[Download Squad] 14 New Entries: AlertThingy 2 adds support for Facebook, Flickr, more services

AlertThingy 2 adds support for Facebook, Flickr, more services

Filed under: Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Social Software, web 2.0, Web

When AlertThingy launched in April of 2008, the Adobe AIR-based application was a desktop client for social networking/micro-blogging service FriendFeed. The developers eventually added support for Twitter, which started an arms race between AlertThingy and Twhirl, a Twitter client that added support for FriendFeed.

Now AlertThingy has been updated to version two, and it supports the following services:

• Digg
• Facebook
• Flickr
• Jaiku
• TinyURL
• Tumblr
• Twitter

You can use AlertThingy 2 to upload images to Flickr, update your status on Twitter or Facebook, post messags to Tumblr, and so on. And of course, you can see what your friends on each of those services is up to. Users can also subscribe to RSS feeds to receive updates from blogs and news web sites.

If you prefer the classic version of AlertThingy that works with just FriendFeed, AlertThingy v1 is still available for download as well.

[via RefreshingApps]

AlertThingy 2 adds support for Facebook, Flickr, more services originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 01 Jan 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A look back at 2008's biggest Download Squad articles

Filed under: Features, Blogging, Lists

2008 has come and gone, and it's been a great year at Download Squad. Our site got a long-awaited facelift and some new faces (including me) joined the ranks. Thanks to all our visitors for all the great tips and comments, and keep them coming!

Before we usher in 2009, let's take a quick look back at some of the biggest posts from the past year!

1. Top 5 iPhone Buzzkills. This was a huge year for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Vic's list of gripes was probably the only time this year you read the phrase "cocaine and hooch" on DLS.
2. 10 awesome Blackberry apps. Cool apps are available for handsets other than the iPhone - Christina Warren shared her list of ten favorites for the Blackberry.
3. The 5 most annoying programs on your PC. Ian Smith started off last year with a bang with his "worst of the worst." I suspect that his five picks are still pretty near the top of list 364 days later.
4. 5 applications you run that suck/5 replacements that don't. Inspired by Ian's post, I kicked in my own list and offered some alternatives to alleviate the sucking - as did our readers in the comments.
5. So you want to be a web developer? Adam's conversation with an unnamed friend was a terrific read, and highlighted a number of great applications and addons aspiring web developers.
6. Windows 7 hands-on. I hate to do this to you guys and gals again, but Win7 has been everywhere since we got our hands on the first leaked ISO (build 6801). Builds 6956 and 7000 (beta 1) were leaked as well, in case you were under a rock.
7. How to surf the web if IE is disabled. We love sharing ways to do things you're not supposed to with your computer, and Brad's handy workaround was a welcome tip.
8. Is Google planning a web browser? Earlier this year, Google Chrome's existence was still a bit of a mystery. That is, at least, until that infamous comic strip hit the web and the first release quickly followed.
9. 24 killer apps for your USB flash drive. Most of you probably have at least one thumbdrive by now. They're ridiculously handy - especially if you've got the right portable applications saved to it. Now if I could just stop putting mine through the washing machine...
10. 35 places to download free, legal MP3s. People love free stuff and they love music, which were probably the two biggest determining factors in this posts' popularity.

A look back at 2008's biggest Download Squad articles originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Free Video Converter offers simple video editing, conversion

Filed under: Utilities, Video, Windows, Freeware

There are plenty of free Windows applications that let you convert files from one format to another (for example, from MPG to H.264). And judging by its name, you'd think that Free Video Converter was just another of those apps. But the free utility also offers basic video editing capabilities.

You won't find any fades, transitions, or titles in Free Video Converter. But the program does let you make quick and dirty edits by selecting the frames of any video that you want to include or exclude. Just choose whether you want to select or deselect frames, drag your mouse over the timeline, and click the export button.

