Windows software

Are you hosting Thanksgiving or bringing a dish to a potluck? If so, plans are probably already in place for the turkey, side dishes, and desserts, but there might be a chance to take your recipes to the next level -- if you have the right apps.

There are several cooking apps for both iPhone and Android that are great year-round, but they also often have special featured recipe collections around the holidays. If you want to kick your green-bean casserole (or any other holiday dish) up a notch, I suggest you take a look at what these apps have to offer.… Read more

With the introduction of tabbed browsing, the way we surf the Internet has never had more distractions. Session Buddy and Session Manager aim to bring a little order to the chaos. Whether you're a couch surfer, a college student, or an office jockey, chances are you probably have what seem to be a thousand tabs opened right now. Managing all those open windows were a hassle before, but now with each one having about 20-plus tabs opened, too? One trick was to force shutdown Chrome. The crash-saving feature would save your session for the next time you launched your … Read more

Black Friday is rapidly approaching and we all know that means people are going to be hitting the stores both online and at brick-and-mortar locations to grab gifts for friends and family. But if you want to find the best deals, you're going to need a little help, and I have just the right apps for the job on iOS devices.

Whether you plan to brave the crowds on Black Friday or stay home and shop online, these apps will get you the best deals and hopefully make your gift shopping a little easier.

Editors' note: For Android shopping … Read more

It all started with Infinite Gangnam Style. For Music Hack Day Reykjavik, Paul Lamere, Director of Development Platform for the "music intelligence" company The Echo Nest, took Psy's "Gangnam Style" sensation to the next technological level. By breaking down the song into parts and matching similar parts in various patterns, he created a dynamic remix of the song that never ends. For Music Hack Day Boston last weekend, he modified and updated the musical algorithm to work with (nearly) any song, resulting in the webware app Infinite Jukebox, with the tagline "For when your … Read more

People who want to take Office 2013 for a spin can download a 60-day evaluation edition.

The version available is the full Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2013 suite, which includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, OneNote, Access, Publisher, and Lync. The software contains all the features in the paid edition, so you won't miss out on anything.

You will need a Microsoft account in order to access the download page, but otherwise there are no strings attached.

Here's how you can grab the free trial version:

Head over to the Office Professional Plus 2013 download page on TechNet. Click … Read more

You can now get a taste of Firefox OS straight from your desktop browser, thanks to a new Firefox add-on called r2d2b2g that bakes a Firefox OS simulator right into your desktop browser.

Mozilla wrote in its blog post announcing the simulator add-on that the tool has two complementary goals for helping developers. Currently at version 0.7, the company hopes that by version 1.0 the add-on will be stable enough to let developers easily create apps for the new OS.

The second goal for the add-on is that it frees developers from having a device to install a … Read more

The extramarital affair scandal engulfing former CIA director David Petraeus has brought massive public attention to the convoluted U.S. laws governing e-mail privacy. We've got some quick tips for keeping your electronic communiques private.

Before getting into the more technical side of things, there are some simple behavioral changes you can make.

Always log out of your e-mail when you're done using it. This goes for any online service, including social networking sites. Logging out prevents a cached password from keeping you signed in even after the browser has been restarted.

Never use your preferred personal e-mail … Read more

Better mobile support and more desktop options give SkyDrive users a bit of a boost today, as Microsoft updates its cloud storage service.

The desktop improvements include the ability to share SkyDrive files with one click from Windows 8's File Explorer (also known as Windows Explorer in previous versions of Windows,) and selectively sync folders from a Windows or Mac. This can help keep small-drive devices from filing up too quickly.

Android and Windows Phone apps have been updated, too, so that you can now more easily browse files in your SkyDrive. You'll also be able to control … Read more

With more than 400 million Firefox users, Mozilla doesn't have a problem with relevance. And with today's disclosure that organization's revenue grew 33 percent to $163.5 million in 2011, the nonprofit organization doesn't have a problem with money.

But it does have a problem with mobile.

So concludes Mitchell Baker, leader of the organization behind the open-source Web browser and other projects designed to keep the Internet free from proprietary constraints. Firefox, which just celebrated its eighth birthday, is the main lever that Mozilla uses to try to keep the Internet open. But Firefox is … Read more