Archive for the ‘Download Squad’ Category
Filed under: Utilities, Macintosh, Productivity
If you’re using Apple’s latest and greatest little peripheral, the Magic Mouse, you don’t want to be without MagicPrefs. Our good friends over at TUAW stumbled on this free and extremely useful utility that gives you control over every aspect of your mouse experience. From adjusting your tracking speed to assigning functions to buttons and gestures, MagicPrefs has you covered.
Because the Magic Mouse’s main selling point is its versatility, MagicPrefs covers a lot of ground in terms of clicks, taps, swipes, pinches and drags. You can assign functions to practically anything, even three and four-finger clicks and taps. On top of assigning standard keyboard commands, you can also make your mouse activate hot corner functions like Exposé, so you never have to drag your cursor to a corner again.
Apple should build something like MagicPrefs into the Finder, because you’re really not getting the most out of your Magic Mouse without it.
[via TUAW]
MagicPrefs: don’t use a Magic Mouse without it! originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 02 Jan 2010 12:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Apple – Apple Mouse – Macintosh – MagicMouse – Download Squad
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Filed under: Palm, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0, Microblogging
For the last month or so, I’ve been keenly keeping an eye on the progress of the open source webOS application for Foursquare: the location-based mobile game that’s been in the tech spotlight since its launch at SXSW last year.Whilst you can check in online using Foursquare’s mobile website, the folks at Foursquare have been gradually rolling out more native applications after launching with just an iPhone app. On top of the existing iPhone, Android and beta Blackberry applications out there, the new webOS app has just been made available for Pre and Pixi users to use.
Though the application is available as part of the webOS App Catalogue, it’s currently still in beta. As such there are a couple of unfinished areas to the app – including the leaderboards for each Foursquare city.
However, if you simply have to check into it at the gym, coffee shop or elsewhere on your Pre, be sure to have a look at our gallery after the break and visit the App Catalogue to download the beta!
For the last month or so, I’ve been keenly keeping an eye on the progress of the open source webOS application for Foursquare: the location-based mobile game that’s been in the tech spotlight since its launch at SXSW last year.Whilst you can check in online using Foursquare’s mobile website, the folks at Foursquare have been gradually rolling out more native applications after launching with just an iPhone app. On top of the existing iPhone, Android and beta Blackberry applications out there, the new webOS app has just been made available for Pre and Pixi users to use.
Though the application is available as part of the webOS App Catalogue, it’s currently still in beta. As such there are a couple of unfinished areas to the app – including the leaderboards for each Foursquare city.
However, if you simply have to check into it at the gym, coffee shop or elsewhere on your Pre, be sure to have a look at our gallery after the break and visit the App Catalogue to download the beta!
Foursquare beta now available for the Palm Pre originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 01 Jan 2010 21:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Fun, Games, Features, Time-Wasters, Lists
Peel yourself off the floor (like Flickr user B. Rosen above), Download Squad readers! It’s time to usher in 2010!
Over the past twelve months we’ve shown you plenty of great tools to improve your productivity. We like to keep things in balance, though, so there were also plenty of awesome Time Wasters posted to keep your stress levels in check. Although in hindsight there were several which probably stressed some of you out even more… so… sorry about that.
Still, there’s no better way to kick off the new year than with a big ol’ helping of button-mashing, bad guy-blasting, puzzle-solving fun. Without further ado, it’s time to take the jump and enjoy ten of our favorite Time Wasters from 2009!
Jason got hooked on this one and couldn’t put it down for three days — that’s the risk you run when you go hunting for Time Wasters, but we do it for you! Also to, er, waste time. Perform tricks and race your bike as different characters, including a robot and none other than The King, Elvis Presley.
Effing Hail [Go Play!]
As a guy who gets his share of nasty, horribly-cold weather during the Winter months I get a little added enjoyment out of harnessing the power of hail to smash stuff. Buildings, planes…It’s all fair game in Effing Hail.
