Dropbox seems to be a startup on the rise! Dropbox announced today that they have over 25 million users and 200 million files are being saved and share daily. Dropbox allows users to back and sync their files across multiple platforms and devices, and all for Free!
Dropbox is great tool and it shows with the amount of users the service has already within their first 4 years.
Oracle has just announced that they intend to move OpenOffice.org to a purely community based open source project and no longer offer a commercial version.
“Given the breadth of interest in free personal productivity applications and the rapid evolution of personal computing technologies, we believe the OpenOffice.org project would be best managed by an organization focused on serving that broad constituency on a non-commercial basis,” said Edward Screven, Oracle’s Chief Corporate Architect. ”We intend to begin working immediately with community members to further the continued success of Open Office. Oracle will continue to strongly support the adoption of open standards-based document formats, such as the Open Document Format (ODF).”
Oracle has been a very closed company for some time, but they have also invested heavily in Linux and MySQL. It will be interesting to see if the community really jumps onto the OpenOffice bandwagon.
This has to be the craziest thing I have heard in a while! Airbnb now allows you to rent the country of Liechtenstein for $70,000 per night!
Airbnb has partnered with Rent a Village by Xnet to rent Austrian villages, German towns, ski resorts and now even full European countries.
“With Xnet and Airbnb, events take place throughout the idyllic landscape of your host destination, not in some generic hotel,” says Airbnb. “The local people earn a living, because each event draws heavily on local vendors and service providers for everything from accommodations and catering to infrastructure and activity production.”
I don’t know about you, but this is a great marketing ploy that seems pretty pointless in general! Heck, it even got me to write about Airbnb!
Source: Mashable
Microsoft seems to be the latest company to get App Store fever! There have already been a few Windows 8 leaked images and here is the latest. The above image is leaked from Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 and its of the new Windows App Store.
It seems like Microsoft is trying to bring together the designs of IE9, Windows and Windows Phone 7. The Windows App Store seems very similar to the design of Internet Explorer 9.
It seems as though Spotify is going through some tough times in terms of advertising revenues. Spotify is about to make some big changes to their free music service in Europe and it would first appear this is because of poor advertising returns at present.
Spotify will be limiting their free service to 10 hours of listening per month, down from 20 hours. What’s more, they’ll only be able to play individual tracks five times ever, before they are made greyed out and unplayable.
Upgrading to the Spotify Premium service will obviously remove both of these limitations and provide better quality streaming.
“We’ve got to balance a number of priorities,” says chief content officer Ken Parks. “Chief amongst those priorities is to keep the free service, which is what makes Spotify unique, and what you’re seeing here is a balance of these priorities. We’ve shown that the model is doing extremely well, but as things stand we need to tweak the service to ensure everyone has access to legal music in the long term.”
It seems that these changes are down to rightsholder demands, but I know first hand that this is because of the major labels not liking the free service! Independent record labels and aggregators seem to be onboard with Spotify’s free service, as long as it brings people off illegal services and allows rightholders to generate at least a little royalties.
It seems like the daily deal phenomenon is growing by the day, but what are the best daily deal sites out there? Here are our favourites. Enjoy!
Woot – Woot is said to be the original one deal one day site. However, unlike Groupon they havent been able to have as much success, so far. Woot! one-day deals are often solid deals, but the site may also be worth a daily visit just for the irreverent and highly entertaining descriptions.
Groupon – Groupon is the king of the daily deals. Groupon is dominant in the US and Canada and is starting to setup shop in nearly every country. Daily deals are triggered when enough Groupon members buy the deals, which include discounts for massages, movie tickets, hotel stays, and even airplane piloting instruction.
LivingSocial – LivingSocial is a daily deals site offering up to 90% off local products and services. LivingSocial has a very strong presence in Europe and Australia. Users can also earn free deals by getting three other people to buy the deal too.
When you think of open source applications, certain ones immediately come to mind: Mozilla Firefox, OpenOffice.org, and Gimp, but there are many more out there that are cross-platform and high-quality programs. You do not have to be a Linux user to benefit from free and open source software development. Try out the following apps and enjoy the freedom.
1. Audacity (Linux, Mac, Windows, and more)
If you are going to edit audio of any sort, Audacity can probably do it. Whether it is something as simple as converting a WAV file to Mp3, or as complex as editing out the background noise of an important interview, Audacity can pretty much do it all. It comes with a ton of audio editing plugins, has a fairly straightforward interface, and it costs you nothing.
