Adobe Photoshop is a legend of a program. Unfortunately, it is also legendarily complicated and expensive, which makes things difficult for the average user. Even if you get past the intimidating price tag, Photoshop’s maze of layers, masks and magic tools can make even the bravest prospective user doubt their ability. Surely there’s an easier alternative?!

Luckily for us, there is. Most people don’t actually need a photo editing program of such epic proportions, which is why developers have created a raft of alternatives that area easier on your wallet AND your blood pressure.

Photoscape - Photoscape has to be number one on any list of free and easy alternatives. Full of features, simple to use and, best of all, completely free, this program is pretty much freeware’s image editing poster child. Come on, with over three MILLION downloads in the last two years on Softonic alone, it has to be doing something right!

GIMP - In second place comes GIMP. Somewhat of a giant, despite the odd name (it’s actually an acronym of GNU Image Manipulation Program), GIMP scores slightly below Photoscape because its installation process can be a little scary. Since we’re looking for stress-free alternatives, this means it loses a few points, but once you get GIMP safely installed on your computer, you’ll find it’s full of features and has an impressive range of cool plug-ins that are almost sure to meet your editing needs.

Photofiltre - Photofiltre scores high in terms of price - it’s free - but a little lower on ease of use. Like Photoshop, its interface is a bit overwhelming at first glace, but the learning curve isn’t half as steep and it is an ideal starting point for budding graphic designers who might well move on to Photoshop in years to come.

PhotoImpression - ArcSoft PhotoImpression come in at number 4 because its major pro is counterbalanced by a major con. This Photoshop-like program is full of features, but way, way easier to use than the original. It’ll give you good practice for the ‘real thing’, helping you to learn the basic concepts of more advanced image editing. The major con? Well, it’s not actually free, but you can try it out and get used to the basics. When you have them down, you can move onto the more complicated tools.

Before looking at the last program in our run-down, ask yourself a question. Do you really need a tool like Photoshop? Although you might want to crop a few photos, tweak color balance or create a fancy slideshow, you probably don’t need to go as far as seamlessly adding an image of Bigfoot into the pictures of your family’s last camping trip in the woods. Photoshop is for professional level photo editing, and most people really don’t need such power.

Picasa - If you need a simple and effective photo editor, but not exactly an alternative to Photoshop, give Picasa a try. The newest version of the Google tool is better than ever, and provides some really slick features for ordinary photo editing. It has none of the headache-inducing options of the more advanced editors, but will still give you fantastic results.

Halloween is just around the corner, and while we start carving pumpkins and buying tons of sweets for our usual trick-or-treat visitors, we thought it would a nice idea to make our computers share the spirit of this celebration. After all, we spend a lot of time together so it’s only fair we help them get into the mood for the upcoming event with these Halloween wallpapers.

Click on the image to download the full-sized wallpaper. Some of them are available in various resolutions.

Read the rest of this entry »

Windows: Some people need to be constantly twittering about what they do. If you’re among them, this extension is for you! The all new Echofon (previously known as Twitterfox) integrates perfectly in Firefox and lets you check your twitter, send messages and see what your followers are up to, all from within your favorite browser. The new version features a complete redesign and the same great functionality.

iPhone: If you’re a Photoshop addict then why not try out the new iPhone version of the app, Photoshop.com Mobile. It’s by no means a fully-featured editing suite, but what it does do is to allow you to quickly and easily tweak photos on the move, through an excellent interface based around touch gestures. It has some great sharing options, too.

Mac: Making backups should be an easy process, and SuperDuper! (new version 2.62) understands that perfectly. SuperDuper! creates perfect clones of your Mac volume so you have a full backup of all your data, including permissions, user profiles and private settings. SuperDuper! is incredibly easy to use: just select the drives to copy from and to and start backing up.

Windows: If you need to edit several photos in a row, either you spend a long time with the PC working on each one of them, or you use Modi. This program lets you apply basic changes (rotate, resize, adjust levels, add frames, insert watermark and more) to multiple photos simultaneously, saving you time and work. There are 12 different filters to choose from, and you can even customize some of them.

