Windows: Are you a Firefox user? If so, you’ll be happy to know your favorite browser has been updated. Firefox 3.5 includes exciting new features such as a private browsing mode, an enhanced Awesome bar, better support for embedded videos, more powerful tools to manage your browsing history and a new engine that makes websites load even faster.
Symbian: There are plenty of applications for taking screen captures on your PC, but what happens if you want to grab an image of your phone’s displa? Well, grab a copy Best Screen Snap and your problems will be solved. Best Screen Snap is specifically designed to take screenshots of applications installed on your phone, which you can then send to your PC.
Mac: Ask anyone who’s used a Mac for a long period of time and they’ll tell you that Cocktail (now updated to version 4.4) still remains one of the best all round admin tools out there. Cocktail can do all your essential maintenance tasks from clearing your cache to controlling sleep times. There’s nothing new in Cocktail that you can’t do in Terminal but Cocktail makes it so much easier through its GUI.
Switching to a whole new browser is a tough decision, but the launch of updated versions for both Opera, Safari and Firefox may have encouraged you to take the step. In that case, you probably need a way to keep all those precious bookmarks safe in the transition from one browser to another.
Most browsers nowadays include internal tools that let you export bookmarks to a standalone file and then open that from the new browser, or even import all data from the old browser right after installation. But in case none of these solutions work for you, here are a few apps that can help you sync bookmarks across different web browsers.
Xmarks - This excellent bookmarking tool, previously known as Foxmarks, started as Firefox-compatible only but can now be used with Internet Explorer and Safari as well. Xmarks not only enables you to sync and backup bookmarks, but also displays additional information about the websites you browse and enhances your web searches.
AM-DeadLink - Using Opera? Then this is the tool you need. With AM-DeadLink you can manage bookmarks from Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. The program also does a bit of housecleaning, by removing links to websites that are no longer available and recovering lost favicons.
Transmute - This is probably the most powerful bookmark synchronizer out there. It lets you sync, convert and organize bookmarks from the most popular web browsers, including the ones I mentioned before and also Google Chrome and Flock. it also helps you keep your bookmark collection clean by removing duplicates.
Google Earth has one of the liveliest user/contributor communities around, and there always seems to be people putting the program to new uses. This weekend sees the start of the Tour De France, and if you’d like an interactive map of the grueling route, try this Google Earth file. Zoom in over a mountainous part, and use tilt to get a good idea of just how painful parts of the race will be! There’s an extended description of the route at creator Thomas Vergouwen’s blog.
All you need to do to view it is open Google Earth, and download the file. Select ‘open with Google Earth’, and you should see the red route with various flags and icons stuck over France. Check back at Thomas’ blog to see if there are real time updates available, so you can track progress on your Google Earth map. Check out this impressive YouTube video flypast of one of the mountain stage:
Firefox 3.5 finally released [Softonic review]
China delays launch of new Internet censorship program [Guardian]
Firefox and other apps possible on Android [Read Write Web]
China (again!) bans ‘gold farming’ sweatshops [Information Week]
Pirate Bay changes hands [TorrentFreak]
Microsoft to charge more for Windows 7 in Europe [ComputerWorld]
How are your reactions this friday? They’ll need to be razor sharp if you want to score highly on Zodiac Reactor. It’s a simple timing-reaction puzzle game, where you have to hit one of four keys at the right moment as a corresponding element approaches the Zodiac Reactor. It’s a simple idea, but if you panic for a split second and lose concentration, you are done for. It takes a minute to grasp, but the introductory tutorial is great. Check it out!
Mac: As the popularity of the Mac platform increases, so too does the risk of malicious attacks. Doorstop X offers a reliable solution, providing an extra layer of protection for your Mac. The firewall has been specifically designed with Leopard users in mind, and features an easy-to-use interface, which displays security information and settings in a series of window panes.
iPhone: TweetDeck is one of the most popular desktop Twitter clients out there - and at long last an iPhone version of the app has arrived. It hasn’t half bad either. TweetDeck for iPhone 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 for you to track who’s doing what.
Windows: Singing along to your favorite bands is fun, provided you know the lyrics. And if you don’t, let LyricsFetcher do the hard work for you. This app scans your music library in iTunes or Windows Media Player, finds the lyrics to all your songs in the blink of an eye, and pastes the information directly into the files’s ID tags.
