You might think that the last thing the world needs is yet another desktop client for Twitter. And you'd probably be right. But that doesn't make new kid on the bloc Toro any less pretty to look at.

Toro doesn't have a ton of features when compared to the reigning champs like Twhirl and Alert Thingy. It doesn't have a shortcut for sending direct messages and doesn't have a tab for direct tweets. And it has exactly two options in the settings dialog (turn alerts on and off, and turn sounds for alerts on and off).

But that said, Toro is one of the most physically attractive Adobe AIR-based Twitter clients I've seen. Items like Recent, Public, and Replies are separate into tabs. There's an integrated search feature. And you can view a list of your friends and followers in the Friends tab. I don't know why most desktop Twitter clients insist on having colorful backgrounds, but there's something about the black and white simplicity of Toro that makes it an attractive alternative.

[via RefreshingApps]

Mozilla CEO says the first Alpha version of Firefox Mobile will be available in a few weeks. That's pretty exciting. But I wouldn't read too much into it at the moment.

It's not clear exactly what devices or operating systems will be supported by the early Alpha. Pre-alpha releases of the browser, code-named Fennec, are already available. But at the moment, they only run on the Nokia N810 internet tablet. The N810 is a pretty cool little device, but it's not as ubiquitous as say, Windows Mobile or Symbian powered cellphones.

Mozilla does plan to make a Windows Mobile version of Firefox Mobile available. I just don't know whether we'll see that version in a few weeks when Fennec hits alpha.

[via Gizmodo]

Economy got you down? Feeling some pain at the gas pump? Stressed every time you turn on CNN? Yeah, me too. So I was intrigued when I found the Happy Creator.

It's a nice little exercise that helps you remember some of the things you can be happy about. It's just a list generator but, when you fill it with things that make you happy, you can go back and read it when you're feeling a little too much stress. Maybe you got some amazing new coffee to drink in the mornings or you had a really great workout yesterday. Add it to your happy list. Be detailed or be brief. It's completely up to you - it's your happy list after all.

You can also visit the Happy House for a list of things other people have been happy about, in case you need some inspiration. It all comes from the book, "14,000 Things to be Happy About" by Barbara Ann Kipfer.

Dorky? Yes, but we could all use a little help focusing on the good stuff now and then, don't you think?

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]

Thinking about picking up a new T-Mobile G1, but want to know how big it is first? Pective is a new web service that will show you pictures of various items in actual size. Just select the size of your monitor and Pective will do the rest.

The service isn't perfect. For example, I have a 15.4 inch widescreen display, while Pective only allows you to select a 15 or 16 inch display. So the picture of a CD it displayed was slightly larger than the actual CD I held up to the screen to make a comparison. But it was close. Close enough that I I can figure out how much space an iPhone would take up in my hand, or how hard it would be to type on the G1's thumb keyboard.

Right now there are only a handful of items to sift through on Pective. But that works out well because there's also no search function. You can only browser. Users can add their own images, and anyone can report whether the sizes for uploaded images is accurate or inaccurate. As more items get added, I certainly hope Pective adds a search box.

[via Digital Inspiration]

Since I became irked with the limitations of Allway Sync's free edition, I've been looking for a good replacement. I've been getting by with the MS Synctoy, but thankfully a kick-ass open source app has once again come to the rescue.

Synkron is a powerful, cross-platform synchronization tool that boasts an impressive array of features.

During the install the option is given to add a context menu extension. Oh yes, I'll have that. I work my context menu like a rented mule, and if I can add one-click synchronization to it, you'd better believe I'm going to.

The program sports a tabbed interface, making it easy to set up, run, and manage multiple jobs. The interface is uncluttered and easy to understand. Folder analysis is extremely fast, and files, file types, and folders can be blacklisted to exclude them from synchronizations.

Yet another "tower defense" game? These games are very derivative, but the thing is, they're extremely fun to play. Whiteboard Tower Defense uses a whiteboard metaphor for your battleground, which works insofar as it gives a excuse for a new version of the game with different towers and enemies to deal with.