Hammertime in 60 Seconds [Go Play!]
I just couldn’t put this list together without including Jay’s awesome discovery. Play your way through loads of minigames featuring — who else — MC Hammer. Awesome sequined blazer not included.
Infectonator [Go Play!] [Go Play Christmas Edition!]
Zombies are awesome. Time Wasters are awesome. The two combined? Fuhgettaboutit! Choose the original or the holiday remix – either way, the goal is the same. Power up your zombies, turn the townspeople, and destroy stuff. Mmmm, brains!
Little Wheel [Go Play!]
Jay found Little Wheel’s levels a bit on the simple side, but the game’s visuals and soundtrack make it highly enjoyable distraction. Help the little robot fix all the broken stuff and restore power to the city!
Minim [Go Play!]
This interesting little puzzle game will have you banging your head occasionally – but some of our favorite Time Wasters have been incredibly frustrating. Connect the molecules, clear the board. Sounds simple enough, right?
Monster Evolution [Go Play!]
I had a great time playing this, and my son had an even better time watching. Grow your monster from a minor annoyance to a humanity-destroying beast of epic proportions. 25 different monsters to play and three difficulty settings make for soldier-eating, tank-smashing fun!
Rayhound [Go Play!]
Battling enemies using a ship with no guns whatsoever might seem like a pretty stupid idea, but who needs guns when you have a crazy gravity field at your disposal? Just blow your enemies up by redirecting their own fire.
This is the Only Level [Go Play!]
Sometimes the best games are the simplest ones – or at least the ones which appear to be simple. Every level is the same in this game, or so it looks. There’s something different about each one, and it’s up to you to figure it out.
Tuper Tario Tros. [Go Play!]
This was one of our more recent selections, and you’ve really got to play it to understand why it’s cool. Take the original Super Mario Bros. and throw it into a blender with Tetris, and this is what you get.
Have another favorite I missed? Share it in the comments!
10 favorite Time Wasters from 2009 to kick off your 2010 gaming! originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 01 Jan 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Download Squad – TimeWaster – Video game – Game – Elvis Presley
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Filed under: Games
It had to happen eventually — and sooner rather than later it would seem! Today I am proud to be a crumpet-eating, tea-drinking subject of the Queen because in the UK, video games outsold movies in 2009. A total of of $2.8 billion was spent on video games, while only $1.93 billion was spent on DVD, Blu-ray and box office sales. That’s not just a minor victory, that’s a frackin’ landslide.
These shocking (and awesome) numbers come from a report that also says there are now 25 million games consoles in the UK, or theoretically up to 90% of all households. Sure, some households will have multiple consoles, but that’s still pretty damn solid market penetration!
I can only assume that modern distribution channels like Steam and Xbox Live are driving the incredibly rapid growth of the games industry. Perhaps this is finally the wake-up call that the film industry needs: content needs to be high quality and easily obtainable and reasonably priced — not just two out of three.
You need to get us out of our houses somehow, or better yet: give us a reason to watch a film instead of playing Modern Warfare 2.
I’m also curious to see if other countries will release similar figures for 2009, or if the UK is actually leading the most important, contemporary charge of the 21st century.
[via CNET]
Video games overtake movies in the UK originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 31 Dec 2009 23:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Video game – Xbox Live – DVD – Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – Games
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After I put together my list of 10 awesome free Mac apps for 2009, a lot of folks asked me when the iPhone list was coming out. How about right now? Get ready, because I’m about to tell you how to spend those iTunes gift cards you got for Christmas. I’ve selected an eclectic little group of apps that includes games, productivity tools, chat and more, and it makes a great starter kit for anyone who’s new to the iPhone. Advanced iPhone users might even discover a new gem or two.
