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.

There’s nothing more time consuming and tedious as cutting and pasting words into search engines. If you have the Google Toolbar installed in Firefox, do you know that you can create your own custom searches simply by right clicking on a word and selecting the site you’d like to search? Here’s how to:

1. Right click on a search box that you’d like to integrate with Firefox. This could be absolutely any search-box on any webpage of your choosing.

2. Go to the bottom of the context menu and select Generate Custom Search…

3. In the Add Search Button dialog that appears, add the name of the search site (in this case “Softonic”) and add the URL of the site. Click Add. Read the rest of this entry »

Windows: If you ever come across an online video you’d like to keep it with you, NetVideoHunter is the app you need. This handy Firefox extension lets you save embedded videos from websites like Youtube, Dailymotion and Metacafe among others, and save them right to your hard drive in FLV. It includes a built-in video player and can handle multiple downloads.

BlackBerry: If you’ve already got bored of your BlackBerry Storm and are wishing you’d bought an iPhone instead then fear not because iPhoneishStorm Theme will give it a passing resemblance to Apple’s legendary mobile device. The theme completely overhauls your home screen, adding a series of iPhone-style icons, as well as a dock at the bottom of the screen.

Mac: If you think that Apple¡s iChat is a bit limited, then you might find Chax gives it that little something extra. Chax is a collection of minor modifications and additions that extends iChat and makes using it far more pleasurable. The preferences alone add several new features to iChat, then there are all the other benefits, which include a unified contact list and growl notification.

Juggling the ever increasing number of social networks and media sites can be a time consuming pain. Logging into lost of different accounts, you can have a very busy browser before you’ve don anything constructive. I thought I’d look at the current range of solutions to this. I’ll start with some honesty: At the moment there is no one good solution, but there are some which do a reasonable job.

Notable stand alone applications AlertThingy, TweetDeck and Skimmer all offer to pull together your social networks. Skimmer is quite interesting, but it’s very much a beta product, and is the only one with Blogger support, but doesn’t feel finished! It’s something to keep your eye on. TweetDeck and AlertThingy are much slicker, although both are focussed on Twitter and Facbook. Both work very well for Twitter - you don’t miss any of the Twitter experience doing through either of these clients. Facebook is a mixed bag - you can’t do everything you can on the website from any of these clients. AlertThingy offers many more social networks, and they both look good, so TweetDeck loses out just by being a bit too limited.

Firefox has similar add-ons. These give you the more or less the same features as the stand alone apps, but are integrated into Firefox. The most flexible we’ve found is Yoono. It’s a bit of a monster, but can bring Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Myspace and more into the same space. On top of that it features instant messaging from Microsoft Messenger, Google Talk and Yahoo chat, plus the option to add feeds from your favourite websites. The amount of stuff can get a bit overwhelming, but you can choose exactly what you do and don’t want. The Facebook feed also gives you your news feed, not just status updates, which is great.

Online services like Zenbe bring your email together with Facebook, Twitter and more. I found this less comfortable than using either a Firefox add-on or a stand alone application. What is clear at the moment is that no one has a perfect solution. Everything I’ve seen can handle Twitter easily, but Facebook always feels like ‘Facebook lite’, and all of these social network aggregators suffer from becoming cluttered.  I am looking forward to Skimmer’s further development, as its Blogger support could make it the most complete package, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Windows: Fancy a pool game? Now you don’t need an expensive table that takes up half the space in your flat. PoolStars is a fun online game that lets you play pool and snooker right from your computer. Practice on your own or play against other people from all over the world in a nice, realistic 3D environment. And when you’re ready take part in a tournament!

Mac: Foxmarks is a free add-on for Firefox that syncs and backs up your bookmarks across multiple computers and more. Foxmarks for Safari now brings the same benefits to Safari. The result is that wherever you have Safari, you have your bookmarks with you at any time. What’s more, you never need to worry about losing your bookmarks again because Foxmarks always holds a backup of them on its servers.

iPhone: There was a time when the pinnacle of home entertainment was guiding a ball out of a wooden maze without it falling down any of the holes. Labyrinth Lite Edition recreates this fascinating challenge on your iPhone and actually proves to be one of the more enjoyable games on the platform. There are ten free courses included in Labyrinth Lite Edition, each offering a unique challenge.

iPhone: Looking for a bit of fun on your iPhone? Try Bike or Die 2 Lite, which puts you in control of a bouncy BMX on which you need to complete a number of obstacles. There are five levels included in this free Lite version, in which you get to perform jumps, traverse icy hills, pull off mid-air flips and even cycle along a ceiling!

