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.

Firefox 3.5 finally released [Softonic review]

China delays launch of new Internet censorship program [Guardian]

Firefox and other apps possible on Android [Read Write Web]

China (again!) bans ‘gold farming’ sweatshops [Information Week]

Pirate Bay changes hands [TorrentFreak]

Microsoft to charge more for Windows 7 in Europe [ComputerWorld]

How are your reactions this friday? They’ll need to be razor sharp if you want to score highly on Zodiac Reactor. It’s a simple timing-reaction puzzle game, where you have to hit one of four keys at the right moment as a corresponding element approaches the Zodiac Reactor. It’s a simple idea, but if you panic for a split second and lose concentration, you are done for.  It takes a minute to grasp, but the introductory tutorial is great. Check it out!

You could waste quite a lot of friday with Barbarian Onslaught, a 19 level 2D hack and slash game. As a nameless barbarian, you must roam the lands searching for the secret of steel. You won’t be bored along the way, as there are hordes of mosters and undead-type folk hell bent on removing your head. Make sure to remove theirs first… It’s all really cartoony, and the variety of attacks and finishing moves makes this an enjoyably gruesome experience!

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 »

Although it started over three years ago, the Twitter phenomenon has gone into overdrive in 2009. Its importance in breaking news and reaching the areas that traditional news outlets simply can’t have been well documented and the current political situation in Iran is a perfect case in point. Even the US State Department has asked Twitter not to perform maintenance and thus risk blocking crucial tweets from emerging out of Iran. Meanwhile others have suggested that Twitter may be the most important thing to hit the net since Google.

However, are we getting a bit carried away with the reliability and effectiveness of what Twitter can do? Isn’t it a bit worrying when even the US State Department starts relying on Twitter to maybe formulate foreign policy? And the more popular it becomes, isn’t there a danger that an over reliance in it could be both politically dangerous for governments, embarrassing for news organizations and potentially taint how authentic tweets actually are as spammers, commercial organisations and governments join in.

We’ve already seen a study that has punctured the myth of exactly how popular Twitter is. Harvard University found that a paltry 10% of Twitter users generate over 90% of the content. When you see how much content high profile tweeters like Stephen Fry, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher create, this isn’t as hard to believe as it may at first sound. It also found that half of all users update their pages less than once every 74 days and that most people only ever tweet once during their lifetime. It’s clear then that relying on Twitter as some kind of “democratic miracle” is fraught with problems.

In the case of Iran however, there’s no doubt that Twitter has provided an invaluable outlet in a country where getting a true picture of events isn’t easy. During the 20 year commemoration of the Tienanmen Square massacre in China, Twitter also proved one of the few ways of people getting their voices heard despite authorities trying to block them. As a blogging man myself however, I’m prone to agree with bloggers such as Muhammad Saleem who point out that one of the “hidden” dangers of Twitter is the brevity of tweets. There’s no scope to write any detailed analysis or context in a microblog of just 140 characters.

Saleem also makes the salient point that with Twitter, there is a far greater danger of information overload. It can take a while just to filter the wheat from the chaff when you’re trying to filter hundreds of tweets, many of which are garbled in order to fit more words in. A search for #Iranelection provides the perfect example. In the time it takes you to scan the first five to ten Tweets, you’ll be told that there are already another 150-odd new messages matching your search. It is simply impossible for anyone to accurately stay on top of, let alone filter, such a vast weight of opinion.

There’s no doubt that there’s some valuable information being tweeted every day on Twitter. But there needs to be a much better way to filter genuine breaking news from inane tweets. And the more popular it becomes and the more organizations like the US State Department start taking an interest, the more skeptical you have to become.

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?

Crane wars is an almost ready for release game from Flashbang studios, the quirky team behind Paper Moon, Off Road Velociraptor and Minotaur China Shop. You can play a beta 3 version of this browser game here. You control a crane at a construction site, and have to build tower blocks, while watching out for attacks from a neighbouring crane company. You can throw objects at the competition’s buildings, and they can do the same! The game is timed - your budget is constantly being drained, and when it runs out the game is over.

The controls are simple, but building your skyscrapers can be a bit fiddly, especially when someone’s throwing trucks at your creation! Like all of the games on Blurst, Crane Wars is compelling mainly because it’s a cool and ridiculous idea. It was originally scheduled for release today on the Blurst site, so if you don’t fancy playing the beta and want to wait, it shouldn’t be long… As with all Blurst games, you’ll need the Unity browser plug-in.

Little Wheel is a beautifully presented and animated point and click adventure. It’s relatively short, but really enjoyable. Little Wheel takes place in a robot world, which has lain dormant for 10,000 years dues to an accident that left the robots without power. Waking after a lightening strike, your little robot has to journey through the dormant city and bring it back to life. With its quirky, silent robot protagonist and simple though engaging gameplay, Little Wheel is the most charming browser game I’ve played.

