Month: October 2007

If you’ve ever read David Allen’s Getting Things Done then you’ll love Midnight Inbox which is based on the principles he preaches across America. And if you’re just a typical male like me and need a little help in the organisation department, you’ll find Midnight Inbox of great help. I’m telling you, this program can do just about everything apart from remind you to flush the toilet.

The program is different from a traditional notification based organiser though as it takes a pro-active role in conducting your life. As new e-mail, documents and calendar events come in, it intercepts them and places them in various inboxes in terms of the priority you assign them. It gives you gentle reminders of which tasks it assesses need prioritising but it’s not in your face all the time, shrieking at you like some deranged programs do. The motto of the program is “work smarter, not harder” which is a good way to sum-up what Midnight Inbox can do for you.

Taggart, The Equalizer, Poirot, Angela Lansbury – what do they all have in common? They were great murder mystery heroes who tackled the murky world of crime to apprehend murderers and assassins. Nowadays, many of them have been taken off the airwaves but fear not, you can recreate your own murder mysteries with these excellent games. From Cluedo style to all-out gun thuggery, there’s something here to suit all tastes.

• MDK (Murder Death Kill) – The name says it all

• Hero Online – Based on a Chinese novel

• Agatha Christie: Death on the Nile – Classic adventure

• Call of Juarez – Be Clint Eastwood in this western style murder mystery

• Dead Reefs – Catch the loony that’s running around killing people on a desert island

Now all we need is for someone to turn The Equalizer into a game. The title sequence alone would be worth every penny.

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For many people, the extent of their web searching in Firefox is typing ‘www.google.com’ in the address bar. Of course, this should return you plenty of relevant results, but there are plenty of tools and extensions for Firefox that improve the quality of your search results and make the whole process much quicker and easier. For instance, many power users turn to the iGoogle Sidebar to get customised content from the search engine giant directly to the side of their browser at all times.

The Googlepedia extension is another neat add-on for quickly finding facts and information about a particular subject, particularly if you make use of its ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ feature to weasel out non-relevant results. Of course, Google is not the only search engine out there and it’s dangerous to rely too heavily on it. Organize Search Engines can be bolted onto Firefox to help you customise the search engine menu in the browser. Here, you’ll be able to place all your favourite search sites, giving you instant access to each of them.

OK, so these tools have made your searching quicker, now it’s time to improve the quality of your results and snuff out anything that’s not relevant. Install the BetterSearch extension and you can enhance search results from a range of engines by adding preview thumbnails, site info, quick previews and ‘Wayback Machine’ links to them. If you just want to search for stuff relevant to where you are in the world then try Loki, which determines your current position and lets you look for maps, business listings, and directions basedon your location.

It’s that time of the year again when the rain sets in and going outdoors becomes less and less appealing. Why not install play some board games on your handheld device to pass the time in a fun way? Whether you’re alone or with company the collection of titles in this handy package will keep you amused for hours.

Similar to the other “pedia” titles created by the same developer, Gamepedia allows you to store and organize all your video games. Perfect if you own different game systems and your game collection is getting a bit out of hand. You’ll be able to enter titles by searching for them directly on six different Amazon sites or scanning the UPC on the game with your Mac iSight camera. It includes Spotlight integration and a Cover Flow style view to browse game covers.

No doubt you’re busy cutting holes in bedsheets and attaching cobwebs to your eyelids in preparation for Halloween next week. But why should humans have all the fun? There are plenty of spooky downloads available that will make your computer as scary as any of the made-up ghouls you’ll see wandering the streets on October 31st. Here is a selection of some of the most grizzly Halloween wallpapers, screensavers and themes:

• ALTools Halloween Desktop Wallpapers – Ghoulish wallpaper collection
• Halloween Wallpaper – Never have vegetables been so frightening
• 3D Spooky Screensaver – Howl at the moon while your PC is idle
• Halloween House Theme – Scare yourself witless with this spooky theme
• Cemetery Screensaver (Mac) – Zombies, witches, ghosts, skeletons…Mum!!!