Bubble Spinner - Time Waster
Filed under: Fun, Games, Time-Wasters
Looking for a new "spin" on those games where you shoot objects at each other and try to match colors? Pardon the corny pun, but Bubble Spinner might be for you. Instead of shooting at a static playing field, in Bubble Spinner your shots actually rotate the board. The object is to clear the screen by connecting 3 or more bubbles of the same color, making them disappear. Having the target in the middle of the screen instead of at the top adds some new tricks to your Bubble Spinner arsenal. You can bounce off two walls to reach tough spots on the bottom of the board, and you can throw away a bubble by having it bounce too many times without touching another one. If you're having trouble getting a high score, you can always take out your frustration by spinning the board around as much as you can.
Bubble Spinner - Time Waster originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 09 Feb 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsWindows 7 tip: (elevated) command prompt anywhere
Filed under: OS Updates, Windows, Microsoft, How-Tos, Windows x64
The command prompt here power toy was a feature that a lot of users requested be built-in to Windows 7. Microsoft listened, and added it to a secondary context menu.
By holding shift and right-clicking a folder, you'll see additional commands not listed on the standard menu, such as open in new process, copy as path, and open command window here. Suppose you need a command window with elevated privileges. Then what?
In Windows Vista, it could be done through the start menu by typing cmd into the search box and holding shift+control and hitting enter. This works in Windows 7 as well.
Combine the two, and you've got a right-click elevated command window shortcut: shfit+control+right click on a folder and choose open command window. Check your title bar: if it starts with Administrator, you're set!
Some other sites have posted registry hacks to add a context menu entry for the admin option, but why bother? It's already there - just hidden!
By holding shift and right-clicking a folder, you'll see additional commands not listed on the standard menu, such as open in new process, copy as path, and open command window here. Suppose you need a command window with elevated privileges. Then what?
In Windows Vista, it could be done through the start menu by typing cmd into the search box and holding shift+control and hitting enter. This works in Windows 7 as well.
Combine the two, and you've got a right-click elevated command window shortcut: shfit+control+right click on a folder and choose open command window. Check your title bar: if it starts with Administrator, you're set!
Some other sites have posted registry hacks to add a context menu entry for the admin option, but why bother? It's already there - just hidden!
Windows 7 tip: (elevated) command prompt anywhere originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 09 Feb 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsOneSpot expands WSJ partnership
Filed under: Business, Internet, Blogging, Web services, web 2.0
Back in June, we covered OneSpot -- a subscription service that allows publishers and businesses to deliver relevant content from across the web to a targeted audience. As I described the service then, think of OneSpot as a white-label Techmeme/Sphere/Digg solution for small and large publishers. OneSpot is a really great concept, because not only do publishers have the ability to supplement their own content with targeted and relevant content from around the web, they still have editorial control over what stories and sources appear on their site.
Today, OneSpot announced that it has closed a $4.2 million Series A round of funding, led by Silver Creek Ventures out of Dallas. With the economy being what it is, and with venture capital for start-ups becoming more and more of a scarcity, this is a big win for the Austin-based company. I caught-up with Matt Cohen -- OneSpot's founder and CEO -- on Friday and after hearing about what OneSpot has been up to since we last spoke, and what the plans are for the future, it was clear why these guys are succeeding despite the rough economic climate.
Since June of 2008, WSJ Online (the online arm of The Wall Street Journal) has been using the service on theWSJ Law Section and Law Blog, to supplement its own coverage with news from around the web. The integration has been a success and OneSpot is now integrated in the Technology, Health, Politics, Personal Finance and Business sections of the site. If you go to any of those sections, in either a sidebar or column, headlines related to that category appear from sources across the globe.
OK so a large publisher like WSJ can take advantage of OneSpot, but what about individuals? The details are still being tweaked, Matt told me OneSpot is working on a solution for individuals (think probloggers). That's really exciting to me, because I know that there are lots of individuals or smaller sites that would love the ability to supplement their own content with current stuff from around the web, without having to manually cull sites or feeds, only to post a link.
