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Thursday, April 1, 2010

Six April Fools' Day launches that were real | Web Crawler - CNET News

April 1, 2010 1:19 PM PDT

Six April Fools' Day launches that were real

by Josh Lowensohn

Every year the tech world trips over itself to create a myriad fake products for user chuckles and some easy press. There's also a very small percentage of companies that decide to launch real products. We've rounded up six of those sites and services below, as well as some honorable April Fools' Day-related news events.

1. Google Gmail

One of the most notable April Fools' Day launches was Google's Gmail in 2004. Back then, a gigabyte of storage for a Web e-mail service was a big deal. This was especially true given that competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo were charging for extra in-box space.

Gmail wasn't open to everyone though. Its small, 1,000-user private beta test, which expanded through the company doling out user invites from time to time, became a hot tech ticket, and one that spawned an entire ecosystem of invite-trading economies.

Gmail has since continued to expand how much service it gives users, which is now up to 7.4GB.

2. Yahoo Sideline

Element 1.1 for home theater PCs [LWN.net]

Element 1.1 for home theater PCs

[LWN subscriber-only content]

March 31, 2010

This article was contributed by Nathan Willis

Element is a lightweight Linux distribution for use on a home theater PC (HTPC). It comes with most of the same video-playback applications one would find in a modern desktop distribution, but the development team has put considerable effort into wrapping the applications in an environment that is easy to navigate from across the room, and comfortable for non-multimedia-hackers. Tough challenges still remain for any HTPC distribution at the hardware and configuration level, but Element's results are definitely an improvement over basic Linux systems in setup, application integration, and usability.

Read more...
https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/381252/afbe6c903895073e/

Don

7 of the Best Free Linux Bible Software - LinuxLinks News

7 of the Best Free Linux Bible Software

Easter is the most important annual religious festival for Christians. It is the celebration of the resurrection of the central figure of Christianity, Jesus of Nazareth (Jesus Christ). It therefore seems an appropriate point in the year for us to turn our attention to open source Linux Bible software.

The Bible refers to one of two closely related religious texts central to Judaism and Christianity, the Hebrew or Christian sacred scriptures respectively.

Bible software helps to make religious studies more effective, more organised, and more rewarding. For example, this type of software makes it possible to navigate around the religious texts more quickly, to perform complex searches to find passages, to serve up daily devotionals (where insightful and revealing passages of the Bible and key Bible characters are presented to the user), and much more.

To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 7 high quality Linux Bible software. Hopefully, there will be something of interest for anyone who wants to learn more about God and his work.

Now, let's explore the 7 Bible software at hand. For each title we have compiled its own portal page, providing a screenshot of the software in action, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, together with links to relevant resources and reviews.

Bible Software
Xiphos	Offers a rich environment for reading, study, and research
BibleTime	Qt based Bible study program
The SWORD Project	CrossWire Bible Society's free Bible software
Alkitab Bible Study	Offers rich and user friendly Bible study tools
Bible Analyzer	Comprehensive Bible study and analysis application
Bible Desktop	Easy to use study tool
BPBible	Flexible study tool

Return to our complete collection of Portal Pages.

Go there...
http://www.linuxlinks.com/article/20100328144637234/BibleSoftware.html

Don