5.0

Forgettable finance

Personal finance technology has come a long way; there are now Web sites that will automatically download your transactions and alert you when you've gone over budget or are in danger of overdrawing your checking account. And then there are programs like Finance Explorer. Although the program does what it's designed to do--mostly--it just doesn't measure up in a world of increasingly sophisticated personal finance software.

Finance Explorer has a pretty bare-bones interface. Down the side there's a menu listing different accounts including bank, cash, credit card, investment, and loan. Users are supposed to be able … Read more

File viewer plus

Universal Viewer Portable is a free application that can open and display a wide range of files, including text, hex, binary, and Unicode files of unlimited size. It opens nearly all image and graphics formats as well as multimedia files, plug-ins, Internet-compatible files, various encoded files, and even Office files via the associated Navigation Panel shareware. It can also be integrated with Windows' context menus and some popular file managers such as Total Commander.

Universal Viewer has a small, efficient interface with toolbar icons clearly depicting their functions. We quickly browsed to and opened a wide range of files, including … Read more

Skype to go

More than 700 billion Skype users place more than 900 zillion calls annually using Skype's free software. While our numbers may be off, there's no doubt that millions of people use Skype for voice and video calls, instant messaging, and file-sharing. PortableApps creates portable freeware by modifying open-source programs to store program data locally and run on a Windows machine without modifying the registry or file structure. We looked at their Skype Portable release. You can store Skype Portable on a USB stick or other device and run it on any Windows PC with Internet access and a … Read more

Talk over the Web for free

Popular and preeminent VoIP service Skype has wooed its fair share of people with an itch to ditch the landline and an Internet connection, especially those with international contacts. With its latest update to version 5, the company hopes to win over even more customers and keeping the current ones happy. Skype 5.0 features a streamlined interface, Facebok integration, and videoconferencing functionality.

First, Skype tackled the overall user experience of the software. The new Home page integrates a feed of mood messages from your contacts and yourself, and it offers a variety of tutorials to help you use the … Read more

Skype 5.0 delivers videoconferencing, Facebook integration

Popular and preeminent VoIP service Skype has wooed its fair share of people with an itch to ditch the landline and an Internet connection, especially those with international contacts. Today, the service is launching its latest update in the hopes of wooing even more customers and keeping the current ones happy. Skype 5.0 features a streamlined interface, Facebok integration, and video conferencing functionality.

Easy renamer

Batch File Renamer from Ezyware is, as its name suggests, a batch file renamer, a utility that can quickly and easily change the name, order, and attributes of files and folders, either singly or in large batches; in this case, up to a million files at once. It can sort file names by name, date, and time, and it previews all changes before making them. It's very small, totally portable, and free, too.

We noted that Batch File Renamer is portable, requiring no formal installation: just click the program file, and it runs. The user interface is a compact, … Read more

CNET on location with 'Hawaii Five-0'

Brian Cooley went to Honolulu to spend a couple of days with the cast and crew of the new "Hawaii Five-0," looking at the technology both in and behind the show. What follows is his video travelogue from a couple of locations and a handful of interesting conversations with the people behind the "reboot" of a classic piece of TV.

Checking out the tech with the cast and crew of "Hawaii Five-0"A lot changes in 30 years; yeah, it's been that long since cameras rolled on a new episode of "Hawaii … Read more

Solve Safari 5.0.1 page load woes with DNS settings

This is a simple troubleshooting tip to help resolve occasionally slow or partial page loads, or when a Web page cannot be found.… Read more

Hands-on: Skype video conferencing

When it comes to group video calls, one-time VoIP pioneer Skype plainly lags behind others. It's been fewer than two weeks since Skype added beta support on Windows PCs for a video conference call feature that competitors like ooVoo and VoxOx have long integrated to differentiate themselves.

However, Skype has the advantage of being a known quantity among casual technologists who would be otherwise less inclined to sign up for new services once they've already settled on one. Such is the case with one of the toughest test groups I know to please: my family. Five of us … Read more

One-stop print shop

CanoScan Toolbox is a one-stop shop for all of your printing needs. Though it mostly works without a hitch, the lack of a workable Help feature could leave many users in the dark about some of its functions.

The user interface is about as basic and straightforward as it gets, with prominent buttons for functions like Copy, Print, Mail, and more positioned side-by-side in a small window. Each button is labeled, so there's no question about its purpose. Clicking a button opens a dialog box that walks you through each step. For example, drop-down boxes in the Copy dialog … Read more