Spiceworks is widely regarded as one of the top IT tools on the planet, offering network management and monitoring, a user helpdesk, equipment inventory, and lots more--all absolutely free.

Just one problem: it's not an especially mobile-friendly solution. For the IT administrator who's constantly on the move (is there any other kind?), the only option for staying connected to Spiceworks is schlepping a laptop.

Until now. Spiceworks for iPhone shrinks the software to pocket size, giving IT managers and admins everything they need for mobile network management.

For example, the app offers remote network monitoring, showing the status of your servers, systems, and software. If one of these assets has a problem, you can open a trouble ticket right on your phone.

Other features include full management of Spiceworks help-desk tickets, direct access to employee contact information, and even the option to snap employee photos to upload to their Spiceworks user profiles.

IT workers especially like the Spiceworks user community, and the app provides full access to it. You can read posts, ask and answer questions, leave comments, and so on.

Oh, and did I mention that the app is free, just like Spiceworks itself? I think it goes without saying that if you use this tool to manage your network, you'll want to grab the iPhone version pronto. Best...IT freebie...ever.

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

Opera announced today the opening of its own mobile app store.

The new online Opera Mobile store is offering both paid and free apps designed for a variety of phones, including those running Java, Symbian, BlackBerry, Android, and Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS. The company launched the new store with help from mobile app marketplace Appia, which provided the storefront e-commerce technology.

Opera is specifically looking to reach users of its own mobile browser by setting up the store's mobile Web site as a Speed Dial link. Opening the site on a mobile device prompts users to either select their specific device or platform or check out the store in general. But for ease of use, people will want to select their own device to more easily zero in on the right apps.

In return, the site presents all the available apps divided into different categories, such as Featured, Free, Top 50, Top Picks, and New. Tapping on a specific category pops up a list of apps with brief descriptions, paid or free status, and the number of stars collectively awarded to the app by other users. From there, users can either browse the offerings or search for a specific title. Choosing an app lets people view more details and click on a download link to download the app directly to the device.

Launching the store across more than 200 countries, Opera said the settings are customized for each user's device and operating system and will display the local country, currency, and a list of downloaded apps. To help kick off the new app store, Opera has set up another site called the Opera Publisher Portal, which it says offers developers a way to get their apps directly into the Opera Mobile Store.

"The launch of the Opera Mobile Store supports Opera's core belief in an open, cross-platform mobile Internet experience by providing Opera users with an integrated storefront of mobile applications," Mahi de Silva, executive vice president for Opera's Consumer Mobile group, said in a statement. "Our partnership with Appia delivers to all Opera Mobile and Opera Mini users easy access to a wide variety of great content, on any device, all over the world."

Opera's new store faces an increasingly crowded field of mobile app stores, including Apple's App Store, Google's Android Market, RIM's BlackBerry App World, and Nokia's Ovi Store, as well as open app stores such as GetJar. Amazon also will soon offer some competition, at least in the Android arena, as it recently revealed that it will open its own store for Android apps.

Originally posted at News - Digital Media

Google released Chrome 10 today, endowing its browser with faster JavaScript, password synchronization, a revamped preferences system--but no new Chrome logo. Chrome is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Google announced Chrome 10's stable release on its blog but refrained from mentioning its product number. That's in line with the company's effort to focus on features rather than version numbers, which it calls mere milestones. Google tries to get new versions into users' hands as rapidly as possible and currently passes a new milestone about once every six weeks.

JavaScript is the programming language used to write Web-based programs, and it's steadily gaining in importance. That's because programmers are now using it to write full-featured Web applications such as Gmail and Google Docs, not just Web pages, and faster JavaScript enables more features and a faster interface.

Chrome 10 comes with the "Crankshaft" version of the V8 browser engine that Google pegs as 66 percent faster than the unnamed version in Chrome 9 as measured with Google's V8 Benchmark suite. That's a major speed boost, but be aware there are many other attributes of browser performance, and one of the biggest--hardware acceleration--will hit prime time with the imminent release of Mozilla's Firefox 4 and Microsoft's IE9.

Chrome 10 gets some hardware acceleration, though, when it comes to playing videos, said Chrome team member Jason Kersey in a blog post.

Browsers usually get new features, but, unusually, Chrome had one removed: H.264 video is gone. Google said Chrome 10 would support Google's own VP8 video encoding, which it offers royalty-free in an attempt to unencumber Web video from patent licensing barriers that come with the widely used H.264. For those who are attached to the codec, Microsoft offers an H.264 Chrome plug-in for Windows 7 users.

Chrome already had Adobe's Flash Player built in, but Chrome 10 also puts Flash in a protective sandbox to confine security problems to a walled-off area of memory. Also in the security department are 23 security fixes discovered through Google's Chrome bounty program and ranging in severity from low to high.

