Today is a special day for any Apple fanboy out there. On April the 1st 1976, Apple Computers Inc was founded by Steve Jobs, Ronald Wayne and Steve Wozniak and the first ever Apple I personal computer kit was created in Steve Jobs’ parents’ living room. Since then, Apple has gone through many ups and downs of which memorable moments we remember Steve Jobs’ outing in 1985, his triumphant return in 1996 with the acquisition of NeXT by Apple, the release of the first Powerbook in 1991, the Apple Store in 1997, the iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007 and the Macbook Air in 2008.

Although Apple’s market share in terms of computers in no way matches that of PCs, it has managed to create such a powerful brand image that any announcement it makes is instantly reported on worldwide. Just look at the release of the iPhone at last year’s Macworld convention, followed by millions around the world. And with the iTunes Store and the iPod, Apple has turned into a major player in the digital music world. The next step for Apple is the mobile world and the initial success of the iPhone shows Apple is going in the right direction.

Apple do not seem to have prepared anything special for their 32nd birthday. We encourage you to go to the Mac page on Softonic and try out some programs to celebrate more than three decades of Apple computers.

Oh, and did we forget to mention that yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the creation of Mozilla?

So the end of February also saw the end of an era - the result of an announcement at the end of last year by AOL, the last owners of Netscape Navigator, that work and support on the project would officially end. The figures say it all - over the past decade, the once dominant browser has gone from a market share of 90% to just 0.6%. It may seem outdated and archaic now, but Netscape’s legacy for internet users is considerable - not least that from it emerged Firefox.

For those who remember the early days of the internet, they may even shed a tear at the news as Netscape Navigator will be the first browser through which they first accessed the amazing world of the internet. I remember at my university, it was the standard browser installed on all machines and although by today’s standards it was painfully slow, clunky and just plain boring, it did open up a whole new world and without doubt, set the blueprint from which the browsers of today developed.

Netscape was originally launched in 1994, the brainchild of Marc Andreessen who founded the Netscape Communications Corporation. By 2002, the browser’s user base had almost completely disappeared however as more innovative and browsers such as Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox started to dominate the market.

Netscape’s commercial history is quite interesting. Embracing the spirit of freedom that early pioneers of the internet encouraged, it actually started out as a free browser but within months of its launch, the makers presumably saw the massive demand and commercial potential it had and quickly reversed the decision making it free only for educational and research institutions. However, it was made available as an evaluation version after which people were merely encouraged to pay for it once they were satisfied. In the end, the company realised this was a fairly futile policy and decided to make it completely free with limited support and then eventually withdrew all support as demand was simply impossible to satisfy.

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Not many people may know it but on February 19th, Photoshop celebrated its 18th birthday. Yes, that’s 18 years of constant improvements in what has been and remains the best image editing application to this day. From the release of PhotoShop 1.0 to the latest version of Photoshop CS3, the program has always lead in terms of simplicity, powerful editing tools and new imaging possibilities. In what is much more than a coincidence, Adobe shipped new versions of both Photoshop and Lightroom this very 19th of February.

If you’re a real Photoshop fan or if you’re just curious about the story of Adobe’s image editing suite you can read up all you want on it, via John Nack on Adobe, who has a great post roundup of various blogs counting the history of Photoshop, from the evolution in features to the changes in its design. For one, I actually learned that the original icon wasn’t the famous eye, which you see in versions 1 to 7, but actually a 1hour photoshop, where people used to drop off their film rolls to get prints. The new icon, a more formal ‘Ps’, is much more minimalistic but blends in well with the line of other Adobe programs, making them all look like a periodic table of the elements. True, the pictures from back in the 90s really look dated, but you can quickly see the same logic and construction in the application throughout the years, the sign of a well built and solid program.

If you’re bored this weekend and the weather is wet and wild why not sit down and have a blast at a classic video game? Forget going out and buying a game for your console though, because some of the greatest titles new and old are available to download for free on your PC. Some are available as officially-licenced abandonware, while others are out-and-out copies, but I’ve put together a collection of top games that will keep you amused for the whole weekend. In fact, you’ll probably end up calling in sick the whole of next week too.