When it comes to video conversion, Free Video Converter can handle a number of popular file formats including AVI, FLV, MP4, MPG, RM, QT, and WMV using popular codecs like XviD and H.264. There are also presets for YouTube, iPod, iPhone, HDTV, and Flash videos for the web.

Free Video Converter offers simple video editing, conversion originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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P.I.C.O. is 3-on-3 Worms style warfare in your browser - Time Waster

Filed under: Fun, Games, Internet, Time-Wasters, Web

If you're a NewGrounds user, you've no doubt seen the Pico franchise before - it's been around for ages. Some of the games in the series might be just a tad politically incorrect, but don't let your sensitive side stop you from trying out P.I.C.O.

P.I.C.O. was created by Bomtoons for Pico Day 2006, and it's still a great way to kill some free time. Choose your team of three characters from the series and dust off your trajectory-based combat skills. Aim your selected weapon (grenade, rocket launcher, fist, etc.) carefully with the arrow keys, press and hold the space bar to power up and release it to unleash your attack.

Want to test your skills against a friend or co-worker? Take them on in a two-player match and prove your superiority! It's a great way to make your whole team blow that important deadline.

P.I.C.O. is a stylish, fun take on the Worms series, and I shudder to think how much time I've blown over the years playing them.

What am I doing blogging? I've got three grenades left!

P.I.C.O. is 3-on-3 Worms style warfare in your browser - Time Waster originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 31 Dec 2008 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Extended Task manager for Windows

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

Extended Task Manager shows you everything that the built in Windows Task Manager does... and then some. This free utility offers a summary page which shows you al ist of running programs as well as a graph with your CPU usage, Page file usage, disk I/O use and network performance, among other things. And that's just in the first tab. The program has 8 separate tabs that provide detailed information about exactly what your computer is doing while you aren't paying attention (or even when you are).

The performance tab, for example, offers a more detailed look at your CPU, Memory, and Disk I/O usage and history. The graphs are similar to what you'd find in the Windows Task Manager, but the Disk I/O graph is a helpful addition. And when you mouse over any point in a graph you get details including which running processes are using the highest percentage of your resources at any given second.

[via Life Rocks 2.0]

Extended Task manager for Windows originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 31 Dec 2008 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Keep your application installers updated with Ketarin

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

We've covered applications that attempt to download and install the latest versions of your Windows software in the past. But Ketarin takes a different approach. You can enter a list of applications you want to track, and it will automatically check the download locations to see if there are new versions available. If there are, it will download the installer files to the directory of your choice. You can designate a single directory for all your downloads, or a different directory for each file.

The easiest way to use Ketarin is to grab the download URLs from FileHippo, a popular software download site. Ketarin will automatically detect and download the latest vesion of any app available on the site. But if you want to track an application that's not available on FileHippo you can enter the URL for the download page and establish a list of variables Ketarin should look for to determine whether there's a new version of the application available.

You can find more instructions for using Ketarin at the CDBurnerXP help site. The application updater was designed by the maker of the free CD burning application for Windows.

via Lifehacker

Keep your application installers updated with Ketarin originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 31 Dec 2008 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Openfire: cross-platform Jabber server

Filed under: Internet, Text, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Productivity, Freeware

Openfire is an open-source Jabber (XMPP) server that provides an easy way to offer and maintain internal instant messaging (including voice and video chat) for your company or organization. There are server plugins available which can add archiving and statistics capabilities as well as message of the day and multi-user chat (MUC) bookmarks.

Openfire conveniently supports LDAP and Active Directory authentication as well as SSL for encrypting communications. If you require high availability, you can enable clustering to eliminate a single point of failure. Common databases like MySQL, Microsoft SQL, and PostgreSQL are supported, or you can use Openfire's embedded database.

While the developers offer a web-based (SparkWeb) client and install-based (Spark) client, it's possible to use any IM client that supports Jabber (Adium, Pidgin, iChat, etc.). Openfire runs on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows and since it's Java based, it will require that you have a JRE installed.