Mac: If you’re used to either iCal or Google Calendar then it’s a shame to have to choose between the two. Both are great organizational tools in different ways. Calaboration lets you have it all by allowing you to keep both iCal and Google Calendar in sync so you never need to choose between using one or the other again. And it works absolutely seamlessly.

Windows: The wait is over. Internet Explorer 8 is finally here, with a bunch of new features and advanced functionality to make your Internet browsing experience even better. Try the new Accelerators, Web Slices and InPrivate Mode, and see why this new version of Internet Explorer is a significant step forward for Microsoft.

I have to admit, I don’t use iCal as much as I should do. That’s partly because I’m not big on calendars and agendas but mainly because Google Calendar came along and trumped it. Since I spend half of my life online, using an online calendar is no big deal to me and I’m hardly bothered about a breach of privacy whereby someone could discover my grandma’s birthday. However, in recent times I’ve come to discover various plug-ins and add-ons for iCal that mean I can have the best of both worlds and more. Here are my 5 tips for getting the most out of iCal:

Calaboration An essential for any Google Calendar user. Calaboration syncs iCal with Google Calendar so no matter which you use to organise your life, they’ll always be in sync. It simply requires your Google account username and password to get up and running and from then on, every entry you make is synced in real time.

YAI (You Are Invited) If you work with Outlook like me then this is another essential. YAI allows you to translate and transfer appointment and meeting invites to iCal from Outlook, Google Calendar and Zimbra. This prevents you needing to use Outlook’s calendar and iCal at the same time. Invites appear in iCal’s invitation pane and you can also import pending invites that you’ve already received but want to add to iCal.

eBaytoiCal Why not use iCal to make money? If you’re a big eBay user and you’re forever missing auction deadlines, then this is the plugin for you. Quite simply, if you’re browsing an item on eBay, eBaytoiCal creates an event in iCal for the auction date. It sets a reminder 15 minutes before the end of the auction with the name of the event and the URL of the item you’re viewing. The downside? It only works with Safari at the moment.

iCal Events For all those dashboard addicts, iCal Events allows you to see what’s coming-up in your schedule without even opening iCal. You can only see events up to two weeks in advance but that’s enough not to give you any excuses! By hovering your mouse over the color of the calendar you want to view, you can also see more details about each event.

Today Designed to give a comprehensive overview of your daily events and tasks without having to open iCal all the time. Today allows you to keep track of what’s on your agenda for any given day and it syncs with iCal automatically. In this way, your agenda, events and tasks are available all in one tidy interface. It can however be prone to a few bugs now and then so use with care.

Windows: Even if you don’t like browser toolbars , you should definitely give Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer a try. It gives you instant access to all of Google’s services, plus other useful tools. The latest version, Google Toolbar 6 Beta, includes enhanced search suggestions, a handy new tab page with thumbnails to your favorite sites and an awesome desktop launcher.

Pocket PC: Microsoft has been busy of late ramping up its Windows Live offering, and now all of these communication tools are available in one place on your Pocket PC. Windows Live for Mobile provides you with instant access to Windows Live tools from within your device. It’s designed to make it easier for you to stay in touch with your contacts on Hotmail and Windows Live Spaces, as well as performing web searches and syncing your contacts.

Mac: If you’re not a big fan of uTorrent then Transmission is one of the best alternative torrent clients on Mac thanks to a beautiful interface and a simple set of intuitive features. This new version brings many more improvements to an already solid release. You can set different priority levels for torrents, establish stall limit times, limit download speeds and much more.

One of the things that first made Firefox such a popular web browser was that it was so developer-friendly. Including features that web developers loved meant that they were more likely to use Firefox and, in turn, more likely to develop for maximum compatibility with Mozilla’s browser.

One such feature is the Page Info window which, until the launch of Firefox 3, included two extra options: the Links and Forms tabs, which provided a wealth of data but saved on the hassle of trawling through the page’s source. For some reason, Mozilla removed these options in version 3… and though this has been annoying me for months, I’ve only actually bothered to look for a solution today. As you might expect, the fix is quick, easy, and comes in the form of an extension.

Simply install the ‘Link and Forminfo’ add-on from Mozilla’s site, restart Firefox and check the Page Info on any page you like. Those handy Links and Forms tabs will be back! Hooray!

