For everything from family to computers…
Wine is a great way to run your favorite Windows programs on Linux, but if you don’t want to mess with a program’s settings to get it just right, free app PlayOnLinux has a bunch in its database that you can install with one click. More »
from Lifehacker
iOS/Android: Group calling isn’t something most of us need to do often, but it comes in handy when you’re trying to make plans with a bunch of people or when you’re making the rounds for holiday calls. CrowdCall simplifies the process by making it easy to make calls to up to 20 people directly from your iPhone or Android phone. More »
from Lifehacker
Microsoft’s Jerry Koh and Jeff Piira gave some insight into the Windows 8 touch experience in yet another Building Windows 8 blog post yesterday. They talked specifically about the type of touch hardware that would be required for Windows 8-certified tablets – the touchscreens in Windows 8 and Windows on ARM tablets will need to recognize at least five simultaneous inputs, have good edge detection, and accurately register 95% of all touch input.
To ensure a decent experience on Windows 7 tablet hardware, the gestures needed for basic OS navigation require no more than two fingers, though tablets with limited multitouch capabilities may not be able to use apps or features that require more complex gestures. To compensate for tablet hardware with poor edge detection, Windows 8 can use a 20 pixel buffer around the screen to help register edge gestures, but the space used for the buffer cannot be used to register other touch input. Various sensitivity issues may also cause problems with individual taps, swipe to select, swipe and slide, and swipe from edge on Windows 7 tablets.
For more information, including specific Windows 7 tablets that Microsoft has used for internal testing, the full post is linked below.
Source: Building Windows 8 blog
from AnandTech
A couple of weeks ago, Google updated Google Maps Navigation screens with bigger buttons and to be more car-friendly. Today, they updated the actual starting Navigation menu with a new layout to help complete the experience. You now have 4 big buttons to choose from when entering the Navigation screen, along with a list of recent destinations. If you swipe to the left, you get a list of locations that you have starred in Google Places for quick access. If you swipe to the right, you get a list of your contacts that have addresses attached. Seems minor, but man does this make sense.
Update:  Google also added in “preferred†mode of transit and gave higher resolution maps to phones with better displays.
Click here to view the embedded video.
Cheers Jason and JW!
from Droid Life
Red Hat today announced that it has crossed the billion-dollar mark in revenue, with $1.13 billion in the fiscal year that ended February 29.
Red Hat is unique in becoming the first vendor of its size to make all or nearly all of its money from building, maintaining, and selling open source software. We examined the company’s long journey in the recent article, “How Red Hat killed its core product—and became a billion-dollar business.” Red Hat’s quarterly earnings announcement today shows that the company did cross a billion, as expected, with $297 million in fourth quarter revenue, up 21 percent over the previous year’s fourth quarter.
For the entire 12 months ending Feb. 29, Red Hat pulled in $965.6 million in subscription revenue, and $167.5 million in training and services, for a 25 percent year-over-year improvement. Net income was $35.97 million for the quarter and $146.6 million for the full 12 months. Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin praised Red Hat in a blog post today, saying “This achievement will finally put to bed the argument that ‘nobody can make money with open source.'”
Red Hat is most famous for Red Hat Enterprise Linux along with its contributions to the Linux kernel, but the company builds and sells many enterprise software products in addition to its flagship distribution. As we noted in our previous story, the only Red Hat technology that hasn’t been completely released under open source licenses is the OpenShift platform-as-a-service software, which is based largely on the 2010 acquisition of Makara. Red Hat has good news on that front too—the source code for the core technology behind OpenShift will be released on April 30.
from Ars Technica
from Engadget
Android: If your phone has a good camera on it, why would you need a separate app to grab a head-on shot of paper? In the case of Handy Scanner, it straightens and fixes perspectives, enhances readability, makes multi-page documents easy, and pushes PDFs quickly to wherever you’d like. More »
from Lifehacker