Mac: PDFs are the best way to distribute documents on the Net, particularly if you’ve scanned one. It’s much better than sending a generic JPEG scan. PDF Studio is easy to use, yet powerful enough to allow you a whole host of editing options that enable you to annotate and edit documents. You can use it with existing PDF documents or directly using the tailor made scan-to-PDF feature

iPhone: iPhone users can relax - finally they don’t have to access the site through Safari any more, and can stay photo-connected with this official Flickr application. You can view your photostream, add comments, search for users and view your contacts. There’s a tab that gives you your recent activity and uploads on Flickr too. The app’s user interface is smooth, fast and intuitive.

iPhone: In my experience, if there’s anything worth than an invasion of aliens, it’s an invasion of paper aliens. And that’s exactly what happens in Inkvaders, an original and fun side-scrolling, Martian-blasting adventure game. The object of Inkvaders is to rid the World of aliens by blasting them with your gun. In order to help you, you also have a jet pack which lets you fly over the Martians.

Mac: If you’ve got more than one Gmail account and can’t keep up with each one individually, then Notify is a handy menu bar extension. Notify allows you to keep track of several accounts at once within an elegant tabbed user interface. It allows easy access of your mail accounts - in a single click of the account you will be taken straight to your inbox and you’ll receive a Growl alert for newly received mail.

Windows: Massive graphic suites are not always the best option. Lighter, smaller image editors are the most adequate tool for quick image optimization and retouch. One of them is Paint.NET, a free photo editor with support for layers and a bunch of special filters and effects that includes all the key features you’ll need for quick image editing.

What got me started thinking about this most recently was testing Spotify mobile, for Android and iPhone. The high quality streaming service means users needn’t carry their music collections around on their devices, just open Spotify and listen to whatever they want. I find it hard to believe that streaming all that data is an efficient way to listen to music.

Old heavy industry has a poor environmental image, but do new high tech industries do much better? We don’t imagine smoke stacks and poisoned lakes etc when we think of web 2.0 (or 2.1, 3.0…), but is there any evidence this industry thinks about the future of the planet any more than the old industries?

With the Spotify mobile apps one thing becomes quickly obvious - streaming to your phone hits your battery, much more than listening to your personal library would.

I have a contact who works with design sustainability in the UK, and after a short discussion about Spotify, his answer was unequivocal: “Digital streaming has the look of another clever technology that is not good for us“.

In essence it’s because when consuming media ‘locally’, you only have to download it once, and can then access it as many times as you want, only using the energy of that one device. But with streaming services, every time you access media you are consuming more energy in the sending and receiving  of information, the server running at the other end and your device too. That uses more energy.

We are supposed to be cutting our energy consumption dramatically over the next decade, and yet are developing new technologies that are obviously less energy efficient. I’m picking on Spotify because it’s new - video services like Voddler would undoubtedly be worse, and any streaming service is essentially wasteful. These services are convenient, and people love what they can do, but shouldn’t convenience be secondary to sustainability? The idea of downloading content that is then “thrown away” immediately after use is dreadful, after all.

I read many tech blogs daily, and the environment is basically off the radar, as if it’s not their concern. It is everyone’s concern: if sustainability and energy efficiency aren’t part of your development and design decisions in the 21st Century, you are designing irresponsibly.

Web geeks got all excited recently thanks to the discovery of a Google Easter egg - if you search for the term ‘ascii art‘, the Google logo turns into an example of what you’re searching for - cool, eh?

Even if you have heard about this particular Google gift, you might not have been absolutely sure what it referred to. ASCII art is a type of graphic art that involves making pictures and designs from ASCII character coding, in other words, making art using the characters on your keyboard. You’ll probably have seen it around the web before, but what you might not have realized is that it is entirely within your reach!

Whether you are creatively challenged or an artistic maestro, there is a method for you. If you fall into the first group, you can skip the hard bit and download yourself a nice little generator that will do much of the work. Ascgen, for example, is a tool that allows you to upload any image and produce an ASCII version within seconds. You can then edit the image until you are totally happy with it, and voila - you have your first ACSII masterpiece!

