Google Toolbar has been recently updated - only the Internet Explorer version, though - and now includes an efficient Translate feature that will make web browsing easier, even in those websites you can’t understand. The new Translate feature is displayed as one more button in Google Toolbar, and one click is enough to make it detect the language of the web page you’re currently visiting and translate to the language you’ve set as default in the toolbar’s configuration menu.

Google Toolbar works surprisingly well, although the quality of the resulting translation depends on the language pair, and is never going to be as reliable as a translation done by a professional translator. The good thing about it is that it keeps on translating pages as you browse the site, and if you often translate from and to the same languages, Google Toolbar will remember your settings and translate web pages without having to click anywhere. The Translate feature supports 41 different languages and will soon be offered in Google Toolbar for Firefox as well.

But what if you don’t want to install a toolbar? There are other ways to turn foreign texts in something you can more or less understand. One of them is Google’s Language Tools, where you can paste text fragments for immediate translation or type in a web URL to obtain a complete web page translated to the language of your choice, while keeping the original design and layout as much as possible. Another option is using translation software, like the well-respected Babylon.

If you prefer online tools, you can check ProZ.com, where professional translators can solve your doubts, or IATE, a powerful online dictionary with support for all European languages that’s mainly focused on technical terms. Finally, I’d recommend WordReference as an excellent online dictionary with support for six languages, an active user community willing to help you and a special app for the iPhone / iPod Touch.

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.

Since first trying Spotify earlier this year I’ve become a firm convert and even more so now that they’ve introduced some handy little features to enhance the listening experience. If you haven’t been using the service long, you may be unaware of everything that Spotify can do. Here are a selection of tips from sharing links to searching by record label to help you get even more out of the app:

Link To Your Favourite Track Moments

Want to share your favourite guitar riff or solo with a friend? Spotify allows you to link to a specific moment in a track with a little trick. While you are listening to a song, simply go to the Edit menu and select “Copy”. Then just add “%23″ with the time in the song that you want to share e.g. http://open.spotify.com/track/4caRcqZl3JyrxwhgV5HGQ8%23.

Share Tracks in Facebook or Delicious

You can now share tracks to Facebook or Delicious simply by right-clicking on a track and selecting the “Share to” option.

See What The World Is Listening To

To see what you, your country or Spotify users worldwide have been listening to most, click on “Home” in Spotify and then select the “Top Lists” tab. Clicking on the tab allows you to select top lists from around the world which is an interesting way to assess music tastes in other countries or see which artists you might be missing out on. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

iPhone: If you’re a fan of console soccer games and have been waiting for a decent one to come to iPhone then get straight to the App Store because X2 Football 2009 is here. This excellent football game looks and plays a lot like Pro Evolution Soccer and FIFA. It contains loads of international teams, all with real players, and a control system that is as intuitive as a console.

Windows:  Being safe online requires a few different applications: anti-virus, firewall, email filter and more. But you can also have them all together in a single app with Norton 360. This comprehensive security suite protects youfrom any possible online threats, while keeping your system fully optimized and your data safe thanks to automatic backup copies.

Mac: Fed up of trying to bring all your video content together? Miro (formerly known as Democracy Player and now updated to version 2.0.5) is one of the best internet TV apps out there aggregating content from Hulu to YouTube. Miro means you don’t have to visit separate sites to keep-up with your favorite content.

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]

The Web is full of handy software applications that can contribute to make your life a bit easier. Whatever your need is, it’ll probably take you only a few minutes of Googling to find a suitable program for it. But if you look further, you’ll see there are other applications the aim of which is not precisely to be useful and efficient. In fact, there are a quite a few of these useless programs that seem to have been created for no reason at all - or at least, for no sane reason. Here are some examples I found on the Web, though I’m sure you’ll know many more.

Alien Communicator - Believe or not, ‘the truth is out there’. And if you want to find it, you better start contacting aliens right now. When you run this tool, aliens will be able to communicate telepathically with you and leave messages by controlling the number generation capabilities of your PC.

Voice Lie Detector - If you think your partner or your kids are not completely sincere, you need a lie detector. This program uses an old algorithm to detect voice stress, an unmistakable signal that will enable you to discover if you’re being lied to.

