Month: March 2008

Today’s downloads for Windows and Mobile

Download Project TorqueNo plans for Easter holidays? Download Project Torque and join exciting driving competitions against players worldwide. This free online racing game, which could be defined as a Gran Turismo clone for PC, features several game modes, amazing graphics, realistic physic effects and a very active social component with embedded chat and email clients.

Guide the beetle out of the cavesFancy a cool mobile game to help you while away the bank holiday weekend? MadBeetle fits the bill perfectly, providing level after level of involving gameplay. Your mission? To guide your angry little critter out of the underground caverns by negotiating monsters, blowing up doors and dodging cannon fire.

The great software Easter egg hunt – Day 8: Open Office

Take a break from work to shoot aliensHaving already tapped into Easter eggs inside Microsoft’s Word and Works, I’d thought I’d pay homage to the fine work independent developers have done towards spreading Easter cheer. Open Office is one of the most popular open source apps around and makes for a viable free alternative to Microsoft Office. What’s more, I reckon the hidden goodies are better too.

There are two great hidden games inside Open Office 2.0. The first is a classic Space Invaders shooter, which can be accessed by entering “=GAME(“StarWars”) in any cell. You’ll also find a Tic Tac Toe game by typing “=Game(A1:C3;”TicTacToe”)” into cell A4. The game will then be launched in cells A1 to C3.

Another interesting Easter egg in this version of the suite is one that prints the minor build information and credits list in the ‘About OpenOffice.org’ window. To access this you need to select ‘Help, ‘About OpenOffice.org’ then hold down Ctrl+S+D+T. Another inclusion by the application’s sycophantic programmers is a hidden picture of the development team which you’ll find in OpenOffice.Org Writer. Enter “StarWriterTeam” into a Writer document and a picture of the crew will appear.

Tools to subtitle your films

Miss Teen USA subtitledI always prefer subtitling over dubbing. Dubbing can often make a mockery of a good film, especially if it’s done badly. I once saw The Godfather in German and Marlon Brando just sounded ridiculous – I just don’t believe that dubbing does anyone any good. If you’re a video enthusiast, or you’ve got tons of DivX films that are without subtitles in your own language, then here are some tools to help you make professional looking subtitles.

Subtitle Workshop is one of the best and most comprehensive packages out there. It supports all types of subtitle format and by previewing your film as you subtitle it, makes it extremely easy o merrily type away as your film plays. It also includes a spell checker which is a must for any kind of program like this – there’s nothing worse than badly spelled subtitles (except a dubbed film of course). Winsubtitler does a similar job with a slightly more basic interface and it doesn’t support as many formats but it’s a good alternative if you find Subtitle Workshop too tricky.

If on the other hand, you’ve already got some subtitles but they’re either damaged or don’t work properly, help is at hand with Subtitle Processor which can even repair those subtitles damaged on commercial DVDs. At the end of all your hard work, if you’re still having trouble viewing your subtitles in a DivX player, then CoolSoft DivX Subtitle Displayer can display DivX subtitles along any kind of media player.

How to: Open Office files without Office

Microsoft Office ViewerMicrosoft Office is one of the most popular and widespread office suites for everyday tasks. Most companies install it on their employees’ computers and this enables them to open documents, work on spreadsheets or view a presentation in a comfortable way, all from the same software package.

Now what if you don’t have Office installed, for example, in your home computer? You probably can’t afford the license or simply don’t want to install the whole thing just for viewing the odd fun Powerpoint presentation your friends email you. The perfect solution for these situations is the Microsoft official viewers for Word, Excel and Powerpoint files.

These small, simple apps enable you to open DOC, XLS, PPT and other file formats that are usually managed by the Office suite, so that you can view Office documents without actually having the Microsoft Office suite installed on your system. These viewers work with all Office versions from 97 to 2003, but you may need to install a special Compatibility Pack to open the DOCX format from Word 2007.

Bear in mind that these tools are intended just for viewing files, meaning you won’t be able to edit them. In any case, it’s a handy way to open Office files when you don’t have the original Office apps.

The great software Easter egg hunt – Day 7: Acrobat

Get Acrobat Reader to bark like a dog!We all use it on a regular basis, but how many of us know about the hidden Easter eggs in Adobe Acrobat Reader? Well, I do. That’s because it’s the software that I’m unravelling today as part of my Easter quest to find hidden features in the world’s most popular programs.

For instance, did you know that Adobe’s PDF reading app can make animal noises? No? Well, it can. Start the program and go to ‘Help’, ‘About plug-ins’, ‘Acrobat Forms’. Now hold Ctrl+Shift+Alt and click on the ‘Credits’ button. Acrobat Reader will now bark like a dog! Fancy something more tranquil? Access whale noises by choosing ‘Help’, ‘About plug-ins’, ‘Acrobat Annotaions’. Hold down the Ctrl key and click ‘Credits’. The button even changes to a harpoon for you to spear the whale that appears on the plug-in logo.

