HAVE YOU HEARD OF NINITE INSTALLER YET?

Are you upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 8
or buying a new PC? In both cases, you face the same tedious chore:
reinstalling all your apps.

That
means digging out a bunch of CDs and/or downloading programs from various
sites, then installing them one at a time. I don't know about you, but I can
think of better ways to spend several hours.

Ninite is a web app that lets you quickly download groups of
software. Useful for quickly setting up computers, this automatically downloads
programs in the right language without any toolbars or additional files.

The Ninite interface is just one page, with categorized popular applications. To install a
package you simply select those programs you need, click 'get installer' and
then the download starts. The selection of applications is good, from browsers
and messengers, to security and file sharing software. It's not comprehensive,
but has what most people will need to get started on a fresh PC.

Ninite creates a custom software installer with all the freeware
and open-source apps you want. Just choose from the dozens of available
programs--everything from AVG Free Anti-Virus and Dropbox to OpenOffice and
uTorrent--and the service builds an installer that will download and load them
all.

Once
you start the installer, you can sit back and relax: Ninite automates the
entire process, meaning you don't have to sit around clicking Next a
bunch of times.

Even
better, Ninite automatically chooses the proper version of each program--32- or
64-bit--and eliminates any toolbars that might try to sneak in during
installation.

I
love this thing. I've used it several times on new PCs, and it saves time like
you wouldn't believe. Bookmark it!

5 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE NEW BLACKBERRY: Z10

BlackBerry has completely reinvented
itself with a brand-new operating system and two killer-looking new phones.
Here's what you need to know about them.

The Blackberry Z10 Smartphone is mostly referred
to as Zee Ten or Zed Ten in the English-speaking countries around the world.

1.
BlackBerry is now called BlackBerry. The company used to be called Research in
Motion, or RIM, which most people did not know and was confusing. Now it's just
BlackBerry. 

2. There are two new phones, running one new operating system.
The operating system is called BlackBerry 10, and it's completely new--has
basically nothing in common with any old BlackBerry system besides a few
features (BBM is still around). The first phone, probably the flagship, is the
Z10, an all-touchscreen device with a 4.2-inch, very high-resolution screen (at
356 pixels-per-inch, it should have the clarity of the iPhone or any high-end
Android phone), a dual-core processor, and all the sensors you'd expect. It'll
have 16GB of storage built-in, though you can expand that with a microSD card. Interestingly,
it has only one button, a power/hold trigger on the top of the phone--you
navigate with taps and gestures rather than buttons. 

The
other phone is the Q10, which looks more like a typical BlackBerry--meaning, it
has a hardware keyboard. We don't know much about it, really; we know it also
has a dual-core processor, that the screen is a 3.1-inch AMOLED (which should
give it nice vivid colors), that the keyboard is the widest BlackBerry keyboard
ever, that the battery is the biggest BlackBerry battery ever, and that it has
4G. That's about it!

3. BlackBerry 10 is completely new, making BlackBerry the
latest in a long line of historically strong companies to completely toss out
their smartphone platform in order to compete with iOS and Android. And it
looks pretty nice! It has a few key ideas that inform the way you use the
phones. The first is gestures. There's no home button at all: you swipe up from
the bottom to access your "home screen," such as it is. That'll give
you access to your eight most recently used apps, your favorite apps, and a
list of all apps. 

BlackBerry
10 also groups all of your messages together. And that means all of your
messages. Like, email, sure, but all of your email accounts, plus text
messages, plus BlackBerry Messages, plus Twitter and Facebook and Foursquare
and lord knows what else. It's an interesting idea, having a completely unified
inbox--I imagine whether that's a better system will depend on the particular
user. It's called BlackBerry Hub.

4. TimeShift is this new camera thing BlackBerry is very
excited about. It's basically a burst mode: instead of taking one picture, the
camera will take a whole bunch of pictures, and then you can pick which frame
is the best/most flattering shot. Samsung has about 16 different apps that do
variations of this, but the interface (a little ring that you scroll around)
seems nice.

5. It has lots of apps! BlackBerry says it'll have 70,000 at
launch, but the dirty secret about big numbers like that is that 99.9% of all
apps are garbage that nobody uses. That said, BlackBerry does have some key
ones lined up: Facebook, Twitter, Angry Birds, Rdio, Foursquare, LinkedIn,
Evernote, that kind of thing. But it doesn't have Instagram or Snapchat or
Vine, and its game selection will probably be limited.

Should you buy the
BlackBerry Z10? This is a question you alone can answer. If you want the best
BlackBerry out right now, it is the Z10. Go ahead and get yourself one. If you
want a bit of fresh air, or want to explore the world of BlackBerry for the
first time, come on board and get yourself the Z10. If you are on Android or
iOS, the Z10 may not blow your mind completely as there are still some apps
that haven’t made it there yet. If managing, editing, sharing of documents is
your thing and you are always doing emails on the fly, the Z10 will come in
handy.

All in all you have reasons to be optimistic about
BlackBerry 10, because any competition is good competition, and first reactions
from the Z10 users seem very positive. You can be hopeful to get a full review soon
as I wish to dive into the hardware and software and see how it feels when it
is used on a daily basis.

Meanwhile, I
expect BlackBerry to evolve the BlackBerry 10 quickly based on
the feedback that the early adopters are supplying and hopefully they
will be back in the game.