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Manage your tasks, contacts, and more with VORG Express - Free Organizer

VORG Express - Free Organizer is a comprehensive program for managing contacts, schedules, important documents, and more. It has all the features you'd expect of a personal information manager, as well as a few you wouldn't. We think it's a great choice for busy professionals of all types.

VORG Express has an interface that reminded us of Microsoft Outlook, with menus on the left for Folders, Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, Notes, and Documents. Most of these are pretty straightforward, and they look and function as you would expect them to; there are multiple calendar views, contacts are organized … Read more

Load IE-only Web sites with IE Tab for Firefox

We don't like Internet Explorer, but we keep it around, because every now and then we encounter some dinosaur of a Web site that can't be viewed without it. If you find yourself doing the same thing even though Firefox is your browser of choice, try IE Tab for Firefox. This clever extension lets you open IE-only Web sites within Firefox. It's a brilliant solution to the problem of switching back and forth between two different browsers.

IE Tab for Firefox installed easily and was ready for action after we restarted the browser. In order to find … Read more

Creative unveils 'new genre' of audio device: Sound BlasterAxx

Not surprisingly here at CNET we get a ton of press releases e-mailed to us announcing new products. Most are fairly bland, but Creative's media pitch for its upcoming Sound BlasterAxx line of speakers is one of the more amped-up ones I've received lately, reading like an ad for a new energy drink. In fact, I think the PR person who wrote it had three Red Bulls before he or she started typing.

Here's a little taste. Careful, it's rich:

Creative Technology Ltd today announced the Sound BlasterAxx, a whole new generation of Sound Blaster and … Read more

New 27-inch Dell all-in-one matches iMac pixel for pixel

HP and Asus released the first 27-inch Windows-based all-in-ones this year, but with 1,920x,1,080-pixel resolution screens, they failed to match Apple's high-density, 2,560x1,440 iMacs. Dell's new XPS One 27 does.

Dell says the starting price for the new XPS One 27 is $1,399. That puts it ahead of the $1,249 HP Omni 27, but on par with the Asus ET2700I. All are also at least $300 below the most affordable 27-inch iMac.

At least for now, those other 27-inch all-in-ones also all use second-generation Intel Core CPUs, aka Sandy Bridge. The XPS One 27 has third-generation Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs, aka Ivy Bridge.… Read more

Samsung aims to up memory to 2GB for phones, tablets

Ever felt like that game or tabbed-out browser on your phone or tablet could use more memory? Samsung says it has the answer.

The South Korean electronics giant announced today that it has begun making low-power double-data-rate 2 (LPDDR2) memory using 20 nanometer class technology.

Translation: Samsung's most advanced manufacturing process allows it to pack 20 percent thinner memory chips into a 2-gigabyte package.

And that means potentially more large-screen phones and tablets with 2GB of standard system memory instead of the 1GB limit that's prevalent today. And that, in turn, means more DRAM to power memory-hungry games … Read more

Google Books Downloader saves you a trip to the library

E-books are changing the way people read, and services like Google Books are leading the way with millions of free titles as well as a growing number of new titles published in electronic book formats, sometimes exclusively. Google Books Downloader is a simple piece of freeware that downloads e-books from Google Books and converts and saves them to a folder of your choice. It can save ebooks as PDF, JPEG, or PNG files that you can view in your browser or e-book reader. With it, Google Books can become your public library.

Google Books Downloader's installer offers two options, … Read more

MultiMi is like social media for your social media

If it sometimes seems that social media apps have taken over your desktop and are coming after what's left of your free time, you're hardly alone, but that's the problem, isn't it? All those people communicating using all those programs; and you're already in deep, right? Help is available from MultiMi, a free app that unifies your e-mail and social media accounts in one interface. You can check your inbox and chat accounts, access Facebook and Twitter, post photos to sites such as Picasa and Flickr, and manage your Google Calendar and other Google Apps. … Read more

Create desktop sticky notes with MemoMe

We all know how useful those little yellow sticky notes can be, and there are plenty of virtual versions that bring the concept of sticky notes to your computer desktop. MemoMe is one of the more feature-packed programs of this sort that we've encountered. With options for formatting text and even adding images, we think it's a great choice for anyone who needs an easy way to keep track of ideas, reminders, and so on.

The program has a predefined keyboard shortcut that opens a new note. At the top of each note, a small toolbar lets you … Read more

Keep weather data handy with WeatherInfo

WeatherInfo is a simple application that keeps the current conditions and five-day forecast at your fingertips. It's not the most feature-packed weather app we've seen, but if you're looking for a program that can hang out unobtrusively in your system tray and provide you with weather info when you need it, it's not a bad choice.

The program's interface is straightforward and easy to navigate, with tabs dividing it into screens for Current, Forecast, and Options. The Current tab shows a thermometer with the current temperature down the left side, and a text box displays … Read more