You could waste quite a lot of friday with Barbarian Onslaught, a 19 level 2D hack and slash game. As a nameless barbarian, you must roam the lands searching for the secret of steel. You won’t be bored along the way, as there are hordes of mosters and undead-type folk hell bent on removing your head. Make sure to remove theirs first… It’s all really cartoony, and the variety of attacks and finishing moves makes this an enjoyably gruesome experience!
The web browser has slowly evolved from being just one more program on our hard drive to becoming almost the only tool you’ll ever need, thanks to the popularity of web apps. This is why it’s important to keep it perfectly updated, and tailor it according to your needs and tastes. One of these small customization details is the browser home page, that is, the first web page that loads when launching the browser; something our reader David seemed to have some problems with:
I want to delete the Google search page from my Firefox home page. Don’t quite know how it got there in the first place but I want to delete it. Please advise how I can do this and thanks!
I must say I don’t really understand what David meant by ‘deleting’ the home page, but assuming that what he wants to do is changing the home page, it’s quite easy: simply open Firefox, go to Tools > Options and in the Main tab, enter the address of your preferred website in the ‘Home Page‘ text field.
Besides this basic functionality, there are other tricks you can use to spice up your browser home page. One of them is opening several webpages at the same when you launch the browser. All you have to do is entering the addresses of all the web pages you want to use as home pages in the same field described before, separating them with vertical bars.
An easier way to configure multiple home pages without having to type that much is opening all the web pages you want to use, then go to Tools > Options and click the ‘Use Current Pages‘ button. Read the rest of this entry »
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of years, you probably know what Twitter is. What’s more, you may have been using it for a while now, to share links, keep in touch with friends and follow the ups and downs of a few celebrities.
But besides its main purpose as microblogging platform, and thanks to the Twitter API, Twitter has become also the ground base for a wide variety of apps and services, created by hundreds of developers worldwide. Thanks to this stream of creativity, Twitter is now much more than just a microblogging service. Here’s a small sample of everything you can do with Twitter - apart from exchanging 140-character long messages:
- TwitPic - Probably one of the most popular Twitter-based apps, TwitPic lets you easily share photos on Twitter. Simply upload the image to the TwitPic site and it’ll be automatically sent to your Twitter account.
- FileTwt - Lets you send files online via Twitter, up to 20 MB in size. Files are shared in either in your public timeline or in a private message addressed to only one person (which requires signing for a free account on the app’s website).
- TwitVid - It’s similar to TwitPic, only that it lets you share videos instead. TwitVid supports multiple video sharing - in playlists - and can also capture the image source from your webcam.
- Twisten - With Twisten you can discover new music everyday. This app searches Twitter for music-related tweets and lets you listen to those songs on the spot. There are also links to download the MP3 from Amazon or iTunes.
- TwtJobs - Believe or not, Twitter can also help you get a job! Twtjobs lets you create and publish your “twitter resume”, or advertise a job post in Twitter. The 140-character limit can be quite challenging though.
- TwitterCal - If you use Google Calendar, you’re going to love this one: TwitterCal lets you create new tasks and appointments by sending direct messages to a specific Twitter account.
- TweetStats -Finally, a little nourishment for your ego: with TweetStats you can quickly generate statistics about your own Twitter account: how many tweets per hour do you send? Who do you retweet most?
According to Opera, today is the day the Web changes. Its new Unite service promises to radically extend what we do online. The basis of the new platform, which is built into the latest build of Opera 10, is to do away with Web servers owned by strangers and instead connect people on a computer-to-computer basis. The developer’s vague advert ( a candidate for the list of worst tech ads ever) fails to convey any of the real benefits of Unite, of which there are many.
Unite is designed to allow you to easily share you data, such as photos, music, notes - in fact, any file you have on your computer. You can share just with yourself (to access your work computer and home, for instance); with selected friends, family or colleagues; or with the whole world. What’s more, Unite works across any browser and even supports mobile browsers. This concept itself isn’t a new one - services such as LogMeIn and Laplink have been enabling remote PC access for years. In the case of Opera Unite it’s the way the service is implemented that makes it so special.