• Guitar Zero - Yep, you read it right. The same riff-rocking game with a different name
• Halo Zero - 2D version of the mighty Xbox classic
• Grand Theft Audio - Original version of the game that got me into car crime
• Super Mario World - Recreate that beautiful day your got your SNES
• Neo-Sonic Godspeed - Cool new twist on the blue racing hedgehog theme
• Blockfall - Play Tetris as a Firefox plugin
• Zelda Classic - Exact replica of the NES game we could never put down
• Classic Doom 3 - Experience the gameplay of the original with updated graphics
• Half-Life 2: Revolt - Multiplayer version of one of the all-time greats

If you were a child in the 80s and didn’t have a ZX Spectrum, then quite frankly you were a bit of a dork. The Sinclair computer is often credited as being the father of videogames and I’m sure most of us can remember a handful of classic games that helped to waste large chunks of our formative years. Revisiting some of these old titles makes you realise just how addictive they were, and here are some of my favourite PC remakes:

• Cybernoid 2 - Get your blaster ready, there’s a whole lotta enemies to destroy
• 3D Live Pool - It’s still pool and it’s still 3D but boy are the graphics better these days
• Blasterball 2 - Arkanoid on steroids
• Deluxe Pacman - He’s 30 years old but the famous yellow blob is still scared of ghosts
• PiX Pang - Faithful remake of the Speccy classic
• Lode Runner - Make haste with the treasure but watch out for guards
• Boulder Dash - Pushing rocks has never been so much fun
• Bomberic2 - Blow stuff up just like Bomberman used to
• Dragon Jumper - Like Frogger but with a dragon
• Echoes - Modern day version of Asteroids with souped-up visuals

Fifteen years ago, there were so many cool games I wanted to play but couldn’t. We didn’t have internet access yet, and the occasional game my brother and I could get our dad to buy (like the awesome F15 Strike Eagle III) were pretty expensive. I remember that one of his work buddies gave us copies of Doom and Wolfenstein 3D, along with X-Wing (with a trainer on the last disk!) but otherwise we were pretty limited in our choice of games to play on the ol’ 486.

Now we’re living in the future, you may expect me to have forgotten my love for Imperialism II and Wonderboy In Monster World… what do you think I am, fickle? Luckily, the games I loved (and the ones I longed for) can nearly all be found at Abandonware sites like Abandonia. Abandonware exists on somewhat shaky legal ground given that much of it remains under copyright (even though it may no longer be available for purchase).

While I’m not going to condone breaking the law I will say that I support the idea of keeping games alive by enjoying them long after their developers have abandoned them. There is actually a larger point to be made about the validity of the 70-year copyright longevity for software, something which is updated and superseded so quickly. But I’ll leave that argument for the dry legal experts of Wikipedia.

My first Abandonware Classic is the remarkable Shadow President. This impressive game puts you in the most powerful seat in the world: that of US President. The aim of the game is to handle your economy and your relations with every single country in the world. From a world map, you can click any country and then decide on all sorts of policy and aid issues such as trading partner status, intelligence operations, military and humanitarian aid and diplomatic coercion. You soon realise that the top job is a lot harder than just shaking hands and delivering speeches articulately. Hmm, that’s kind of worrying. Anyway, check out Abandonia’s great review of the game here and keep your eyes peeled for more classics.

There’s a good joke I heard once about how people were worried about computer games affecting kids’ behaviour but, says the punchline, if that was the case teenagers would all be running round dark rooms, listening to techno and munching pills. It may be overstating the case to say Pac-Man has defined a generation, but the little yellow man keeps popping up time and time again. And now he’s back completely revolutionising science.

A new study using a rather nasty version of the classic arcade game has discovered the way the human brain reacts to imminent danger. By plugging the hungry fellow into the mains, scientists gave players an electric shock whenever they were captured by a blue ghost. The scientists found that when the threat was far away players used the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain developed for complex planning tasks, and when the predator was about to kill them their brains switched to the periaqueductal gray, the survival zone. It all seems fairly obvious stuff. I guess when the scientists were analysing the results the ‘thinking’ part of their brain was working. Then they probably switched to the ‘talking’ bit and after that perhaps the ‘writing’ and ‘colouring’ zones. However, if anyone knows how to get hold of this version of Pac-Man, please let me know.

