Making the leap to Linux? Trick out your freshly installed desktop OS with the free software programs listed in our guide. In a few steps, you’ll have a machine worth leaving Windows or Mac OS X behind for.

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Japan’s NHK has followed up The Hollywood Reporter’s earlier indications Toshiba was ready to dump its money-losing HD DVD business, with news that the company is prepared to cease manufacturing software and hardware, at a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars. This caps the worst week ever for red, when HD DVD was dumped by Netflix and Wal-mart.

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Board members concluded the unsolicited $44.6 billion offer massively undervalues the Web pioneer, a person familiar with the situation told the newspaper.

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Gmail is one of those rare things unanimously loved by everyday web users and tech-heads alike. The possibilities are endless. It can be anything from a simple email client to your central nervous system on the web. This article highlights some of the very best tips, tools and hacks hand-picked from hundreds of resources.

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As of February 4, six of the 13 DNS root servers can be queried over IPv6, putting IPv6 on equal footing with IPv4 on the first time

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Out of the rumor mill comes the 16GB iPhone, now official. Ever since the 16GB iPod touch was announced in September, we all knew it was just a matter of time until Apple could bung the same NAND chip into their chubbier iPhone. The Surprise is a new 32GB iPod touch for the same $499. Both are available immediately.

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Every Firefox user spends a lot of time dealing with tabs. Thus, improving the tabs directly adds to the browsing experience. You can make them better, faster, beautiful and lot less ovewhelming. So here you go, 6 powerful addons to improve your tabbed browsing.

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This first-ever beaming of a radio song by the space agency directly into deep space is nostalgia-driven. It celebrates the 40th anniversary of the song, the 45th anniversary of NASA’s Deep Space Network

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An excellent collection of useful tips on design patterns, refactoring and other programming tricks

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The announcement was made at last night’s French premiere of The Orphanage, a Spanish horror film that Del Toro helped produce. Introducing the film-maker, the host told the audience: “Today is a big day because we are announcing what everyone wanted to hear, which is that he will be directing The Hobbit.”

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Microsoft has offered to buy the search engine company Yahoo for $44.6bn (£22.4bn) in cash and shares.

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Leaked photos of the new MacBooks! Ever wanted your computer to be recyclable, blazing fast (literally), or poured out of a bottle? If you answered “yes” to any of those, there’s now a MacBook for you.

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The recent flyby of Mercury by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft has given scientists an entirely new look at a planet once thought to have characteristics similar to those of Earth’s moon. The spacecraft also discovered a unique feature that scientists dubbed “The Spider.”

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“An excellent website takes a particularly savvy blend of both great design and great code. Because of this, you often find designers having to figure out code and developers trying their hand at design…”

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Sprout is a browser-based, WYSIWYG editor for Flash with an interface reminiscent of Photoshop or Dreamweaver. Designers can use it to create, publish and track Flash widgets, websites and mashups, thereby obviating the need for them to work with programmers who would cost time and money, and who might not execute designs satisfactorily.

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According to Apple, the Air is officially shipping and the Apple TV update due two weeks from Macworld’s Keynote (yesterday) has a week or two left in the oven.

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Not only does Tetsuya Nomura swear by the game’s 2008 release date, he also teases at a playable demo for FFXIII on the PlayStation Network a while before the game is released, to show off the game’s revamped battle system.

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While this is good news for those looking for a new laptop at a lower cost due to the smaller Blu-ray player, gamers who have yet to purchase a PS3 may be able to get in on this as well.

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Today we are presenting a round-up of 101 CSS techniques designers use all the time.

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Here’s a tour of the pre-alpha demo release of GNOME Online Desktop included in Fedora 8.

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This is the all encompassing list for the latest resources that will help you improve your Web 2.0 design…

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All is not lost when it comes to blogging tools for GNU/Linux; there are quite a few options and all of them fulfill certain blogging needs to near perfection. Here are five different ways to compose your blog posts on the GNU/Linux platform along with their pros and cons.

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Official Xbox Magazine has the scoop on the Fall Xbox 360 dashboard update, and you better believe it’s a doozy. UK-based CVG reports that the December 2 update will allow 360 owners to download and play Microsoft-published Xbox 1 games on their 360s.

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Here is a first photo of Zachary Quinto as Spock in JJ Abrams’ Star Trek. The production is currently shooting in a chapel that has been converted to looked like a Vulcan Council Chamber of some sort.

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Spock

Spock

“Now that the full crew of the Enterprise has been cast in JJ Abrams Star Trek prequel/reboot, we thought it would be a good time to take a look at the talent involved. Let’s take a look at thee new crew of the Starship Enterprise.”

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