client

ManyCam is the freeware tool users who need their Webcam for more than one chat program simultaneously. It creates a "virtual" Webcam that replicates your currently installed camera. It then lets multiple applications access the video stream without conflict.

ManyCam is compatible with Yahoo, MSN, CamFrog, PalTalk, ICQ, Skype, YouTube, and more. Once you've installed it, you need to set ManyCam as the primary input for program that you want to use. It'll automatically start when activate your Webcam through that program. The application includes a bunch of gimmicky features that let you change aspects of … Read more

MENLO PARK, Calif.--The global rise in power consumption isn't bad for all species, it turns out.

Sun Microsystems is seeing increased customer interest in its Sun Ray, a thin desktop client, as electricity prices climb, said Subodh Bapat, vice president and chief engineer in the Eco Responsibility office at Sun. Bapat's comments came in a presentation during Sun's global media day taking place Wednesday.

Thin clients like the Sun Ray consume far less electricity than conventional desktops, he said. A Sun Ray on a desktop might consume 4 to 8 watts of power. That's because … Read more

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Las Vegas for the Citrix iForum show. Citrix is best known for its Presentation Server product, nee MetaFrame. Presentation Server delivers specific business applications to remote desktops using Windows Terminal Server on the back-end. It's usually thought of in terms of thin client computing; in fact, the vast majority of Presentation Server installations deliver applications to ordinary PCs. (I describe the technology in more depth in this Illuminata research note.) However, these days, Citrix has many other products as well, variously tailored to delivering applications and full desktop images to a variety of clients.

I've been seeing more interest among IT folks in alternatives to traditional desktops over the past year since, well, ever. Traditional SMS-style provisioning and management systems never truly performed up to hopeful expectations; increasing concerns about security have only exacerbated an already sub-par situation. Nor are users thrilled with the current state of affairs. Their PCs tend to accumulate "cruft" (that's the technical term) over time and software loads "blow up" (another technical term) periodically. Furthermore, IT policies intended to keep things under some vague semblance of control tend to consist, in no small part, of long lists of "Thou shall nots" that limit what users can do with corporate PCs.

And, before the various fanboys chirp in, switching to Linux or a Mac doesn't make all these issues magically go away.… Read more

The Mozilla Calendar Project has upgraded Lightning, the calendar plug-in for Thunderbird to 0.7, and is aiming for a 1.0 sometime in 2008.

As we've noted before, Lightning makes Thunderbird soar above Outlook for home use, and places them on nearly equal ground in the office. The latest update includes an overhauled interface with easier-to-use buttons for jumping from your mail to your calendar, LDAP directory support for event invites, and Sun Java Calendar Server support.

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Last month I wrote a research note about some of the changes going on with the desktop PC. We're seeing more variety and experimentation with client devices than we've ever seen. Handhelds grab most of the headlines. (And some of the nascent trends around "Ultra-Mobile PCs" and "Mobile Internet Devices" are genuinely worthy of attention.) However, there's action on the desktop too. My research note delves into the background behind these trends in considerable depth but, in a nutshell, people are starting to wonder: "If most of my computing is out in the network cloud anyway, why is it that I need a big, noisy, hard-to-manage desktop PC?"

Dan Lyons over at Forbes.com reports on one of the latest desktop PC alternatives, from the Menlo Park-based Zonbu. It's a small box powered by a Via x86-compatible processor with 512MB of DRAM and 4GB of flash for storage. It runs a custom Linux distribution that comes packaged with Firefox, Skype, Open Office, Peer-to-Peer clients and lots of multimedia applications and games. The unit doesn't have any fans, something that leads the company to loudly trumpet its eco-friendliness--a laudable goal certainly, if one that's in danger of getting more than a bit overexposed these days. … Read more

Cerulean Studios announced Friday that Trillian is coming to Mac OS X. The company is quick to point out its previous statement from last year, "We will never port Trillian to Mac OS X," remains true--they remade the Trillian UI from the ground up for Mac fans.

Trillian for Mac OS X is still a very early version, so we can't list it on Download.com just yet. This build will only work for those who have set up their Astra account and contacts list through the Windows version. As a first build, they expect Trillian for … Read more

If you use torrents frequently, then you'll remember December 7, 2006, as a day that will live on in infamy, a day that teh Interwebs broke in half--just a little. That was the day that BitTorrent, Bram Cohen's torrent progenitor, announced it had bought ?Torrent, the free-but-closed-source torrent client that showcased innovative features in a surprisingly lightweight app.

Now, two years since their last upgrade, BitTorrent has released its first version that combines ?Torrent code with its own open-source base, and ?Torrent has also come out with a minor-point upgrade. Confused? Read on.

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Chat clients are great for interoffice communication and sending quick messages to co-workers and friends. The only problem is once you've chosen a particular chat client--usually decided by what your friend uses--you can only communicate from within that particular client's network. In other words, Yahoo chat users can only talk to other Yahoo chat users. If you've spent any time using chat clients, you know that people use several different apps, making it difficult to talk to everyone without downloading each one.

Fortunately, clever software developers came up with chat programs that would play nice with all the major clients, so you only needed one program to talk to everyone. There are a lot of these programs available for download and most are free. But in addition to the ability to chat with people on several networks, these clients also offer features and options that make them great apps in their own right.… Read more

Patiently waiting for somebody to write that killer Thunderbird extension that does everything from sending spammers a DOS attack to washing your dishes won't get you much beyond a head of gray hair and a trip to Cuba for cheap meds to treat your high blood pressure.

No, there are no panaceas here, but we do have a platter of some newish extensions that not only make you slimmer and sexier, they also make Thunderbird better and easier to use with preview pane browsing, e-mail stickies, toolbar tweaks, and more.

… Read more