Every now and then, you come across a piece of software that genuinely surprises. Normally, the thing that surprises us about such pieces of software is what it does: features and functionalities. QQ doesn’t really do anything new. It doesn’t contain any particularly ground breaking features. It’s an instant messaging client. What’s surprising about QQ is that its network has over 1 billion registered accounts… and unless you’re in contact with China, you probably never heard of it.

Depending on who you believe, QQ is either the #1 or the #3 most popular instant messaging client on the internet. It’s published by QQ.com, which in turn has an Alexa rank of 11. And yes, the fact that this is such a popular app is what makes it so important.

Apart from the fairly generic functions that you’d expect in any IM client, QQ does pack a few features which you won’t find in either Yahoo’s or Microsoft’s offerings. For example: QQ allows you to resume an interrupted download when you’re sharing files with friends. That may not sound particularly exciting but if you consider the stability of networks in parts of China and plenty of other countries, you’ll see that it’s actually essential. Another cool feature included with QQ is a nifty little screen grab tool which you can use while chatting. It even lets you make small screencasts: great for anyone who’s constantly helping friends out with their PCs.

But does that make QQ an MSN killer? Well the answer is: possibly. QQ is already a better designed and more up-to-date client than MSN. What QQ needs is a way to convince Messenger users to jump ship. One way this could be done would be by interacting with the MSN network: I don’t think that would work. But some promotion on American and European websites could well have a major impact.

You can download QQ Messenger from Softonic here, and don’t forget to check out our QQ review, too!

As you may have read elsewhere, today marks the 5th anniversary of the release of Mozilla Firefox 1.0. The browser, intended as a direct attack on the market dominance (and abysmal build quality) of Internet Explorer, has gone from strength to strength in those five years, proving that the software we use to view the web can be as important as the content we’re viewing.

But this story didn’t really begin on November 9th, 2004. Firefox had already been around for a couple of years, under the name of Phoenix (and, briefly, Firebird). That was when many internet users, including myself, first had a chance to get to grips with what was to become a revolutionary piece of software. I was still using a 56k dialup connection when I first used Phoenix, so load times really mattered!

You can still download Phoenix 0.5 (from 2002) and, apart from gaping security holes it’s riddled with, the program itself is eminently usable and very reminiscent of Firefox 3.5.5. Some page elements display incorrectly on newer websites, but the most notable difference is how much faster ‘bloated’ Firefox 3.5.5 is. Also, Firefox uses a heck of a lot more memory than Phoenix ever did, but that seems OK because computers have so much more memory available.

Many of the keyboard shortcuts and features in Firefox were already available in Phoenix. Tabbed browsing, for example, works well in the older browser, though you couldn’t carry out advanced tab operations like dragging tabs to reorder them. Phoenix 0.5 also fails the Acid3 browser test, with a score of 39/100 - still strikingly better than ’standards be damned’ Internet Explorer 7 (12/100).

Taking another look at Phoenix 0.5 today has brought back a lot of memories… like how the default theme was ugly but the favorites manager was streets ahead of IE’s offering (which it still is). Phoenix was an important piece of software that restored hope to web users like me who’d grown up with Netscape, only to see it die from lack of development. So yes, today is Firefox’s birthday. But I’m remembering Phoenix.

One of the most widespread problems people had with Snow Leopard when it launched was a compatibility issue in Mail.app (aka Apple Mail) which prevented messages being sent and even crashed the program in some cases. Nick wrote a guide to fixing these issues, so this obvious failing in Apple’s QA testing needn’t be too much of a hindrance.

That said, my first thought when I read about people having problems with Mail.app was: why are these people even using Mail.app? I’ve had my current iMac for around two years and I’ve never even run the Mail program. Not once. That’s because I use Gmail, a mail application that renders Mail.app and all other desktop email clients more or less obsolete.