Remember the Amiga/Atari classic Sensible Soccer or Kick Off? Well Addictive Football is exactly the same and will bring back tons of memories for many who, like me, spent hours glued to their joysticks. Most importantly, the game has retained the playability that made the originals such classics of their time. It was never about the graphics with these games that’s for sure!

In Addictive Football, you can play 5-a-side rules on a variety of different pitches with 5 different game modes to choose from. These include a Knockout Cup and League style games as well as a Custom Game Mode where you set the team skills and names yourself. There are unfortunately only 10 teams to choose from but they all differ considerably in skills & abilities.

The game even features all the classic pitch surfaces like grass, astroturf, concrete, indoor, ice and a bizarre futuristic field. As a result, the ball acts differently when it bounces meaning no game between the same teams is ever the same.
The only other downside is that real team names and players have not been used, presumably because of licensing issues. However, in custom mode, you can rename squads and players to your liking so you can recreate all those classic encounters such as this one between Liverpool and Everton.

My blog posts might not be the award-winning scoops of journalism that I was tipped for way back when at Bournemouth University, but I know for a fact, reader, that you are going to remember this moment for the rest of your week. So sit down, if you aren’t already, and get ready for some stomach-punching news. Those legendary digging, bridge-building, parachuting, exploding Lemmings are now inside your PC and at your control.

In an immaculate DHTML remake of the classic game, all written in javascript, you can play fun, tricky, taxing and mayhem levels and save your progress. One annoying omission is the lack of sound, especially exciting I remember when hundreds of the green-haired rodents were set to explode. By the way, did you know, the suicide myth surrounding Lemmings was created by Walt Disney. Anyway get playing this and you can do what you want to the little creatures.

Unfortunately since writing this article it would appear that Lemmings DHTML has been around since 2004, just no-one’s heard about it. My career is in tatters.

Ten years are nothing - except in the world of technology. Computers, the Internet and the software industry have evolved a lot in the last decade as a result of the implementation of new protocols, programming languages and advanced hardware capabilities.

Ten years ago many people were using Windows 95, which sold more than one million copies in just four days. Apple hired Steve Jobs as a consultant, Macromedia launched Flash 1.0 and two young students at the Stanford University began developing Google. Other famous sites like eBay, Hotmail and Amazon had been launched just a few months before. These were also the years when the DVD and the wheel mouse were born, when Sony released its first VAIO and the IBM computer Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov in a chess match.

In 1997 our computers had 233 MHz processors and we connected to the Internet with 33.6 modems. And how did web pages look ten years ago? The answer is in the Wayback Machine, where you can view archived versions of many websites across the years. Plain designs, just a few graphics not to overload connections and pure, simple HTML that has little to do with today’s Ajax technology. It’s real time travel and it’s just a few clicks away!

After hearing that Manhunt 2 is to be banned in the UK and Ireland, I decided to revisit some of the infamous classics which the powers that be decided wouldn’t be suitable for us to play. Take, for instance, Mortal Kombat, a game that was banned by many countries and censored in others due to its glorification of violence and the sheer amount of blood that flew off those guys. After playing this faithful freeware recreation of the game, it occurred to me just how tame the action is compared to many of today’s beat-em-ups.

Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto is another gaming series that has courted controversy (some would argue, to its own advantage) for years. GTA III and San Andreas were banned in Australia and the fist two versions nearly didn’t make the shelves in many countries over fears they would insight youths everywhere to go out and steal cars. However, after going back to the mightily addictive GTA Volume I and Volume II, I instantly remembered that I didn’t even want to walk away from the TV of an evening let alone go outside and hotwire the next-door neighbour’s BMW.

Then there are the titles that are banned because they don’t fit in with a particular country’s political or social agenda. For example, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory was outlawed in South Korea as it referenced a fictional war between the country and North Korea, while the German government banned Commandos as it contained images of swastikas, which are considered “symbols of unconstitutional organisations” over there. However, nothing compares with the hard-line taken by Saudi Arabia, where you would never be allowed to play Pikaball Volleyball, as it features a character from Pokemon – a gaming series banned for allegedly promoting Zionism and encouraging gambling.

