Paint.NET is one of our favorite free image editors available for Windows.  While it does not have anywhere near the features of Adobe Photoshop, it does have many more features than Microsoft Paint.  So as a whole, we find it to be a very good (and very free) option for non-hardcore image editing.  Now there is an open-source program that seeks to mimic Paint.NET in appearance and features, while adding support for Mac OS X and Linux.

Creating a website is not too difficult.  Making it look nice, however, can be very time-consuming or expensive.  The default program for website design is Adobe Dreamweaver.  However, since that program costs hundreds of dollars, it is natural to look for a free alternative.  KompoZer is just that free, open-source option.

The WikiReader is exactly what it sounds like.  It puts all of Wikipedia into the palm of your hand in a dedicated touchscreen device.  While this may sound a little pointless in the age of smartphones and wireless broadband, there is more appeal to this device than meets the eye.

Larry Ellison, the co-founder and CEO of Oracle, indeed saw this whole netbook/nettop trend coming, 8 years too soon.  In 2000, Ellison thought the time was right for a PC replacement that could access the internet and do little else.  He imagined that all work would be done in the browser and data would be stored on servers somewhere [in the cloud].  Sound familiar?

Today, Always Innovating sure lived up to its name by announcing the Touch Book, a novel take on both tablet PCs and netbooks.

Last week, we talked a lot about Twitter (follow us @justplaintech).  Though the blog-o-sphere thinks Twitter is the best thing since sliced bread, many of you may not know what it is.

With the latest obsession over kitchen computers, let us go back to where the idea began.  In 2000, 3Com released the Audrey internet appliance.

The amazing file syncing program is now available to the masses. Click to find out more.

We talked about VirtualBox before as a free alternative to Parallels or VMware Fusion.  The new version 2.0 makes it more compelling than before.

For the security conscious TrueCrypt is a must. It has several different encryption options, I’m not going to pretend to understand the difference between them but from what I understand they are all pretty ridiculous. Better yet it allows you to use multiple encryption layers at once, making your files super-secure. Best of all it works with Windows, Mac, and Linux, so if you have things on your computer you want to keep ridiculously private, TrueCrypt is the way to go.
P.S. TrueCrypt is also a good way to hide pornography …