Filed under: Finance, Utilities, Macintosh, Productivity

As Ars Technica points out, this is the first new version of Quicken for Mac in 4 years, and it's coming out after blowing several previous deadlines. There's no online bill pay and there's no stock tracking (which might turn some users off), but there's also a big upside. The interface has been simplified and made more Mac-like (or, some might say, more Mint-like) and you can import and link financial data from thousands of banks and credit institutions.

The reason it's called Quicken Essentials, according to Patzer in a MacWorld interview, is because it delivers a nice implementation of the features which the majority of Quicken users consider, well, essential.

It does the things we liked about Mint, too: keeping tabs on your account, and giving an easy visual readout of your spending, by category. There's even a tag cloud. I'm not saying Quicken Essentials is perfect, or even complete, for all Mac users, but it's leaps and bounds beyond the previous version.

Quicken Essentials for Mac shows Mint.com's influence originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 28 Feb 2010 14:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Intuit - Quicken - Aaron Patzer - Quicken Essentials for Mac - Mint.com

Filed under: Audio, Linux, Canonical

For there to be any chance of "the year of Linux on the desktop" ever becoming a reality, certain things have to happen. One of those things (like it or not) is for a major distribution to support the most popular portable media players on the planet -- the iPhone and iPod Touch.

And it looks as though Canonical has stepped up to the plate. According to reports at Ubuntuforums, Lucid Lynx supports Apple's hardware without breaking a sweat.

The Nautilus file manager can browse and access files, but that's really not too interesting to the average user. What does matter is that Rythmbox can play your tunes right from your iPhone or Touch. Pair that with the Ubuntu One Music Store, and it's clear that Lucid is well on its way to becoming an extremely consumer-friendly distro.

It may not sound like much, but when I had Ubuntu systems on display for retail customers nearly everyone asked "can I do all the same things I can on Windows with this?" which they followed with "can my kids use their iPod with it?"

Since I'll soon be able to answer "yes" to that question, it might not be long before Ubuntu systems reappear on our shelves -- and those of other system builders as well.

[via webupd8]

Ubuntu 10.04 supports iPhone and iPod Touch out-of-the-box originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 28 Feb 2010 13:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Linux - iPhone - Ubuntu - iPod Touch - Apple

Filed under: OS Updates, Google, Android

A planned firmware update for the Motorola Droid might benefit owners of other Android devices, too. According to Android and Me, "every Android phone currently released in the United States will be receiving an upgrade to Android 2.1."

This news comes from the same site that was previously skeptical about Google's ability to fit version 1.6 of the Android OS onto a T-Mobile G1. Google, of course, pulled it off, and now Android and Me has sources saying they'll pull of the 2.1 update, too.

What does 2.1 mean for your Android experience? Perks include live wallpapers (on phones that can support them), speech-to-text support, a beefed-up Gmail application, and a Facebook application that can sync photos with your phone's contact list. Unfortunately, some handsets (maybe all of them, actually) may require a wipe before they can upgrade to this yummy new version of the OS.

The update is scheduled for the second quarter of 2010, and could be via PC or over-the-air, depending on your phone.

All U.S. Android phones may get an update to OS 2.1 soon originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 28 Feb 2010 12:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google - Android - United States - Facebook - HTC Dream

Filed under: Mozilla, Beta, Browsers

• head to about:config and search for gfx.font
• double click gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled to enable it
• right-click and create a new integer called mozilla.widget.render-mode
• enter 6 for the value
• restart Firefox

GPU accelerated rendering lands in Firefox nightly build originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 28 Feb 2010 09:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft - Google - Internet Explorer - Asa Dotzler - Mozilla Firefox

Filed under: Web services, Google, Search

Google continues to get better at narrowing search results based on your location. First, they implemented the "near me now" search option for Google Mobile and Android, and now they're bringing location-based results to the desktop. If you pop open the search options panel on Google.com, you can choose "nearby," and Google will return only results from your general geographic area.

