As the tax deadline in the US draws near those rushing to meet the deadlines are probably well aware now of exactly what your financial status is from the last year. Tax time for me usually means that I reevaluate my spending and savings and look at revitalizing my budget. There are some excellent cross-platform apps that I think work even better than the clunky old standards. Here is a quick rundown (that is by all means not a comprehensive list) of a few apps you can use to manage your budget and your finances:

• GnuCash - GnuCash allows you to track bank accounts, stocks, income, and expenses. As quick and intuitive to use as a checkbook register, it is based on professional accounting principles to ensure balanced books and accurate reports. It is backed by an active development community and is blossoming into a full-fledged accounting system. GnuCash has also released a Windows binary. GnuCash is open source and free.
• Buddi - Buddi is a personal finance and budgeting program, aimed at those who have little or no financial background. Buddi will run on almost any computer which has a Java virtual machine installed. This can include Windows, Macintosh OS X, Linux, and many other operating systems. Buddi is released as an open source application and is free (donations accepted).
• PearBudget - Free while in beta, PearBudget is a simple system that helps you build a clear spending plan and track your spending record.  It removes all the overkill in other financial apps and just helps you track a budget. A wizard interface and simple language takes the frustration out of planning (and sticking to) a budget. Multiplatform.

Image "Money Rose“ from Flickr by distinguish 

Beauty :)

VMware Education Services has popped several VMware Server how to videos up on YouTube. As of the time of this post there are currently five videos ranging from how to download VMware Server and get a license to how to add a disk to a virtual machine. VMware Server is a free virtualization product offered by VMware. The current production version is 1.0.4 with 2.0 currently in beta. VMware Education Services has setup their own channel page at YouTube and you can subscribe to their videos and keep track of new additions.

Adobe AIR is a cross platform system runtime for delivering rich content from Internet applications to the desktop. Previously we have seen the most action on the Mac and Windows platforms but now Adobe is looking to really get their game on with Linux. The Adobe AIR team is now in the phase of development where they need a handful of additional testers to begin testing initial builds of AIR on Linux during pre-beta testing. Interested? Answer the following questions and send them to helptesterairlinux at adobe dot com:

1. Are you comfortable working with prerelease software that is not yet feature complete?

2. Will you be able to submit bug reports on issues that you find back to our development team?

3. How many hours a week can you spend testing on Linux?

4. What is the primary distribution of Linux that you’re using? If you are using more than one distribution, please list.

5. Will you be developing applications on your Linux machine (as opposed to writing on Windows and testing the applications on Linux)?

6. What other operating system are you using, if any (Mac, Windows)? Can you compare the behavior of AIR for Linux with AIR for Windows and AIR for Mac OS?

7. Are you working on an AIR application today? If so, please describe.

8. Are you primarily a Flash, Flex or JavaScript developer?

9. What is your name, company name and email address?

Ever wonder what happens when you run “rm -rf /” on your box while it is running?

This tutorial shows you how you can make a bootable flash drive using the Ubuntu linux ISO. All you need is a flash drive that is 1 gigabyte in size or larger.