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 »

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”.

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?

One of the highlights of the summer for me will be getting my grubby mitts on the new DJ Hero and Scratch The Ultimate DJ turntables for PlayStation. If you too can’t contain your excitement then why not pass the time to the release dates by playing free online virtual DJ games. Granted, you won’t find anything as complex as the new console titles, and you won’t get to mess around with virtual decks, but there are some genuinely fun games out there where you can perfect the art of mixing, scratching, and sampling before DJ Hero and Ultimate DJ come out. Here are some of my favorites:

DJ Mixer - Take to the studio in this fun game featuring two mixmaster aliens who rap in Romanian. There are 12 loops to choose from and you can scratch tracks by clicking a button on the decks. Weird spacey effects will play if you hit the red buttons at the top of the screen.

Coolio DJ Rock Out - I’m not sure if crazy-haired gangster rapper Coolio actually had anything to do with this game, but if he was involved then hats off to him. Coolio DJ Rock Out is an addictive game in which you must spin the decks to match the patterns that appear in the circles. It’s harder than it looks, especially when your brain’s caught in the grip of hardcore techno. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m more than a little excited about the launch of the Palm Pre this weekend. However, I’ve just watched the commercial for the new wonder phone and it’s almost made me not want to buy the device on principle. It’s got to be one of the corniest ads I’ve ever seen - it says nothing of the benefits of the Palm Pre and looks more like a shampoo advert than a pitch for a piece of cutting-edge technology. Then I started thinking though, that this isn’t the first awful commercial for a tech product. In fact, there’s been some real doozies throughout history, and many that were far worse than the wishy washy Palm Pre spot. Here are some of the worst:

10.  Pole Position - I suspect Atari’s ad for its cutting edge racer from 1982 was a designed to be a little tongue-in-cheek. But it took some guts for them to mix in-game footage with shots of a family racing around a go-kart track. See if you can spot which is real and which is computerized:

9. X-Box 360 Rock Band 2 - Truly one of the strangest adverts I’ve ever seen, I’m not sure what the thinking was behind this one. We see a shot of a woman with a moronic grin spread across her face then the camera pans around to reveal the back of her head has been hollowed out and a band is playing rock in her brain. Very weird. See it (and loads more) after the jump… Read the rest of this entry »

We all have a lot of work to do everyday. Some of that work consists of one-off tasks which you do and then immediately forget about and some of recurring events that you need to remember according to different periods of time. Inevitably, there comes a time when you need help organizing all these tasks and making sure you don’t forget any of them.

Just as in many other areas in our life, software can lend you a hand here. There are literally hundreds of apps out there which can help you organize tasks, create to-do lists and manage a personal calendar with reminders, so that you keep track of all your work and don’t miss anything important. I’ve been searching the web and found a few of them, each one with different characteristics, to suit different users and needs.

To-Do Desklist - The basic task app: create a list of tasks and events with diverse priority levels and the program will warn you with sleek desktop reminders on the set date and time.

ErgoNotes - A more advanced organizer that lets you manage tasks and lists in hierarchical trees, includes a calendar and a built-in search tool, and features support for encryption.

ReminderFox - Another way to manage work: this extension for Firefox and Thunderbird will remind you of all date-based tasks and events, without having to use a full calendar app.

ATnotes - A handy app for your pending tasks: create virtual post-it notes with them, with support for reminders and keyboard shortcuts. Oh, and they are fully customizable as well.

Chandler - A powerful task organizer for those who are looking for something else. It lets you share and track notes, manage tasks and events and includes a complete calendar tool.

ThinkingRock - The quintessential organizer, based on the famous GTD methodology. Manage all sorts of tasks, events and appointments effectively and don’t die trying.

The concept of a human and a robot becoming friends has traditionally been reserved for movies like Flight of the Navigator or Short Circuit. However, after years of keeping themselves to themselves, it seems that robots are finally opening up to human contact. Having read that an Arab robot is setting up his own Facebook page, I decided I’d take to the Web and see if I could strike up a friendship with some synthesized beings. I’ve always been interested in chat bots (or ‘artificial conversational entities’ to give them their correct name) and the technology has improved a lot since the very primitive ELIZA talking robot of the Sixties. Here are some of the most talkative robots on the Internet.