Textaizer is not strictly an ASCII program, but it does give you results that are very similar to one and, more importantly, it is very modifiable. This program also allows you to upload your images, but you have the added advantage of being able to specify the text you want to use to make the image. This means, for example, that you could use your name to create an ACSII image of yourself - very cool!

If you are the more creative type, you won’t need a program at all. In its most raw form, ASCII just requires a computer, keyboard and a text editor (such as Windows NotePad or something more advanced such as these) - not exactly what you would call complex. Many experienced ASCII artists suggest that the best way is just to begin experimenting, but it takes a while to master. If you feel that you’d like a little guidance on the road to ASCII fame, there are a wealth of online tutorials to help you on your way. Check them out here, here and here.

Google Maps is incredibly useful, but it’s also got some fantastic aerial images of our planet. With a little effort you can grab these images and make great, high quality wallpapers or even print them. Here’s how to do that! You can do it in Windows or OSX, and you’ll need Firefox with the Screengrab! extension installed.

First, go to Google Maps and find the image you want. It’s best if you find it manually, and once you have, click Satellite, and turn of the labels, so your map is clean. Then click Link and copy the HTML code as below.

Now, open your text editor, like Notepad, and paste in the HTML. All you have to do is change the width and height values in the code - something much bigger than your screen, like 3000 x 3000 pixels - and then save it as “filename.html” .

Now, find this saved HTML file and drag it into Firefox. You should see the map open now! To save the entire image, click the Screengrab! icon, choose save and the ‘complete page/frame’ option. Make sure to save the file somewhere you’ll remember. I chose suck a big size as the image is saved with navigation arrows in the top right corner, and saving a larger area than you need means you can edit this out.

Now you’ll have a huge high quality image, that you can trim using any image editor and set as your wallpaper.

[Via: OnSoftware DE]

After I finally stopped laughing at Mashable’s round-up of the best songs about Facebook and Twitter, I’ve had time to compose my own list of the best software-related tunes. It’s amazing how many artists have felt compelled to write songs professing their love (or often their hatred) of applications and operating systems.  Here are the ten that moved me the most.

Free Software Song

The crowd at Richard Stillman’s impromptu ‘gig’ were left dumbstruck by his mesmerizing performance of his self-penned Free Software Song. Don’t expect the founder of the GNU Project and Free Software Foundation to be getting an six-album deal anytime soon, though.

Photoshop

Check out this extravagant performance of Spark’s Photoshop song, recorded on the band’s Creatures of the Deep tour. Russell, we would never want to Photoshop you out of our lives.

Mac or PC Rap

One of my personal favorites, this Flight Of the Conchords-style hip hop parody debates the nuances of the Windows and Mac OS interfaces. Read the rest of this entry »

Imagine if rather than downloading software, you could download products. I’m talking real objects like furniture, tools, and even electrical goods. In other words, a multitude of man made objects which would usually be produced in a factory somewhere in China. Well, it might sound crazy, but that’s exactly what the developers of the “self-replicating rapid prototyper” or “RepRap” are dreaming of.

The first obvious question is, how the hell is this supposed to work? In short, a specially adapted 3D printer will be able to “print-out” the blueprints of the objects that you download. RepRap’s motto is “Wealth without money” and that’s the exciting aim of the project. It embodies the essence of freeware because after all, that’s exactly what all the freeware we download everyday is - free products that add value to your life. The developers point out that, through printers we already have the power to start our own printing press. The RepRap project simply aims to take that concept a step further.

Read the rest of this entry »

Apple has been getting a lot of flak recently, from us as well as elsewhere. People aren’t happy the the iPhone App Store isn’t allowing Google Voice, or in general about the policy of not allowing any app that does something already available from Apple.

Apple is scared of competition, stifling innovation and generally annoying people by not doing whatever it is people want. I’m not sure things should have got so bad, despite my earlier claim they might be losing their cool.