Openfire: cross-platform Jabber server originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 31 Dec 2008 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A look at 7 Windows 7 federated search connectors

Filed under: Internet, Photo, Features, Windows, Microsoft, Beta, Search

Now that half of the known computing world has gotten their paws on the Windows 7 beta, it's high time to start tweaking and modifying Microsoft's latest OS. One feature begging to be monkeyed with is Windows Search.

Windows 7 supports a new feature called Federated Search. It's based on OpenSearch and RSS2 and enables searching of remote repositories from the Windows desktop. Microsoft embracing Open initiatives? Might there be some less-than-altruistic motivation behind this?

Better desktop searching may mean less browser-based searching, which might allow Microsoft to gain a little ground on Google. Still, the ease of creating connectors and the number of possibilties add some serious cool factor to Windows 7. They're a bit hard to find as of yet, but the popularity of the Windows 7 Beta torrent will no doubt lead to some new ones being created in the coming weeks.

The first one I encountered when running build 6801 was Long Zheng's Flickr Connectr. Though it's a man-in-the-middle solution and slightly slow at times it works well, and you can see it in action in the screen capture above. Image results can be displayed just like other files on your desktop - in list or details view, as thumbnails, or using Windows 7's content view.

Windows 7 Forums has several useful connectors for download, including YouTube, Yahoo, Live Search, Google News, and Google Blogs.

Brandon Paddock of Brandonlive.com has created a connector for DeviantArt. I wasn't able to find the download link on his blog, but you can still download it directly.

Want to see the connectors in action? Read on, and check out the gallery!

Continue reading A look at 7 Windows 7 federated search connectors

A look at 7 Windows 7 federated search connectors originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Update Twitter like Doogie Howser, MD!

Filed under: Fun, Internet, Text, Blogging, Web services

What child of the early 90's doesn't remember Neil Patrick Harris tapping away at his hideous-yet-cool IBM PS/2 at the end of a long day of practicing TV medicine?

Those were the days...and now you can relive them while updating your Twitter timeline. Head over to Twoogie, and you'll be presented with your very own virtual PS/2 style updater.

In the devloper's words, Twoogie is "an attempt to recreate that magical anachronism, and bring the teenage wit and wisdom of Doctor Doogie to a new breed of ADHD-addled netizens."

It's old school pretty, and either has intentional lag built in or is just not coded that well - it certainly seems to be part of the design. Either way, it reminded me a lot of my old Magnavox 486SX. Ah, the glory of being able to type faster than your computer could process the input!

The screenshot pretty much tells the whole story, and I knew what to expect before heading to the site - but it was still an awesome experience.

Update Twitter like Doogie Howser, MD! originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Portable Snowbird is a fast single-pane file manager

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware, Beta, Windows x64

If you're looking for a simple, fast, portable file management application to run instead of Windows Explorer, you might want to take Snowbird for a spin.

It's less than half a meg in size and includes some features that aren't included in Windows by default. Snowbird's main window is split between a tree view on the left and folder view on the right. Like Vista, breadcrumbs appear as you navigate but there's also an up button - an omission from Vista's Explorer interface that tends to irk some people.

Snowbird also maintains a list of recently visited locations and allows you to bookmark local and networked folders. The integrated search performs well, displaying results in a popup window. Memory usage is very light, and it ran without issue on my Vista Ultimate x64 install.

Overall, there's not a ton of functionality in Snowbird, but it's certainly good enough to serve as a replacement for the Windows default.

The author's site is hosted by GeoCities, so you may want to head to the via link at Freeware Files to download it.

[ via Freeware Files ]

Portable Snowbird is a fast single-pane file manager originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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bitRipper offers one-click DVD ripping

Filed under: Video, Windows, Freeware

Want to convert your DVD into a video file that you can play on any computer, but don't feel like fussing with complicated DVD ripping software? It doesn't get much simpler than bitRipper. All you need to do is pop a DVD into your optical disc drive, fire up bitRipper, and click the Start ripping button. That's it.