Parrot Trainer - So you have a parrot, but can’t be bothered to train it by yourself? Let your PC do the hard work for you! This app repeats the same sound over and over again until your parrot learns them by heart. According to the developer, you can also use to nag your kids, husband, wife… What’s more, it comes with four sound samples recorded by the developer himself. Read the rest of this entry »

President Obama seems to have a pretty low opinion of video games, and has mentioned them three times recently. He said it was important  that children, ’step away from the video games and spend more time playing outside.’ Maybe that’s a fair point, but the US government has never shown any adult understanding of video games, just kneejerk tabloid reactions.

Do games offer anything more than teaching kids violent or unsocial behaviour? I don’t believe they do either, so I asked around to see what other people thought they had learned from games…

Here’s some of what we came up with:

1: A repeated claim is that they have taught people patience! Not everyone plays patiently, but if, for example you ever played something like Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins, you’ll know that you really need it if you want to complete some games.

2: Reaction times and hand-eye coordination are obviously necessary for lots of games.

3: Problem analysis & creative thinking. Puzzle, adventure and strategy games often require a lot of thought. Have a go at Portal, and you’ll see how games can really challenge you to think differently.

4: One person cited Finances & resource management, as something they’d learnt from games. I can see how that’s possible, but have to admit they have never had that effect on me…

5: Computer literacy. Essential in today’s world, and I’m sure many people of my generation at least got started with computer skills through games. From messing around with Basic on the Commodore 64, to optimizing PCs in the early 90s, games were and are a motivation for learning about your computer in ways that Microsoft Excel never will be.

6: Driving. People had mixed things to say about driving, that they learnt about driving theory from games and also that games taught them they should never drive! I like driving games, because I could never drive like I do virtually on real roads.

Of course, another matter is whether this should be an issue at all. Paintings, movies and music aren’t required to be useful beyond being art. Video games are perhaps getting closer to being considered works of art, but until that happens the media is likely to continue their focus on worries about their negative effects, while ignoring any positive effects they might have.

Do games teach people anything else useful?

After reading dozens of articles about the wonders of Ubuntu and hearing some of my workmates constantly praising it, I was so curious to test it for myself that I couldn’t help it: I’ve downloaded the latest version of this popular Linux distro from their official website and I’m just about to install it. I want to see it with my own eyes and check if Ubuntu really deserves all those kind words. I plan to be using Ubuntu for a few days, not only to test it as an operating system, but also to test myself and see if I can manage to accomplish the most basic tasks (browsing the web, downloading software, blogging, listening to music, editing photos…) in a completely new operating system. If you’re also curious about Ubuntu, get ready because the trip is about to start!

They say that a thousand mile journey starts with a single step and in this case, our first step is obviously installing Ubuntu. After downloading the Ubuntu 9.04 ISO file, burn it to a CD with your favorite burning app, following these instructions if necessary. Insert the newly recorded CD into the CD drive and restart your system so that it boots from the CD drive and launches the installation. You may have to modify the boot-up sequence on your system to do this.

The first step is choosing the language used for installation. Note that this will also be the default language for the system once Ubuntu is installed. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Since switching to Mac, I’ve abandoned almost all of the programs that I used on Windows with the exception of Microsoft Word. This is mainly because Word is so widely used by others that I’ve effectively been “forced” to install it even though I hardly use any other application in Microsoft Office. This is annoying for two main reasons: Office is expensive and takes up over 500MB of my hard drive. However, there are a selection of free and highly accomplished alternative word processing applications for Mac, some of which not only handle Word documents, but that you may even find improve on Word itself.

Writer Part of OpenOffice which is a cross platform multilingual Java based office suite that’s designed as a free replacement for Microsoft Office. Writer is the word processing component and allows you to open and edit Word documents (including .docx), export to PDF and even use it as a WYSIWYG editor for creating web pages. Some prefer to install NeoOffice which has taken OpenOffice and customised the interface for Mac.

AbiWord A better solution than Writer for those working on slower Macs. Like Writer, it allows you to open Word documents, save to .doc format and export to both PDF and HTML. The disadvantage is that it doesn’t support .docx format and may sometimes alter the formatting in Word documents so that they appear a bit messed-up. For those working on older Macs though, it’s an excellent alternative.

Bean Designed specifically for Macs, Bean is based on Cocoa so it looks great. Bean can also open and save in Word format but note that it can’t handle footnotes, images or pre-defined styles and is only partially compatible with Word’s file formats. In addition, it doesn’t work with .docx, hyperlinks are imported as text and exporting of tables doesn’t work well. However, in terms of speed and interface, Bean is excellent.