For those of you still toiling in the dark with an email client, I know there is sometimes a good reason for that. If you’re trying to handle lots of different accounts, or if you need to connect to an Exchange server, it’s difficult to live without a mail client. But for the average home user and even for most home office users, webmail solutions will always be a better idea than clients. Here’s why:

Security and stability

Desktop email clients are inherently less stable than Gmail or other equivalent webmail services. Storing your data on a local disk (even if you backup) will never be as safe as trusting Google’s datacenters (which are, themselves never 100% safe: nothing is).

But perhaps more importantly, email clients generally rely on downloading message files (and often attachments) to your computer before you filter out content you don’t want. This means that the potential for spam and even malware finding its way onto your computer is significantly higher if you use a mail client application. Read the rest of this entry »

This week will see the release of Windows 7, Microsoft’s latest push for control of your PC. As the launch date approaches, we’ll be posting lots of helpful articles, reviews and videos all about the brand new edition of Windows. To kick things off, here’s our first ever OnSoftware poll. Yeah, I can’t believe it either! So how do you feel about the new OS’s imminent arrival?

Let us know by voting in the poll below - and leave a comment to let us know why!

The problem

The more digital content we store on our computers, the more important reliable backup solutions become. For example, my iMac has about 50GB of music and photos on its primary disk drive. While much of the music could probably be replaced, any photo not yet uploaded to Flickr would be lost forever if that disk failed. So, like many other Mac users, I use Time Machine to maintain a secure copy of all my files, albeit on a potentially unstable portable hard disk in the same room as my Mac.

It was this potential unreliability of my Time Machine disk that got me interested in online backup options. What could be better than being able to backup to a remote server, safe in the knowledge that should any disaster befall my Time Machine disk, everything would still be OK. At least, that was the theory.

Solution found!

After some research and a little help from OnSoftware, I settled on Mozy - generally regarded as being a great online backup tool. I signed up for the $4.95/month unlimited backup plan: I thought (and still think) that $5 a month is a pretty good price point for total piece of mind. After setting up my account - a really simple process - and installing the Mozy desktop client - also a breeze - I let Mozy get to work on its initial backup. It was about eight hours after this that I spotted the main flaw in Mozy’s design: you have to complete an entire backup in one go right at the beginning, without any interruptions whatsoever. You can’t go restarting your Mac (not that I did), and you can’t lose connectivity for even a short time, which seems to have happened to me.

Around this time, my Mac was acting a little weird. I’d narrowed the problem down to a graphics driver error, but the truth is that my Mac was freezing from time to time. This meant that every time the driver error reared its ugly exception, I’d have to start from scratch on the Mozy backup. That’s not Mozy’s fault, nor is the occasional eccentricity of my ADSL connection. But Mozy could come up with a way of resuming backups, even for the initial backup process.

In order to be fair, I tried running Mozy after I’d fixed the driver issue and done a clean install, to see if it performed better under optimal conditions. Left overnight, I expected Mozy to be up to about 25% when I checked it in the morning. Unfortunately, Mozy had failed for some unknown reason at some point during the evening… all I could do was start it again. Then it failed again during the day. So I canceled my account, disappointed by a product that I’d been planning on loving.

Two things Mozy could do to win me back

Find a way of resuming backups. When backing up 100GB of data, it’s just ridiculous that an interruption causes the whole process to be canceled. Building a decent file index at the beginning of the backup operation should allow for Mozy to pick up where it left off, and then look for changes after the initial backup is complete.

Clearer error messages. One of the biggest problems I found was that when Mozy’s backup process failed, the information available about what had happened was very limited. More information, on the web side of the user interface, if necessary, would make it easier to diagnose and fix problems preventing the backup from working properly.

 A few months back, I started having problems with my beloved iMac. Lines would appear on the screen, as well as patches of odd color. But worst of all was the series of system crashes I suddenly started suffering, often more than once a day. They’d happen while using Firefox, or opening a stack on the Dock, or just moving my mouse.

