Month: September 2007

So, Photoshop has a new logo. I’m still not sure it really does it for me, but it’s certainly much more in keeping with the modern digital world then its earlier form. Of course, the creative folk at Adobe know a little bit about design, but with a little knowledge and the right software you too can make a logo that will enforce your brand effectively. Start by reading up on the principles of logo design. Get hold of a copy of Logo Designs That Work, or check out The Thinker’s article on what makes a great logo.

Once you’ve grasped the theory, it’s time to get your hands dirty and start working up your logo. Photoshop and Illustrator are the mainstays of corporate design, and used together they contain everything you need to produce a dazzling logo. These apps can be difficult to master if you’re new to them, but luckily there is plenty of software that is dedicated to the creation of logos.

Installing AAA Logo Software is a good way to start because the program contains dozens of pre-made logo templates to get you going. Tweaking these graphics to create your own branding is pretty easy and there are over 2,000 customisable logo elements to tinker with. The Logo Creator is another good app for beginners, and even helps you resell the logos you produce. Once you become a little more ambitious, Xara Xtreme provides a nice bridge between manipulating templates and drawing from scratch.

Of course, it’s no good having a logo if it’s just sat on your hard drive gathering cyber dust. Try using VidLogo to insert your creation into a corporate video, or have a look at Newlite Business Card Printer, which allows you to incorporate your logo into a professional looking business card.

One way to breathe new life into your photo collection is to turn your images into panoramic shots. You can create some amazing pictures if you’ve taken 2 or 3 separate shots of a landscape and effectively ‘stitch’ them together with one of several panoramic photo programs. Here’s a selection of the best:

• AutoStitch – Quick and easy fully automatic 2D image stitcher

• Arcsoft Panorama Maker – Create stunning 360 degree panoramas

• 3D Photo Builder Professional – Produce 3D panoramas in an instant

• Photomatix – Optimise contrast issues to produce pixel perfect panoramas

• Panorama Tools – Automatically publish your panoramas to the internet

Mozilla have announced that they are to launch a major investment drive into revamping Thunderbird’s e-mailing capabilities. Mitchell Baker, CEO of the Mozilla Corporation, has announced that Mozilla will be creating a new company to focus on emailing and messaging which will initially be known as ‘MailCo’.

Baker announced on his blog:

We will increase our investment and focus on our current email client -Thunderbird – and on innovations in the email and communications areas. We are doing so by creating a new organization with this as its sole focus and committing resources to this organization.

Baker says that the main aims of MailCo will be to move Thunderbird forwards to provide better, deeper email solutions, create a better user experience for a range of Internet communications and encourage increased community involvement on the net. But how exactly are Mozilla going to do this? One option is to make Thunderbird a completely web based application and incorporate many of the functions that have made Gmail and Yahoo! Mail so popular. A key to achieving their aims would be taking a closer look at how people are starting to communicate using online applications such as Facebook and MySpace. If Mozilla can somehow adapt these principles for Thunderbird, then they could be onto a winner.

Adding Flash to your website can give it that extra touch of class but the problem is, it’s not exactly accessible to those without programming knowledge. There are, however, tools out there that can make Flash design incredibly simple and user-friendly with absolutely no knowledge required. You won’t be able to create Dreamweaver style websites with these tools but you’ll certainly be able to give your website an edge with them.

• CoffeeCup Flash Menu Builder – Create Flash menus with fade effects and sub-menus
• Flash Templates Pack – 115 ready made Flash templates for instant addition to your site
• SWiSHmax – Create interactive Flash animations, motion paths and buttons
• Anim-FX – Designed especially for creating eye-catching Flash ads, headers and footers
• Advanced Effect Maker – Flash slide shows, games and special effects made easy

The big news of the week for us at Softonic surely is the launch of Softonic France. The site offers downloads for the French speaking public with the same editorial independence and critical analysis as you’ve come to expect from Softonic.

Not a week goes by without another extravagance from Google. This time the Mountain View company has launched the Lunar X Prize, a race to land a privately funded craft on Earth’s satellite. Our Neil Armstrong of the downloads, Tony, took the opportunity to reveal updated images in Google Moon.

From Moon light to strobe lights, James reviewed all the best dance applications, from entertaining tutorials to dancing competitions where you’ll need the best moves to become king (or queen) of the dance floor. If instead you’re looking to make it big on the markets, why not try your hand at a tycoon simulation game? There’s more than one way to become rich, whether by selling lemonade, building malls or opening up a safari park in Africa.

We also focused quite a lot on tips this week, with posts on how to get more from Firefox and how to block unwanted callers. XP users will also be glad to find 5 alternative themes to give a face lift to their OS. If you want to inject more power into Outlook, take a look at the best add-ons for your PC’s default mail client.

After adding super-powers to your email client, why not check out all the best superhero downloads, as we round up all the Marvel and DC comic book-related goodies for the PC.

Enjoy the weekend!

Here at Softonic we like nothing more than a game of table-soccer over a quiet drink at the beginning, middle and end of the day, by which time it’s usually got quite aggressive and no-one is talking to anyone anymore. Then we leave for the night ready to do the same thing again tomorrow. Oh how I longed for a day when I could enjoy the fun of table-soccer without having to play my colleagues. Well, imagine my excitement when I found Master Kick.

iToner is a smart little application that will seamlessly transfer your own ringtones to your iPhone. Extremely simple to use, all it asks of you is to drag and drop your ringtones onto its interface. If your iPhone is connected it will automatically sync them to it. The interface of the application is clutterless and iToner detects your iPhone as soon as it is connected.

We’ve given you one month to learn a foreign language, so how are you doing? Remember Elena will be setting the exam in just a week. If you’re still struggling to get to grips with your new verbs, pronunciation and present perfects then I’m going to give you one more chance. Mango is the Internet’s first free language learning course, or so it claims. There are 11 courses currently available in this Beta version of the site and, with each course providing 100 lessons, it really promises to be a fantastic resource for anyone wanting to experiment with some new funny sounding words.

You have to sign up to begin, but then just choose whichever language you want to learn. As an absolutely diabolical linguist I rushed straight to ‘Spanish for English Speakers’ and was delighted to hear an authentic Señor asking me ‘¿Còmo está usted?’ which even I know is a bit on the formal side. But then we didn’t know each other. There is also a nice American woman offering simple instructions each step of the way and every slide has audio dialogue with pronunciation tips whenever you hover the mouse over a word. The site also sets little challenges for you to practise new phrases against the clock.

As a fast learner I raced straight to lesson 103 but this appeared to duplicate lesson 3 which I had of course already mastered. So some little bugs but I’ll certainly be visiting Mango regularly. After all I can now speak Spanish. Thank-you very mucho, Mango.

Firefox is probably one of the best browsers in the world. Google Maps is also an excellent geopositioning tool. So what happens when you blend them together? You get Minimap Sidebar, a Firefox extension that embeds Google Map into the browser. This tool enables you to map any address on the web with a single click, besides giving you directions on how to get there.