How many of you have actually played PONG, one of the first video games ever invented? This table tennis game developed by Atari in 1972 revolutionized gaming by offering actual animated graphics and real time user reaction (yes, that’s what you call moving the bar around to hit the ball). PONG was a massive hit back in the day and is still venerated by true gamers as one of the ultimate classics of gaming.

Thanks to Captain Caveman, you can now install the PONG! Multiplayer extension to your Firefox browser. The extension is available from your toolbar and opens up a pop up Firefox window. PONG’s controls are super simple: The space bar releases the ball and you use the up and down arrows to move your bar. PONG includes four different game speeds, of which we don’t recommend trying “super insane” unless you’re feeling hyperactive.

The multiplayer feature, where you can supposedly play and chat online with other users, sounded exciting, but didn’t seem to work real well. You might have a hard time connecting with other people who have the extension installed on their Firefox.

PONG! Multiplayer extension is an excellent add-on to have on your Firefox browser, especially when you feel like taking a break.

Although it didn’t have anything like the fancy wireless wands or web browsing capabilities of the Wii, there was always something quite enchanting about Nintendo’s N64. Ultimately it was never going to beat the PlayStation in terms of its market share, but the 64 still brings back fond memories of endless nights blasting the hell out of each other on Goldeneye, or missing dozens of lectures to concentrate on Super Mario 64. The chances are that as soon as the GameCube came along, your N64 went out with the rubbish – a decision you’ve probably lived to regret if you’re anything like us. Thankfully, Project64 helps you to transport yourself back to those halcyon days by allowing you to emulate all your old favourite N64 games on your PC.

The application is designed to play ROM files, which are essentially ‘images’ of the data inside an N64 cartridge. Graphically, the games are pretty good, although not quite as sharp as we remember, with a few too many jagged lines and blocky sprites for our liking. This is understandable, given that the games were originally intended to be played on a TV, which has a completely different way of perfecting pixels. Nevertheless, the overall visual experience is quite authentic, and is complemented by crisp audio reproduction.

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To some, speedball is a dangerous mix of illicit substances but to others it’s an excellent futuristic sports title developed by the Bitmap Brothers in 1991. Mix the rules of football, handball and rugby, add two teams of psycho-cyborg gladiators locked in a metal arena with a metal ball and you get speedball. The game consists of passing the ball around to reach the other team’s net and score more goals than them in a limited amount of time. However, unlike the sports we play nowadays in speedball you can joyfully mangle your opponents to get the ball back.

Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe is the second release in the series. Teams now have 9 players instead of 6 and you can hit targets on the walls to get bonuses. There’s also a number of power ups and other options strewn across the gaming field. The reason we’ve decided to cover this classic is that Kotaku announced today that Frogster Interactive would be releasing a sequel in the summer of 2007. The gaming blog is worried that it will turn out to be a bad “Unreal Tournament Mod”, however with Bitmap Brother Mike Montgomery on the team we can hope for the original spirit of Speedball to carry on.

What about improvements? Will the game environment move on from 2D to 3D? Any chances of multiplayer or online gaming? What about the tournament modes? Will new challenges be introduced? We’ll just have to wait till this summer to see.

While kids in the 80s would concoct all manner of excuses why their homework was late, teachers were almost certainly aware that the real culprit behind the laxness was Chuckie Egg or Jet Set Willy. For me, my own education killer was Boulder Dash, or Repton, as it was known on the Acorn Electron, which I owned at the time (only the posh kids in our town got Commodore 64s).

For the benefit of those who spent their childhoods doing schoolwork, the object of the game was to steer your little critter around a labyrinth full of rocks, collecting diamonds and other booty along the way, while fighting off hoards of nasty beasties. Whether you’re a fan of the original or a newcomer to the game, the highly addictive Boulder Dash provides a faithful recreation of the game that is one of the very few computer games ever to be ported from home computers to arcades (as opposed to the other way around). Be warned though, you may have to start plundering your little book of excuses for not turning up to work again.