WordPress is the best blogging platform out there in my opinion. Nothing else comes close in terms of ease of use, sophistication, customisation and general all round elegance. You feel like you’re working with a professional tool and yet it’s all for free. However, one big downside is that WordPress can be notoriously fussy when it comes to embedding video. The reason, as Robin Good explains, is that:

Unless the embeddable code is specifically designed for Wordpress, once you have placed and published the code, things tend to run havoc: when you edit the post the embedded code is not there anymore, the published page breaks up the layout, the first time is there but not the second one… you know well how it goes.

MSNBC is a good example. Although finally they now provide embedding code with their video clips, the code doesn’t work in WordPress - it simply disappears when you add it whether you’re in Visual or Code view. There are solutions to these problems but it depends on how your blog is hosted. If you have your own domain to host your blog e.g. “www.yourdomain name.com” you can download plugins for the problem and upload them to your plugins folder. However, if it’s hosted by WordPress e.g. “www.mydomain.wordpress.com” you can’t do this and you have to rely on external sites to provide a solution.

If you have your own hosting service then try EmbedIt. Once uploaded, the plugin allows you to create a custom tag HTML1 and paste the code you want to embed it. Just write [HTML1] in your post where you want to embed the code in Visual or Code view.

Another possibility is Video Embedder which provides video support fora far greater number of video sites than WordPress normally does such as Revver, DailyMotion and Break. Where you want to insert the video, simply type the name of the site in parenthesis with the ID of the video in between such as “[videosite]f19GKcZU1vg[/videosite]”. If it’s a Flash video that you’re having trouble embedding, and you know a little about XHTML but not enough ot fix it, then try XHTML Video Embed which also ensures videos posted to your site are XHTML validated cleanly and securely.

If your blog is hosted on WordPress, then your options are very limited. In fact, unless you know how to tinker with the HTML code until the video works, your best bet is probably Vodpod. Vodpod alows you to add a button to your browser tool bar that you can click whenever you find a site with video that you’d like to post to your blog.

It then translates the code into something WordPress friendly and sends it to your blog instantly in a separate post. From there you can copy it into the post you are writing or you can even publish directly onto your blog from Vodpod. It doesn’t work for all video players but it’s one of the few solutions that blogs hosted on WordPress can turn to.

Let’s hope that in the next major release of WordPress, the developers will finally address this issue so that WordPress becomes much more video friendly.

I’ll start off by saying that I’m very stuck in my ways when it comes to Google. I have three main search preferences that I just have to set on any computer I’m using: use Google.com (although I’m in Spain, I hate the results that come up with a .es query); display 100 results per page; open results in a new tab.

As far as I’m concerned, these preferences are essential. So I was pretty annoyed a couple of months back when my Google preferences started to ‘disappear’ about once a week. This was happening in Firefox (pretty much the only browser I use for day-to-day work) and it was happening at work (Windows XP) and at home (OS X).  For a while I wondered what could be causing the problem - I never tell Firefox to delete my cookies when ending a session - then I decided to look for a way of fixing this annoying bug so I’d never again have to go through the hassle of resetting my search preferences.

The best solution I found is the Firefox addon CustomizeGoogle which includes a feature aptly named ‘Sticky Google Preferences’. This feature allows you to ‘force’ Google to use your preferred language and locale, SafeSearch settings, number of results per page, opening results in a new window and query suggestions. Choose your optimal settings and you can then delete your Google cookies as often as you like without losing your configuration.

In addition, CustomizeGoogle lets you tinker with plenty of other Google tools and features, including optimising search results, hiding ads, forcing secure connections,  custom site filters and much more. It’s a great add-on and well worth a look if you’re interested in honing your daily Google experience to perfection.

In the film Minority Report, Tom Cruise waves his hands about in front of a giant computer screen in a vision of how we will use and control computers in the future. FluidTunes, might not be quite on that level but it does allow you to control iTunes solely by using your hands or whatever else you might choose to wave in front of your iSight camera.

It’s an interesting application that works with varying degrees of success depending on how you calibrated it from the start and how near or far you are away from your iSight camera.

On initial setup, it seems pretty impressive. “Wow”, I thought, “I’m actually controlling the Mac with my hands” although it soon became apparent that the results could be very erratic. As you try to scroll towards one album or another, you inevitably scroll way past it because the controls are so sensitive. Looking for Terence Trent Derby one swipe too far with my right hand ended up landing me on Nat King Cole - that’s one hell of a jump in my iTunes collection.

