analysis

Looking for the blind side in a complex world

I spend a fair bit of my working life meeting with people, listening to their plans for their next product, project, strategy, initiative, or campaign. My job? Review, evaluate, and give feedback. It's great when I can confirm they've got things right. Check! Good! Yep! Oh, yeah, I like that! I help confirm and build confidence in the plan.

It's a good thing I have the opportunity to be positive, because the larger and more important part of the job is decidedly less affirming: figuring out where they've gone wrong. What's missing? What's vague … Read more

Panda in the cloud

When it originally debuted, Panda Cloud Antivirus was notable as a free security solution for two reasons: Panda traded on its reputation as a solid security suite vendor making its first foray into the realm of freeware, and the program attained its goal of freeing up system resources by putting much of the program's heavy lifting in the cloud. Now we can add a third reason to the list: it's now known as an effective alternative to the security powerhouses.

When you open Cloud Antivirus, the main window lets you know whether you're safe or not with … Read more

Personal finance calculators

Pine Grove's Loan*Calculator Plus is a free collection of nine easy-to-use financial calculators for loans and debt, focused on personal finance: Loan Calculator; Compound and Simple Interest and Calendar Math; Accelerated Extra Payments; Cash-Down Automobile Loans; Balloon Payments; Mortgages; Remaining Balance; Refinance; and Basic Amortization. In other words, exactly the sort of finances most people deal with on a daily basis: cars, homes, and small businesses.

Loan*Calculator Plus opens with a simple dialog that serves as a central control for its various tools, with prominent buttons for the nine calculators plus two extras, a Cash Flow/Scheduling … Read more

Don't risk it

Effective project management is not a matter of crossing your fingers and hoping for the best, but rather of planning for things that could go wrong and knowing in advance how you'll deal with them. RiskyProject Professional is an easy way to complete all aspects of project planning and tracking, including the analysis of and preparation for potential risks.

The program's interface isn't the most beautiful we've ever seen, but it's well-organized and easy to navigate. There are drop-down menus and toolbars across the top, while the program's major functions--Schedule, Risks, Analysis, Tracking, and … Read more

A newbie's take on E3

SAN FRANCISCO--Freshly back from my first E3, I can now view my time there with rose-tinted glasses. There were entertaining press conferences, an uncountable number of playable demos, and legions of excited gamers who spent hours in long lines to get a first crack at new games and hardware.

But beneath all that, what I saw was an event so large, and so difficult to cover that it's no wonder so many other gaming events like the Tokyo Game Show, Entertainment for All, and Leipzig Games Convention have sprung up to serve as additional outlets for the iterative, and … Read more

Nintendo at E3: Lots of classics, but few demos

LOS ANGELES--Nintendo's 2010 E3 press conference was likely a satisfying one for the company's longtime fans. In it, the company unveiled a slew of new software titles slated to ship this holiday shopping season through to next year that bring back old and very popular franchises.

The biggest news out of the event though, and what had lines with an hour-long wait at the L.A. Convention Center, was the company's new 3D DS hardware, dubbed simply the 3DS.

Revealed at the end of the Nintendo press conference, the Nintendo 3DS is a variant of the Nintendo DS portable gaming hardware that adds a 3D element to the top screen that can be seen without the use of 3D glasses. It also has dual external cameras that can be used to take 3D photographs, which can then be viewed on the device.

Nintendo didn't go into specifics on what users can do with these 3D photos besides viewing them on the 3DS. The big deal here, though, is that Nintendo--and not a proper camera manufacturer--stands a chance at getting 3D cameras into a mind-boggling number of pockets when the 3DS is released next year.

Nintendo has also done some neat tricks to make the 3D effect on its top screen work, by including a "depth slider" that physically moves the 3D layer to either apply the effect full-on, or turn it off completely. As explained by Nintendo President Satoru Iwata, this has been included so that players can get rid of 3D in games if they so choose, or simply tweak the effect to their liking.

The 3DS is also the first for any of Nintendo's portable hardware to include an analog stick, which many would say is long overdue. This, along with an accelerometer and internal gyroscope sensors gives developers several new avenues to take control schemes.

What may end up being the biggest hint at Nintendo's ambitions for the system though, is that the company plans to bring 3D movies to it. While Nintendo was not announcing any at the expo, or how they would be delivered, it was showing off a variety of 3D trailers from studios like Warner Brothers, Dreamworks and Disney at its E3 booth. Presumably these will be the studios to offer content for the 3DS when it launches next year.

The rise of the bridge title

Nintendo has long been known for its family-friendly image, and the event the company not only embraced it, but pointed out that it has led to ample hardware and software sales.

"Last year you heard people say Wii momentum was starting to wane," said Nintendo of America's president, Reggie Fils-Aime. "But last December, we set an all-time record for game system sales of any kind, in any month." Fils-Aime went on to say that more games have been sold for Wii in 43 months than any other platform in the same launch period. … Read more

Even the master can learn new tricks

The bottom line: Photoshop CS5 greatly expands the toolset that Adobe offers in its flagship product, charting new ways to make image manipulation easier while making older tools work better than before. Don't worry about the lack of a new interface; the new ways to get your project done make this version a must.

Photoshop has been in the English lexicon as a term to edit images for a long time, but the latest version of Adobe's flagship program stretches the canvas of manipulation much further than ever before. The look of the program has changed so little … Read more

Even the master can learn new tricks

The bottom line: Photoshop CS5 greatly expands the toolset that Adobe offers in its flagship product, charting new ways to make image manipulation easier while making older tools work better than before. Don't worry about the lack of a new interface; the new ways to get your project done make this version a must.

Photoshop has been in the English lexicon as a term to edit images for a long time, but the latest version of Adobe's flagship program stretches the canvas of manipulation much further than ever before. The look of the program has changed so little … Read more

Tracking deforestation in real time

Google.org, Google's philanthropic arm, has announced a cloud-based method for analyzing deforestation around the world, in a much more up-to-date manner than was previously possible.

Using Google's terabytes of satellite imagery, it allows scientists to look back over time at any location in the world to see how the forest has changed. Going beyond visual comparisons, it uses the power of cloud computing to do actual measurement of deforestation. Much more rapid analysis of the images than is possible on a single desktop computer pinpoints locations of most recent activity. This allows authorities to locate illegal logging … Read more