Fishing in the North Pole can be a rather chilling experience, especially for the fish. And so it is in this puzzle game, where not only do you have to pull out as many colourful fishys from the freezing water as you can but you need to defrost them from the ice too. Oh and there’s only a limited amount of time for you to be able to do this.
Month: October 2007
Star gazing from your mobile
I’ve got pretty bored of sleep recently, it seems such a waste of a perfectly good nine hours. So I’ve been looking for some things to do. Walking the streets has certainly introduced me to some interesting ‘characters’ and listening to music just brings the neighbours round. In their pyjamas! It was as I was shouting out of the window to one of them that I saw the most amazing constellation in the sky. ‘Stars’, it seemed to be saying. It was difficult to read. Which is why I decided to become an astronomical expert. And here’s how I did it:
- Skychart (Palm) – Space as it is above your head
- Astro Info (Palm) – Planet viewing to the second
- Pocket Stars (Pocket PC, Win Mobile) – Highly accurate star-finder and navigator
- VITO AstroNavigator II (Pocket PC, Win Mobile) – GPS displays the stars you should see
- Taiyoukei (Pocket PC) – Incredible planetary images including moon phases
- StarPop (Palm and Pocket PC) – And a little game for you when it gets too cloudy
Sapiens – an intelligent application launcher for Mac
Sapiens is an application launcher that gives you quick access to anything on your Mac. The program exercises your memory by arranging applications in a certain way, which you’ll become accustomed to the more you use the program. It offers five different interface layouts and a handy “find as you type” feature to make any application reachable within seconds.
Use your PC as a surveillance tool
Be warned: while you’re happily browsing your favorite blogs during working hours, your boss may be watching you more closely than you think. Yes, there are many ways in which a computer can be used for surveiling, controlling or monitoring its usage, and you wouldn’t even notice it.
First, we should make a clear distinction between programs that you can use to track your own work, and programs used to control your PC usage in the background. Work tracking tools such as Time Tracker, WorkTime or Time Worked Calculator are useful when you need to know exactly how much time you’ve spent on a given project. They’re also a good way to control your level of procrastination, as you can do with Hronos.
However, monitoring tools are often used to control computer usage and check which applications have been run or which files have been opened. You can find general monitoring programs like PC James Bond 007 and also more specialized tools such as MSN Messenger Monitor Sniffer, which is devoted to record MSN chats. But these aren’t by far the only ones. Just take a look at our Prevention and Keyloggers sections and you’ll see for yourself. You can even use your webcam as a surveillance system, with motion-detect technology, automatic recording, SMS warnings and all the bells and whistles.
Now, before you freak out and start looking for any hidden tasks in your system, let me calm things down: there are also tools to avoid being caught by your boss when you’re chatting, browsing, downloading P2P stuff and other things you’re not supposed to do at work. One of them is Efreesoft Boss Key, which enables to hide any active program window with a simple keystroke. Another good example is the Word Web Browser, with which you can safely browse the web and hide it under a fake Word window when needed.
Tip: keep order of songs imported in iTunes
Ever had to rearrange your music albums imported in iTunes because all the tracks were in the wrong order? If, like anyone out there, you have a substantial music library, it can be a pain having to reorder your albums one by one. Normally, if each track is numbered you won’t have to bother with it. Otherwise, you can use this small tip found today on macosxhints.com. All you have to do is make sure that you drag the whole folder, and not just multiple files, into your iTunes playlist. To best clean up your album, get rid of all unnecessary items in the folder beforehand. A user also suggests removing the .m3u file from your directory to avoid having any duplicates in your library.
You could also want to keep the right order of tracks while transferring them from your iPod to your iTunes library. While I’ve found it normally works fine with iTunes, both iPod2Copy and iSyncTunes will ensure you tracks are kept in the right order. Drag and drop your albums or playlists from your iPod to your iTunes without having to worry about the way tracks are set.
Turn your PC into a fax machine
If you work from home or sometimes have to send faxes, did you know that you can turn your PC into a fully functioning fax machine? If you only want to send documents that are already on your hard drive or in digital format, then you’re ready to go. If you want to scan something that still only exists in hard copy, then you’ll need access to a scanner. Once you’ve scanned in your document, you can use several pieces of software to send it. Here’s my top 5:
VentaFax & Voice – Answering machine & fax combined
Fax Machine – Sends, receives and can even forward faxes received by e-mail
Snappy Fax – Can “post” fax images to websites for viewing by others
1st Fax Extractor – Professional fax software for small businesses
MightyFax XP/2000 – Fax from other Windows programs such as MS Office
Take the Blubster approach to file sharing
There are many P2P sharing apps currently out there but Blubster has recently caught my eye due to the unique way it shares files via the MANOLITO protocol community. Unlike similar programs such as eMule and LimeWire, Blubster does not use a file swarming approach in order to obtain downloads from multiple sources. Rather, Blubster takes a group of exact files and checks which one is going to provide you with the fastest and most reliable download. The result is that unlike other P2P sharing programs, you rarely ever experience interrupted or partial downloads and you get some ultra fast downloads.
The downside however is that if it doesn’t find a reliable download, you get nothing at all. This happens quite often because the Blubster community is still relatively small although the developers claim that there are millions of MP3 currently being shared. You may also find that you have problems connecting to the servers – sometimes it simply times-out or it just takes a few minutes to establish a connection.
Don’t forget that once you’re up and running with Blubster, you can share your music with other Blubster users simply by sending an e-mail link which enables them to listen to it immediately.
Publish eBay listings from your mobile
I don’t know about you but more often than not when I want to buy something on eBay, I find that I have to set my alarm so I can concentrate on the bidding as the vital final seconds of the auction run down. Either that or click ‘buy now’, but that just takes all the fun out of eBay. Well if you’re sick of living your life to eBay deadlines here’s something you’ll be interested in. It’s a mobile solution that allows you to upload listings and bid for products all from your phone.
Joost 1.0 released
After a few months of invite-only beta testing, Joost has finally launched its first public version. Though still labeled as beta, Joost 1.0 features important new features such as new sign up and login modules, and a fully revamped user interface. But above all, we were excited to see loads of new content. So what are you waiting for? Join the future of television now!
Find and preview images on the web with Pandora
Pandora is an application that will scour and search the web for pictures. The application offers an interface similar to that of a picture viewer, where the left side of the menu allows you to browse through images and the center part offers a preview of the selected image. Pandora is great to use if you quickly need to find images on the web.