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Top 10 New and Improved Apps of 2007

lifehacker.com — From significant upgrades to apps we already know and love, to major operating system releases, to a few new tools that help us get things done (or at least point towards the future), '07 was a good year in software and productivity

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  • apatzer, on 12/13/2007, -2/+8I'm a big fan of Mint.com. It's a snap to setup, shows me where I'm overspending, and reminds me of bills. Sweet.
    • IHaveIssues, on 12/13/2007, -1/+12Releasing all my financial details to some web server makes me nervous. I wouldn't do it. If I had a need for financial management software I'd stay local to my PC.
      • morninglorii, on 12/13/2007, -3/+1Hope you're monitoring those ports.
        • rhabd0mancer, on 12/13/2007, -0/+1Yeah, someone might be looking at your encrypted data.
      • ttamshadbolt, on 12/13/2007, -0/+1especially without an SSL cert...
    • DCGaymer, on 12/13/2007, -1/+5I like the IDEA behind "Mint" but not the actual application....On more than one occassion I had other people's user data mixed in with mine. I deleted my account.
    • qbyte, on 12/13/2007, -2/+2I'm sorry, but it is a serious lack of judgment to hand over your bank account information to a website that offers it's services free of charge with a terms of service agreement that tells you that you can't sue them. When will people learn that nothing is free.
    • PhairOh, on 12/13/2007, -0/+2I tried Mint but I was unimpressed. Personally, I'll stick to Yodlee, which Mint uses as a back end anyway.
    • pyrates, on 12/13/2007, -0/+1In Mint you need to give them the logins for all your financial data, no thanks. And if they get hacked, you have to now change ALL your logins? No way. The idea may be good, but in reality it is extremely foolish to give up that information to anyone.
  • wheelzr, on 12/13/2007, -2/+7Awesome list, found out some new stuff. However Joost is kind of lame when it comes down to conent.
    • toxicityj, on 12/13/2007, -1/+1BS. i can watch Transformers whenever I want.
    • spyrochaete, on 12/13/2007, -0/+3Miro is a zillion times better, but its content is mostly downloadable, not streaming.

      http://www.getmiro.com/
    • kaplanfx, on 12/13/2007, -0/+1True Joost is a bit weak on content, but the quality of the service is very good compared to other IPTV offerings (in terms of video speed/quality and in terms of the interface).
  • dansy, on 12/13/2007, -12/+34Started well, but placing Leopard on top transformed it into a fanboy excuse ...
    • luchid, on 12/13/2007, -11/+6Well I guess tons of experts and reviewers and people who are liking it so far are all deceiving us! Quick, get the press on this!
  • chingy1788, on 12/13/2007, -12/+7Ubuntu shouldn't be there

    - ALP
    • luchid, on 12/13/2007, -2/+5Why not? It's making lots of progress really fast. You might not like it, but you can't deny it's a solid, well built, stable and full-featured OS for everyday use.
  • curtistheory, on 12/13/2007, -17/+12Where is Windows Vista?!?!
    • dsmx, on 12/13/2007, -9/+3Considering it still can't beat XP on speed I don't see why vista should even be considered.
    • DarkDx, on 12/13/2007, -6/+7If microsoft made Vista with all those features PLUS negligible perfomance impact, that would have been awesome, but It's too ***** slow, if it were just a little bit slower thatn XP I would use it. Look at leopard, they added some nice features and it's not that uch slower than tiger. Or linux distros, wich keeps adding features without slowing down the thing :)
    • Trax91, on 12/13/2007, -9/+3Windows Vista? I don't get it. There aren't any patches that improve it to the level of Leopard or Ubuntu. Maybe you were dreaming of Service Pack 1.
      • piesforyou, on 12/13/2007, -2/+1Nope, I think he was dreaming of service pack 3.
    • melonhedd, on 12/13/2007, -0/+6It was released in 2006.
  • DCGaymer, on 12/13/2007, -1/+1Of the few items I use....here's my personal review. GMAIL - Love it....but I only give that one to friends...hotmail is still my trashmail account.... and Yahoo mail is for my message board replies. Why all three? So I can compare and contrast. MINT - Having used "Mint" for a few months I'd say...."It's not ready for prime time".... give it a few month's....I recently deleted my account with them. Random people's names kept coming up in my transaction history and I got tired of researching what the hell was going on only to find out...MINT was the issue GRAND CENTRAL - LOVE it. ... I even went so far as to have new business cards published with my GC phone number. I only wish they'd integrate Grand Central and Gmail now.
  • SquigglyP, on 12/13/2007, -12/+6Someone has obviously embraced the web-app "revolution" whole-heartedly. And owns a Mac.

    Ubuntu - yes.
    Leopard - probably.
    Gmail - sure.

    everything else? no.
  • Copsh, on 12/13/2007, -9/+3There is no such thing as "new and improved".

    It can be new, or it can be an improvement, it cannot be both.
    • jamief00, on 12/13/2007, -3/+1It can be a new product which improves on an idea.