I tried disconnecting peripheral devices, used TechTool Deluxe to test the integrity of my hard disk and memory, but found no solution. Looking at Console for a clue (I probably should have done this first), I found lots of serious looking errors occurring just before my system crashes. They all took the form of:

21.06.09 22:25:31 kernel NVDAOpenGL: Channel exception! status 0xffff info32 0x3 Fifo: Unknown Method Error
21.06.09 22:25:31 kernel 0000000b

Now, I may not be a Mac expert per se, but my experiences working with OS X, Windows and Linux told me that “NVDA”, “OpenGL” and “Channel exception!” pointed to the fact that something was gravely wrong and that it had something to do with my Nvidia 7300 GT video card. Which begged the question: is this a hardware or a driver issue?

Reading this helpful thread on the Apple Support forums, I’ve found that plenty of other iMac owners are suffering with the same problem. Consensus there is that it’s related to a driver/software fault… but this is confused by there being at least two problems which cause similar issues. User Asrenzo’s comment from yesterday helps to clarify the situation. After carrying out various tests, he feels certain that the software/driver theory is right. It seems that OS X 10.5.7 introduced a new, faulty driver for the Nvidia graphics card which simply stopped it from working properly.

“But what about the fix?“, you may be wondering. Well, the solution I’ve found is simple: install Snow Leopard. In my case, I backed up my entire home disk with Time Machine, erased and did a clean install, and then imported my apps, files and accounts from Time Machine. I’m not sure that the Time Machine bit is essential but I can say that not only does my 3 year-old iMac run like new now, I’ve also yet to see any Channel exception! or NVDA(OpenGL) errors.

If you’re suffering with frequent crashes and are at your wit’s end (and your Mac’s compatible, of course), try doing a clean install of Snow Leopard. It certainly seems to have worked for me.

An interesting query from one of our (anonymous) readers on a topic which has even cropped up in our editorial meetings:

Hi! I’ve been thinking about buying a smartphone, and one of the features I’ve heard people talking about on mobile blogs is “Augmented Reality”. What is that, and why is it useful? Should it affect my choice of phone?

Though it seems like something of a current buzzword, Augmented Reality as a term was actually coined in the 1980’s. In simple terms, Augmented Reality - also called AR - means the enhancement of what you have around you by adding a layer of data to it. In other words, you can use AR to make your surroundings ’smarter’ - pointing out places of interest, for example.

On my HTC Magic Android phone (AKA the myTouch 3G), I’ve tried out a few of the more popular AR apps and I can honestly say that while I don’t use them 24/7, knowing that I have them to hand is a great feeling. Wikitude AR is the first Augmented Reality app I tried and its results were impressive. Simply point your phone’s camera at anything you like and Wikitude combines GPS location, your phone’s internal compass and a variety of data streams (most notably Wikipedia) to provide you with a wealth of information about what you’re looking at. A newer competitor, Layar, performs similarly but with the advantage of being free and open - meaning that anyone can add their own data layer to it.

Another application, Google’s Sky Map, may not be considered to be a classic use of AR but in my opinion it’s a great example of what Augmented Reality can do. Using it to locate and name celestial objects is actually really fun and enhances a fun hobby. Read the rest of this entry »

Because any excuse is good enough for a celebration, today we’re celebrating that according to our calendars, today’s the 9th day of the 9th month of 2009. To mark the day, we’re giving away 999 licenses for the brand new program FILEminimizer Pictures.

FILEminimizer Pictures is a handy utility which lets you compress images, significantly reducing filesize without losing much in the way of quality.

How do I get my license?

To get a license for FILEminimizer Pictures all you have to do is leave a comment on this blog post, making sure that you include a valid email address.

UPDATE: there was a great response to this giveaway, and as of Wednesday afternoon, we’ve now run out of licenses. You can buy the full version from Softonic here.

The program is priced at €24.95 (€17.22 from Softonic) but, thanks to the developer (and OnSoftware!) you can get the full version for free. Hurry up, and don’t forget to tell your friends. The offer is open until September 30th, or when the licenses run out.

Despite the amount of time they’ve been around, Usenet newsgroups remain relatively unknown to the majority of Internet users. There are plenty of reasons for this, such as the fact that people who know about Usenet generally try to keep it a secret, or if not a secret then not as well known as, say, BitTorrent. Another reason most people don’t bother looking into Usenet is that in order to get a decent, reliable service you generally have to pay a monthly subscription.