At worst, this saves you the trouble of adding the name of your city to your search queries. At best, it shows you useful results you might not have seen if you put in just your city name. I take it for granted that I live in a major metropolitan, but what about people in small towns, who might want to search the whole region? Google's got them covered, too, because you can search by city, region, or state. Very nice!

Google introduces location-based search results with "nearby" option originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 17:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google - Download Squad - Search - Search Engines - Google.com

Filed under: Mozilla, Browsers

Ever since Google dropped Chrome and the V8 Javascript engine on the performance-hungry masses, developers of other browsers have been working hard at leveling the playing field. Opera 10.50's Carakan engine is blazingly fast and many users report it outperforming V8 on benchmarks.

Firefox users who recently upgraded to 3.6 have seen a nice jump in performance as well, though TraceMonkey still lags behind the big guns. That could be changing soon, however. Mozilla's dev team is hard at work on JägerMonkey, which they hope will shift Firefox's Javascript performance into a whole 'nother gear.

One of the speedbumps for Firefox right now is what happens when TraceMonkey can't trace (check out this post to find out more about what tracing is). Firefox falls back to its basic interpreter when JIT compilation isn't possible, and it's just not all that fast.

They're busily retooling what happens when those fallbacks occur, and early performance testing has yielded positive results. Where JägerMonkey can do its stuff, performance gains of 30-40% have been noted. Mozilla's Dave Mandelin like what he sees so far, reporting the "JägerMonkey implements enough JavaScript to run all of SunSpider in "Jäger mode" and is 18% faster than the interpreter." He adds, "And we haven't done that many optimizations yet-there are many more things we will do."

Mandelin's post is an excellent read if you're interested in digging deeper. The short version: Firefox will burn even hotter once JägerMonkey is on board. Keep an eye on the Firefox nightly builds -- it'll likely appear there first.

Early work on Firefox's new Javascript engine nets big speed gains originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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SunSpider - Firefox - Opera - Google Chrome - JavaScript

Filed under: Apple, iPhone

All kinds of crazy rumors about the next-generation iPhone are already floating around, months ahead of its release. If you were excited when you heard that the back of the phone might be touch-sensitive, you'll love this latest feature: the new iPhone's camera might be usable as a swipe-pad. Patently Apple reports that a newly-discovered Apple patent shows a camera that you can swipe to navigate in Safari, flip through your voicemail and more.

In addition to the swipe motion, iPhone apps would also be able to assign function to a tap on the camera. The possibilities are pretty exciting. It's not clear whether this technology will appear in the iPhone that's due out this summer. The patent was filed during the second half of 2008, which may have given Apple enough time to put it into practice.

[via Gizmodo]

Apple patents camera-swipe controls for a future iPhone originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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IPhone - Apple - Safari - Patent - Download Squad

Filed under: Photo, iPhone

I'm a big fan of iPhone photo apps, because the built-in Camera and Photos applications certainly don't handle every photo-related task you might want to do with your phone. You can email photos from the Photos app, for example, but you can't upload them anywhere.

Various photo sites have their own uploader apps, but what if you use more than one site? Orli Yakuel at GO2WEB20 just posted about an app called PhotoScatter that can help you with that.

PhotoScatter lets you send a photo to several different sites at once, including Facebook, Flickr, ShutterFly, PhotoBucket, Picasa, and Twitpic. There's an ad-supported free version and a $3 pro version (with the same features, but faster upload speeds).

The main feature missing from Photoscatter, from a serious photo junkie's point of view, is the ability to add new services or custom URLs to upload to. It would be amazing to send photos to your blog or photo portfolio site and Flickr at the same time.

Photoscatter uploads your iPhone pics to multiple sites at once originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 27 Feb 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iPhone - Facebook - Flickr - Photobucket - Download Squad

1) The Window Phone Concept: Here is a collection of some of the most futuristic and interesting concept phones.

Sonim XP2.10 Spirit