Strap in and tap your App Store icon … here’s 2009 in iPhone apps:
[$2.99, App Store link]
It’s been less than a week since I reviewed Pastebot, and I’m already wondering how I lived without it on my iPhone. This full-featured clipboard app makes copying and pasting snippets of text or images one heck of a lot easier. It also comes with basic editing capabilities – including photo filters – and lets you push photos to your Mac wirelessly. That’s an awful lot of power for 3 bucks, and the app’s design is great, too.
[$.99, App Store link]
The iPhone’s built-in camera is pretty good, but by no means great. Tiltshift Generator can help you take some stunning photos in spite of the hardware, though. It mimics a toy-camera tilt-shift effect by blurring part of each photo and adding some vignetting. You can change the size, shape and positioning of the blur, and also adjust the colors and contrast of the photo. It makes even my amateurish photography skills look brilliant.
[Free, App Store link]
[$5.99 (on sale), App Store link]
This is my go-to app for mobile IM. Multiple chat services, push notifications, and plenty of options for customizing appearance make Beejive a winner. Currently on sale for $5.99 (down from $9.99) it’s a bit of an investment, but it’s well worth it for the amount of time I spend on this thing. Beejive just gets the user experience details right: the favorite contacts list and the landscape keyboard mode are both essential for serious mobile chat fanatics.
[$2.99, App Store link]
It was love at first tweet with this gorgeous, feature-packed little app. Sure, people got a little ticked off that it wasn’t a free upgrade from Tweetie 1, but it’s basically an all-new program. Kickass features include multiple account support, threaded DMs, lists and geotagging, a “nearby” search option, saved searches … I could probably sit here all night detailing everything Tweetie 2 can do. If you check Twitter more than once a day, you should spring for this app.
Kindle
[Free, App Store link]
Why spend a few hundred bucks on a separate device to read books when you’ve already got a perfectly good iPhone? Buying Kindle books to read with this free app is incredibly easy, and watching them zap instantly to your phone via Amazon’s WhisperSync is definitely gratifying. Sure, the iPhone doesn’t seem like it would offer an optimal reading experience, but I managed to read two or three novels on it during my subway commute this spring. I recommend setting Kindle to sepia mode for the most comfortable read.
Bump
[Free, App Store link]
When I first downloaded Bump, I didn’t expect to use it much. Knocking two phones together to transfer contact info or photos sounds cool in theory, but in practice? Well, my field test speaks for itself. I’ve bumped with everyone from new colleagues to girls at bars to friends whose email addresses I had lost. Bump has two big selling points: it’s fast and it’s fun. If you show off Bump around other people who have iPhones, they’ll probably download it on the spot.
Canabalt
[$2.99, App Store link]
My main criterion for a good iPhone game is speed. If I can have fun playing a game and a round lasts under two minutes, I’m happy. Canabalt offers the fast pace I demand from a mobile game, and the controls are so simple that you can play it with one hand tied behind your back. Literally. Running is automatic, and you can tap anywhere on the screen to jump. You control a running man, and your job is to jump over pits and obstacles to stay alive for as long as possible. Because the world of Canabalt is pretty treacherous, that’s usually not very long.
Boxcar
[Free, App Store link]
Boxcar is the ultimate Swiss Army knife for push notifications. You can push Twitter replies and DMs, email, Facebook messages, and even RSS feeds right to your iPhone. Boxcar offers about a dozen different alerts sounds (most of them are annoying, sad to say, but a couple of them are better than the iPhone’s default alert noises), and you can turn pop-ups and badging on or off. If you’re using Boxcar with Twitter, you can also choose a Twitter client to open when you tap a Boxcar popup. The only downside to Boxcar is that it costs 99 cents for each additional service after the first one. I paid up, and I’m happy with the purchase. Hey, gotta have my alerts!
[$2.99, App Store link]
Reeder is great little RSS reader for Google Reader junkies. It’s fast, visually-appealing, syncs up with Google Reader, and only costs a buck. You can do almost anything from Reeder that you can do from Google Reader’s website, but Reeder just looks better on the iPhone. Check out Nik’s glowing Download Squad review from earlier this year. That’s what
convinced me to spend my hard-earned $3 on Reeder.