A lot of people are beginning to talk about Opera’s special announcement planned for next week. A special page on the developer’s website states that at 9 a.m. this Tuesday, Opera will “reinvent the web”. But what could they be talking about?

Checking out the page’s source code [thanks to Pallab for this!] reveals this secret message:

<!– 	We start our little story with the invention of the modern day computer.
Over the years, the computers grew in numbers, and the next natural step in the
evolution was …  –>

This little teaser has also begun to show up on Twitter, along with the next part which continues:

“… to connect them together. To share things … #reinvent http://www.opera.com/freedom”

Our natural assumption when we saw all this was: Opera 10’s about to drop. That’d be great news and it’d just about explain a bit of viral hype building on Opera’s side. However, if we are looking at the release of version 10, Opera are being much more reticent than normal. Our request for a preview (which would normally be answered with a URL to download the final version under embargo) was answered with a cryptic message stating that Opera will be unveiling ‘a new technology‘ on Tuesday, and that there’ll be a live webcast.

Operawatch has plenty of interesting comments regarding what the exciting announcement might be (the least exciting of which would be a beta for the new version of Opera Mini - I mean, come on!). The most likely idea seems to be something to do with cloud computing (see the pic?) .

Our best guess is that Opera will announce that their new browser will feature a ubiquitous experience across devices and machines with everything possible (cookies, history, bookmarks and more) handled in the cloud. It’s difficult to imagine quite how far they’ll take server side technology, but looking at the company’s history, this is definitely the direction they’re heading in.

Got a better guess? Let us know….

After launching a first set of add-on kits under the suggestive name of Fashion Your Firefox a few months ago, Mozilla have taken a step beyond in themed packs with the so called Add-on Collections. Collections are customizable groups of related add-ons that anyone can create and share on the Mozilla website. In this way you can easily keep track of new updates for your favorite add-ons, create personal packs with your basic add-on kit for quick browser installations and share new exciting add-ons with your friends online.

Collections have now their own section in the Mozilla Add-on official website - which, by the way, has been redesigned. From here you can browse collections by popularity, and also check Editor’s picks and latest additions to the site. You can also subscribe to any collections you like, and create your own. Creating a personal collection is as easy as filling in a form with a name, description and a choice of a few selected add-ons. Plus, they can be made public or restricted to only people you invite.

But the best way to keep track of your favorite collections and manage the ones created by you is probably installing the Collector add-on. This add-on has been especially designed to keep track of any updates in the collections you’ve subscribed to, and let you update your own collections with new additions, all directly from your browser.

Although some bloggers are hailing it as a “new” release from Google, Google Quick Search Box was included as part of the Google Codes project earlier this year but it’s now been given an official release by Google with its own webpage. And you can see why Google think the tool is fitting of a major release. Google Quick Search Box is a basically a Spotlight style app that can search for just about anything both on and offline as well as launch apps.

In this way, it’s very similar to Google Desktop except it’s far more discreet and lightweight and there’s no annoying indexing to wait for. Rather, Google Quick Search Box floats on your desktop ready for action whenever you need it. Previously, it only performed basic searches on your hard and online but this official release makes it an altogether more powerful proposition.

Google Quick Search Box can performs more through hard drive and online searches and even launch applications. As you’d expect from a Google product, searches are incredibly detailed and quick and results are displayed clearly. Search for “Firefox” for example and it immediately brings-up the Firefox icon ready for launching. In this way, Google Quick Search Box acts not only as a search tool, but as a launcher as well.

You can even customise Google Quick Search Box to search only those online sites that you choose such as YouTube, Wikipedia, Gmail and Google Docs. To search both your Gmail and Google Docs account, you need to enter your Gmail account credentials in the “Accounts” section in preferences. However, when I tried to search my accounts using Google Quick Search Box, the search seemed to hang for a while and no results were found. Whether this was an error on my side or a bug I’m not sure but it was a little disappointing. Read the rest of this entry »

WordPress today announced the release of the latest version of its awesome eponymous blog platform. Version 2.8 (’Baker’, after the famous Jazz trumpeter Chet Baker), consists of few immediately visible changes but plenty of performance enhancements.

Once you’ve had a time to play around with the new version, you’ll spot an overhauled widget interface, easier to handle theme installations, a new CodePress editor for editing themes and plugins within wp-admin and a new Screen Options interface that lets you customize the look of your admin area to fit your monitor. As well as all that, WordPress seems to run much faster.

Find full details of the new release on the WordPress Codex. Or just watch their video…

You can download the latest version of WordPress here, but if you’re running 2.7 or higher, you should be able to upgrade automatically. If you don’t have a web host but you’d like to try WordPress out, skip along to WordPress.com and register for a free hosted blog!