iPhoneize your website, instantly!
Filed under: Design, Internet, Web services, iPhone, Web
If you don't know anything about the iPhone, the MobileSafari browser, or web design in general, creating an iPhone version of your website can be daunting. Intersquash.com makes it easy. Just put in the address of your site's RSS feed, give it a name, and click iPhoneize. If you want, upload an icon. That's all you have to do: Intersquash gives you a little bit of code to paste into the body of your site, and it's magically optimized for iPhone viewing.Last time I looked, Intersquash had already iPhonized around 2,000 websites. The results are nothing fancy, but you get a clean, readable, functioning iPhone site. It definitely beats making iPhone users wait for for your full site to load. You do need a working RSS feed to use Intersquash, but you've probably got one of those if you use any major blogging platform. If you're having problems, try a service like Feedburner.
iPhoneize your website, instantly! originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsSchedule Twitter updates with Twuffer and FutureTweets
Filed under: Internet, Blogging, Productivity, Web
OpenID is supported, which is a damn good thing: FutureTweets own signup feature crapped out on me three times. My OpenID worked fine, however, and I was good to go (after entering my Twitter info).
Continue reading Schedule Twitter updates with Twuffer and FutureTweets
Schedule Twitter updates with Twuffer and FutureTweets originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsHow we know that Matrix doesn't run on Windows XP
On the other hand, it'd be kind of funny if they did. With that in mind, the folks at College Humor have produced a short video showing what The Matrix would be like if it ran on Windows XP.
Anyone want to take a crack at letting us know what it would be like if it ran on OS X? Debian? PalmOS? Windows 7? Sound off in the comments!
[via Gizmodo]
How we know that Matrix doesn't run on Windows XP originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsTwuffer: schedule your Twitter posts
Filed under: Productivity, Social Software, web 2.0
Twuffer is a site that lets you keep a buffer of Twitter posts that will go up at times you schedule. Twitter plus buffer equals Twuffer, get it? In theory, this is a pretty good idea if you're someone who needs to make periodic announcements or post reminders at intervals. The thing is, I don't think the majority of Twitter users could do that without being annoying.Twitter is starting to become more mainstream now, but the biggest complaint people have about companies and celebrities starting to use the service is that they come of as inhuman. Pre-writing your tweets only makes you seem more mechanical. Twuffer could be excellent if you use it on an account that only you follow, to post reminders to yourself. There are already services that do this, but Twuffer might be faster to set up.
I could be completely underestimating this service, though. The site suggests a few ways to use Twuffer, but if you have an idea about how it could be effective on someone's main account, let me know in the comments.
Twuffer: schedule your Twitter posts originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsBuild the highest tower with 99 Bricks - Time Waster
Filed under: Fun, Games, Time-Wasters, Web
Wrapping your mind around a simple game like 99 Bricks is harder than you might imagine. The object of the game is to build the highest possible tower using only 99 pieces. Sounds easy enough, but you're playing with Tetris pieces and distinctly non-Tetris physics. If you screw up, you don't just leave gaps that you could have used to score points, you cause your whole tower to wobble and collapse. Pieces also don't lock to a grid in 99 Bricks, the way they do in Tetris. You can wind up with pieces slanted diagonally, and there's an edge of the board that your toppled bricks can fall off of. 99 Bricks is kind of like Jenga, in that it's almost as satisfying to watch your tower crumble as it is to play seriously. Once you get the hang of the way the pieces behave, it's an addictive little game.
Build the highest tower with 99 Bricks - Time Waster originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsUse an iPhone or iPod Touch in disk mode with DiskAid
Filed under: Windows, Macintosh, iPhone
One of the first things that iPhone and iPod Touch users noticed was the lack of a built-in "disk mode," where your device would appear on the desktop as a drive that you could use for file storage. Other iPod models even had a setting to specify how much of their storage space should be used for music, and how much should be used for disk mode, but the latest and greatest ones didn't. But thanks to an app called DiskAid, you can still transfer files between your iPhone and your Mac or PC without jailbreaking or using iTunes.Sure, you may already know how to access a jailbroken iPhone's hard drive via SFTP, but that's a pain in the butt compared to DiskAid. You can just plug your device in, start it up, and start transferring files in a straightforward interface that anybody who's ever used Windows Explorer or the OS X Finder can figure out. As a brief disclaimer, realize that storing files on your iPhone doesn't mean your iPhone can interact with them. It's like putting music on an old iPod in disk mode: you can store it there, but you can't play it.
