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Cartes du Ciel

Cartes du Ciel (or Sky Chart) is an astronomy program. Created by Patrick Chevalley, it is a powerful planetarium with features similar to commercially available software. Cartes du Ciel precisely shows the placements of stars. Information on several stars are also provided. But it offers a lot more. Cartes du Ciel can also give you information on planets, asteroids, nebulae, galaxies and comets. The software supports many catalogs including Guide Star and Tycho. Other catalogs can be used so you can see thousands of stars.

Foodspotting

Foodspotting is all about finding your favorite dishes or restaurants nearby. If you want to find out what your local restaurant is serving up, this app from Foodspotting Inc can help. The information comes from users who post images of their favorite foods. This setup is different from other apps in that you get first hand info from real users and restaurant goers.

NeoOffice

NeoOffice is a full featured free office suite. The main applications are the Writer word processor; Base, the database component; Draw, for creating graphics; Impress (presentation) and Calc, for making spreadsheets. Each application is feature packed. Calc has many features comparable to commercial products. You can add formulas and use basic and advanced functions. Some of its more impressive features are the Intelligent Sum Button, Natural Language formulas and Advanced DataPilot technology. Writer has all the features you would expect from full-featured word processors like formatting, bibliographical references and indexing. You can create tables of contents and many more.

Pic Stitch

Pic Stitch is a photography app for the iPad and iPhone. Developed by Big Blue Clip LLC, it is used for combining (stitching) several images into one framed photo. The app’s interface makes it very easy to learn and use. Even if you are not a pro, it is very easy to create works of art. The app can be used to make a photographic series, combining your favorite pictures and producing a before-and-after sequence. While the program’s goal is simple, it has many features. Pic Stitch allows for high resolution export and can be saved into albums.

iHeartRadio

iHeartRadio is more than an online radio. It is a free, complete digital service from Clear Channel Management Services. There are over 1500 stations to choose from. You can search stations by format, zip or state. One of its nicest features is you can build a custom station based on songs or artists. You can also review your “likes” and history, read song lyrics and get information about the songwriter. Your favorite stations can be shared, including the ones you make.

Awesome Screenshot

A screen capture usually does just one thing: capture part of (or the entire) screen. Awesome Screenshot is a free utility that takes it to another level. Aside from capturing screenshots, you will be able to share and annotate them. Awesome Screenshot isn’t that big, so downloading doesn’t take a lot of time. Learning how to use it is a no-brainer. If you want to share a webpage, just go to that page. Click the extension button and that’s it. The annotate toolbar provides several options for annotating pages. Options include adding lines, circles, boxes or drawing freehand. A useful feature allows you to blur information. Use this tool if you want to hide specific elements.

Snowmix

Snowmix has many functions, but it is essentially a computer software that allows you to mix recorded and live video feeds. The program was developed by Peter Maersk-Moller and the Copenhagen Suborbitals StreamTeam. The project came about because existing Linux video encoders didn’t have the features the developers wanted, namely to combine several video streams and graphics, text and video overlaying.

Feedly

There are a lot of useful Google Chrome extensions, and Feedly is one of them. It works like a news reader, informing you the latest news from blogs, feeds, Twitter, Facebook and other sites. The contents are displayed in a magazine-like manner. Feedly also integrates nicely with YouTube, Amazon, Delicious, Google Reader and other popular sites. Feedly provides many ways to edit, work, display, filter and add content. You’ll have to spend some time configuring the program, but it’s worth it. After setting up Feedly, you will end up with a custom made magazine digest consisting of stuff you want. The app also provides suggestions, a lot of which are pretty good and spot on.

Urbanspoon

There’s no shortage of places to eat, but how do you know which ones are good? Well you can try Urbanspoon, a free app (Android / iPhone) that allows you to search for the best restaurants around you. There are several ways to filter your searches. Once you register for free, you can look for eating places that have entered the Village Voice's "Best of" lists. You can also look for restaurants with a James Beard Foundation award, or those that made it into the dining blog Eater’s “essential” restaurants. This new option is great if you want to find out the places the food critics are raving about.