Reviews of software for modern users

Best software for webmasters, developers, net surfers.

Internet Explorer 10

What's new.

• Internet Explorer 9
  A revolution for Microsoft with a full HTML 5 support.

Windows 8

Some info for the next Windows version for all computers from tablets to servers.

• Metro, revolution for all. Microsoft works also on a new OS, Midori.
• What non-Windows alternatives to the Metro interface?
• Seven, the last Windows as we know it.
  Comparing Seven to the user interface of several other systems.
• Projects of Microsoft for the future
  From the more or less secret labs of Microsoft, innovative hardware with software to improve the experience in the future.
• Sysinternals, free utilities for Windows
  Microsoft provides now an archive holding a lot of utilities for getting infos and tweaking Windows.

Once upon a time Firefox

Its history and the foreseeable future.

What genealogy software to use?

Overview of online services and software for editing and creating family tree.

How to become rich with OpenStreetMap

Or with Google Maps, as mapping APIs are under-exploited by developers and used for minimalist functions.

Skywriter and Ace, online code editors

The Mozilla tools was merged with Ace to provide a powerful online collaborative IDE for many languages.

Oracle vs. PostgreSQL

Why to buy an expensive DBMS when a free alternative exists?

Firefox extensions

For Web application design and debuggin, Firefox may be turned into a development tool. The list includes tool for design, checking for errors or compatibility, and SEO with infos about the popularity of a website.

Silverlight

Web programmers need for standards. After XMLHttpRequest (first available in 2000 on Internet Explorer 5) and Ajax (popularized in 2005), XAML could be the next step, but it was missing a runtime to run on any computer. Silverlight is this tool that allows to run RIA on several browsers and operating systems. Moonlight is a port for Linux.

Comparison of anti-virus software

Comparing free and paid solutions.

Utilities for the desktop or the web

Free alternative to commercial software.

List of free archivers

Comparison of free tool to build archive and compress files, ZIP compatible.

HTML editors

Various tool for writing HTML pages. Star Office for document to put online, solutions to write a blog offline with a good editor.

List of tools for video

The best free software to display and edit videos, extract images, convert the format, compress, copy a movie to hard disk.

The magic slate of the MIT

A software to give life to an old dream. But maybe the Galaxy Note will be a better solution?

Web services and sites

• Google Commerce Search
  For the webmaster, a promoting tool, for the user, a replacement for price comparison websites.
• Moderator
  Online service offered by Google that allows users to vote for questions. You can browse topics and know what's most interesting to people. Well informed webmasters have immediately understood the value of the service.
• Should us move to Google App Engine?
  Google provide a free hosting to Web applications, but webmasters have to change their habits.

History

These software are abandoned of have uncertain future.

• Volta
  Microsoft once released Volta, a complete tool with runtime and library intended to provide an alternative to Google Web Toolkit. The link to the project is now broken.
• Sidewiki
  Now abandonned, was a tool offered by Google, to add comment on web pages, it creates a new source of information for users.
• The Google pack
  A lot of tools for webmasters. Star Office is now dropped but it may be replaced by Open Office.
• The popfly site from Microsoft has been closed.
• Empire and anarchy
  Against a powerful organisation with an overall vision and a coherent strategy, a plethora of incompatible open source solutions.