Three free remote-access apps for iPhones


The App Store is home to numerous apps that let you connect to a desktop PC from afar. Granted, navigating Windows on a screen as comparatively tiny as the iPhone's is not a lot of fun, but it works better than you'd expect.

TeamViewer brings powerful remote-access features to your iPhone, yet it doesn't cost a dime.
Indeed, I've used remote-access (or "RA") software many times for simple tasks like e-mailing a file, peeking at a document, and even shutting down the PC (when I'm too lazy to walk down a flight of stairs).
My RA app of choice? LogMeIn Ignition, which works even better on the iPad than it does on the iPhone. Just one problem: it costs $29.99. (Ironically, the required desktop counterpart, LogMeIn Free, costs nothing.)
Thankfully, I've found a handful of free RA apps. (There are others, but I'm focusing on the three I know best.)
First up: RDM+ lite, a new, ad-supported version of the $9.99 full version. (For the same price you can buy the iPad version.) RDM+ is noteworthy for supporting both Mac and Windows systems--you just need to download the proper desktop client.
Next, there's JumiMouse, which in its early days merelyturned your iPhone into a touch pad, but has evolved into a more complete remote-access app. The free version is a bit limited in that you can't interact with your PC when you zoom in at all (which is quite necessary for most functions). Thankfully,JumiMouse Plus costs just $1.99. Note that this one's Windows-only.
Finally, my favorite freebie: TeamViewer, a full-featured, Mac/Windows-compatible remote-access app. It has no ads and no limitations to speak of. Plus, it did a better job on my iPad than either of the other two apps--though pixel doubling is just no substitute for an HD version. You can read my full coverage of TeamViewer over at Business Hacks.
Well, those are my three freebies. Have you found another free remote-access app you like better? Or at least one that doesn't cost 30 bucks?

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Roundup: External hard drives under $150



Samsung S2 Portable
(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)
Before you start furiously deleting precious music, photos, and movies from your computer, why not free up space and archive your library at the same time with an external hard drive?
Storage vendors like Seagate, Samsung, and LaCie are competing to offer the lowest cost-per-gigabyte on the market, which means generous cost savings for the end consumer.
And you don't just get a slab of hardware, either--most drives come preinstalled with automatic backup software that let you specify data profiles and exactly which folders on your system drive to sync with the external, so in the unfortunate event of a hard drive failure you'll always have your precious data backed up and ready to go. Check our the list below for our favorite external hard drives under $150.
See the products compared side by side, or click through the slideshow below to see the details.

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Sizing up Amazon's Kindle in its many forms

(Credit: Amazon)

On Monday evening, Amazon announced that it would soon be offering a Kindle app for Android. This shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone considering the company already had software applications for the PC, Mac, Apple's iPhone and iPad, and BlackBerry phones. But it is worth delving into how the Kindle apps on these platforms differ, if at all, and which one has the best non-Kindle Kindle experience.

Amazon has not been resting on its laurels when it comes to the Kindle as a platform. While the Kindle hardware itself is only in its second generation, the strength of Amazon's strategy is in getting its digital bookstore into the hands of as many users and on as many platforms as possible. The end goal, you see, is that everyone buys their books from Amazon, even if they're not willing to invest in the Kindle hardware itself.

What becomes clear, though, the closer you look, is that the Kindle software Amazon provides for third-party hardware is universally less full-featured than what one can do on a Kindle proper. Is that by design? Certainly. We'll delve into that a little later on. In the meantime, let's start by taking a look at Amazon's various kindle apps by order of release.


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Free: Any BlackBerry on any carrier

Sure, you're still on the hook for service, but at least the hardware won't cost you a dime.

(Credit: Wirefly)


Are you in the market for a new phone? From today through Sunday, Wirefly has a pretty sweet deal: Every BlackBerry on every carrier is free.

Do you want a Storm2 with Verizon? You got it. How about a Curve 8520 with AT&T or Sprint? No problem.

Wirefly stocks about 20 BlackBerry smartphone models from the four major carriers, so you should be able to get what you want from the carrier you want.