One seemingly minor but actually pretty useful change in Chrome 10 is a revamped configuration system. Instead of a pop-up dialog box that must be dealt with then closed, the new settings show in a browser tab.

The first advantage of the approach is that there's more room to show what's going on. The second is that you can leave the settings open while using other tabs--for example while reading Web sites that are offering advice on what to do. A third is that you can save specific Web addresses for a configuration setting, which Google believes could make remote tech support easier because you can simply e-mail somebody a URL rather than tell them how to drill down through a number of settings. Finally, a feature that comes along for the ride is that the configuration page comes with a search box to locate particular features directly.

Update 10:40 a.m. PT: Added information about Chrome 10 supporting VP8 video encoding and putting Flash in a protective sandbox. Updated 1:53 p.m. PT: Added information about Chrome 10's hardware acceleration for video and security fixes and about Microsoft's H.264 plug-in.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

About a year ago Google Chrome became the first browser I open each day to check the daily news, e-mail, and social networks. It's just faster, plain and simple. But Firefox remains the browser I use for work because of the many productivity-boosting add-ons that have been released for the program.

Recently I've been using three Firefox extensions to help me get more work done in less time: one removes all the extraneous material from Web pages to show only the main content, another monitors the amount of time I spend on work-related and non-work-related sites, and the third pops up a reminder at the interval of my choice to stay limber by stretching.

Readability brings the Web's content to the fore
Plenty of Firefox add-ons block the ads that accompany the content on Web pages, but even with the ads excised it isn't always easy to find the content you're looking for. Readability from Arc90 and Baris Derin reloads the current page to remove its non-essential content.

Three large buttons in the top-left corner of the Readability window allow you to revert to the page's original format, print the reformatted page, and send the page via e-mail. The add-on lets you adjust the page's margins and font size, and you can choose one of five page styles. You can also convert the page's links to footnotes. To view these options, right-click the Readability icon on the right side of the Firefox status bar at the bottom of the screen.

Some Readability users report problems when using the program along with the NoScript script-blocking add-on, but the extension worked without a problem when I tested it--on a PC without NoScript. You can activate Readability by pressing Ctrl+Alt+R on Windows or Command+Option+R on a Mac. Reload the original page by pressing Ctrl+R or Command+R, respectively.

Show your boss how hard you've been working with RescueTime
You may never have wondered what percentage of your browsing time is spent doing actual work, but your boss might have an opinion about it. Even if you're just curious about your workaholic status, RescueTime provides a unique view of your Web habits.

To view your RescueTime statistics, click the extension's icon in the Firefox status bar or choose Tools > View RescueTime on the browser's main menu. The program shows the length of time you've spent using Firefox today, in the last week, and in the last month. You'll also see the percentage of time you've spent "distracting browsing" and how that percentage compares with other RescueTime users.

Either I'm wasting a lot more time than I think I am, or RescueTime's manner of determining what is and is not a "productivity" site is out of whack. The program indicates that I spend two-thirds of my browsing time distracted, which means 79 percent of RescueTime users work harder than I do. Some of my former bosses might not be surprised by this finding, but I honestly believe I'm working harder than this.

You can get a more-detailed view of your browsing habits by clicking View Detailed Stats, which opens the RescueTime dashboard. There you view your Firefox usage by day, week, month, or year, as well as by category and activity. Other graphs rate your efficiency and your time spent on sites as very productive, productive, neutral, distracting, or very distracting.

You can also view the productivity ratings for all the sites you've visited and adjust the ratings to reassign sites RescueTime identifies as "distracting" to be "productive," or vice-versa. To go off the clock, simply press one of the three pause buttons: 15 minutes, 1 hour, and all day. The RescueTime Pro version promises "real-time alerts," more-detailed reports, and offline tracking of meetings and other activities.

The site claims not to tie your browsing history with you personally, and since the program doesn't require registration, I tend to believe this. However, any site that monitors your Web habits must be used with some discretion.

Get up, stand up, and use your muscles when StretchClock indicates
Spending hours on end with your eyes glued to the monitor and hands locked on the keyboard is a good way to end up in an orthopedist's waiting room. You can have the best of intentions to take regular breaks during the workday but still find your muscles cramping up after consecutive hours of relative immobility.

The StretchClock extension from Shane Gildnes pops up a break reminder at the interval you choose and even suggests some low-impact exercises suitable for the office. In addition to being able to adjust the time between stretch reminders, you can pause the countdown, reset it, or choose to exercise now.

