Linux-powered netbook users that have been missing their doctors' appointments and kids' school plays because operating a calendar application on their tiny portable is, at best, clunky and painful, can finally breathe an accurately-scheduled sigh of relief. Srinivasa Ragavan, who is one of the user interface developers for the open-source Evolution personal information manager project, has taken it upon himself to develop netbook-happy frontends for the calendar and mail portions of Evolution.

The calendar interface, as shown off on his blog, makes use of the entire screen for the calendar view. It features a handy upper toolbar for navigation, and a powerful drop-down menu for selecting more viewing options. The mail frontend, named "Anjal," features such optimizations as a similar upper toolbar, a tabbed interface (something soon to be seen in Thunderbird 3), and Gmail-esque threading.

Srinivasa hasn't yet released any working source for the calendar interface, but the Anjal mail project is available for anyone willing to install Moblin on their netbook, or (for even more fun) build it from source.

[via All About Netbooks]

Evolution is an Outlook clone for Linux that serves as an email client, calendar application, and a task and contact manager. DIP Consultants has released a version of Evolution that runs on Windows machines. If you don't want to shell out the cash on the latest version of Outlook, Evolution offers many of the same features, plus a few extras.

It supports a whole slew of online services including Exchange, IMAP, POP, iCal, and Google Calendars. Evolution also features integration with the Pidgin chat client.

Evolution for Windows supports Windows XP and Vista. But I have to say, it's not exactly an Outlook or Thunderbird killer just yet. On my test machine it took an unreasonably long time to launch. And it frequently froze while downloading messages from my Gmail account.

[via Lifehacker]

Dino Run is an online flash-based time waster with a great classic arcade feel. You play the part of a small dinosaur, and you run. And run.

The premise of the game is that you are running from a "pyroclastic wall of doom", while trying to find power-ups like eggs, super eggs, bones, critters, birds, and plants. Each of these things help you in different ways, such as earning you DNA which allows you to evolve your dinosaur with additional abilities.

The wall of doom is actually a pretty novel way to introduce an extra level of suspense to the game. When you're well ahead of it, you don't really have any indicator just how far ahead you are. So while you have time to slow down and attempt to get some of the more powerful power-ups, every moment that you waste feels like an eternity. When the wall of doom catches up to you, the screen darkens and it starts to envelop you like a wave. You can actually continue to play as it covers over you, so much so that you can't even see your dinosaur, and it's possible to run your way out of trouble. In fact, if you do this, you actually earn risk points.

The graphics and music are all deliciously reminiscent of 8-bit gaming days of yore. Dino Run is what I wish my Commodore 64 games were like.

If you've got more hours on your hands today than you know what to do with, Evolution is probably exactly what you need. Unlike some of our other Time Wasters, it plays at a slow place - you won't need to have good aim or mad clicking skills - just some patience and the will to raise bugs.

The basic premise is this: you are a bug owner (the insect kind), and you raise bugs for a living. As such, you spend your days caring for your bugs' health and happiness, providing them food, and getting them ready to breed. As you breed different types of bugs with each other, you can spawn new types that are stronger, better, and faster. The goal of the game is to produce the "ultimate bug" which is at the very top of a relatively large evolutionary ladder.

In order to finance your bug raising enterprise, you can put a price on your bugs and sell them, or race/fight them against other bugs for prize money. As you make more money you can buy better food, "growth enhancers," and toys to keep your bugs happy. The trick is, that if you have too many bugs at once, they will die from unhappiness - so you have to keep the bugs you want to breed and get rid of the ones you don't want around.

Ultimately, Evolution is a nice way to waste your time - especially if you like raising things. And bugs.

The TSA, that pesky (but very necessary) organization that makes us take off our shoes at the airport, has a new public face in the form of the Evolution of Security blog. By visiting the site and participating in the discussion through comments, the public helps the TSA in improving security measures. It plans to learn from its readers through the blog and will make changes to its policies accordingly.

Though blog-readers have a chance to post questions, it doesn't mean the TSA will give you a direct answer. Instead the TSA "will challenge you with new ideas and involve you in upcoming changes." Though it means we may still have to take off our shoes at security checkpoints, its nice to know that the TSA is doing what it can to make the flying experience better.

The blog, which was just launched yesterday, features a number bloggers whose names range from "Bob" all the way to the very rare "Jim", and though their names sound ordinary, many of these people are anything but average. Take, for example, Ethel, who graduated from MIT with Biology, Computer Science, and Electrical Engineering degrees. She also worked with NASA on an artificial gravity system , which reminds us: we should probably buy one of those when space travel becomes the norm.

[via Gadling]

Evolution is a Personal Information Management program that has been popular in the Linux world for a few years. It looks startlingly like Microsoft Outlook, and in fact is intended as a replacement for Outlook. Evolution's claim to fame is the ability to connect to an Exchange server with most of the same functionality afforded to Outlook clients. And while I'm not sure how I feel about the blatant rip-off of the user interface, I was okay with it when I figured that it gives Linux users the ability to connect to an Exchange server, create and accept meeting requests, and basically be first-class citizens on their corporate network.

Well, now Evolution has been ported to Windows. Why do I feel differently about it now? I'm not sure. I guess since Microsoft Outlook already exists for Windows, it's hard to justify using a third-party application that replicates Outlook so completely.

The justification given on the Evolution site was that their company needed to be able to schedule meetings with external clients who used Microsoft Outlook as their email client. And rather than purchase Outlook for their staff, they opted to port Evolution to Windows to avoid paying for the software.

Although many publications have called Evolution an "Outlook Replacement", I'm not sure I would be comfortable building a company on what is almost certainly illegal software. Evolution's user interface is so similar to Outlook's that it's either infringing on Microsoft's copyright, or at least some form of intellectual property. I'm no lawyer, but I know in my gut when something feels wrong, and this feels wrong. But it's not for me to pass judgement, and who knows - maybe Microsoft is tacitly allowing Evolution to exist. Anyhow, as a technical achievement, it's remarkable. Even if it is fugly compared to recent versions of Outlook. Hmm, maybe that's why Microsoft doesn't mind?

You know, the desktop hasn't really changed that much since 1984 when the original Macintosh debuted. Windows still work pretty much the same way they always have, and so do desktop icons. Now we have things like the Start menu and the dock, and widgets basically everywhere, but apart from pretty colors, rounded corners, and transparency, the desktop today would probably be pretty recognizable to a time traveler from 20 years ago. If you're feeling nostalgic, this site has a screenshot timeline of the evolution of the desktop since 1984. Of course, 1984 wasn't the invention of the GUI, or even the WIMP paradigm--the former distinction belonging to NLS way back in the 1960s, and the latter to the Xerox Alto, developed in 1973.