The graphics are predictably sparse, consisting only of single-color towers and enemies on a white background. The sound effects are cute, but maybe a little annoying - though since most people will likely be playing this at work, make sure to hit the mute button at the top-right of the window. Armor Games seems to consistently produce high-quality browser gaming, and this game while not a standout certainly fits in with their stable of games.

The game play in Whiteboard Tower Defense is surprisingly challenging, with the Easy level providing significantly more difficulty than Easy on the original Tower Defense game. I shudder to think how difficult the higher levels are.

What's the first thing you do after you layoff 10 percent of your workforce? You go on a buying spree, right? That's what eBay appears to be doing anyway. The company, which currently employs about 15,000 people plans to layoff about 1,000 full time workers as well as a number of temporary employees. At the same time, eBay has announced it will spend over $1.3 billion to buy two companies.

First up, eBay will buy Danish competitor DBA for more than $380 million. But the big news for folks who don't live in Denmark is the $945 million the company is spending to purchase Bill Me Later, a company which allows web sites to perform instant credit checks based on your birth date and last four digits of your social security number allowing online retailers to extend you instant credit and send you a bill later.

Bill Me Later's technology will be used to complement eBay's existing PayPal online payment system.

There's no question that eBay needed to do something to deal with increasing competition from Amazon Marketplace and other online stores/auction houses. But I have to say, if I were one of the 1,000+ people getting laid off, I wouldn't be to happy to see my former employer spending this kind of cash on acquiring new properties.

Need to put together a quick list or data table, but can't be bothered with the bloat of a full spreadsheet application?

List² is a minimalist (32kb) application that can do just that. Its uncomplicated interface allows you to quickly assign names to columns and start entering your data.

What can List² do with such a small footprint? Import and export tabbed data files, import CSV, export to HTML, and perform simple search and replace operations. Columns and rows can be moved around and inserted with ease, and List² even supports column sorting.

Though the .zip download contains a .reg file, I was able to extract only the executable itself and run it on my MSI Wind with no trouble at all. With it on my flash drive I've got a tiny, incredibly simple way to maintain lists on the go - regardless of who's computer I'm using.

I've been using Excel for jobs like this for ages, which just doesn't make any sense. List² is much lighter, and does everything I need it to do. It's freeware, Windows only.

I've been using Foxit PDF instead of Adobe Reader for ages. I'm not a big user of PDF files, so I don't need whatever it is Adobe jams in to the 90-some-odd megs of disk space the new version consumes.

Vuzit's online document viewer is a nice service, but I want single-click document handling. I don't want to download a file, open a new tab, browse to Vuzit, then browse to and upload my doc.

The Nodobe addon does exactly what I want, adding a new option Firefox's right-click menu. Find a file you need to open, right click it, and Vuzit's online viewer will display it in a new tab.

My one complaint is that it doesn't add an option to the download dialog, meaning it can't handle attachments from my Gmail. OpenItOnline, my document handler of choice, does provide that functionality.

Those with privacy concerns will want to read Vuzit's policy first, just to be on the safe side. I like to err on the side of caution with my docs, so anything really important I'll still be reading offline. For manuals, spec sheets, and the like, the Nodobe Viewer is a great alternative.

There are plenty of things to love about a modern desktop Linux distribution like Ubuntu 8.04. It's got nifty desktop effects, comes with an office suite, web browser, media player, and pretty much anything else you need for day to day computer user. And there's a huge list of applications you can install with the click of a mouse.

But there's one thing I absolutely hate. And that's the fact that while package managers like Synaptic and apt-get make it incredibly easy to install all sorts of applications, uninstalling is another matter.

