Download Squad

Ubuntu 8.10 Inteprid Ibex is still warm, but the folks at Canonical are already hard at work on the next generation of the popular Linux distribution. The first Alpha version of Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope was released today.

As a first Alpha, this release is not recommended for users in search of a stable desktop environment. And there's really not much benefit to downloading it unless you plan to help test and develop Ubuntu 9.04. For the most part Jaunty Jackalope looks a lot like Ubuntu 8.10. The desktop theme and other graphics haven't been altered at all, and for the most part, the operating system comes with the same set of applications as Intrepid Ibex.

So what's different? The developers have been busy re-merging of changes from Debian, the Linux distribution that Ubuntu is based on. Canonical is also working on porting the operating system to run on machines with ARM processors which could lead to Ubuntu showing up on more Mobile Internet Devices and netbooks next year.

There's currently no LiveCD version of Jaunty Jackalope, so if you do decide to download the Alpha, you'll have to grab the alternate or server installation CDs. The full version of Ubuntu 9.04 is scheduled for release on April 23, 2009.

Back in August I wrote about Screamer, a nice portable streaming radio app. KSoft's Icy Radio offers a similar experience with a couple of nice additions.

Icy Radio is completely portable - just download the zip archive and extract it to a folder. Apart from a large library of audio streams, Icy Radio includes several nice skins and streaming video support.

As with Screamer, you should expect some of the included streams not to work. After all, many of these feeds come from ad-supported sites and their owners probably aren't so keen on the idea of us listening to their music without having to view their banners.

The massive channel list is fully searchable and indexed by genre - more than 60 of them. Adding new stations is easy, and can be done one-at-a-time or in bulk from an XML file. Icy Radio's tabbed main window also sports a favorites list for your top channels and maintains a history of your recordings for easy playback.

Built-in recording supports MP3 and OGG (you'll need to download and unzip the plugin into your Icy Radio folder first). Unfortunately, video streams can't be recorded as of version 0.5.

Icy Radio is freeware for Windows only.

The basic idea behind the new time-tracking service BubbleTimer is that it's not productive to track how you're spending your time down to the minute. It makes more sense to bubble in your activities in 15 minute increments, and BubbleTimer lets you do that with one click. Once you've added some goals and gathered some data, BubbleTimer becomes a playground for info nerds.

You can export your data to programs like Excel and Apple Numbers, or you can create attractive tables and graphs from within BubbleTimer. BubbleTimer is all web-based, so you can update it from anywhere. It's free to try, but if you get really addicted, you can buy a subscription for $20/year.

About three years after acquiring FolderShare, a utility for synchronizing files across multiple computers, Microsoft is retiring the application and plans to replace it with a similar utility called Windows Live Sync. You could make the case that what's happening is Microsoft is renaming FolderShare rather than replacing it, as the new version will likely look a lot like FolderShare and have many of the same functions. But it will also have a few improvements including:

• Ability to sync up to 20 folders with 20,000 files each
• You can login with your Windows Live ID
• Integration with the Windos Recycle Bin
• New clients for Windows and Mac
• Unicode support for synchronizing files in other languages (beside English)

Why Microsoft is continuing to push this software at the same time as it develops Windows Live Mesh which allows you to synchronize files across mutilple computers, the web, and mobile devices, is anyone's guess.

Welcome to Googleholic, your weekly fix of everything Google!

In this edition:

• Google SearchWiki lets you customize results
• Google adds new features to BlackBerrys and iPhones
• LIFE Magazine's photo archive comes online
• GrandCentral App comes to Mac
• Google plans to work with OEMs to pre-install Chrome
• Access Google Docs within Gmail

Read more →