Opera Unite can be accessed from a tab on the side panel in the browser. The first thing you’ll need to do is create a free account with Unite. Once you’ve done this, you can start using the Unite ’services’, which are like mini-apps that allow you to perform certain tasks. There are six services pre-installed into the latest Opera 10 build, though obviously the company hopes that developers will embrace Unite and frantically start churning out new services. Here’s a look at what you get at the moment though: Read the rest of this entry »
Crane wars is an almost ready for release game from Flashbang studios, the quirky team behind Paper Moon, Off Road Velociraptor and Minotaur China Shop. You can play a beta 3 version of this browser game here. You control a crane at a construction site, and have to build tower blocks, while watching out for attacks from a neighbouring crane company. You can throw objects at the competition’s buildings, and they can do the same! The game is timed - your budget is constantly being drained, and when it runs out the game is over.
The controls are simple, but building your skyscrapers can be a bit fiddly, especially when someone’s throwing trucks at your creation! Like all of the games on Blurst, Crane Wars is compelling mainly because it’s a cool and ridiculous idea. It was originally scheduled for release today on the Blurst site, so if you don’t fancy playing the beta and want to wait, it shouldn’t be long… As with all Blurst games, you’ll need the Unity browser plug-in.
Little Wheel is a beautifully presented and animated point and click adventure. It’s relatively short, but really enjoyable. Little Wheel takes place in a robot world, which has lain dormant for 10,000 years dues to an accident that left the robots without power. Waking after a lightening strike, your little robot has to journey through the dormant city and bring it back to life. With its quirky, silent robot protagonist and simple though engaging gameplay, Little Wheel is the most charming browser game I’ve played.
A lot of people are beginning to talk about Opera’s special announcement planned for next week. A special page on the developer’s website states that at 9 a.m. this Tuesday, Opera will “reinvent the web”. But what could they be talking about?
Checking out the page’s source code [thanks to Pallab for this!] reveals this secret message:
This little teaser has also begun to show up on Twitter, along with the next part which continues:
“… to connect them together. To share things … #reinvent http://www.opera.com/freedom”
Our natural assumption when we saw all this was: Opera 10’s about to drop. That’d be great news and it’d just about explain a bit of viral hype building on Opera’s side. However, if we are looking at the release of version 10, Opera are being much more reticent than normal. Our request for a preview (which would normally be answered with a URL to download the final version under embargo) was answered with a cryptic message stating that Opera will be unveiling ‘a new technology‘ on Tuesday, and that there’ll be a live webcast.
Operawatch has plenty of interesting comments regarding what the exciting announcement might be (the least exciting of which would be a beta for the new version of Opera Mini - I mean, come on!). The most likely idea seems to be something to do with cloud computing (see the pic?) .
Our best guess is that Opera will announce that their new browser will feature a ubiquitous experience across devices and machines with everything possible (cookies, history, bookmarks and more) handled in the cloud. It’s difficult to imagine quite how far they’ll take server side technology, but looking at the company’s history, this is definitely the direction they’re heading in.
Got a better guess? Let us know….
One of the new features included in Microsoft Outlook 2007 is native support for RSS , which comes in quite handy because it allows you to manage email and feeds from one single application. But what happens if you’re still using Outlook 2003 - like me - or even older versions, and still would like to embed RSS feeds in Microsoft’s email client? The answer is RSS Popper: a useful Outlook plug-in developed by Paradisoft with which you can comfortably read your favorite feeds right on Outlook’s interface.
Once RSS Popper is installed, launch or restart Outlook and you’ll see a new toolbar. Click on RSS Popper > Edit Feeds and you’ll open a window where you can start adding your feeds straight away. RSS Popper brings some example feeds by default, but you may as well delete them if they’re not your cup of tea.
The good thing about RSS Popper is that it also features support for importing and exporting, which means you can import your complete feed collection in XML format and embed it directly in Outlook. RSS Popper will organize each feed into different folders - just like your email folders - and display selected items as if they were email messages.
RSS Popper can be configured to refresh feeds automatically according to a certain period of time, though you can also refresh them manually by clicking the correspondent button on the toolbar.
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