2. Boxee (Linux, Mac, Windows, Apple TV)
The Boxee Box has received big headlines lately, and that may have obscured the fact that the Boxee software is free and open source. You can download it and install it on Windows, Mac, and Linux computers, turning any computer into an instant home theater box. Boxee will play all kinds of videos from both your computer and the Internet. It also plays music and photos. Easy home theater entertainment can be as easy as hooking a laptop to your TV.
3. FileZilla (Linux, Mac, Windows, and more)
Transferring files does not need to be painful. Whether you have your own website or just want to copy files over a network from one computer to another, FileZilla is a power and easy-to-use transfer tool that supports FTP, SFTP, and FTPS. With FileZilla, you can easily connect to a web host, such as UK server hosting company 34SP.com. It has a drag and drop interface for easy file transfers, and you can connect with the click of a button.
4. VLC (Linux, Mac, Windows, and more)
Tried and tested, VLC is the definitive video player for all platforms. Forget whatever player came with your computer. This is the one you need. It will play everything: Quicktime, DivX, Windows Media, H.264, Xvid, MPEG-4, Mp3, DVDs, and pretty much anything else you can throw at it. It is lightweight, has a ton of features, and can also stream content to others.
5. Inkscape (Linux, Mac, Windows, and more)
When most people think of open source image editing, they immediately think “Gimp”, but when you need a powerful vector graphics editor, Inkscape is the best free solution you will find. Easily create basic shapes or entire drawings. The possibilities are limitless. Just as Adobe Illustrator is the lifelong companion of Photoshop, Inkscape is a must for anyone with Gimp.
6. Pidgin (Linux, Mac, Windows, and more)
Yes, people still use instant messengers, and chances are, you have a bunch of accounts: Yahoo, AOL, Windows Live, Google Talk, and others. Pidgin brings them all together in one program and allows you to stay in contact with your diverse groups of friends. Pidgin even connects to Facebook chat so you can chat with friends without going to the website.
7. Xmind (Linux, Mac, and Windows)
Mind-mapping sounds kind of like a sci-fi experiment you should avoid, but it is actually quite useful for creative types, students, and businesspeople. With it you can do simple brainstorming or develop intricate organizational charts, outlines, and business models. Best of all, when you are finished, you can upload it to the web and share it with others.
“Free and open source” means the software you are using is distributed under a license that allows modification of the source code, sharing, and redistribution. Unlike Freeware, where the application is free of charge but the source code is hidden, this software can be sold or given away for free, and the source code is open for all to view and modify to their liking. While some proprietary operating systems like Mac OS X contain some free and open components, others like Ubuntu and FreeBSD are primarily free, open, and available for all.
Guest post by: Tavis J. Hampton is a librarian and writer with a decade of experience in information technology, web hosting, and Linux system administration. His freelance services include writing, editing, tech training, and information architecture.
Nokia has just launched Nokia Drop, which allows users to push links and pictures from their desktop browser to their Nokia phones.
All the user needs to do is install the Nokia Drop application on their phone and install a browser extension on their desktop. The browser extension is available in both Firefox and Chrome.
KickassTorrents is a very popular bittorrent search engine that has decided to drop the .com domain in favour of a .ph. Many bittorrent related sites have been dropping the .com domains, because the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been making the point of seizing domains related to file-sharing.
KickassTorrents has been feeling the heat recently. It was one of the sites reported to the US Government last November by the MPAA, who said that it had a “commercial look and feel that could deceive users into thinking it is legitimate.” The United States Trade Representative (USTR) later copied this description in its overview of sites that are “notorious for infringing activities.”
Read the rest of the article over at TorrentFreak.
Tweetdeck has just released their web application in the Chrome Web store. Now any user can access Tweetdeck from within their Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer and Opera browser.
According to a blog post from TweetDeck, the new Web App, which requires no downloads, is already working on Chrome, Firefox 3.6, Firefox 4 and Safari with compatible versions arriving soon for IE9 and Opera.
If you’d like to try your luck at receiving a beta invitation you can visit: http://www.tweetdeck.com/webbeta. You’ll need to know your browser name and version number, then again if you don’t know how to find those you shouldn’t be in a technology based beta program to begin with.