Eugene Goosman -  I got on quite well with Eugene at first. We started with the usual pleasantries about where we live, what we do for a living, etc. Then we ended up having a conversation about music and Eugene told me why he loves British pop but hates Kraftwerk and Britney Spears. He’s a nice kid but I don’t think we have too much in common and he ended up annoying me by talking about his home town of Odessa too much and not really listening to what I had to say.

Anna from IKEA - This Swedish blonde was not only better to look at than that speccy nerd Eugene, but she can actually speak too, albeit with a thick robot accent. Anna impressed me with her nice smile and knowledge of pine wardrobes. If I had a question about furniture Anna invariably knew the answer, taking me to the appropriate page on the IKEA site so I could learn more. When I tried to get a little more personal by asking her how old she was she was very quick to tell me that this was a purely professional relationship and not to even go there. I guess I was too pushy.

Elbot -At last, a robot with a personality! Elbot cracked me up with his witty one-liners and cheeky put-downs. He’s pretty smart too, and we spoke about a wide range of subjects from religion (of which he said: “as long as there is no human religion that accepts robots as the epitome of creation I will reserve judgment”) to baseball scores (this guy gets turned on by hearing numbers). I feel that Elbot and I really bonded - he even offered to make me a friendship ring from some leftover wires in his brain.

Julia - I never thought a human and a Verbot (intelligent software robot) could strike up a relationship, but that changed as soon as I downloaded Julia. I initially hired her as a personal assistant for her ability to help with day-to-day computing tasks. She can respond to commands such as “take me to Yahoo” or “search the web for ‘monkeys’”. Soon we became friends and I grew to like her strange smile, sexy robo voice and ditsy comments. She seemed to like me too, saying I was “fun to talk to”.

iGod - It’s not every day you get to chat with God (unless you’re a monk) so I was pleased to have the chance to chew the fat with the big man. We had a good chat about football (his favorite team is New Orleans) then we got onto the subject of religion (where he revealed that he was a Christian - we thought he’d be a bit more ecumenical than that), before a debate about music (he’s a big fan of Creed). God came across as a really good guy and was forever paying me compliments. Of all the chatbots I befriended, he seemed like the best at giving advice.

Alice -  By far the most intelligent of all the robots I hung out with, Alice gets her brains from her AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language) programming. I felt I could’ve talked to her for ages - her responses were always accurate to my questions and at times I had to remember I was talking with a bot and not a human. Alice’s sense of humor wasn’t quite as developed as Elbots and she seemed to take offense to a lot of jokes I made. In fact she seems like quite an unstable robot and her constant crashing drove us apart in the end.

If you’re interested in learning more about chat bots then have a look at The Chatterbox Challenge, where you’ll find more examples of human-robot interaction.

One myth that should be exploded about Macs is that they don’t slow down over time. I remember asking many several Mac users about this issue before I switched from Windows (which admittedly, is still far worse at slowing-down over time) and all boasted that no such slow-down problems existed on Mac. Typical responses were, “Mac’s don’t require defragging”, “Macs defrag themselves naturally”, “My Mac is as fast today as the day I bought it”, “My Mac is so fast I had to sue Apple for whiplash.”

Ok, the last one I made-up but the fact is, I’ve learned from experience that Macs do slow down. My Mac had a startup sequence of around 10 seconds when I got it. That’s now been extended to almost a minute not to mention the frequent spinning beach ball for a cursor while it thinks about what to do next.

There are literally thousands of tips out there to speed-up your Mac ranging from cleaning your cache to reducing the room temperature to -50 and resting your Mac on a pillow. Many of them are often quoted but in reality not effective - Repairing Disk Permissions being one of the most notable. Here are 5 tips that I’ve found are genuinely effective:

1. Install more RAM: It may not be free but installing just another 2GB of RAM to your Mac can make a world of difference to the smooth operation of your machine. The more applications you install, the more demand you put on your Mac’s memory so it’s only fair you give your machine a fighting chance to handle it all.