It is certainly true that if Microsoft was seen as being this controlling today, it would get roasted by the press (as it has done in the past). But I think Microsoft are in a very different position, as they have a massive market lead over the rest, and unless you can pay more for an Apple,  or are brave enough for the uber-tech-nerd world of Linux, you will use Microsoft. So they’d better listen to people, as people mostly aren’t using them by choice.

But you choose to use a Mac, or to buy an iPhone. Apple products are beautifully designed, incredibly user friendly, and generally don’t crash. People loved the iPhone when it came out, but now it’s being demonized for not being able to do something it has never been able to do. Maybe the iPhone would be improved with Google Voice -  but it’s no worse without it. It seems a great deal of this is that users feel they are being denied a free service, but you can’t blame companies for wanting to maintain revenue.

To me, people are wrongly assuming that because they own a product, they have a say in its development. They don’t. Apple, like Nintendo, make incredible products by not listening to people, and being secretive. There may be odd things that other companies do better, but none of them get the whole package as right as the iPod and Mario creators. When lowly users are allowed to get involved, you get a big mess as the Simpsons showed us years ago with “The Homer” automobile.

As for exploding iPods: that just sounds cool!

Mac: Normally designing and publishing a website requires a certain amount of coding and database admin knowledge. Not so with the newly updated Joomla! which allows you to to set up a complete website in minutes. You don’t need to design or code anything. The whole design process is configured and customized through web menus, so that the only thing you need to worry about is creating good content for your site.

iPhone: If you’ve ever used the Google Translate tool then you’ll know just how great it is for translating text from one language to another. If you want a slightly more convenient way of using the service on your iPhone then check out Free Translator. The app provides a mobile-optimized interface for Google Translate that makes it much quicker and easier to perform translations.

Windows: SmarterFox is a neat little add-on for Firefox that can really speed up your browsing. It adds functions to your right-click context menu, allowing you to easily search Wikipedia, Google in a click. You can also download all links or images from the page your viewing without hassle. For such a little program, SmarterFox is pretty impressive. It has a great range of functions that really do make browsing and searching easier and faster.

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]

Windows: Great for budding animators, Pivot Stickfigure Animator does exactly what its name suggests. Though creating an animation takes time, as you still have to create each frame of your cartoon masterpiece, it’s fun and accessible. It’s also free, so go and get animating

Mac: Don’t be fooled by the name - TrailRunner caters for more than those who just fancy a jog with a difference. TrailRunner is a well thought-out and crafted application for anyone who’s on the move whether hiking, running cycling or looking for directions. The aim of TrailRunner is to be the ultimate exercise partner.

iPhone: If you’re looking for a popular and elegant Twitter client for iPhone then look no further than TweetDeck. TweetDeck displays everything that’s going on on Twitter in a highly organized way. As with the PC and Mac versions, TweetDeck for iPhone uses a system of columns to make it easy to track who’s doing what.

Fed up of waiting for the Windows Mobile Marketplace to open its doors? Then use this time to check out the best of the existing apps for Pocket PC and Smartphone devices. Microsoft’s new mobile app store will launch with 600 applications but we shouldn’t forget that there’s already a ton available to download now that will power up your mobile experience. Here are 20 that I strongly recommend you to take a look at.

fring -Ultra-handy way to chat over IM or Skype while you’re sat on the bus

Nimbuzz - Another stellar instant messaging and VoIP app for Windows Mobile

Spb Mobile Shell - treat yourself to a much cooler and more powerful front-enda

Opera Mobile - Quite simply, the best way to browse the Web on a mobile phone

Google Maps - Who needs an expensive sat-nav system when you’ve got good old Google?

Kaspersky Mobile Security - Probably the most complete security tool for Windows Mobile

TCMP - Media player with enough guts to handle a massive range of formats

Skype for Pocket PC - Save yourself a heck of a lot of money on phone calls

vTap - Turn on the tap to a deluge of online videos

Facebook for Windows Mobile - Never lose touch with your friends. Ever Read the rest of this entry »