I often find myself reinstalling operating systems, particularly Ubuntu, either because of using ‘sudo’ one too many times or the rapid development of alpha builds. Some people like to parachute from planes, well, I like running the latest builds of the OS. There are a few things that power-users do to every installation or machine [...]

If you want to start coding, there’s no better way than with Firefox add-ons. If you’re familiar with standard web programming languages, you’ll be up and running in no time. If you’re not, learning a bit of web tech won’t be very difficult, and learning how to make your own Firefox addon will surely prove [...]

Boxee, as you probably know, is a cross-platform media center application which you can download for free. Because it was designed specifically for the living room, it is suitable for use in conjunction with your large screen TV, with interface elements legible from the mythical 10 feet. Whether you run the application on an Apple [...]

Wuala is definitely one of the most under-reported start-ups, and there’s no good reason for that. It takes the best features out of both Dropbox and Mozy to create a must-have online file storage service for anyone with a computer. Developed by Dominik Grolimund and Luzius Meisser, the technology behind Wuala is truly amazing. By [...]

I’ve been a long-time nay sayer to any sort of online password manager, citing mainly reasons of security, and I took upon myself to maintain a Google Docs spreadsheet with all my >=12 character passwords. Believe me, remembering random strings of ASCII is not an option. I’ve now discovered Mitto and consequently changed my tune [...]

We’ve all seen those movies when the geek character mashes the keyboard and disables firewalls in a matter of seconds or minutes. But because we don’t discuss movie cliches on MakeUseOf, we’re going to instead look into the definition of a firewall – what it does and why you need one on your network or [...]

There’s no debate whether or not our online activities are tracked, they most surely are. It’s not even a single party that keeps the score; your ISP, website owners, advertisers and NSA know the reason you switched to Private Browsing Mode yesterday at 22:12. If the cool kids are doing it, why shouldn’t you? Here’s [...]

We aren’t born with computers (although that might be true in the future), but we sure do collect them over the years. Some may opt to sell their antique Apple II’s on eBay. But seriously, we all have those 3 year PCs and laptops sitting in a dark corner in your apartment.  Wouldn’t it be [...]

What makes the internet and technology in general very exciting, both from a consumer and journalist’s perspective, is the accelerated rate of innovation, or put more bluntly, of new stuff. We’ve reviewed quite a lot of different tools that allow you to be more productive, organized and collaborative, such as Shareflow,Tokbox and Notely, but the [...]

Today we’re going to continue our journey through the Ubuntu software repository looking for more children’s Linux educational software. As I dutifully noted in the previous article about chemistry applications, Ubuntu and Linux distributions in general, have a wealth of great educational software. As more and more parents allow their children to use the computer, [...]

An often overlooked aspect when compared with other more popular operating systems, Ubuntu enables students of various ages and topics to access a wealth of educational software. Of course, like all the software presented in the Synaptic Package Manager or Add/Remove Applications, these incredible useful tools are available for free and  can be installed immediately [...]

Although Google Wave has got a lot of media attention, here’s the executive overview if you’ve missed the beat. Google Wave is both a communication and computing platform developed as a replacement to a whole array of web-based services: email, IM, wiki, social networking. One of its most important features is the seamless integration of [...]

While statistics put Internet Explorer clearly ahead as the most widely used web browser, it’s clear to many people that it is not due to the excellent programming. Subject to more than one official inquiry in Europe, and numerous columns, both online and in print, the practice of “˜bundling’ the infamous browser with the every [...]

The long and hot summer days are slowly but surely starting to fade away which means it’s time to dust off the textbooks and prepare to return to a more scholastic routine. Being a student myself, I’m always looking for ways to improve the way I manage my time, and more importantly, the various array [...]

First launched back in 2006 as a CD trading service, Lala has evolved along with its market into the most comprehensive web-based service for listening to your music online and music downloads. Its offerings include full length album previews, an online store with 7 million songs, DRM-free high quality variable bit rate MP3 music downloads, [...]