StartUpToFinish

Albert Lai is the kind of entrepreneur Canada should be fortunate to have. The 29-year-old has been involved in dozens of startups since leaving university during his first year to work for himself.

Reality show “Start Up Junkies” looking for another company to profile … Mobile, Ala., chamber invokes a Seattle service icon … PerkyPoll enters a crowded online-polling space …

During the Web’s heyday, a profitable Internet company nearing $100 million in annual sales while luring a million new customers a month would have found itself on the IPO fast track. However, that’s hardly the case for LinkedIn, a professional networking site that has cleared those hurdles and then some.

The former Prime Minister of Poland Jaroslaw Kaczynski says that Polish citizens should not be given the option of voting online.

“I am not an enthusiast of a young person sitting in front of a computer, watching video clips and pornography while sipping a bottle of beer and voting when he feels like it,” Kaczynski said in an interview posted on the Web site of his conservative Law and Justice Party.

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Eric Schmidt and his fellow Googlers probably can’t wait for Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to get the heck out of the business world and go on with his philanthropic works.

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The pioneering voice-over-internet company is battered by lawsuits, customer defections and poor stock-market performance. Many have written it off, but Vonage is hoping for a second act.

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[Source: Yahoo! News Search Results for startup internet]

Filed under: OS Updates, Linux, Open Source, Canonical

Canonical has posted some more details and a bunch of pictures of Ubuntu Mobile, a version of the popular Linux distribution designed for mobile computers using Intel’s Silverthorn processor like the Samsung Q1U Ultra. We’ve known for a while that Ubuntu Mobile was in the works, but it looks like the operating system is coming closer to an official release. Source code is available now, but we wouldn’t recommend installing it on a unit you use regularly unless you’re willing to risk erasing all of your data.

Ubuntu Mobile will include touch-screen support and large icons so you can navigate with your fingers and no stylus. The interface is designed for 4.8-inch through 7-inch screens with resolutions from 800 x 480 pixels to 1024 x 768 pixels. The default web browser is based on Firefox and supports Flash 9, Java, and pretty much everything you’d need to access modern web sites.

Some of the applications will include:

• Skype with Video support
• Audio and video players
• An email client with support for POP and IMAP
• An RSS Reader
• PIM software

You can check out sample pictures of some of the applications, but there’s a chance the application interface could be redesigned before the final release.

[via Canonical]

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[Source: Download Squad]

Filed under: Features, Linux, Open Source

Who doesn’t love choices? You can “have it your way” at fast food restaurants. No two cars ever cost the same, because of add-ons and price negotiations. We like choice. It’s a good thing.

Right?

Choice, really, is a double-edged sword. We get too many choices, and we can get easily overwhelmed. “Oh crud, another option…” leads to “What do I care?” leads to “Forget it.” We either select our options without thinking through (or understanding) the consequences, or we drop what we’re trying to customize without ever getting all the way through.

Choosing a Linux distribution is tough. We’re not kidding. There are a lot of them out there… some wonderful, some not so wonderful, and some that are designed to fit very specific needs you may (or may not) have.

So how are you supposed to sort through them all?

Here’s a hint. You don’t. Not all of them, anyway.Continue reading Flipping the Linux switch: The distribution maze

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[Source: Download Squad]

Filed under: Business, Utilities, Adobe, Freeware

What a time for 1.0. Hot on the heels of Adobe’s official release of AIR version 1.0 comes the 1.0 version of eBay Desktop. The two releases are so close you would think the makers of eBay Desktop planned it (which of course they did).

eBay Desktop 1.0 provides a desktop alternative to the eBay website - you can use it to search, browse, bid, keep track of your auctions, and more. And because it uses Adobe AIR, it runs on both Windows (XP and Vista) and Max OS X (10.4 and 10.5).

The eBay Desktop installer weighs in around 7 MB (the AIR installer is included if you don’t have it installed on your system already). Install was quick and easy, though getting the program to run was a little more work: on our test Mac, the program kept crashing until we went to the Applications folder and opened the program manually.

When you first start the program, you’ll be met with a nifty little video introduction to the eBay desktop. The eBay desktop home page allows you to track all your bidding and watching activity, and there are separate tabs for finding items, tracking and paying for your winning bids, and a feeds tab.

eBay has put a lot of work into this desktop application, and it shows. The interface is clean and very intuitive. The one major drawback is the lack of features for sellers. You can’t track the items you’re selling or your past sales. At this time, eBay desktop is definitely a buyer’s tool.

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[Source: Download Squad ]

Filed under: Fun, Games, Time-Wasters

MazeFrenzy is a mouse-pointer game where you must direct a red dot from “start” to “finish” on a light-colored path without touching the dark-colored boundaries. It’s very similar to the board game Operation. To play simply click your mouse on the red dot, let go of the mouse button, and drag your mouse (and the red dot) through the maze to your goal.

You’ll encounter obstacles, shortcuts, and frustrating readjustments of your hand and mouse which will inevitably bump the dot into the boundaries causing you to have to start all over again.

While it took us an embarrassing number of tries to complete the maze, we know you’ll do better. And when you do, try the even harder version, Maze Frenzy 2.

[Via earthshine]

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[Source: Download Squad ]