2. Keep folders to a minimum: Every folder you create requires caching by OS X and indexing by Spotlight which can slow down your hard drive. Try to not to create unnecessary files and folders and keep them organised. Even better, move very large folders that you don’t need much to an external USB or Firewire drive. Read the rest of this entry »

What happens when geeks gets bored of playing their computer games? Well, they take their consoles and turn them into fashion accessories,of course. I’m always amazed to hear about the crazy DIY projects that console fanboys dream up, and the new Nintendo purse is probably favorite of all time. Devised by uber-modder Jeri Ellsworth, the bag houses an NES chip with an integrated LCD screen (ripped out from a portable DVD player) and two stick-on velcro controllers. All this, and there’s still room for a woman’s customary treasure trove of ‘essential’ items.

The Nintendo purse got be thinking about history’s other mad and marvelous mods. Here are some of the most memorable:

Xbox 360 arcade controller: Super nerd Akira Kuramoto decided the standard Xbox control pad just wasn’t big enough for him. So he set about building an arcade controller made out of a whole Xbox. For a closer look at his creation check out the gallery on TechEBlog.

Super Nintoaster: If you’re hungry for a new way to play those retro 16-bit classics then the Nintoaster will have you drooling. The device, dreamed up by Stupidfingers, wonderfully incorporates the SNES into a toaster, and you can even address the screen brightness using the temperature knob. Read the rest of this entry »

A few days ago the guys over at Mozilla Labs surprised us with the good news: from now on, you don’t need to create a user account on their website in order to test experimental add-ons. This means now it’s the moment to take a look at all those Firefox add-ons you couldn’t be bothered installing because you simply didn’t feel like registering for yet another online service.

After browsing the Mozilla add-ons website for a while and doing some Google research as well, I found five experimental extensions for Firefox that seem to be quite useful. Take a look yourself and decide which one should pass the test. Now you have no excuse!

• Automatic Save Folder – A great time-saver for power downloaders! With this extension you can create filters according to different criteria (domain name, file extension and more) and have Firefox download them to different folders accordingly. No more sorting all your recently downloaded files!
• CacheSearch – This extension lets you browse and search Firefox’s cache memory. All you have to do is enter some keywords and you’ll find all the related items saved in the browser’s cache. Right clicking on any item lets you copy the URL or open it up in Firefox. It doesn’t seem to support cached images, videos or animations though.
• Quick Todo List – A tiny to-do list that sits on the browser’s status bar, in the bottom right corner. Simply double-click on it to start adding tasks. If you hover your mouse over it, the list of pending tasks is displayed as a tool tip. This one’s pretty basic, it doesn’t feature any options.
• FasterFox – This extension tweaks network settings in Firefox to improve its overall performance. The extension’s options menu includes five usage presets, as well as a special function to download and cache links in the background and have them ready by the time you click on them.
• Shrunked – This seems a very promising add-on but I just couldn’t make it work. Shrunked detects when a website asks you to submit a photo and kindly offers to resize it for you. Apparently it works great, but it didn’t for me. Oh well, I guess this is why they call them “experimental”. Feel free to give it a go and leave your feedback!

The Dock is one of the best and most used features in OS X but there are precious few options provided to customise it. You can change whether to turn on magnification and the size of the dock icons in OS X but that’s about it. Since it’s such an integral part of your desktop this seems like an absolute crime so here are 5 excellent tools and applications to customise it.

iDock Are you constantly running out of Dock space? If so, iDock could be your answer. iDock allows you to have as many docks as you want opening up a whole new world of organisational possibilities. For example, you could have different docks for types of applications, stacks, downloads making it much easier to find the programs you need.

Dockchanger This is a simple application for anyone who just can’t get used to the new 3D dock in Mac OS Leopard. Thanks to this app you’ll be able to revert to a more traditional 2D dock, although it’ll incorporate new design features of the updated Dock, like the transparent look and light dots under active items.