So, Download Squad readers, now you’ve seen my list. How about yours? What iPhone apps did you fall in love with in 2009? I still have iTunes cards burning a hole in my pocket, so show me what I missed by leaving a comment.
Jay’s 10 favorite iPhone apps of 2009 originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 31 Dec 2009 18:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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iPhone – App Store – Facebook – ITunes Store – Smartphones
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Google Voice is great for voicemail and text transcription, call forwarding, and a bunch of other useful phone-related services, but it’s not a full VoIP solution like Skype. That could change in 2010, though, especially since Google acquired Gizmo5, a company that develops technology for web-to-web and web-to-phone calls. Owning Gizmo5 doesn’t necessarily mean Google’s going to compete with Skype, but some recent quotes from a VP at Google suggest things may be headed in that direction.
According to eWeek, a Google VP of Product Development, Bradley Horowitz, told the media that “voicemail transcription, inbox integration and threaded SMS are fantastic features, but we’re really just scratching the surface. Gizmo5 gives us talent and talent technology. … We want to make sure your communication is available to you irrespective of where you are at, what device you have in your pocket, etc.” With Gizmo5′s technology, Google’s brand name and huge userbase, will we be saying “Google Voice me” instead of “Skype me” by this time next year?
I’m not willing to call it one way or the other just yet. What do you think, oh wise DLS readers?
Is Google Voice going to be the next Skype? originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 30 Dec 2009 19:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Google – Skype – GoogleVoice – Gizmo5 – Voice over Internet Protocol
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Filed under: Fun, Text, Utilities, Linux, Office, Productivity, Freeware, Open Source, Education
For new users, I recommend the openSUSE-Edu Li-f-e(Linux for Education) Live DVD. You can get it at http://en.opensuse.org/Education/Live#Download. There are some screen shots here.
This is a Live DVD – you simply place the DVD in the computer’s DVD drive and reboot the machine from it. When the machine comes up, you will be running Linux. Normally, the software won’t write to your computer’s hard drive unless you specifically ask it to. So
- You’ll want to plug in a USB disk drive / memory stick for documents you want to save or share with other users or machines.
- When you shut the computer down and remove the DVD, it will come back up just as it was before.
What’s on the DVD:
- Dozens of educational, scientific and mathematical software packages ranging from pre-school to graduate school. A partial list is here.
- The Sugar desktop from the One Laptop Per Child project.
- Graphics and desktop publishing. A partial list is here.
- The OpenOffice.org productivity suite, the Gobby collaborative editor, the Okular PDF viewer, PdfMod PDF editor and the Evolution e-mail / calendaring package.
- The Ekiga Softphone voice over IP and video conferencing package.
- The Firefox browser, XChat IRC client, Pidgin and Kopete Instant Messaging clients, Chokoq and Gwibber Twitter clients and many more Internet tools.
- Both the Gnome and KDE desktops.
If you’re a more advanced user, or work with a school system that’s building an educational computer system, there are many more tools on this DVD, described here, here and here.
Now let’s take a closer look at some of the packages. For photographers and graphic artists, there’s the GNU Image Manipulation Program, known as The GIMP. Typically, you would use GIMP for retouching photos, editing images, making logos and other sophisticated image manipulation tasks. There’s an excellent collection of tutorials here.
If you’re interested in mind mapping, there’s View Your Mind (vym). You can do 3D modeling and animation with Blender. For vector graphics drawing, there’s Dia, Inkscape and Xara. Desktop publishing is easily done using Scribus. For musicians, there are a number of multimedia players, CD/DVD burning packages, the GNU Solfege ear training package, the Hydrogen advanced drum machine, and two score editors, Canorus and NoteEdit.. There’s also the Gnome sound recorder.
