Articles by Jack M. Germain

Canonical expects to start rolling out the first phase of Ubuntu's new heads-up display (HUD) in the April release of Ubuntu 12.04. But HUD will supplement Unity, Ubuntu's default desktop interface introduced last year, rather than fully replace it The move to radically change the desktop's default interface is being made out of necessity, accordin...

The concept of mobile connectivity in today's multi-device world is changing. Connectivity means more than connecting our laptop computers to WiFi or 3G carrier networks wherever we go. Today people work on more than one computer. Increasingly, workers and consumers alike rely on a growing collection of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet PCs...

gThumb is one of the best image viewer and browser applications available for the GNOME Desktop. I particularly like its adeptness in handling both still photography and videos.

If you spend a lot of time at your keyboard, no doubt you dabble a lot in listening to Internet radio. Radio Tray is a relatively new Linux app that can make tuning in to your favorite radio stations a new experience.

When it comes to playing audio and video files in Linux, media players pretty much all work the same way and have a very similar user interface. It usually all comes down to features. With SMPlayer it depends on what you want to play....

Eye candy can be a great user experience sweetener, but tastes vary widely as to how much is just enough, and it's one differentiator among Linux desktops. ...

LiVES is an advanced video editor that can double as a video jockey (VJ) tool. It is surprisingly powerful. But its interface makes it rather simple to learn. In fact, it has so many feature levels that this app would be right at home as the video editor of choice in any professional film editing studio.

Asking a seasoned Linux user what music player you should use is akin to bringing up questions about religion or politics with your drinking buddies. A much safer strategy is, don't ask and don't tell. But if you insist, let me throw a suggestion into the fray....

YouTube is a great source for watching an eclectic collection of videos on music, human stupidity and worldly comedy. But I find it much too easy to go far afield as I click on "also watched" videos when viewing a particular topic line. Minitube solves that problem for me....

Backing up data and restoring a crashed computer are two of those "I wish I hadda" moments in the life of every computer user. When you maintain a collection of computers for your job or organization, those tasks can be critical.One of the fastest and most reliable ways to restore an afflicted computer is to copy its previously saved image onto th...

My interest in desktop eye candy vacillates with the seasons. The added productivity it brings to a particular desktop design is also a factor. Now that GNOME 3 forces a desktop without icons, I took a look at how useful the gDesklets Project might be....

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Open Source and the Open Road, Part 1 The connected car is on the verge of going where no vehicle has ever gone before. Presently, many cars enable drivers to pair their mobile music and phone devices with their vehicles' sound systems. But cars with telemetry that will connect to cloud-based navigation and entertainment services could soon be comm...

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A new wave of really cool devices will soon do more than simply integrate your mobile gadgets with your automobile. Pairing your smartphone with your car's sound system and on-board navigation platform is already old hat. Car makers are now looking at how to expand that concept to enhance the notion of your car being treated as one big mobile device...

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