Finance

H&R Block is taking a cue from AOL. In major computer magazines this month, H&R Block is
providing free CD-ROMs of its TaxCut tax software to readers. The CDs were spotted in PC Magazine and PC
World. The same program costs $10 on TaxCut’s Web site, so it’s a pretty good deal. It’s the federal version only,
so H&R Block still can make money from you when you buy a state version (if your state has an income tax, that is).
You just peel the plastic coating off and insert the CD into your Windows computers to begin installing it.

This one is for the bachelors and techno-geek dads out there. Ever get to the grocery store and realize that
you didn’t bring a list, or worse, didn’t even make a list? That happens to me all the time. Sitting down
to make a grocery list simply isn’t on my top 100 things I want to spend my time doing. But playing with my
Pocket PC is. So I’ve started using Friday Shopping, which is a
shopping list for your Pocket PC.

At first, the thought of keeping such a mundane list in my Pocket PC seemed
silly, but then I realized the efficiencies it could bring. Each grocery that you input becomes available to add to
future lists by simply choosing a quantity beside them. Each one is also associated to an area of the store, so if you
find yourself in the bakery, you instantly have a list of everything you need to pick up from the bakery. Sweet!
Couple this with listening to podcasts while shopping, and you can truly geekify the experience.

Sure, there are a lot of great apps for the Mac. But sometimes it seems like almost all of them come from small developers or directly from Apple itself. It would be nice to see more mainstream developers follow Microsoft, Adobe, Netscape and a handful of others, and go cross-platform. One member of that exclusive club is Intuit, which has been producing Mac versions of Quicken for as long as it’s been a product. The latest version, Quicken 2006, includes several Mac-only features, such as integration with Apple’s .Mac service and a "Smart Payee" function which lets you change the display name of payees and have the change promulgated through your data. Quicken 2006 runs for $69.95, and if you’re a Mac user looking for a standalone financial management program, you’re probably going to buy it at some point, since Microsoft’s cross-platform efforts don’t extend to Money.

Version 1.4 of the Linux office suite KOffice was released today. The big news in this release is the introduction of two new apps to the suite and integration with the OASIS Open Document file format. The two new apps are Krita, a paint program, and Kexi, a data management program. Krita looks to have intermediate capabilities, more powerful than, say, MSPaint, but simpler than The Gimp. Kexi looks to be an amibitious project, with support for three different database back-ends and planned support for more, and a user-friendly front-end akin to Microsoft Access.