The program's default alert is to open the StretchClock site with a Flash video ready to guide you through a stretch. This can be an abrupt interruption to your workday. Click the settings button on the StretchClock toolbar in the Firefox status bar to change the duration between breaks and to have the program play a reminder or wait for a click rather than open a new browser window.

While I didn't try out any of the StretchClock stretches--I've had my own stretching routine for many years--I'm a staunch proponent of regular, extended work breaks. Even if the program serves only to remind you to get out of your chair for a few minutes, it has served a valuable purpose and justifies the space it takes up on your ever-more-crowded Firefox status bar.

Originally posted at Workers' Edge

Jolicloud will have a new name and direction, according to comments made yesterday by project founder Tariq Krim.

The Jolicloud operating system--touted for its HTML5 and cloud sync capabilities--will be known as Joli OS "to avoid confusion" and Jolicloud will be used to refer to the online desktop, Krim said in a blog post.

Despite the successes--which include 300,000 account registrations since August--of the Jolicloud desktop, Krim said it was imperative to "expand our experience beyond our own OS to be relevant on other platforms."

Read more of "Jolicloud changes name and direction" at ZDNet UK.

Originally posted at News - Business Tech

Judging by a recent source code change, it seems likely Google's Chrome browser will sport a new logo that looks less like the offspring of an electronic Simon memory game and a robotic Roomba floor cleaner.

The keen Chrome-observing eyes of Peter Beverloo spotted a new logo that arrived today for Chromium, the open-source underpinnings of Google's closed-source Chrome browser. The new logo still complies with the unwritten rule that browser logos must be circular but looks more like an abstract geometric pattern than the shiny happy plasticky objet d'art that is the current Chrome logo. Like the current Chromium logo, the new one is all blue, but there are four compartments that could be used for the red, green, blue, and yellow Google colors used in the Chrome logo.

Update 10:05 a.m. PT: There seems to be some confusion here about the all-blue logo. It's only for Chromium, not Chrome. Google uses the all-blue logo only for Chromium, which is devoid of proprietary software such as Adobe Flash Player that comes with Chrome proper. If Google introduces a similarly revamped Chrome logo as what Chromium is getting, expect it to inherit the multiple colors of today's Chrome logo. See the bottom of the story for a comparison of the logos. Also, it's a good bet to expect an all-yellow version for the Chrome Canary version.

Logos are superficial, but Google is a very brand-conscious company. It's entertaining to its phalanx of designers endlessly fiddling with logos and favicons to try to strike the right balance between fun and unintimidating on the one hand and serious and commanding on the other. Plus, of course, logo changes often go hand in hand with marketing and promotion efforts triggered by new ambitions or new possibilities.

Doodles, comic books, cartoons, and reformatted search results pages notwithstanding, design isn't always an easy job at Google. One visual design leader for the company, Douglas Bowman, left Google in 2009 because he believed the company was too data-obsessed--for example, testing 41 shades of blue to with users of its Web site.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

Revving the Flash Player development engine as fast as possible, Adobe Systems has issued a beta of version 10.3 that lets programmers use a variety of new audio tools.

Those audio possibilities could be very useful for those writing Net-based voice communication software. Features include canceling noise and echoes, detecting when a person has started or stopped speaking, and correcting microphone volume levels to even out speech loudness, Flash product manager Thibault Imbert said in a blog post late yesterday.

More broadly, though, the software embodies Adobe's push to keep Flash competitive. The browser plug-in is, if not fighting for its life, in a much less secure position than in years past when programmers could safely assume virtually all browsers had the plug-in installed.

Even as Adobe seeks to make Flash--and a close relative, AIR--a foundation for software that runs on a wide variety of computing devices, the technology faces two big challenges. First are mobile devices, which can lack the processing horsepower and memory to handle Flash and which in the case of Apple's iOS bans Flash altogether. Second is a maturing suite of Web standards that increasingly can handle many programming tasks that previously required Flash--including on those mobile devices that lack Flash.

Adobe tries Web standards, too
Adobe is hedging its Flash bets by embracing those Web standards. Perhaps the best example is Adobe Wallaby, which rewrites Flash elements to use Web standards including HTML (Hypertext Markup Language, the language to describe Web pages), CSS (Cascading Style Sheets, used for formatting and increasingly advanced animations), and JavaScript (the language of Web-based programs that's a cousin to Flash's ActionScript). Adobe is billing the technology in part as a way for Flash programmers to reach iOS devices.

"Adobe's job is to help you solve problems, not to get hung up on one technology vs. another," said John Nack, a principal product manager at Adobe who focuses on mobile-device apps, in a blog post today.

But Adobe continues to push Flash hard, too.