We're going to be hearing a lot more about content filtering and aggregation in 2009, whether it is through separate sites like Alltop and Regator or subscription services like OneSpot. OneSpot's funding shows that this is a real area to watch in the coming months.
OneSpot expands WSJ partnership originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 09 Feb 2009 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsGoogle plays the heavy for record labels, targets bloggers
Filed under: Audio, Blogging, Google
The problem is, some of the people sharing songs are doing so at the request of artists and their promoters. That's the case with Ryan's Smashing Life, whose story has been picked up by LA Weekly and Rolling Stone.
In November, some of Ryan's posts began disappearing. There were no takedown notices. The posts were not unpublished. They were unceremoniously deleted without warning.
What's going on behind the scenes are the same idiotic practices that have plagued the music industry for ages. The promoters push material to people like Ryan for publicity without talking to corporate muckety-mucks. The suits get mad, and blame the little guy. Google hosts the content, so the labels order them to grab the intellectual ballbat and make with the kneecapping.
In Google's defense, surely there's something in the Blogger.com TOS that permits this sort of thing, but these actions don't do anything to further Google's friend-of-the-people image.
Ultimately, though, it's the bass-ackwards business model of the music industry that continues to frustrate and inconvenience the rest of us who just want to listen to our music.
[ via Inquistr ]
Google plays the heavy for record labels, targets bloggers originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 07 Feb 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsWill Opera claim the Javascript speed title?
Filed under: Internet, Beta, Browsers
A recent blog entry on the Opera web site states that "Carakan is currently about two and a half times faster at the SunSpider benchmark than the ECMAScript engine in Presto 2.2 (Opera 10 Alpha).
On my laptop running an Intel T5500, Opera 10 posts a total time of 5006.4ms. Even at 2.5 times faster, that's still not as fast as the 1410.2ms Chrome 2.0.160.0 puts up. In fact, the projected 2002.6ms time is 50% slower than Chrome.
That said, Sunspider is only a benchmark. What really matters is how browsers compare to each other in real use, and Opera 10 alpha certainly "feels" like it's competitive with Chrome and Firefox.
The Opera development team also reports that "other benchmarks" with which Carakan is already compatible report results that range from 5 to 50 times faster than Futhark. There's no mention of what the tests involved, but it's fair to say that if those numbers can be translated into real world performance Opera will be in a good position to throw down the gauntlet.
Will Opera claim the Javascript speed title? originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 07 Feb 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsCornify: ruin any website, unicorn-and-rainbow style
Rewind. Yes, Cornify is kind of fun. I like it for the same reason people pay actual money to own a Staples EasyButton. Sure, it's corny, but you can just hit the thing as hard as you want when you get angry, and it's a great way to blow off steam. Cornify is even better, though, because instead of hitting a button, you can hit the website that made you mad in the first place. Hit it with unicorns. Once you've calmed down, you can reload the page to de-Cornify it and move on with your life.
Cornify: ruin any website, unicorn-and-rainbow style originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 06 Feb 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsFugly Friday: it doesn't have to be like this
Filed under: Fugly Friday
Each Friday we take a look at the weird, bad and just plain fugly interfaces for desktop, mobile and web apps.. Welcome to Fugly Friday
After going through the submissions last week it struck me how so many educational portals or tools are not given the design love they deserve. Shouldn't there be a program where designers can volunteer their time to spruce up edu sites of all kinds? Maybe not for the for-profit schools, but there's no reason for Front Page-style mediocrity -- ever.
Anyway, I've seen firsthand what a crummy edu site can look like. Some schools clearly "get it," while some are obstinate in their fugly ways. Case in point: Josiah sent us a screenshot from the University of Akron's web editor UI (it's on the next page). It's amazing how crappy a site can look with such minimalism.
After going through the submissions last week it struck me how so many educational portals or tools are not given the design love they deserve. Shouldn't there be a program where designers can volunteer their time to spruce up edu sites of all kinds? Maybe not for the for-profit schools, but there's no reason for Front Page-style mediocrity -- ever.
Anyway, I've seen firsthand what a crummy edu site can look like. Some schools clearly "get it," while some are obstinate in their fugly ways. Case in point: Josiah sent us a screenshot from the University of Akron's web editor UI (it's on the next page). It's amazing how crappy a site can look with such minimalism.