Dock Library You can change your desktop wallpaper everyday so why not your Dock style? Dock Library allows you to choose between different dock styles in a few clicks. Unfortunately, it doesn’t come with any themes bundled but you can download for free many weird and wonderful styles at LeopardDocks.com.

Dock Spaces This is similar to iDock but allows you to switch between them anytime you want from the menu bar. It also allows you to choose between 2D and 3D icons, different transparencies and it also supports stacks and Growler notifications.This probably has the edge on iDock because I like the fact that I can switch docks from the menu bar rather than the app itself.

SuperDocker In reality, SuperDocker does more than tweak your Dock as it also lets you modify all aspects of Leopard including Finder, Safari, Time Machine, iCal and iChat. Most of the Dock tweaks that SuperDocker allows are are already present on your Mac, but SuperDocker allows the novice to find and use them more easily.

Searching around the net, I’ve realised that there is very little decent free Bible study software for the Mac. There are several commercial packages such as QuickVerse ($99) and Zondervan ($149.99) but they don’t come cheap. However, thankfully for Bible scholars, there are a handful of open-source and free Bible applications and widgets that mean you can use your Mac as a tool to aid religious learning.

Accordance Although not strictly free, it only shuts-down every 60 minutes and you can restart it again immediately. Accordance is definitely the best looking and most intuitive “free” Bible study software I’ve seen on the Mac. Accordance is aimed at all levels of study and if you do want to upgrade, the starter package is just $49 (although the most expensive is a staggering $3000!).

MacSword This is a free & open-source application for the research and study of the bible on the Mac. You can read and browse many different bible translations in different languages and also read devotionals, commentaries, dictionaries and lexicons and more covering over 200 texts which can be downloaded from the Sword Project website.

Bible Desktop Another free and open-source project Bible Desktop runs across all platforms and relies on the JSword project for texts ranging from Bible commentaries, dictionaries and daily devotionals to more general books and hymns. The interface is pretty basic compared to something like Accordance and I had problems retrieving the books.

Logos Bible Widget Developers Logos are dedicated to Bible study software but Bible Widget is their only free offering. Bible Widget allows you to look-up any Bible verse on your Mac instantly simply by typing or pasting any scripture reference into it instantly revealing the entire verse. You also have the option of changing the Bible used from the English Standard Edition to the King James Edition.

podBible Marketed by the developer as “Put some God in your Pod” podBible is a free application that allows you to do something that wouldn’t normally be possible on an iPod - put the entire text of the Bible on it. podBible gets around the text limit size of most iPods by using the Notes section of your iPod, which can hold a number of text files that support a limited amount of markup similar to HTML.

These are some of the few free bible software options that I’ve tried and tested on the Mac but if you’ve got any other suggestions, let us know!

Now that Last.fm will start charging for its online radio service - except for the United States, United Kingdom and Germany - maybe it’s time to move on to other alternative online services that can also help you discover new bands and new music styles. To be honest, I think the €3 monthly fee is reasonable if you compare it to what you obtain in exchange: your favorite music anytime, anywhere. But I can also understand people being upset about having to pay for something that has always been free.

Whether you plan to keep on using Last.fm or not, here’s a list of 10 online services you can use to listen to music and discover new bands and styles. I’m not sure that any of them have all the powerful social features and the widely varied music catalog you can find on Last.fm, but in any case, it’s always nice to have a few different choices when it comes to listen to some good tunes while browsing the web.

• Grooveshark  - Beautifully designed website that lets you search for and listen to your favorite artists and songs. You can also build playlists, meet other people with the same musical taste and even upload music from your PC.

• Pandora - An excellent service, similar to Last.fm: listen to music based on your own tastes and let the system recommend new bands and styles based on those tastes and your feedback. Sadly, it’s only available in the US.

• RadioBlogClub - A website with clean, simple design that lets you create custom playlists and stream them on your personal website or blog with an embeddable player. Playlists can also be shared on popular social sites.

