Month: August 2007

Having recently taken part in my first podcast, I’ve become aware of the sheer number of obstacles that lie in the way of becoming a radio star. Aside from our producer having an accident with his laptop and losing some of our ‘valuable’ material, we were amazed at how much you can end up paying for editing software, promotional tools and hosting. Thankfully, there are a number of reliable utlities you can pick up for free that take care of various aspects of your podcast production. Best of all, you can pretty much run the whole show using web apps, making it great for collaborating with the possé remotely.

Before you even pick up a mic, it’s a good idea to get a taste of what’s out there at the moment, be it to gain inspiration or spy on what your competition is up to. Podcast.net contains a well-organised directory of online shows to help you research the field you wish to explore. Once you’re ready to lay down your inane banter then head for podOmatic, an online service that lets you record and edit your own shows through an easy-to-handle interface.

After you’ve recorded a podcast, you’ll quickly realise that it’s simply not viable to just invite everyone round your house in order to listen to it. No, you need to find a host for it. Luckily, Gcast provides a free hosting service, as well as some useful tools for mixing playlists online and recording over the phone.

What good is a podcast that no one knows about? No good. So, head for Clickcaster, which takes care of the licencing and promotion of your radio show with the minimum of fuss. Another great Web app to try is Transcribr, which helps audiences find and use your podcasts with enhanced searchability and indexing. It does this by creating a transcript of your podcast and although it’ll cost you $1 per minute, you’ll have a fully indexible transcript within three days.

Now that the Premiership and La Liga seasons have kicked off, I’ve just made my annual pilgrimage to the newsagent to buy my sticker albums and wallcharts. This year though, I’m also planning to use my computer to track all the latest stats from Europe’s football leagues. I’ve downloaded a copy of Ltrack, which lets you monitor your team’s highs and lows over the next few months.

Its interface is pretty simple but there’s a lot you can do with the app. As well as showing the league table standings, a wide selection of statistical information can be displayed, printed or exported in a variety of formats. I’m a massive stat fan and was impressed by the way you can view data on teams, players, goals and red and yellow cards.

You can display, print or export these statistics and tables in a variety of different formats and there’s a handy online update facility to keep your league up-to-date with the latest results over the Net. This feature is only available for certain leagues, but Ltrack is still a much easier way of tracking football league data than scribbling on a wallchart.

Lounge by the pool while you can, ’cause summer is almost finished. If you already fear the return to normal life we can help you ease the comedown with a few lively water games for your computer.

Diver: Deep Water Adventures is a classic simulation game where you’ll have to earn your living as a pro diver, exploring different ocean floors, taking photos, going treasure hunting or neutralizing rusty sea mines from WW II. Fish Tales will make you feel just like Nemo, as you impersonate Sunny, a tropical fish looking to defeat the ruthless Shark King. Those of you who enjoyed the Pirates of the Caribbean series on the big screen will take to Pirates: Battle for the Carribean. This game, part strategy, part action, pits you against other buccaneers in a fight to rule the seas. Last but not least, Aquapack Battle Boattle is a classic little naval shooter with fast action and smooth animation.

For more intense gamers, we recommend the newly released sci-fi thriller Bioshock, which is set in a gloomy underwater world and where you’ll attempt to survive by hunting for a DNA-altering substance. Check out the trailer for more info, but beware, it does include some pretty violent scenes:

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This is not the first time we cover iPod applications on this blog. We already analyzed the great Yamipod and also gathered a top list with iPod tools. But this is definitely one of the most original iPod tools I’ve stumbled upon. It’s called iPod Plug-in for Winamp and it’s exactly what its name states: a plug-in for Winamp that enables you to manage your iPod.

After installing this plug-in, you’ll see a new item in Winamp’s Media Library. Yes, that’s your iPod! Click on its name and you’ll see the iPod’s contents, conveniently organized by categories and ready to be played on Winamp itself. In fact, you can use tracks on your iPod as if they were on your hard drive.

But that’s not all. iPod Plug-in for Winamp also includes tool to synchronize contents between the computer and the iPod, rate songs, autofill the iPod with random songs and of course, copy files from the iPod to the PC and viceversa.

