Month: June 2007

Forget hunting newspapers for crossword puzzles. Black Ink goes out and finds them for you, and keeps them all in one tidy place. You can set a timer to play under pressure and Black Ink has a number of shortcuts to jump to spots in your crossword. We also like the printing option, so if you’re going on vacation and don’t plan on taking your Mac with you, you can still print out a few crossword puzzles.

One way of enriching your musical experience is to learn the lyrics to all those songs you know and love. Thanks to Evil Lyrics, music lovers have an easy way to do just that every time they listen to MP3’s on their PC. Evil Lyrics is a small plug-in that displays the lyrics of songs as they play as long as you’ve got an internet connection.

Once installed, Evil Lyrics starts every time you open your default media player. The window floats in a small browser style window at the side of the player but it can be minimised to the tray if you don’t want it sat there. The window also provides additional links to Google searches, Amazon album profiles, translations, offline storage and other album or song related data. The plug-in was designed originally for Winamp (which is what we tested it in) but it now works with Windows Media Player, Foobar2000 and Sonique. It’s also supposed to be compatible with Media Player XP although many users have reported problems with this particular player.

Continue reading “Evil Lyrics delivers songs to your desktop”

Flash games are fun but sometimes they also distract too much and make it hard to go back to work. So, if you’re going to play anyway, at least play a game where you can do something more than killing aliens or collecting golden coins.

Lumosity is a mixture between a game and a brain fitness program that promises to improve your memory, attention, cognitive control and processing speed along a free 30-session course. Each session consists of 3 to 5 short games in which you’ll have to catch birds by spelling their names, find your way through a labyrinth full of monsters or solve maths operations as fast as you can.

Before starting your sessions you can take a quick test to measure your LumosIQ for a better progress tracking. Our result wasn’t too bad but we’re definitely enrolling in the course! And you’d better hurry up too, as it seems Lumosity is not going to be always free.

ZeusDraw is a very accessible tool for anybody wanting to get their hands into vector drawing. We really liked the feel of the different brushes and the set of options offered like path tools or gradient. You can also measure the length of lines, angles and stamp your own graphics. The multiple windowed interface means everything is just a click away. The devil is in the details and this is where ZeusDraw shows its true colors with features like blend modes, soft edges, tiled output and a number of layout and construction aids.

If you ever felt like testing a new operating system but didn’t have the guts to format your PC and start from scratch, then this is for you. VirtualBox creates a virtual computer inside your PC so that you can install and test just about anything, from a whole new OS to any application, without any risk. A great tool for all those eager users who always want to try new stuff!

Don’t know what to do with those holiday pictures? Try creating a DVD slideshow with VSO PhotoDVD. This great tool creates a video with your photos to which you may then add comments and also an optional soundtrack. The results can be watched on TV, enabling you to share photos with your family and friends in a very easy way.