Finally, for developers and other power users, there are four major integrated development environments (IDEs): Anjuta, Eclipse, Mono and NetBeans. There are two web page editors, Bluefish and KompoZer.
In short, just about everything you need to get started with Linux is on this DVD. I highly recommend downloading it and trying it out!
Best Linux software for new users originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 30 Dec 2009 12:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Linux – opensource – OpenOffice.org – OpenSUSE – Operating system
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Filed under: Open Source, Mobile, Android
With 2009 coming to a close, everyone is beginning to look towards the future and what will happen to all the great technology around. Ever since it was introduced, the iPhone has been critiqued for being such a “closed platform”, making developers vet their applications through the App Store.
When Android was introduced, its open source approach allowed developers to get their applications out there more easily. But is this totally safe? Sure, the app store approval process has left a lot to be desired, but could hackers be setting their sights on Android?
According to the 2010 Cyberthreat Forecast by Kaspersky Lab, “The increasing popularity of mobile phones running the Android OS combined with a lack of effective checks to ensure third-party software applications are secure, will lead to a number of high-profile malware outbreaks.”
While users with unlocked and modified iPhones have been subjected to a few attacks already, because of the way the Android OS works, in theory every owner is at risk. We’ll have to see what preventative measures Google takes and how clever hackers become!
Android malware in 2010? originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 29 Dec 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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iPhone – Android – Google – App Store – Open source
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Filed under: Text, Windows, Open Source
When you ask about a free alternative to Windows Notepad, chances are good that Notepad ++ will be recommended to you. Another alternative which doesn’t get mentioned as often is Notepad GNU.
It occupies the space in between Notepad and Notepad ++. Notepad GNU does offer loads of features, though not quite as many as Notepad ++. Which is fine, because plenty of people just want Notepad with a few tweaks like line numbers, bookmarks, and syntax highlighting. Notepad GNU does all that and more!
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the foreign language install menus – not a surprise, since the developer’s site is in Russian. Click through, and you’ll wind up with an English language interface when you launch the app.
Notepad GNU is Windows Notepad on steroids originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 29 Dec 2009 17:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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opensource – Download Squad – Microsoft Windows – Windows – English language
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I like to imagine a day when you can download or stream any TV show, movie, or other video before or at about the same time as it’s available for viewing on TV. Oh right, the pirates have pretty much already made that possible. But I mean legally, where you either pay for a video or watch ad-supported media.
While we’re not quite living in my utopian world where cable and satellite boxes are obsolete, the Wall Street Journal reports that we’re getting a little closer. Sony Pictures and Showtime are starting to move up the digital delivery of select content so that you can get it online before you can walk into a store and purchase the DVD.
For instance the film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs comes out on DVD next week, but it’s also ready available for digitla rental if you have a Sony TV or other device. Lionsgate is making the latest season of its Showtime TV series Weeds available online a week before it’s available on DVD.
Of course, web sites like Hulu have been offering free, ad-supported episodes of broadcast TV shows within 24 hours of the air-date for a while now. And some cable shows are available for download from services such as iTunes shortly after broadcast. But premium content like Hollywood movies has usually been available either at the same time as the DVD release or later.
Up until recently, content producers have been reluctant to do anything that would jeopardize more traditional revenue streams such as DVD sales or you know, the money generated by showing TV programs on a TV. But as broadband becomes more common and consumers continue to purchase portable media players and smartphones for watching TV on the go and set-top boxes (or computers) for watching digital content on a TV set, physical media such as DVDs and Blu-Ray discs could be on the way out. If movie and TV producers don’t want to cede the new territory to the pirates, they’re going to need to step up and offer convenient and reasonably priced alternatives.
Movie studios starting to push online releases before DVDs originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 29 Dec 2009 12:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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DVD – Television – Sony Pictures Entertainment – Meatballs – Blu-ray Disc
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