Download Squad

Digg.com has links to a number of mirror sites with the final, official release of OpenOffice 2.0. The main project site still lists 2.0 as a Release Candidate but mirror sites are apparently being populated in preparation for an official announcement. Read the comments on the Digg post to see the mirrors that are currently offering the download.

MobiTV provides something like basic cable for your mobile device. It was released for the Treo 650 (sorry 600 users, not yet) on Friday. Subscriptions run $9.99 per month. How does it work? Short answer - pretty darn well.

No, the picture quality is not as good as watching an AVI on the Treo. Yes, it’s very sensitive to your connection strength. And oh yes, it does suck a huge amount of bandwidth. In fact, the first time you launch the MobiTV application, it warns you that you want to be on your carrier’s unlimited data plan. But the audio is very good and the picture quality - with a 3 or 4 bar connection - is also quite good. MobiTV can either be loaded from your PC or directly to your phone from the web.

The monthly service, which currently displays 40 channels on my Treo, includes a good selection of news (MSNBC, NBC Mobile, ABC, C-SPAN), sports (MLB Highlights, NFL Highlights, Fox Sports, ESPN 3), and a smattering of comedy, music, weather, and educational material (Discovery and TLC).

NOTE: Apparently, AT&T users with an older SIM card now on the Cingular network have reported that they can not get anything other the MobiTV promo channel. A fix is in the works. Check the supported carriers and phones information carefully before you subscribe. There is no trial period available.

Rumors are flying fast and furious that Google is jumping into the instant messaging and VOIP game. Beginning with a carefully couched piece in Sunday's New York Times by John Markoff, the fever pitch of speculation that Google plans to follow the release of Google Desktop 2 with an instant messaging/VOIP client has been building literally by the hour. Today the LA Times, eWEEK, C|Net, PC Magazine, and others are all reporting that the new service will be launched as early as tomorrow.

Y'know... with all of the similarities between Windows XP and Mac OS, it amazes me that Microsoft has never figured out that it might be helpful to be able to see the size of a folder in Windows Explorer. Sure, you can right click on the folder and get its properties but that's more clicks than I care to make and comparing the size of two folders is... well, it's annoying.

Enter Folder Size, a nice bit of open source goodness that simply adds a "Folder Size" column to your Windows Explorer windows. One less annoyance.

If you don’t know what it means to tail a log file, please skip right over this post. It will be entirely unintersting. If, OTOH, you need to monitor the goings-on on one or more servers and are tired of wrestling with miles-long log files, you’re going to love this tool. From the site:

Tail XP: Ever wanted to follow a log file or capture debug messages without having a debugger at hand? Then this product is for you! Featuring multiple types of monitors: file monitor, event log, syslog, OutputDebugString and coloring of lines based on regular expression rules. Best of all: it docks to the top or bottom of your desktop like ICQ and other windows resize accordingly. Check out the screenshots.

Freeware: This product is a total freebie. The cost is zip, nada, zilch. Zero in whatever language you care to use. Certified by softpedia.com