Use an iPhone or iPod Touch in disk mode with DiskAid originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsPhotosynth: Microsoft's answer to Google Street View, with a twist
Filed under: Photo, Utilities, Microsoft, web 2.0
Photosynth, the much-anticipated three-dimensional photo experience from Microsoft Live Labs, has finally launched. "Synths," as they're called, are series of photos stitched together by a fancy algorithm that compares them to one another to create an immersive 360-degree viewing experience. You can start exploring Photosynth on most Windows PCs (and some Macs running virtual machines) now.Photosynth is integrated with Live Maps, as well, so you can view other people's synths of various locations, right from the map. That's what's causing people to compare Photosynth to Google Street View, which is the closest product out there right now. But Google Street View doesn't let you create anything on your own, with a regular digital camera. Keep an eye on Photosynth as -- I know this is clichéd, but it may be true -- a game-changing technology.
Photosynth: Microsoft's answer to Google Street View, with a twist originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsSend files out fast with uSend.io
Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Productivity
There are a lot of sites for quickly sharing files, but some of them are painfully slow or require registration. If you want to send a file with a minimum of fuss, and the file happens to be 100mb or smaller, give uSend.io a look. It's powered by drop.io, and the upload speeds when I tested it were excellent compared to similar sites. This is now my go-to site for sending any medium-sized file to a friend.Besides being fast, uSend.io also has some nice extra touches. The test file I used was an AAC from my iTunes library, and usend.io converted it to mp3 to generate an in-browser preview. Of course, when I went to download the file, it was still in the original AAC form. Beautiful. The download pages for uSend.io files are hosted on drop.io, so you can also link, embed, or share you file with additional contacts via email. It's an all-around smooth experience.
Send files out fast with uSend.io originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 10 Nov 2008 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments5 very basic things Windows 7 still isn't any good at
Filed under: OS Updates, Windows, Microsoft, Beta
While I'm generally pleased with Windows 7 so far, I've found myself shaking my head every now and then. In some instances it's obvious that Microsoft has been paying attention. Other times, not so much.
I've noticed five issues so far that, though minor, leave me wondering if Microsoft is going to be able to pull off a really great OS by its projected mid-2009 release.
.ZIP Files
Windows 7 still takes forever to extract files from a zip archive, which leaves me dumbfounded. An 18.4mb zip containing only two files took me almost 23 seconds to extract using the right-click context menu's extract all option. Using 7zip's context menu extraction, the same operation took less than three seconds.
Zip files have been supported natively since Windows XP. Seven years later, there's still no improvement. Third party applications are so much better at handling .zip files it makes me wonder why Microsoft bothered adding support in the first place.
Continue reading 5 very basic things Windows 7 still isn't any good at
5 very basic things Windows 7 still isn't any good at originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsClassics: The iPhone e-reader to rule them all?
There's no shortage of eBooks available for the iPhone and iPod touch [App Store link] however one of the latest releases Classics looks set to take the crown as the best around.The application comes with a dozen public-domain books ready for you to read: with more promised in future (free) updates. As you might expect, there's plenty of attention paid to the application's handling of your reading too: pressing home places a neat ribbon bookmark on the page you were reading, for example.
To see how Classics fared in day-to-day use, I read The Jungle Book on a 2-hour train journey home. I'm a stickler for actually reading a physical copy of a book - and no big fan of eReaders to date - however I was pleasantly surprised at how readable the books were: for someone who loathes reading books on a screen, I was absolutely happy to keep on reading.
My only gripe about the application is that swiping to the next page [which cues a stylish animation] takes too long: however as I'm something of a fast reader, and devour each page rather quickly, I'd imagine this isn't something most users will experience.
Classics is currently just $2.99 on the App Store: there's no word currently on when this introductory price ends.
Classics: The iPhone e-reader to rule them all? originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 10 Nov 2008 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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