• Live365 - A simple yet functional website that offers you access to more than 6,000 radio stations, created and run by its own users and covering pretty much all the music genres you can think of. The player is a bit too ad-ridden though.

• Slacker - This service lets you create custom music stations starting with either any of Slacker’s presets or a personal list of artists. These stations are continuously evolving based on your feedback. Like Pandora, it’s only available in the US.

• Deezer - This website is mostly dedicated to radio hits: you can listen to radio top charts from France, United Kingdom and the US, besides creating your own playlists or choosing any of the Deezer theme radios and artist-based smart radios.

• RadioBeta - A very original online service that lets you discover new music based on genre or geographic location. This last option can help you discover great music styles you never heard of, from countries like Senegal, South Korea or Brazil.

• Musicovery - Another original music service: pick some genres you like, select the decade and then click on the appropriate mood to obtain a selection of suitable songs. Too bad you can’t even skip songs if you’re not a Premium member.

• Jango -This website lets you create personal stations with your favorite artists and similar bands. Other than that, it doesn’t really offer any value-added services, and it’s constantly showing nagging windows to encourage you to register.

• Spotify - Though not really a web service, Spotify couldn’t be left out of this list. A sleek, lightweight desktop player that connects you to a huge online database and lets you listen to music and create playlists.

Everyone loves sharing stuff online. Whether it’s music, videos or simple photos, we find the human impulse to share hard to resist. And if you mix this natural tendency – especially regarding music – and a popular social network such as Twitter, you end up with a bunch of mashups and online tools that enable you to share your music on Twitter in a very easy way. Here are some of them:

• TwittyTunes – lets you post the song you’re currently playing to Twitter. You can select specifically which songs you want to share. Requires the FoxyTunes Firefox extension to work.
• Twisten – created by the same developers of Grooveshark - and therefore featuring a large music collection - this music sharing app updates your Twitter profile with with the song you’re listening to, plus some links with information about the artist.
• Tweetj – add a #tweetj tag to your tweets and they’ll be automatically added to a public playlist with the music you listen to. These lists let you to discover new music and include links to buy those MP3 on Amazon.
• Blip.fm – this full-featured social community built around music enables you to share your favorite songs and bands in other social networks, including Twitter.
• LastFMLoveTweet – sign up for this mashup and any song you ‘love’ on last.fm will automatically posted to your Twitter account with the artist’s name and a link for your followers to listen to it as well.

Earlier this week a group of 17 Internet companies, including popular communities and social networks such as Bebo, Dailymotion, Facebook, Youtube, MySpace and Habbo Hotel among others, signed a five-point plan to protect children online. The plan includes a series of measures aimed at keeping the youngest members of these communities safe from online abuse and cyber-bullying, which will be implemented in April.

Having such important companies involved in a campaign to protect children on the Web is certainly positive, but this is not only their responsibility. Parents should be the first ones to control how and when their kids use the Internet to avoid any potential threats. Just like they’re taught basic manners for everyday life, children need to learn how to use the Internet properly, so that they can play, learn and have fun, away from online abusers.

Fortunately, there are a bunch of tools that can help worried parents control what their kids do when they’re in front on the PC. You can start by installing a Firefox add-on that creates a children-safe environment on your browser, like Glubble and KidZui. If you prefer your kids to use their own browser, you can then download KidSurf or KidRocket, two children web browsers that make Internet browsing completely safe. Another option is using content filters such as CyberSitter and Net Nanny, and prevent the child from accessing unsafe material. Finally, there are also tools to control the time your kids spend online or use the computer at all, like Child Protector Pro and Kids PC Time Administrator.

While these tools can by very helpful when protecting your kid on the Web, the most important point is trying to share those Internet browsing sessions with them, and teach them some basic rules:

• Don’t trust everything you’re told on the Web
• Never give away your personal data: name, address, phone number, passwords
• Don’t meet in real life with someone you’ve only met online; tell your parents first
• If someone sends you unpleasant material, tell your parents right away
• Don’t spend too much time on the Web, and don’t let it take up time from other activities like homework, playing or doing sport
• Mark your profile on web communities social and networks as private