But if you’re willing to pay for the extra security, anonymity and speed then Usenet newsgroups can be both a fun place to discuss any topic under the sun and a repository of as many open source apps and Linux distributions that you can think of. Apparently, some people have even found movies, albums and HD-TV shows on them. OnSoftware doesn’t endorse or condone copyright infringement or piracy, though. OK?

Once you’ve set up an account with a reliable newsgroup provider (I use the Giganews Diamond service which offers unlimited downloads via a secure SSL connection), you’ll need some software. Until recently, this was my setup:

Newsgroups reader: Unison

Unison (full version $25) is a nicely designed native Mac newsgroups reader. In essence, it allows you to browse through the thousands of groups available on Usenet, read and participate in discussions and download binaries (files). Simply configure Unison with your account details (including how many simultaneous connections you want) and you’re away. But if you’re anything like me, you’ll find the wealth of information and groups just a little daunting. So…

NZB search engine: Newzleech

Binaries are broken up into lots of fragments and you’ll need to download all of them if you want to be able to reassemble them afterwards. For this reason, it’s a good idea to use a search engine to find all the constituent parts of a file before you start downloading them. I use Newzleech because it’s quick, easy to use and generally helps me find what I’m looking for. To use it, simply add your search term (I often stipulate a filesize range too) and select the binary that looks most complete. E.g: searching for Ubuntu Jaunty with a minimum filesize of 700MB, I find one binary that’s tweaked for netbooks. Perfect! I hit the Get NZB button and open the resulting file with Unison. Read the rest of this entry »

British Government forms ‘Video Games Committee’ [GamePolitics]

Microsoft profits drop by one third, 5,000  jobs ‘to go’ [BBC]

Palm updates WebOS, re-enables iTunes syncing [AppleInsider]

Google Latitude comes to iPhone [Lifehacker]

Apple has 91% of luxury market revenue [TUAW]

Artificial brain ‘10 years away’ [BBC]

Google Maps updated to include magical layer awesomeness [Google Mobile Blog]

iPhone flatulence app developers in legal battle [The Daily Show]

Will Google Chrome OS finally offer the mythical GDrive? [ReadWriteWeb]

Apple releases new versions for Logic Studio and Final Cut Studio [CNET & MacRumors]

Microsoft releases Expression Studio 3 [Denny Boynton]

Our guide to travel apps for Android phones [OnSoftware]

As this year’s the summer vacation season coincides with an ever-increasing stable of awesome Android handsets, we thought that we’d take a look at some handy software you should definitely install before you start your holidays. From Augmented Reality wonder-apps to one-stop converters and translation tools, making sure you’ve got these programs with you when you set off should help you make the most of your trip.

Enhanced tourism: Wikitude Premium AR Guide

One of the first Android apps to be widely talked about, Wikitude is an Augmented Reality app that uses your phone’s GPS, Google Maps, Wikipedia and even your camera to produce a truly impressive travel mashup. Simply look ‘through’ your phone in any given direction and Wikitude tells you about sites of interest, public transport stations, restaurants and more within your vicinity - all by overlaying them onto a map or your phone’s camera display. Apps like this really are a glimpse of the future.

Convert anything: ConvertMe (Beta)

Keeping track of fluctuating currency rates while abroad is one thing. But what about clothes sizes, food measures and distances? ConvertMe can convert between hundreds of weights, measures and currencies - including some that you probably won’t need on vacation (magnetic flux, anyone?). Its currency rates are updated frequently so that you can be sure that your lobster bisque isn’t too extravagant a treat.

Translate foreign languages on the move: SpeedyMarks Translator

The best preparation for a trip abroad is to make sure that you have a grip on at least the basics of the local language.  Translator will come in handy for identifying fairly simple words and phrases, but performs better with some languages than others. My tip: try using Google image search for simpler words: you’ll get a quick visual aid which is more useful if you’re trying to learn.