The deal is available on all new and upgrade-eligible accounts. Suffice it to say, any phone that you buy requires the usual two-year service contract. (And, please spare me the comments about how the "phone isn't really free." The phoneis free. The service is not.)

To sweeten the deal further, Wirefly is offering free shipping on the order and, on some models, giving you free activation. But wait, there's more. If you choose a BlackBerry from T-Mobile, you can trade in your old phone for a cash back bonus of at least $75. We're talking about an actual check in the mail, not just a credit to your account.

But wait, Wirefly isn't done yet. It is still hooked up with Bing Cashback, which means that if you start your purchase from Bing, you stand to "make" $50 on the deal.

Just head to Bing Cashback, sign into your account, then search for Wirefly. Click the "sponsored" link that appears at the top of the results page. Once you hit the Wirefly home page, click BlackBerry in the Shop By Brand section. Then just choose the model and carrier you want; the deals should be the same as if you'd used the main Wirefly link up top.

Speaking of that, I know that according to the promo page's countdown timer the deal expires today at midnight, but a Wirefly representative told me that the deal will certainly run through Sunday.

Not interested in a 'Berry? How about a Pre? Wirefly also has the AT&T Palm Pre Plus for free and it also has free shipping and activation. I still think the Palm Pre is one of the most underrated phones on the market today.


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Inside Google TV beats a unique Intel chip


The silicon powering the Google TV technology is a window on Intel's future and an affirmation of its new credo: integrate, integrate, integrate.

The CE4100 is a system-on-a-chip, or SOC, which essentially means all of the various features of a computing device are packed onto one piece of silicon. Intel historically has not focused on this kind of highly-integrated chip, but rather ultra-fast processors designed for PCs and servers.

But designing Intel chips is now becoming an exercise in how many disparate features can be squeezed onto the proverbial head of a pin. In this case, the CE4100 turns a TV into a versatile computing device. "We are transforming TVs from essentially a dumb display device to smart computing device," Eric B. Kim, senior vice president at Intel, said in a phone interview Wednesday.

Intel is not taking its eye off performance, though. "High performance is needed to deal with large screens, multiple streams of high-definition audio and video. Google could not do what they want on today's SOCs," said Kim. "This is not something that you hold in your hand. This is something you plug into the wall," he said, referring to other chip designs that emphasize power saving features over performance.


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Midrange Samsung plasma gives solid picture; sleek style

Samsung's PNC590 series offers an understated, classy look.

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

In 2009 Samsung made significant improvements to the picture quality of its higher-end plasma TVs, bringing videophile cred to bear against category king Panasonic. This year, Samsung has announced an even larger lineup of plasmas, and one of the most intriguing from a potential bang-for-the-buck proposition is the PNC590 series.

It lacks the features--namely Internet connectivity and services--of its like-priced competition from Panasonic and LG, but makes up for it with promising specs. All told, however, C590 can't quite match either the 2010Panasonic G series or the 2009 Samsungs we reviewed, despite delivering decent picture quality overall. Videophiles seeking a 2010 Samsung plasma might be better served higher in the company's lineup, but less discerning fans of the brand will have few complaints with the C590 series.

Read the full review of the Samsung PNC590 series.


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Google unveils Net storage utility

Offering a direct competitor to a widely used Amazon.com service, Google on Wednesday launched an early version of an Internet-based storage system.

As with the better established Amazon Web Services (AWS) option called Simple Storage Service (S3),Google Storage for Developers provides a mechanism to tap into data that Google houses and keeps safe and accessible.

The service is designed to offer low-level access to information stored on the Net. Web sites and Web applications can tap into the data as needed, and Google charges through a utility-computing model that means the more customers use, they more they pay.

Google announced the new service amid its Google I/O conference.

"Developers can easily connect their applications to fast, reliable storage replicated across several U.S. data centers," Jessie Jiang of the Google Storage for Developers team, said in a blog post Wednesday.

The Google service is open by invitation to a "limited number of U.S. developers only," Google said. Those early testers get 100GB of data storage capacity and 300GB per month in data-transfer bandwidth.