Of course, you can click the settings tab to access more advanced features. For instance, you can change the audio or video codecs or adjust the bit rate, aspect ratio, or video resolution. At the very least, I'd recommend configuring the audio. The default settings use a ridiculously low bitrate that sounds just awful.

For some reason, when I tried ripping a video using the LAME audio codec, the audio and video were out of sync, but when I tried again using the Fraunhofer codec all was right with the world.

[via MakeUseOf]

bitRipper offers one-click DVD ripping originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Net2ftp is a solid web-based FTP client

Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Beta, Web

Every now and then I need to FTP something from a computer that doesn't have an FTP client installed. Since it always seems to happen when I forget my flash drive, I like the option of using net2ftp's web-based client.

The basic interface is all PHP, so it should work just fine in any browser. It performed nicely in Chrome, Firefox, and IE on my desktop and even on my iPod touch. It's a very capable client and can do just about everything that a desktop client can: create and CHMOD files and directories, view and edit text files, copy, move, delete, zip, and unzip items.

Java and Flash uploaders are available if you'd like to queue multiple files. Clicking on the heart icon creates a bookmark that will open net2ftp and jump to a specific FTP folder after logging in to your server.

An install option is provided as well if you'd like to copy the net2ftp installer to your own server. Modules for Drupal, Xoops, and Mambo are included for quick and easy integration.

The interface also supports 3 different skins and more than a dozen languages. It's a handy tool for taking care of quick FTP transfers when you don't want to mess around with a full-blown desktop client.

Net2ftp is a solid web-based FTP client originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 30 Dec 2008 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Firefox will eventually let users turn web apps into desktop apps

Filed under: Web services, Mozilla, web 2.0, Browsers

Web based apps are the new desktop apps. There are web apps for playing games, watching videos, listening to music, creating and editing office documents, and the list goes on. While I still prefer editing audio, video, and images using dedicated desktop tools, there are even web apps for that.

But sometimes if all you want to do is access your email account or an online image editor like Picnik, you don't really need to fire up a full fledged web browser. A while back Mozilla created a project called Prism that lets you create a desktop shortcut that will open just a single page at a time in a stripped down version of Firefox. Now it looks like Mozilla is planning on integrating that feature with a future version of Firefox.

Here's how it would work. When you visit a web-based application, you'd be able to click a button to turn it into a desktop app. This would create a desktop shortcut to the application and users would be able to open a window showing just that app. For certain applications, like the Flickr Uploader or Zoho Docs, Firefox might allow you to drag and drop files to upload or create file associations in your operating system so that every time you click on a Word document, for example, Zoho Docs would be opened instead of Microsoft Word.

Right now these features are still in the planning stages. But we could see them in future versions of Firefox. Of course, Google Chrome already has a similar feature which lets you create an application shortcut out of any web page with a click of a button using Google Gears.

Firefox will eventually let users turn web apps into desktop apps originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 30 Dec 2008 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Get detailed disk info with Drive Manager

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

If you store all of your Windows files on a single hard drive with one partition and rarely use the CD/DVD drive or USB flash disks, then please ignore the rest of this article. If on the other hand you have multiple hard drives or partitions and are constantly using removable media, you may want to check out Drive Manager.

Drive Manager will provide you with detailed information about all disks connected to your computer at a glance. The utility comes in a single executable package, so all you need to do is click and run. No installation is required.

In addition to showing you information about the size, format, and name of any disks, you can also get SMART information, or detect file system flags. For optical disk drives you can detect the types of discs that the drive can read and write as well as the maximum write speeds. You can also analyze disks.

Drive Manager also lets you hide drives so that they won't show up in Windows Explorer.

[via gHacks]

Get detailed disk info with Drive Manager originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 30 Dec 2008 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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