Continue reading Fugly Friday: it doesn't have to be like this
Fugly Friday: it doesn't have to be like this originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsGoogle offers 1.5 million public domain books for your mobile phone
Filed under: Internet, Google, Mobile
Google has been scanning books for the last couple of years for the company's Book Search portal. Well over a million of those books are in the public domain, which means that Google can legally make the full text available online without running into any copyright issues. And this week the company upped the game by creating a mobile portal which basically means you can read any of those books on your computer or mobile phone. The new Book Search mobile portal is optimized for touchscreen devices like the iPhone or Google Android devices. But you can use it to find and read books on any internet connected device. I grabbed this screenshot using a desktop web browser.
1.5 million books are available to US readers, and over half a million of those books are available internationally. Many of the books are classics that were written long ago and which are no longer covered by copyright. But there are also some newer texts that have entered the public domain for one reason or another.
As Google points out, some of the books may contain errors, since the optical character recognition technology used to convert the scanned images to text is far from perfect. And Google added a neat trick that lets you see the original scanned image when you select any chunk of text.
Have you found anything interesting or surprising in the book list? Let us know in the comments.
Google offers 1.5 million public domain books for your mobile phone originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 06 Feb 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsWindows 7 or KDE 4?
Filed under: OS Updates, Windows, Linux
But you know what? Windows 7 isn't the only operating system with a flashy new desktop interface. The KDE 4 desktop environment for Linux also offers some pretty nifty features like enhanced support for widgets, a new menu, and animations.
So the folks at ZDNet Australia decided to see what people thought of KDE4. Only taking a cue from Microsoft's Mojave campaign, they didn't tell anyone that they were looking at a Linux desktop. Instead they said it was Windows 7. And people seemed to be impressed. Of course, they also only got to look at it for a few moments and didn't know that it wouldn't run MS Office, Outlook, or Adobe Photoshop. But hey, first impressions matter, right?
[via Slashdot]
Windows 7 or KDE 4? originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 06 Feb 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsOnline word processor Shutterborg lets you open and edit any web page
Filed under: Office, Web services, web 2.0
For instance, I typed in www.downloadsquad.com and within seconds Shutterborg loaded the page as if it were a Word document. You can change or remove images, add text, adjust the font, alignment, or muck up any web site any way you like.
The service doesn't offer a ton of options. Right now you can only save files in HTML format. And there's no way to load documents saved on your desktop, although that feature is coming soon. So right now Shutterborg is really more of a novelty than a replacement for Microsoft Word, or even Google Docs. But this web based processor does show some promise, and could certainly help you plot a practical joke or two.
[via ReadWriteWeb]
Online word processor Shutterborg lets you open and edit any web page originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 06 Feb 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsHumanity suffers your wrath in Monster Evolution - Time Waster
In Monster Evolution, it's time for humanity to suffer your wrath! Devour or squash enough people to reach the goal and you'll be able to evolve into a new, improved creature.
You get a short grace period at the start of the game. There won't be any do-gooders around with guns or tanks firing at you, but they're coming. Later on, you'll be assaulted by even more human-created annoyances like helicopters and zeppelins.
The graphics and gameplay are pure fun, and with three difficulty setings and 25 monsters to try out this one could definitely make your Friday afternoon totally unproductive.
Unless, of course, you consider eating hundreds of people and destroying civilization productive. In that case, play on!
Humanity suffers your wrath in Monster Evolution - Time Waster originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 06 Feb 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsAdd-Art is an ad blocker and an art show in one
Of all the unlikely places to curate an art show, the ad space on websites has to be one of the most unlikely. Instead of shocking a monkey or being invited to meet some "adult friends," how about looking at a selection of art that changes every two weeks? The Add-Art plugin for Firefox comes packaged with Adblock Plus, but instead of removing the ads entirely, it displays images from the current show.Replacing ads with art sounded a bit hokey to me at first, but its the curation that makes this idea brilliant. There's something uplifting about a campaign to take a space in a website's layout, that people were just going to throw away with ad-blockers anyway, and repurpose it to show them something new. Looking through the past exhibits, one of the more interesting projects was curated by having Amazon Mechanical Turk workers select their favorites: a clever, populist approach to art, made possible by the web.