After that, as with Amazon's S3, there are fees. Among them: 17 cents per gigabyte per month, 10 cents per gigabyte for uploading data to the service, 15 to 30 cents per gigabyte for downloading data from it.

S3 pricing is more complicated, with per-usage costs dropping at higher rates of usage. For example, for the first 50 terabytes of storage, Amazon charges 15 cents per gigabyte for its premium level.

Update at 4:30 a.m. PDT: Google also lets you do something with the data via BigQuery and Prediction interfaces to Google Storage.

BigQuery can be used to explore and analyze data sets, Google said, and Prediction "exposes Google's advanced machine learning algorithms...to make your apps more intelligent. The service helps you use historical data to make real-time decisions such as recommending products, assessing user sentiment from blogs and tweets, routing messages, or assessing suspicious activities."


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Google offers free fonts for the Web

Some of the 18 fonts Google released for free use on the Web and anywhere else.

Some of the 18 fonts Google released for free use on the Web and anywhere else.

(Credit: Google)


In an attempt to move beyond drab typography on the Web, Google on Wednesday released 18 freely usable fonts and an open-source tool designed to smooth over browser issues in displaying downloaded fonts.

A number of Web designers--if not all readers--are excited that newer browsers support downloadable fonts so sites can use more than the handful that it's safe to assume are installed already on people's computers. For every eyeball-searing grunge font and blood-pressure-raising instance of Comic Sans, there's a tasteful use of an artful logo or distinctive text.

But font licensing rules mean a Web designer can't necessarily upload any old font for a site. This is where Google's move, announced at itsGoogle I/O conference, comes in. The company released 18 fonts and also announced an interface that lets Web sites use them.

"Google has been working with a number of talented font designers to produce a varied collection of high quality open source fonts for the Google Font Directory," said Raph Levien and David Kuettel of the Google Font API team in a blog post. "With the Google Font API, using these fonts on your web page is almost as easy as using the standard set of so-called "web-safe" fonts that come installed on most computers."

The way to Web fonts was paved with the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) formatting standard and more recently the Web Open Font Format technology that helped encourage Web typography support from traditional font licensing companies. But even with those foundations, there are copyright concerns that might put off Web developers.

Google's fonts are free of copyright restrictions, though.

"Since all the fonts are open source, you can use them any way you like. We also have a separate project hosted on Google Code for downloading the original font files. Since they're open source, they can be used for just about any purpose, including for print," the Google font team members said.

In addition, Google announced an open-source project called WebFont Loader to supply Web developers with code to deal with differences in how browsers handle downloaded Web fonts. The software, a collaboration withSmall Batch's TypeKit project, includes JavaScript code to control how Web pages display types for a uniform experience across different browsers, Google said.


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Kongregate's Flash games come to Android in style


One of the most exciting prospects of Flash coming to Android devices has been games. While the iPhone platform has become a developmental heavyweight for indie gaming in just a few short years, it remains unable to take advantage of the rich library of titles developed to work on Adobe's Flash player.

With this week's inclusion of Flash player 10.1 on Android phones as part of the 2.2 software update, however, gamers on the go now have access to these titles. The only problem, it seems, is that not all of them are mobile phone-friendly.

Kongregate, a popular Flash gaming host and community, has gone through the effort to weed through its library and pick out titles that work well on smaller screens. Of the site's more than 28,300 titles, its staff has pulled together around 120 that they think work quite well.

CNET on Monday spoke with Kongregate CEO Jim Greer about the collection, as well as the site's efforts to get some of its top games' developers to make small adjustments, a process he says is going quite well. "There were a few games where developers had to make some buttons bigger, or put some buttons on-screen to replace the need for a keyboard," Greer said. "But they're psyched about it."

Greer said Flash developers who were aiming to port over their games to the iPhone had gotten "the wind taken out of their sails" after Apple's change to the developer agreement back in April. "There were a number of developers who had Flash games that they were working on using Adobe's Flash compiler," Greer explained. After the change in the rules, Greer said many began focusing on Android instead.

Adobe Flash-powered game Shoot! running on an HTC Nexus One. The game uses the phone's trackball to let players steer their ship.

(Credit: Kongregate/CNET)

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