      I.E. when gmail came out - it was NEW, but it was also an IMPROVEMENT over hotmail
    • Hardac, on 12/13/2007, -1/+1"New" and "improved" are individual sets and are not inclusive. Contrary to you're disbelief there is such a thing as "new and improved" when read in this context.
    • toxicredm, on 12/17/2007, -0/+1If something is improved so much that it is unrecognizable from the original, that makes it new. For instance, HDTV is just an improvement on the original black and white TV, but wouldn't you say it's new?
  • IHaveIssues, on 12/13/2007, -9/+5Not loving Office 2007 - not loving the ribbon at all.
    • spyrochaete, on 12/13/2007, -1/+2I am. Big time. Word and Outlook are incredible.
    • PhairOh, on 12/13/2007, -0/+2The ribbon grows on you. I'll admit that it's a pain in the ass to start working with, but once you figure it out it's actually quite handy. I especially like the real time visuals it gives you when you hover over different elements, such as showing you what your selected text would look like as a caption or as a new heading.
  • plizard, on 12/13/2007, -9/+4can someone explain to me how office 2007 is an improvement?
    • lordtyros, on 12/13/2007, -0/+4hit ALT, then get back to me
    • over90000, on 12/13/2007, -1/+1it's more user friendly.
    • piesforyou, on 12/13/2007, -1/+3The ribbon is great
      Image placement in documents works a LOT better (still not great I know, but a vast improvement)
      It brings things like styles and references within easy (and noticeable) reach of the casual user, rather than digging into menus
      docx is an improvement
      It seems to be more stable than the more recent older versions
      Document recovery works brilliantly
      ...

      I'm no fanboy; I use Latex for anything serious, but those are my experiences.
    • scabbers, on 12/13/2007, -0/+1Realtime word count.
    • spyrochaete, on 12/13/2007, -0/+6Realtime previews. You highlight text and just hover the mouse over styles or colours or fonts and it temporarily changes the highlighted text so that you can see it in context.
    • ganlet, on 12/14/2007, -0/+1It ensured that I'll be sticking with openoffice
  • over90000, on 12/13/2007, -8/+2Oh boy, the Apple fanboys are highjacking the poll.
  • gregdlewis, on 12/13/2007, -0/+13dugg for recognizing google maps for their new and amazing draggable routes feature
  • studiow, on 12/13/2007, -12/+0Dugg because one reason : Mac is there!!
  • thinman1189, on 12/13/2007, -15/+3Buried for including anything developed by Microsoft. The only improvement on their products is switching to something else.
    • toxicityj, on 12/13/2007, -1/+1people like you are why Digg is losing its enjoyableness.
  • ArthasMenethil, on 12/13/2007, -9/+3lol @ apple fanboys -- vista is a far better improvement than leopard -- ive actually heard leopard is having as bumpy of a launch as XP did.
    • clbw, on 12/13/2007, -3/+0Windows Vista is code name for Windows M.E., Get back to work Bill, and except the fact that VISTA is a debacle.
    • badnewsblair, on 12/13/2007, -0/+2Where in the world did you hear that?
  • voyvf, on 12/13/2007, -14/+3Seeing Office 2007 in that list made me vomit a little in my mouth.
  • uziko, on 12/13/2007, -5/+2Wow i just used mint never heard of it until now, it's so ***** easy. Within 25 seconds i had everything set up. Awesome it makes microsoft money look like *****.
  • AQUANETA, on 12/13/2007, -6/+1Web apps are still worthless. no one productive uses them.
    Wheres Luxology's modo 301, cause everyone loves a modeler, sculptor, animator, and renderer with the best UI under the sun.
  • aaronm67, on 12/13/2007, -2/+6If you're running Linux, and you would like something similar to VMWare Fusion to run apps "seamlessly", try Innotek Virtualbox http://www.virtualbox.org/

    Here's an example: http://babbage.missouri.edu/~agm257/snapshot6.png
    It's far from perfect, but it works well enough to use office/itunes/whatever if that's what you're interested in. I use it to manage my zune.
    • sigsegfalt, on 12/13/2007, -0/+1I use it too, and it runs much better than the free VMWare Server/Player setup. Still, it's no VMWare Fusion.
      • aaronm67, on 12/13/2007, -0/+1Yeah, it's definitely no VMWare Fusion, I was just posting because I hadn't heard much about it (on Digg atleast). If you're just looking to use Office 2007 or iTunes to manage your iPod, it works out pretty well.
  • uziko, on 12/13/2007, -4/+1wells fargo and capital one all you need is the username and password to log into your account,
    citi however you need memorize all the 3 questions they asked you and the answer to them, which i ***** don't, as usual citi is crap
    • uziko, on 12/13/2007, -0/+1nvm it worked i left the questions blank, i don't know why it asked them in the first place
  • dennisparrott, on 12/13/2007, -3/+2to aaronm67's point about virtualbox ...

    I was running VirtualBox on Ubuntu and had Windows 2000 running and you could run Photoshop CS2 reasonably. Win2K needed some fonts installed to smooth things out looks-wise but it ran fairly well.

    If you are using Linux and need to run Windows virii (errrr, programs) well, VirtualBox does the job fairly well. (Not as well as VMware Fusion on my new Mac but...)
  • Markus123, on 12/13/2007, -2/+7Leopard, most improved "app" of 2007? I've had way more issues with leopard than I ever had with Tiger... and there's barely any benefit to it.
  •  

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