This week I’ve been beta testing a new Web app called blinkBox that is designed to help you communicate with people using movie clips. I can’t remember exactly what possessed me to sign up to the service but I guess I was just intrigued as to how this would work. The simple answer is – it doesn’t.

The process is a simple one – choose a video clip, edit the length of it, write a funny message then send it to your friends. This revolutionary new communication technique is called ‘blinking’. According to the developers, Michael and Adrian, the site is designed for film and TV fanatics to celebrate their love of the screen with each other.

The most powerful tool we have to communicate who we are and what we do, is the emotional connection that everyone has to the properties we represent. The relationships we have with our favourite films, scenes, characters and songs form a profound emotional language that’s understood by almost everyone on the planet – friends, family and complete strangers.

OK, great. But my favourite film is Back To The Future, and there are no clips of this on the site. My favourite character is Teenwolf. No clips. My favourite scene is the one with the strawberries from Nine and a Half Weeks. Need I go on? Instead, the best ‘blink’ I could muster was a clip of Ian Botham fly fishing with an old man who looks like a hamster.

I’m all in favour of the social networking revolution but to me blinkBox clearly illustrates that we’re in danger of seeing a return to the bad old days of the dotcom boom when investors were backing any old hare-brained scheme only for it to fall flat on its face. What we need are web apps that make our lives easier or provide an online solution to an offline problem, not a made-up new way of communicating that just confuses people. Or am I stating the blinking obvious?

If there’s one thing PC users envy from MacOS that’s the Dock, that eye-catching, smooth-moving bottom toolbar. But now you can have one even if you’re not a Mac owner. Just install RocketDock and enjoy a beautiful new toolbar where you can easily add links to your favorite programs and change between active apps.

Regular visitors to Softonic might have noticed that we’ve been slowly building up the world’s biggest collection of Solitaire games on a single website. That’s because we know you like them, and we’re desperate to get into the Guinness Book of World Records. There are of course some fantastic versions of the game such as Solitaire City but everyone knows strange beats fantastic and there are plenty of weird editions about:

Dream Vacation Solitaire: Undoutbedly the most exotic Solitaire game in the world, this one lets you pretend you’re mega-rich even though you’re stuck at work waiting for the day to end. As you play you get to build up money and medals and buy yachts to sail to the next glamorous location on. And play Solitaire. For a few minutes you get to live the life of a supermodel – apparently behind snorting gargantuan quantities of drugs, the world’s prettiest faces like nothing better than a good old game of Solitaire.

Ronin Solitaire: Ronin is a samurai with ambition. However, he’s currently unemployed and needs to find a new master. Plus he’s depressed having been made the laughing stock of his town. No benefits, no home, his wife’s left him and the rain is coming down. But you can help. Be good at Solitaire and get Ronin back where he belongs. As the humble servant of an exploitative gangmaster.

5 Realms of Cards: James raved about this one recently as his ‘download of the day’ on insideTonic and since then he hasn’t stopped talking about, or playing, it. He’s a sucker for a good fairytale and 5 Realms of Cards is based on saving a princess. No surprises that she’s still locked in the tower waiting to be rescued.

Bastille Solitaire: Of course Solitaire is not just a card game, confusingly it’s also a puzzle with little pegs. Surely someone could have come up with a new name. How about ‘Pegs’? Or ‘Solipegs’? Or ‘Pegipegipegs’? Anyhow, this one makes it onto the list by brilliantly combining the beginning of the French revolution with a game where you have to pull all the wooden heads out to win.

If like me you’re terrified of algebra or equation solving, then you should take a look at Eular Equation Solver. This simple but powerful tool is designed to help you solve the complex fluid dynamics of Euler equations.

It’s aimed at advanced students and professionals although it can also calculate simple equations so it’s great for cheating on your homework! The program has several fields – the equation itself, the values delta, the X values and the initial values of X and Y etc. You simply fill in the required fields with the hardest equations you can think of, click ‘Calculate’ and it not only gives you the solution but also reveals a graphical representation of the result.

Even better, the program doesn’t require any installing or unzipping – just download it and the .exe file runs it immediately. A very powerful tool for cheaters and professionals alike!