I wanted to see if I could get some audio editing tools up and running on my Eee PC 1000H today. I could have just tried installing Jack and Ardour, but I decided to go all out and install Ubuntu Studio's audio packages. I opened a terminal, typed in "sudo apt-get install ubuntustudio-audio," and after downloading 300MB of files and unpacking them to take up 600MB on my desktop I was all set. Dozens of utilities has been installed, most of which I didn't have any intention of using. After playing around a bit, I couldn't figure out how to playback audio in Ardour, the one app I really wanted to use. And Ardour crashed about 70% of the time I tried to launch it.

So I decided to uninstall using the same method. I opened a terminal, typed "sudo apt-get remove ubuntustudio-audio" and received a message saying I could free up 49.2KB. Only two packages would be uninstalled, and almost all of the audio applications I didn't need would stick around, eating up hard disk space.

Apt-get makes it incredibly easy to install software. It's not so easy to remove it. It looks like my best bet is to go through and remove the applications I don't need one by one. I'm amazed how often I run into this program.

If you don't tend to install a lot of programs that you later wind up uninstalling, Ubuntu's a great operating system. If you enjoy testing out new software, and value both your hard drive space and your free time, Ubuntu may not be for you.

I haven't played with Fedora, SUSE, or PCLinuxOS lately. Anyone know if any of them have a package manager that makes it easier to remove applications?

Update: Thanks to mcdope, I managed to find a solution. But it was so non-intuitive that I'm going to stand by my headline. Uninstalling applications needs to be much simpler in Linux.

Basically, apt-get autoclean, apt-get autoremove, and apt-get --purge remove did nothing for me. What helped was installing the debfoster package and then running it. This shows a list of all packages that were installed along with ubuntustudio-audio (or any other package). If you select "y," you can keep a package. Selecting "n" removes it -- but not the other packages that rely on it, as I figured out the hard way.

So I had to reinstall ubuntustudio-audio, run through the whole process again, and this time select "p" for purge." That finally removed most of the apps that had been installed as part of the package and cleaned up 519MB of disc space. Finally, I ran apt-get autoremove which seemed to cleanup a few more loose ends.

Thanks for all your suggestions!

It's been a while since we looked at Livestation, a video player that allows you to watch live streams of TV channels, with a heavy emphasis on news programming. While the channel selection was rather limited in February, there are now over a thousand channels to choose form, thanks to user submitted links to channels that stream live TV signals. Most are still news related, but there are also a handful of channels of music and other genres.

Another major change is that Livestation is now cross-platform. There are Windows, Mac, and Linux clients available. The Linux version works best on PCs with NVIDIA graphics cards, while the OS X version should run on any Mac with an Intel processor. The Windows version also no longer requires Silverlight to be installed.

The user interface has also been tweaked, making it simpler to search through the long list of channels or flip between channel presets. If the video window looks small in the screenshot, all you have to do is double click on any video to watch in full screen.

While Hulu, Joost, and other online video sites are focusing on offering video on demand, Livestation provides a decent way to watch live programming. And there are two things that most people would rather watch live than pre-recorded, news and sports. Since there's a lot more money involved in getting broadcast and webcast rights for live sporting events, I doubt we'll be seeing ESPN or similar channels on Livestation any time soon. But if you want to catch the latest BBC, CNN, or Bloomberg news, Livestation's got you covered.

[via MakeUseOf]

You know how RealNetworks confidently launched a commercial DVD ripping program and then went and pre-emptively sued a bunch of movie studios to demonstrate in court that the software doesn't infringe on copyrights? Yeah, the studios sued back. And while the courts figure out how to deal with the whole mess, RealNetworks has been ordered to stop selling the RealDVD software.

NewTeeVee reports that this is just a temporary shutdown until Tuesday. The purpose is to give the judge time to review the details of the case.

Meanwhile, there are still plenty of applications that will let you rip DVDs for free, although few, if any, keep a DVD's CSS encryption intact the way that RealDVD does. So if you're a big fan of DRM, especially the heavy-handed kind that will only let you watch a ripped movie on a single computer, you might want to wait until this legal battle is worked out. If you prefer being able to watch movies your own way, you might want to check out Handbrake or Fair Use Wizard.