Posts with tag best
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The Greatest Software Ever
What would you say is the greatest software ever written? Snood would probably top my list, but I must admit InformationWeek's list is a bit more.. practical. Charles Babcock's What's the Greatest Software Ever Written? is a great mini-survey of the history of software, terminating in a list of 12 of the world's most historic software developments. I won't ruin the final 3 for you, but here are items 4-12.12. The Morris worm
11. Google search rank
10. Apollo guidance system
9. Excel spreadsheet
8. Macintosh OS
7. Sabre system
6. Mosaic browser
5. Java language
4. IBM System 360 OS
Number 1 will not surprise you, but 2 and 3 are interesting choices. So, if you had Babcock's job, what would top your list of the Greatest Software Ever?
[Via Lifehacker]
PC World's 100 Best Products of the Year
Now that we've got the worst products ever out of the way, how about the best? PC World is running an article with the past year's 100 best tech products, and I'm tempted to copy-and-paste the whole thing into my wishlist. It's an even mix of hardware, software, and web sites, but since this is a software blog I'll give you a sampling of the latter two (spoiler warning): Adobe Premiere Elements 2, Apple's Boot Camp, Craigslist, Google Earth, and YouTube make up the software half of the top 10, with Firefox and Google following not far behind. The heavy hitters Adobe, Mozilla, Google, Apple, and even Microsoft make a few more appearances, but there's also plenty of one-off products from small vendors holding their own. Oh, and I should mention that Download Squad's sister site Engadget makes the list at #13, right between Firefox and Toshiba's HD-A1 HD DVD player. Congrats!Download.com freeware staff picks
There are a lot of best-free-software lists out there, but probably nobody's hands pass over more freeware than
the folks at Download.com, so I thought their staff-picked Best Free Software collection
from a couple weeks back was worth noting. They split the free apps up into ten categories--Audio & Video,
Business, Developer, etc--and their picks are very solid. The obvious is there, of course, but so are a few surprising
picks. I especially recommend the Desktop
Enhancements section that has quite a few gems like this brilliant Holding Pattern
screensaver pictured at right.[Via Digg]
Top 20 web development links of 2005
Alessandro
Fulciniti at Web-Graphics has collected his top 20 bookmarks of
2005. They're all, of course, web development links with a focus on CSS and JavaScript with some design,
typography, AJAX, and search engine optimization thrown in. Every one is a must-read for anyone doing web development
in 2006.List of 50 best Firefox extensions
As I've been warming up more and more to Firefox,
it's hard for me to resist giant lists of summarized Firefox extensions, and this one looks pretty
comprehensive. I've never seen this "Quick Online Tips" blog before, but I found their list of "50 Best Firefox Extensions for
Power Surfing" linked from Fark,
which in my book means it has to be worth a gander.One thing that catches my eye is that some of the extensions, like ScrapBook, make me say "hey, browsers should do that on their own already." The extensions are also categorized which helps with finding stuff you're actually interested in. A lot of the extensions are not hosted at Mozilla's site and/or seem pretty unique, such as the Gmail Delete Button, which (you guessed it) adds an actual delete button to Gmail's interface. Definitely worth a look.
Five best freeware games of 2005
Given that it's 2005, I'm surprised we're
not seeing more Top 5 lists, but here's one: Five Best Freeware Games of 2005, from
gHacks. I won't spoil #1 for you, but I will spoil the rest: Advanced Strategic Command is at #5,
retro-style adventure Zak McKracken 2 is
#4, Battlefield-alike Warrock is at #3, and intriguing Korean MMO shooter GunZ The Duel takes #2. To see their favorite freeware game of the year you'll
have to click through to gHacks.BlogPulse's 2005 Year in Review
Like Google's Year-End
Zeitgeist but for blogs, BlogPulse has published a Year in
Review that lists 2005's biggest blogs, news stories, images, videos, and more. Boing Boing, unsurprisingly, crowns
the Top Blogs list, followed by our sister blog
Engadget. The Top Blog Posts category is an
interesting potpourri with an odd LiveJournal bent, and the Top Wikipedia References category
(Podcasting, Hurricane Katrina, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster) is pretty eclectic, too. And if you like
charts, be sure to check out the Featured Trends of
2005.
Top 10 podcasts episodes of 2005
Who listens to enough podcasts to name the top ten
episodes of the year? The folks at LearnOutLoud, apparently. To be fair, they only chose among podcasts that are listed
in their hand-picked directory, but it makes for a pretty
good sample. Topping the list of LearnOutLoud's Top 10 Podcast Episodes of
2005 is the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders podcast featuring the CEO of Trilogy Software, Diggnation's "Clip
Show" episode, and Malcolm Gladwell's appearance on IT Conversations. Also on the list, at #8, is our own Jason
Calacanis on the Web 2.0 Show. Head over to LearnOutLoud to see the full list, with links.Most underrated apps of 2005
The parade of best-of-'05 lists continues:
As a companion to her Best apps of 2005
list, Lifehacker's Gina Trepani has posted her Top
underrated apps of 2005 list, and it's a good one. A couple of my favorites, notably Picasa and MyBlogLog make the list, and she's
included a couple dark horse picks like Yahoo! Calendar and ShoZu. Head over to Lifehacker
to check out the rest.
Best fonts of 2005 according to Typographica
There's a little design geek inside me and inside him is an even littler typography geek, and that geek loves Typographica's Favorite Fonts of 2005. With fanciful names like Lisboa, Deréon, and Zingha, these are some truly beautiful fonts, but I think my favorite of the bunch may be Robert Slimbach's Garamond Premier Pro, and gorgeous update to the old serifed standby. There's also several dozen runners-up for your perusal, and this is only Part 1, comprising the first six months of the year. The article's writer, Stephen Coles, also notes the expanding role of the OpenType format and the fact that many type designers have completely abandoned PostScript and TrueType fonts in favor of OpenType.