Flash Player 10.3 is the third significant point release to Flash Player 10, and its arrival reflects a growing trend in online software development toward smaller, more frequent releases. Google's Chrome browser, with a six-week cycle, is perhaps the fastest, but Mozilla is moving to a quarterly release cycle with Firefox. The general idea is that online software distribution lets software developers get new features into users' hands sooner rather than waiting for large updates with a long list of changes.

Version 10.1 was a long time in the making; its most notable feature was that it ran on higher-end Android phones and not just personal computers. With the mobile transition under way, Adobe now seems to be working through a backlog of smaller but significant features it wanted to add. Flash Player 10.2 brought more efficient video through a feature called Stage Video that uses hardware acceleration.

With the arrival of HTML5's built-in video abilities, online video is a particular competitive battleground for Flash, which for years had the market largely to itself. Here, Adobe is continuing its sales pitch of offering higher-level features useful to those in the business--in this case by building in some online analytics features of Adobe's Omniture acquisition.

"Media Measurement for Flash allows companies to get real-time, aggregated reporting of how their video content is distributed, what the audience reach is, and how much video is played," Imbert said of the analytics technology.

Flash 11: 3D and 64-bit
Meanwhile, for Flash programmers in the avant garde, Adobe last week issued preview version of Flash 11 with 3D graphics called Molehill. The Molehill interface is a big deal for Flash, which has a stronghold in online gaming but which faces competition from an emerging Web standard called WebGL.

Developers are starting to kick the Molehill tires. Lee Brimelow, an Adobe Flash platform evangelist, shared a list of Molehill demos yesterday.

Also coming with Flash Player 11 will be 64-bit support, an update that follows the release of several 64-bit browsers--notably Apple's Safari.

"Now, you may be thinking, what! No 64-bit version!" said Imbert in a personal blog post. "64-bit is coming for the next major version of the Flash Player, so please wait a little more time, I know it is painful, but this is for the good! Next major version will be killer."

64-bit software can handle vastly larger tracts of memory than 32-bit software, which is limited to 4GB, and 64-bit operating systems have become ordinary when it comes to Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. The large memory address space isn't terribly important for browsers today, though, so 64-bit Flash isn't at the top of Adobe's priority list.

Adobe can't wait forever, though. 64-bit computing can improve some performance--Safari's Nitro JavaScript engine, for example--and it's difficult at best to use a 32-bit plug-in with a 64-bit browser.

Closer to the here and now, though, is Flash Player 10.3. Along with the audio controls, it comes with a control panel that runs on a person's machine. It's integrated with the regular Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux control panel rather than the present mechanism that uses a Web site. The control panel brings "streamlined controls for managing [users'] Flash Player privacy, security, and storage settings," Imbert said.

And in a separate control panel change, Flash Player can integrate with a browser's control panel to let people control settings there, too. That can help address the "evercookie" problem, in which a person tries to delete a browser's regular cookies but fails because duplicates can be stored using Flash.

Finally, the new version integrates with Mac OS X's built-in notification system when it comes time for a software update.

The Flash Player 10.3 beta will is designed for mobile phones as well as personal computers, Imbert said. Programmers who want to try the new features of 10.3 should note that they're available in the Flash Player 11 preview version, too.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

Steve Jobs thinks that HTML5 is the future of media-rich content on the Web, and eventually he might be right. But Web designers and their clients are working with Flash now, so to address this schism between the two, Adobe Labs today unveiled a new free tool called Wallaby that will convert Flash into HTML5.

Originally demonstrated at Adobe's MAX 2010 conference, the conversion process is currently workable but rough, said Adobe Flash Professional Senior Product Manager Tom Barclay. "HTML5 will be an important technology for banner ads and Web publishing," he said but cautioned that Flash is heavily used by developers, especially games that require complex interactivity.

As Wallaby works now, you select your FLA-formatted file and hit convert, and Wallaby changes the Flash file into HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS. Most of your Flash file will get converted, Barclay said, including most drawing elements, fills, shape tweens, motion tweens, symbol names and instance names. Since it's built on Adobe's Air platform, both Windows and Mac based developers will be able to use it.

The built-in logging tool tells you which elements were not converted, and these currently including the audio and video tags. Barclay said Adobe Systems is looking for feedback from developers before it decides if it will add support for the more complicated aspects of HTML5 at a later date. "Developers can add interactivity after the conversion using JQuery and JavaScript," explained Barclay. The initial goal of the tool, he added, is to support banner ad development on iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches since Apple has no plans to allow its iOS to support Flash, although he said that the HTML5 output will be appropriate for any WebKit-based mobile browser. (Android's default browser is also built on WebKit.)

With standards on HTML5 still in development, Adobe is positioning itself here with a leg up on easing the transition for developers who will inevitably have to use both technologies concurrently, at least for the foreseeable future.