[via Andrew Richardson on Twitter]
Add-Art is an ad blocker and an art show in one originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 06 Feb 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsMultiple Inboxes adds extra panes to Gmail
Multiple Inboxes changes that. The tool is part of Gmail Labs, which means you can enable it by clicking the little green icon next to the Gmail settings link. Once you enable Multiple Inboxes you'll notice a few extra panes hanging out next to yor main Gmail window. You can adjust what shows up in these areas by clicking the settings link.
For example, you can see all of your starred items in one panel, while viewing all items with attachments in another.
Multiple Inboxes will probably work best for users with high resolution, wide screen monitors. If you've got a 1024 x 768 pixel display, there's a good chance you're going to have a hard time reading your message headers when running this tool.
Multiple Inboxes adds extra panes to Gmail originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 06 Feb 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsFeedscrub is like a spam filter for your RSS feeds
Filed under: Social Software, web 2.0
Just because you subscribe to an RSS feed doesn't mean you want to read every single thing in that feed. What if you read Download Squad just for Brad Linder's posts, or you're only interested in posts about Google? FeedScrub might be what you're looking for. It lets you vote each of your RSS articles up or down, training it to only display the stuff you care about. You then subscribe to the scrubbed feed in your reader, and you're good to go.Where FeedScrub gets things right is at the bottom of each item in the scrubbed feed, where they've put in buttons so you can train FeedScrub directly from your reader. Where it gets things wrong -- but only a little bit -- is by giving you one set of preferences for all of your subscriptions, instead of letting you export them as separate scrubbed feeds. I'd like to break my unread count down by individual feed, not aggregate it into one scrubbed one.
Feedscrub is like a spam filter for your RSS feeds originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 06 Feb 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsGood news Windows 7 beta users: your opinion matters!
Filed under: OS Updates, Security, Microsoft, Beta
Remember the little UAC bug Long Zheng noticed the other day? It's been fixed.
As announced on the Engineering Windows 7 blog, UAC behavior has been changed in two key ways. First, confirmation is now required when any UAC changes are initiated. Second, the UAC control panel itself will now run in a "high integrity process" that can't be compromised using mechanisms like sendkeys.
Yes, it's fantastic news that Microsoft has fixed an important security issue. But Microsoft does have a good track record as far as security goes - just look how quickly they responded to the unconfirmed IE flaw.
There's something else important to take away from this: Microsoft is actually listening to what its beta users are saying, and they're willing to make changes based on feedback. It's encouraging to see this at work, and is certainly a good sign for users planning on making the move to Windows 7 once it's released.
Keep using your send feedback links, and keep commenting - Microsoft is listening this time around!
As announced on the Engineering Windows 7 blog, UAC behavior has been changed in two key ways. First, confirmation is now required when any UAC changes are initiated. Second, the UAC control panel itself will now run in a "high integrity process" that can't be compromised using mechanisms like sendkeys.
Yes, it's fantastic news that Microsoft has fixed an important security issue. But Microsoft does have a good track record as far as security goes - just look how quickly they responded to the unconfirmed IE flaw.
There's something else important to take away from this: Microsoft is actually listening to what its beta users are saying, and they're willing to make changes based on feedback. It's encouraging to see this at work, and is certainly a good sign for users planning on making the move to Windows 7 once it's released.
Keep using your send feedback links, and keep commenting - Microsoft is listening this time around!
Good news Windows 7 beta users: your opinion matters! originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 06 Feb 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsGet a StrongBad or Sam & Max episode for free
Filed under: Fun, Games, Windows, Windows x64
Though you can choose to only receive the newsletter weekly, you've probably got a spare GMail account laying around just in case opportunities like this arise. Time to put it to good use!
Telltale is behind a number of great games. While you're there you might want to grab Sam and Max 104: Abe Lincoln Must Die for free as well.