Prevent thefts and stay secure in hotel rooms: Sheriff Android Lite

Sheriff Android Lite is one of those apps you hope you’ll never have to use. Running in the background on your Android phone, when activated it detects movement and emits a loud alarm to warn you that your phone (or the bag it’s in) has been moved. I recommend buying the full version because for only $1.50, you get SMS alerts, personalized pre-warning messages, stealth mode and more.

Track your every step: AndAndo

This app is ideal for trekking, cycling, and other outdoor pursuits, but perfect for stat-loving travelers of all types. AndAndo lets you record your movements using GPS. You can add notes and photos to your path and best of all (in my opinion), export your tracks to standard GPX and Google Earth’s KML formats. Creating maps of your travels has never been easier - and with the embedded media and notes you can effectively produce an automatic travel journal of your movements.

Final note: some of these apps will make use of your data connection, meaning that traveling abroad could be expensive if you keep data roaming switched on all the time. Oh, and use Barcode Scanner to read those QR codes.

Windows 7 RTM out on August 6th [Windows Team Blog]

Sam Raimi to direct (likely awful) WOW movie [Eurogamer]

Google Wave first impressions [Solid State Group Tech Blog]

Disney to offer films on SD cards [Engadget]

Our exclusive mini interview with Voddler boss yesterday [OnSoftware]

Yet another rumor about an Apple Mac tablet [TheStreet.com]

A few weeks back, mobile video streaming wizard Qik announced an alpha version of its software for Android devices. The app allows you to capture live video images and stream them on the Qik website, as well as recording and sharing clips via Twitter and Facebook.

I’m embarrassed that I only got around to testing Qik today because, while it’s still obviously not quite a ‘final’ product yet, this is exactly the sort of application that reminds me just how fun mobile software can be.

Once you’ve installed the app and set up a Qik account, you’re ready to go. Qik uses your normal camera view with a handful of overlays and buttons for controlling streaming and recording. There are two key controls: Online/Offline (indicating whether you’re simply recording a clip or recording and streaming live at the same time) and the main stop/start button for controlling recording. There are additional options for sharing, location, title and making your videos public or private.

While streaming live to the Qik website, we noticed an obvious lag (confirmed by the lag monitor displayed on screen). This seemed to get worse as the battery on my HTC Magic (MyTouch 3G) - and believe me, the battery ran down pretty quickly. I haven’t had time to do a test from full charge to nothing but I suspect you’d find it difficult to stream for much more than 20 minutes continuously without connecting a charger. Which is actually not too bad at all, when you think about it. Read the rest of this entry »

So here is the announcement we’ve been waiting for. Over the last three years or so, I’ve had many conversations with colleagues about the likelihood, or rather the inevitablility, of Google eventually releasing its own operating system. It would be based on the web, the browser and the cloud. It would be open source, free, and compatible with multiple hardware platforms. Then we saw the Chrome browser launch, followed by the Android mobile OS. Last night’s blog post may have come without any hype or build-up but it contains few surprises. And that’s great!

The new operating system will be called Chrome OS. It’ll be a custom Linux distribution ‘with a new windowing system‘ which, I assume, means a replacement for X rather than just a new desktop environment. It’ll be open source and according to Google, “the platform for application developers will be the web“.

So the question now is: just how important will this prove to be? Melissa Perenson at PC World has a pretty detailed response, raising a few more interesting questions along the way. Her general feeling seems to match mine: one of guarded optimism but some uncertainty as to whether we’re ready to go 100% cloud based just yet. This was an opinion raised in our editorial meeting this morning too: “I like to own my digital stuff, I can’t and won’t trust the web to do that for me”.

I reckon this will prove to be a significant moment. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Chrome OS’s path was a little more rocky than Android’s has been so far. While Google is apparently already working with computer manufacturers, a truly successful offering would have to be downloadable and installable on pretty much any existing netbook or PC. Which would mean device drivers, compatibility issues and everything else Microsoft puts up with while developing Windows. But if there’s a company with the resources and the skills needed to produce the first widely popular true web OS, it’s Google. I just can’t wait to get my hands on a development build!