Month: September 2007

I’ve always thought the one thing missing from my life was a soundtrack. Something I could wake-up to, brush my teeth to, run really fast ala Tom Cruise to. Even kiss a girl to. Which is why I am really excited having just created my very own soundbadge. OK so it’s a bit stupid. And a bit pointless. But how do you think Tom Cruise got to marry a pretty girl and run really fast. Internal music.

It’s really quick to do, which is probably one of the best things about it. Just visit the site, answer the very short questions and listen to your personal soundbadge. You can also get it emailed to you to keep. Mine is very dark and repetitive. I’ve been listening to it for the past half an hour now and I swear it matches my heartbeat. Give it a go, and watch out for the first question. It’s a beauty.

Protect your computer from online threats with PC Tools Firewall Plus. This firewall controls your Internet connection and monitors all applications that try to connect to the Internet, thus detecting and blocking any unauthorized access that can harm your computer. Plus, it’s very easy to configure and requires no technical knowledge at all.

Ever dreamed of driving a space taxi? Or managing a TV station? How about being a professional deep sea diver? We’ve delved into the Softonic games category to come up with the oddest job games you could play. If you’re working this is probably a good way to escape from the office and dream yourself into a completely different environment.

• Chocolatier : Build up and manage a successful chocolate company, creating new recipes, cutting deals with shops and beating competitors to the best cocoa and nut shipments.
• TV Station Manager : Can you take the stress of live 24 hour news? In this game you have to rebuild a nearly bankrupt indy TV station, buying and selling TV rights, setting the weekly schedule and handling advertising deals.
• Paparazzi : Harass stars and celebrities, building your reputation as one of the tabloid press’s most ruthless photographers.
• Space Taxi 2 : In the future, as claimed for the last 50 years, we’ll all have flying cars. In this game you get to pilot your flying taxi around a futuristic city, catching fares from aliens, robots and humans alike.
• Drug Wars – Underworld : Play the role of a street dealer, buying and selling all sorts of drugs so you can one day become the big honcho of drug trafficking.
• Profitville : Help your city’s economy shine again by handling shipment of goods to all the local shops, fending off the competition of the MegaMarts at the same time.
• Nanny Mania : Think cleaning up your room is painful? In this game you need to keep a whole household spick and span, making beds, taking out the trash and so on.
• Diver: Deep Water Adventures : As a professionnal diver you’ll be able to make money by filming underwater documentaries, recovering lost treasures from sunken shipwrecks or disabling old WWII mines among other things.

Hollywood funnyman Will Ferrell has just announced that he’s auctioning a part in his new film on eBay. Cool stuff like this goes under the hammer on auction sites all the time, and there are plenty of tools around that you can install to help give you a competitive advantage of the rest of the bidders. Here are some of the best applications on Softonic to assist you with buying and selling on eBay:

• eBay Turbo Lister – Create slick looking listings for your eBay sales
• Desktop Ebay – Quickly find the products that you want
• Buyertools Reminder – Bid on eBay before an auction ends
• EBgo Sniper – Steal in at the last minute to claim eBay auctions
• AuctionSleuth – Win more auctions with this sniping tool
• Auction Sentry – Grab the product you want at the last second
• eBay Auction Sniper and Auction Search – Improve your auction successes
• Merlin AuctionMagic – Powerful sniping and auction management software
• The Poster Toaster – Create and edit bulk ads for eBay
• Prospector Lite – Find and track eBay bargains more easily

Plasma Pong takes the old table tennis classic and puts it into a psychodelic liquid enviroment, adding the colour and graphics that the original so desperately lacked. Plasma Pong plays very much like the version we know and love, only this time the ball is replaced by a wad of goo.

It’s always the same: the largest your hard drive, the more files you have stored on it. Managing this huge amount of information is a hard task that can go terribly wrong if you don’t take it seriously. This is why I thought it would be a good idea to go over some useful apps that can help you manage your files in an easier way.

The first thing we probably need to control is space management. HDGraph helps you here by drawing a graphical chart to display your hard drive’s space usage, so that you can immediately identify which folders are taking more space.

Another good tip for drive maintenance and file management is cleanliness. A clean drive is usually faster, more reliable and more efficient. There are dozens of tools to leave your hard drive as bright as a new pin: erase empty folders with Remove Empty Directories, delete unnecessary files with CCleaner and search for duplicate files with Duplicate Cleaner. There’s even a special duplicate finder for music files.

Finally, remember to always make a backup copy of your most important files. This includes not only work documents, but also your most precious memories like personal pictures or videos. Cobian Backup is an excellent option but there many other backup tools in to choose from in our Security Backups category.

I think it was Ricky Martin who once said: “Dance as if no one is watching and sing as if no one is listening.” Eventually, of course, living by this mantra proved to be Ricky’s downfall, but it’s certainly true that dancing is a good way to express yourself and release some tension. If you fancy learning to dance properly but can’t afford salsa classes and don’t want everyone chuckling at your lame moonwalk in the local disco, then try downloading a computer program to help you.

Dancemat-style games have become increasingly popular on consoles and in arcades across the globe, and if you’re lucky enough to own a dancemat then you simply must check out Stepmania for the PC. The game features slick, 3D graphics and you can customise your own moves. Even if you haven’t got a dancemat, you can still bop along to the beat using your keyboard. If you want to learn to dance in a more traditional, controlled way then install Dance! The app teaches you more than 180 different dance moves through a series of tutorials, over 40 of which are available with video and pictures, to help you learn more easily.

Once you’ve instilled rhythm into your heart you may want to test your dancing skills against others. Dance! Online and Audition Online are two very similar games where you need to pull off rad dance moves in order to upstage other ravers over the Internet. They both allow you to customise your dancer by selecting from a range of outfits and accessories and include chat options so you can make friends/heckle people.

If you’re still struggling to get your groove on after all this then why not sit back and learn something from arguably history’s greatest dancer? The Scooby-Doo Dancer places the partying pooch at the foot of your desktop, where he’ll throw down his mesmeric moves, including the legendary Scooby Shuffle.