[ via Elite Freeware ]
Get a StrongBad or Sam & Max episode for free originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 05 Feb 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsRetro Video: when Internet was civil
I love the quote from playwright John Allen, who really understood how "Internet" could connect physically disparate affinity groups. John also says, "there's an interesting kind of restraint that you find. ...There's not a lot of put-downs... not screenfulls of 'go to hell.'" My how times of changed. These days anonymity and "Internet" are synonymous with flame wars and cyberbullying. One can only hope that recent pleas for civility on the web will get us back to these good ol' days of newsgroups and bulletin boards.
We'll keep an eye out for more retro videos and post them here.
Retro Video: when Internet was civil originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 05 Feb 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsBox.net launches new design, more collaboration features
Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Web services, web 2.0
We've covered Box.net before -- the file storage site with collaborative tools and a really great iPhone app -- today the company has launched a redesigned site and even more tools to make online collaboration easier and more effective.
Last year, Box.net added the ability to let users invite other collaborators to view or edit documents. Coupled with Box.net's OpenBox platform, you have a really slick light content management system that allows you to store, share, and group edit documents, spreadsheets, images and more. Today, even more features have been added to aid in project and team management.
Some of the highlights:
- Profile pages for each user that can be customized to show their role in the current project and their contact information and recent project activity
- Discussions that can take place across your shared workspace. You can also comment on individual files
- Bookmarks -- it sounds simple, but it's actually pretty cool because you can share a URL and the rest of the group can then comment on it and its findings.
- Updates - you can see updates across all your various projects to see what the newest discussions, edits and uploads are, all from one page.
Continue reading Box.net launches new design, more collaboration features
Box.net launches new design, more collaboration features originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsStardock Fences adds KDE 4 style desktop organization to Windows
Filed under: OS Updates, Utilities, Windows, Freeware, Windows x64
Fences add KDE4-style containers to your desktop into which you can drop shortcuts and files. As you would expect from a Stardock app, the aesthetics of Fences are nice out of the box and can be highly customized.
On first launch, you can choose to let Fences attempt to automatically corral your icons or go straight to work manually settings things up. The no-fuss option worked well on my desktop, grouping files, folders, and shortcuts in their own containers.
Once you have things sorted out to your liking, you can take a snapshot of your setup to easily switch between configurations. You can also lock your fences to prevent organizational mishaps. For a clear look at your desktop, a double click will hide everything - unless you have a container excluded from hiding.
Fences is currently free until August as a preview, and runs on both 32 and 64-bit Windows.
To see some more screens, view the gallery after the break!
Continue reading Stardock Fences adds KDE 4 style desktop organization to Windows
Stardock Fences adds KDE 4 style desktop organization to Windows originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 05 Feb 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsFoxmarks brings bookmark synchronization to Safari and IE
Filed under: Browsers
Foxmarks provides a simple way to keep your Firefox bookmarks synchronized across multiple computers or Firefox profiles. Just install the plugin and any time you add or remove a bookmark from one computer the changes will be reflected on Firefox on any other computer you use. This comes in handy if you want to sync the bookmarks on your home and work computers, or if you have a portable version of Firefox that you keep on a USB flash drive for use while you're traveling, but which you want to keep up to date.This week the Foxmarks team released tools that let you synchronize your Internet Explorer and Safari bookmarks as well. That means you can sync your IE7 bookmarks at home and work. But it also means you can keep your bookmarks on all three browsers synchronized.
The new tools don't support password synchronization, a feature that Foxmarks added for the Firefox plugin a while back. But it's still a pretty awesome development, especially for anyone who uses Internet Explorer at Work and Firefox at home.
[via Lifehacker]
Foxmarks brings bookmark synchronization to Safari and IE originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 05 Feb 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsYou received this email because you are subscribed to the real_time feed for http://www.downloadsquad.com/rss.xml. To change your subscription settings, please log into RSSFWD.
1 comment:
I have interpret a insufficient of the articles on your website trendy, and I definitely like your line of blogging. I added it to my favorites net page file and resolve be checking stand behind soon. Please check out of order my position as well and fail me know what you think. Thanks.
Post a Comment