Windows/Mac/Linux (All platforms): The free, multi-platform iTunes assaulter (if not quite killer) Songbird busts out great improvements for a 1.1 version, including a one-click album art grabber, performance improvements, and loads o' little tweaks. The killer new feature is a single menu option, u...

BackTrack was the winner of our recent Hive Five for best Live CD, so we decided to take it for a test drive and show off a few of the features for everybody else. BackTrack can be installed to a regular boot cd, a USB drive, installed to the hard drive, or even downloaded as a VMware virtual machin...

If Apple knows how to do anything, it's take tech you've already seen and make it flashier and more fun to use. The new Safari 4 public beta is no exception. Apple says Safari 4's 150 features are "leading the way with innovation," but in reality they're all things we've used before in other browser...

Windows/Mac: Postbox is an email client that helps you re-discover all the photos, attachments, and links buried in your email, as well as organize newer mail. Think of it as Thunderbird with a file-managing fixation. In fact, Postbox is based on at least a good chunk of Thunderbird's code, and most...

Windows/Mac: Foxmarks, our favorite way to keep Firefox bookmarks synced across computers, is now offered for Internet Explorer and Safari, giving anyone with multiple computers or browsers a pain-free way to keep it all together. Foxmarks offers basically the same type of background bookmark-syncin...

ALBUMS OF THE MONTH: Light of X , by Miranda Lee Richards LA-based Richards is a testament to persistence. Eight years have passed since The Herethereafter, her 2001 debut release. Yet in 2009 Richards picks up right where she last left us. Light of X is steeped in the Gram Parsons Laurel Canyon-sou...

Windows/Mac/Linux (all platforms): ANki, a free "spaced repetition system" (i.e. flashcard-style memorization tool), offers a gentle learning curve, a pared-down software interface, and online access and synchronization. Once you install and launch Anki, you can easily spend hours discovering all it...

ALBUMS OF THE MONTH: City Lights , by Javier Escovedo Ironically, we finish the year with an album that arrived at the year’s start. The Escovedo name may sound familiar. Brother Alejandro gets most of the attention but City Lights proves Javier to be equally talented. Escovedo is clearly a st...

All platforms: Free and open source virtualization software VirtualBox gets a "major upgrade" to version 2.1 which is now available for download. Besides a gaggle of fixes, the changelog details new features: Support for hardware virtualization (VT-x and AMD-V) on Mac OS X hosts Support for 64-bit g...

Windows/Mac OS X: Backup service Backblaze aims to take the hassle out of online backup by backing up only the data you need and ignoring unnecessary files like operating system files, applications, and temporary files. That way you don't have to get specific with Backblaze about everything you want...