software

While the battle to access your music and video files on the go continues both of the software front with services like Qloud, Orb and Simplify Media, there's also the hardware side of things with placeshifting technology from Sling Media, SanDisk and others. Ultimately people want a really simple way to enjoy their stuff elsewhere with a soft or Webware experience that's easy to use.

rVibe is an interesting piece of Windows software that opened up its doors to the public last month. It's half jukebox, half social music marketplace that's taken a new approach to music pricing and sharing by giving users a sizable array of songs that can be both streamed and downloaded using two different price points. While the music comes from a combination of sources, the actual transfer of the songs is handled via p2p in a similar fashion to Napster in the days or yore.

Streaming a song will cost you $.03 a pop, while downloading an entire copy (sans-DRM and at a audiophile-friendly 320 kbps) runs $.99. RVibe has a built-in recommendation service that lets you suggest a track you've purchased to one of your friends. If they end up buying it, you get $.05 back, which can either be spent on more music or donated to charity. It's also worth noting that every time you pay for a streamed song, it will reduce the price of purchasing the track by subtracting the price of a streaming session, all the way down to $.78 a track (or seven streamed plays). While there's a preview portion of the service called "auditions" I wouldn't mind seeing a super low cost streaming option in other popular online music stores to avoid purchasing songs with deceptively good preview clips.

Today they're launching "rVibe Anywhere" which is their personal streaming component. Assuming you've got a copy of rVibe running on the machine with your music library, you can get full access to all your tracks, along with the capability to share any purchased songs with others with an embeddable player widget. While the incredibly popular iTunes software from Apple can accomplish similar feats locally (and across the Web by fooling it with plug-ins), rVibe's solution is a little more extensible from the get go when it comes to making music sharing a social experience. Despite Apple launching their own set of Widgets earlier this year, clicking on a song still requires firing up iTunes, which everyone might not have.

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The first part of this posting on dealing with software crashes covered preventing the leakage of personal information, portable applications, and controlling the programs that run automatically when Windows starts up. Here we look at dumps, event logs, and disk checking, but first, we pick up on the topic of drivers.

Driver Verifier

In Windows, the term "driver" refers to software used by the operating system to control the hardware in the computer. Each piece of hardware (sound, video, printer) has an associated driver program.

The last topic in the previous posting was an airplane analogy to illustrate … Read more

A correction to my Zune first impressions post: it is possible to arrange songs by genre in the new Zune software.… Read more

Spyware: the scourge of the Interwebs! Send it packing with Check Point Software's ZoneAlarm Anti-Spyware, a CNET Editor's Choice winner. Normally $29.95, the software's now available free of charge--but you've got to download it today before 8 p.m. ET. After that, it turns back into a pumpkin--er, a commercial product.

While you're at it, snag ZoneAlarm ForceField and ZoneAlarm Firewall (available via the same link). The former's free while in beta; the latter's a full-time freebie. All three products require Windows 2000 or XP (ZoneAlarm Firewall also supports Vista). (via AppScout)… Read more

Those of us who have actually read through many of the Open Source licenses and have spent a fair bit of time mulling and discussing their consequences take a lot of things for granted.

One of those things is that once a program, or anything else, is released under an Open Source license you can't just take it back. Maybe this seems obvious to you, or maybe not, but it isn't to everyone. Perhaps especially as we depart the realm of software where most developers involved with Open Source have given at least passing thought to the implications … Read more

You've heard of the "killer app."

But have you really seen one?

Ed Abbo, Oracle's senior vice president of applications development, thinks he has--several times over. But then again, what else would you expect an apps guy to say?

Keenly aware that a number of attendees at Oracle OpenWorld were interested in the company's applications strategy, Abbo set out to deliver some answers--with varying degrees of the "wow" factor.

Oracle is looking to add a taste of social networking structure into its apps and, like a number of companies, a pinch of Web … Read more

IBM is releasing an update today to its free Lotus Symphony productivity suite, which remains in beta testing.

The three desktop applications, Documents, Spreadsheets and Presentations, are counterparts to Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The latest iteration of Symphony is supposed to be faster than its predecessor, which debuted less than two months ago.

The package is one of several low-cost or free alternatives to Microsoft Office. Unlike products such as ThinkFree, Zoho and Google Docs & Spreadsheets, there is no online component to Symphony.

Like its close competitor, the $79 Sun StarOffice, Symphony works on Windows and Linux computers … Read more

Fusion, or confusion?

For Niranjan Reddy, a technical lead at Office Depot, the answer was Fusion, with less confusion.

That was Reddy's assessment, after listening to Thomas Kurian, top executive on Oracle's Fusion middleware efforts, during his keynote speech Tuesday at Oracle OpenWorld on the company's Fusion Middleware 11g beta.

"We wanted to see how much better it would be to use Fusion 11g with E-Business (Suite) 12," Reddy said. "Right now, we're using many different adapters outside of Fusion Middleware, but with Fusion 11g and E-Business 12 we could bring it all … Read more

Filemaker is betting that its new database software, Bento, will please Mac users seeking a multipurpose personal information manager. The application will ship in January 2008 for $49, or $99 for a family pack. A free test drive is available on the Web site of Filemaker, which is owned by Apple.

Like the Japanese lunch box for which it's named, Bento appears to be a tidy organizer. Sorting and searching options look elegant. The software could serve a variety of purposes, such as tracking freelance work gigs, sending party invitations, plotting an exercise regime, cataloging household items, creating libraries … Read more