global options, such as time stamp formats, color-coding, and activity logging. Bulk Rename Utility tries … Read more

Silly season is upon us.

The Free Software Foundation is on the warpath against Microsoft's launch of Windows 7, as CNET's Ina Fried reports, denouncing Microsoft for "poisoning education," "invading privacy," and other evils.

The irony is that the Web site used to promote this latest rant uses a license that prohibits derivative works, a cardinal sin in Free Software Foundation theology.

The site uses the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License, which allows people to copy and distribute a page, but not to actually modify and improve upon it ("No … Read more

Artweaver is an art supply store and a blank canvas all rolled up into one. With it, you can create your own masterpieces and experiment with the multitude of built-in tools. Choose from paint and calligraphy brushes, pens, pencils, crayons, and even sponges and brushes made to mimic famous artists like Van Gogh.

Artweaver's interface is very similar to Photoshop's. Creative professionals and hobbyists who are familiar with Photoshop will be able to navigate their way through its palettes and windows with no problem. This helped us get up and running with the program easily and made our … Read more

It's been over a year since Apple inaugurated its App Store, but we finally have a sense of how the approval process works.

Apple has been reluctant to publicly discuss how developer-created applications get approved, but the federal government forced its hand by sending an official query regarding the rejection of Google Voice several weeks ago. On Friday, Apple answered a series of questions posed by the FCC regarding the App Store and its evaluation policies, and there were several interesting revelations.

First, Apple says Google Voice was not rejected, it just hasn't been approved, and that AT&… Read more

With its professionally designed and visually appealing interface, ACDSee Pro makes a good first impression. While novice users might be overwhelmed initially, the tools to organize and view images proved easy to use.

This program's sleek interface looks sharp and well-designed. Four main areas dominate the screen. The middle section, and largest, is for thumbnails of your photographs and allows you to view an entire folder's worth of shots at once. The lower left side gives a larger preview of any thumbnail you click on, as well as a small graph of its color composition. Above this box … Read more

EF Process Manager helps computer users take a look under their hard drive's hood. But with an overwhelming amount of information in a tight space, users might need to take extra time to warm up to it.

This program's appearance is sure to make a user's head spin, unless they already have an intimate knowledge of their computer. Two claustrophobic screens of strange words and changing numbers is a real time representation of the processes and modules in your hard drive. The Help file focuses more on how to execute commands and less on defining this confusing … Read more