The important bit is the initial collaboration test. It basically involves waving your hands like a lunatic until the play button lights-up to inform you that calibration is complete.

The problem is FluidTunes magnifies whatever your iSight camera is seeing so you have to move considerably back from your Mac for your hand movements to register properly. The result is that you can end up sitting 3 feet away from your Mac waving your hands around like you’re trying to taxi a plane onto a runway.

In the end, it seemed to me that FluidTunes has a mind of its own and it would take the subtle hand gestures of a black belt in Tai Chi to stop it from selecting whatever album it wanted and playing it. Still, it’s the closest you may ever come to being Tom Cruise - if the prospect has ever grabbed you.

Unity is a cool plugin for playing online games.  I’ve never seen 3D graphics this good in my browser before, so here are a few games and toys that will undoubtedly impress.

For relaxation purposes, point yourself towards Jetpack Brontosaurus.  This is pretty abstract and really attractive: who hasn’t dreamed of flying a brontosaurus around with a jetpack? There are five levels to play, each with a series of missions to complete, like collecting fruit and flying through rings. It reminds me of Thrust, but much slower, in 3D, and with a Brontosaurus, rather than a spaceship. PilotWings, the old SuperNintendo game, is probably a better reference point for this, as both games share a similar pace.

Also gentle and fun, and even cuter than a brontosaurus, is the 20 level TumbleDrop. This is a 2d physics based puzzle game, where you have to remove objects under your star carefully so it lands on a platform instead of tumbling into the sea.  Don’t try this at work; you won’t be able to stop!

There are a few cool action games too. My favorite at the moment is Downhill Bowling. Why in the world no one thought of this before is incredible, because this is a really great idea with a ton of of replay value, as you’ll want to keep improving your strike rate down the courses. If you register, you can leave your score on the online scoreboards, making this a very competitive game.

For a dose of mindless violence,  try another game I feel I’ve been waiting to play my whole life - Off-Road Velociraptor Safari. Take control of a velociraptor driving a 4×4, then chase down other raptors and run them over. It’s a silly concept but very satisfying, with excellent physics, nice graphics and good crunchy sound effects.

I also found a very retro-futuristic 3d Tron-like game called Traces of Illumination, and a space shooter called Manta, so it looks like Unity is taking browser games to the next level

One of the great things about blogs is that they’re often a great source of the latest news before it’s officially been announced. Time is therefore of the essence when blogging and one way to significantly speed-up your blogging response time is by adding a blogging widget to your dashboard. Mac users are spoilt for choice in this respect - widgets exists for just about every major blogging platform including Blogger and WordPress. Here are 5 of the best free blogging widgets for Mac OS to help you break the story first:

Blogger Widget

Google only offer 2 widgets for Mac - one for Gmail and the other for their user friendly Blogger blogging platform. This simple widget allows you to write text and publish it directly although annoyingly, it doesn’t allow you to add links or images.

WordPressDash

WordPress fans can use this simple widget to post and publish text although again, no images or linking is possible. You can however select which category you want to post under.

Dashalytics

If you are constantly monitoring the performance of your blog then Dashalytics offers you instant access to Google Analytics stats. Note that you need to have registered for a Google Analytics account first. Each widget can only monitor one site at a time but you can have multiple sites open to monitor multiple widgets. Read the rest of this entry »

Windows: Have you ever thought of using all that generous Gmail space for online storage? Gspace is the FON friendly site that provides free online storage to access your files everywhere. Gspace turns the 2GB of your Gmail account into free online storage. With Gspace you can manage unlimited Gmail accounts to store all type of files within its simple, user friendly interface.

Blackberry: If you’re the kind of person who likes to keep up with the latest news then perhaps Journal Bar should be the next app to install on your Blackberry. The program automatically downloads the latest news, weather, and stock information for you to peruse whenever you like. As a result, you don’t need to pay for Internet charges just to read the news.

Mac: If you own a Mac, chances are that you’ve already discovered the simple joy of image organisation that is iPhoto. While not exactly built for the professional photographer, iPhoto’s packed with enough features to keep anyone from beginners to pro-amateurs happy, and all in a clear, easy-to-use interface. iPhoto 7.1.5 Update includes enhancements to the way iPhoto offers print services for books, cards and calendars ordered through the program.