Google Docs Google’s online office suite is handy replacement for opening and saving Word documents. All you need is a Google account to get started. Google Docs features a clean interface, autosave feature, spell check and it can save your documents either to your account, publish it as a web page or automatically e-mail it as a Word document. You can even invite others to collaborate with you on a document.

ThinkFree Online The ThinkFreeOffice suite isn’t free but it’s online counterpart ThinkFree Online is. It only allows you to open and view any kind of Office document, including .doc and .docx and then embed, convert, share, upload or search them for free. You can perform basic functions for free but you have to sign-up for extra features such as the offline file management “Power Tool”.

A while ago I wrote a post about how to find album covers on the Internet and import them to iTunes, so that when you browse your music library - either on the PC or on your iPod - you can enjoy colorful artwork instead of those boring gray music notes. Today, I’m focusing on something that will also contribute to make your music collection a bit better: searching the Web for the lyrics to your favorite songs and importing them directly into the files’ ID tags, all with a minimum of effort.

The trick is using LyricsFetcher,  a handy free app that scans your iTunes or Windows Media Player library and searches the web for the lyrics of all the songs you have - or just the ones you select. The first time you launch it, LyricsFetcher may seem to be a bit slow but that’s just because it needs to load your whole music library before doing anything else. From that moment on, finding the lyrics to all your favorite songs will be a piece of cake. Read the rest of this entry »

In case you don’t know, OnSoftware is on Twitter: so if you want to keep up with what’s going on here, follow us! Find us here at twitter/softonic_en.

If you don’t use Twitter, why not give it a go? It’s a surprisingly good way to stay up to date with whatever you’re interested in! And if you follow us, we’ll follow you back - meaning you can send us suggestions, tips and software questions that we’ll answer here on the blog.

Hunch.com is a recently launched ‘decision engine’, which has got quite a bit of attention due to one of the company being Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake.

Microsoft’s heavily covered Bing has been called a decision engine - by Microsoft - which I don’t understand as it’s just a search engine. I think it’s a good search engine, for what it’s worth, but not a decision engine. Hunch is what you’d expect a decision engine to be. You ask a question like,

“Should I get an iPhone or a Pre?” and it helps you make a decision. In theory.

It’s still growing, not all questions work, and it’s very much a US site - English people have to remember to say vacation, not holiday! I thought I’d put Hunch through it’s paces and see if I agreed with it. To my first question, above, Hunch said I was 99% in favour of an iPhone. I tried Xbox 360 versus Playstation 3, and was told I was 60% in favour of an Xbox. That’s lucky, as I’ve already got one.

These questions weren’t so hard, though. I could make my own mind up about purchases, so I moved on to more important life issues. First up, “What should I eat for lunch?”. I wasn’t too impressed with Hunch’s answers. It suggested Indian or Chines food, and Pasta. It might as well have suggested I wanted “food” for lunch. I want specifics!

Hunch asks you a series of questions to get to know you better, but it still doesn’t know me that well, so perhaps I should forgive it not being specific.  However, my second important question was “Should I get married?” Personally, I don’t think so: I’m a 21st century citizen, and don’t need such arcane public institutions! However:

…apparently I’m wrong! Should I trust a decision engine more than my own brain? I think I’ll buy an iPhone, go and eat some ‘food’ and think about it.

If you’ve never performed a backup of your hard drive, then you’re risking potential disaster if it fails or that “on” switch simply doesn’t work one day for some reason. We all come-up with poor excuses for not doing so - our external drive is full, we don’t have time, we simply forgot etc. but CrashPlan is an application that definitely leaves no room for excuses. These are some of the ways you can backup with CrashPlan:

• Online Encrypted and unlimited size hard drive backups online for a modest fee
• PC/Mac Backup your hard drive to another PC or Mac and vice versa
• External Drive Backups performed in real time to USB and Firewire drives
• Friends You can even select a friend over the net to backup your files to

Best of all, not only does it work across platforms and is free but using CrashPlan couldn’t be simpler.  I setup CrashPlan on a Mac and within a minute, a backup of my entire hard drive was being performed to my USB drive. Note that the program is only free for personal use (they’ve got a special CrashPlan Pro for companies) although it is supported by a few ads. Read the rest of this entry »