Did you also know that there’s a speech engine lurking inside Acrobat Reader? Well, there is. Hit Ctrl+Shift+b and the entire document you’re viewing will be spoken to you. Ctrl+Shift+v will read a single page, Crl+Shift+e stops the speech, and Ctrl+Shift+c resumes. Perfect if you want a bedtime eBook story read to you!

Continue with the Easter egg hunt here.

How to manage Firefox profiles

Manage Firefox ProfilesBeing such a smart browser, Firefox uses a very clever method to store your user information. It’s called profile and it’s a set of files where Firefox saves all your bookmarks, browsing history, extensions, passwords and personal settings.

Your Firefox profile is stored in a different location from the browser’s program files, to avoid any possible harm. These are their default paths:

Windows XP/2000: %AppData%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\
Windows 95/98: C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\

But probably the easiest way to access them is by opening the Start menu, clicking on the Run command and entering this: firefox –ProfileManager. In this way you’ll open the Firefox Profile Manager, from where you can check all the available profiles on your computer, customize the way Firefox handles them and also create new profiles.

Manage Firefox ProfilesNow why would you want to create another profile? Two possible answers come to mind: one, separate profiles are an excellent way to get to test new Firefox versions when they’re still at a very early stage of development (and therefore, quite unstable); and two, profiles also allow you to have completely different Firefox settings and configurations for two or more different users, which is really useful when you share your PC – and your browser – with the rest of the household.

When managing multiple Firefox profiles, you can create desktop shortcuts to launch Firefox with each one of them. Simply add this text in the target field, after the executable path: -P Profile_Name (obviously replacing the “Profile_Name” bit with the actual profile name you want to load in each case). You can also uncheck the “Don’t ask at startup” option in the Profile Manager, so that the browser asks you which profile to use every time you launch it.

5 software steps to the dating game

A couple very much in loveI’ve never used a dating site or a “perfect match” piece of software but I wouldn’t be averse to giving it a go. In theory it sounds like you can cut out a lot of hassle – just match a few essentials on a database and Bob’s your uncle – you’ve got a ready made wife.

Of course, in reality it’s not as simple as that. There are many things that can go wrong. People often, let’s say, “stretch the truth” when it comes to filling in dating forms, their photos have been doctored in Photoshop or they simply don’t live up to your expectations. Then you’ve got people that take advantage of the system completely and treat it as some kind of slightly more sophisticated meat market. So bearing in mind that I ain’t much of a Casanova, here’s my 5 step plan to getting back in the dating game if you’ve been on the shelf a while:

1. Get in touch with your inner self – Before you take the plunge into dating sites, you might like to prepare with Natural Biorhythms. This software helps you discover your natural strengths and weaknesses and also your ideal biological match.

2. Prepare yourself with some smooth lyrics – Ladies like to feel wooed with complements and such but flattery will only get you so far. There comes a point when you have to step-up a gear and tell her things that make her heart flutter. What better then than Love Quotes to sweep her off her feet.

3. Use a love calculator – Download A-Toolbar which, amongst 50 useful tools such as an RSS Reader, Currency Converter and Horoscope, also features a Love Calculator. Simply enter the name of the person you desire, plus your own, and the calculator will work-out whether the relationship has a future.

4. Join a dating site – There are literally hundreds to choose from and which one you do depends on where you live. One of the best starting points is Datingsites.org which profiles the most popular sites on the net. One of the sites is Great Expectations which is the agency that Borat used while looking for a wife “with plough experience” in America.

5. Start your own dating agency – If all of the above has failed, start your own dating agency with Dating Pro – that way you can cherry pick the best candidates and “sort the wheat from the chaff” at source rather than risk any disappointment or rejection.

Remember however that dating via agencies can be a very risky game to play as David Brent discovered while waiting for the woman of his dreams in The Office:

[youtube]XB24zxYNNA4[/youtube]

The great software Easter egg hunt: Day 6 – WinRAR

Watch those books fall!!!It’s the sixth day of my software Easter egg search and today I’m exploring the hidden mysteries of WinRAR. It’s a compression utility so I’m going to write a compressed blog post about it. There are two cool Easter eggs in WinRAR. Click on ‘Help’ and choose ‘About WinRAR’. Now click on the WinRAR banner and watch the waves lapping across the ocean. Now click on the books and watch them fall. That’s it (told you it was compressed).

Continue with the Easter egg hunt here.

Do rising Mac sales spell the end for the PC?

Apple logoAre the days of PCs and Windows really numbered? Will the world eventually convert to Macs? Maybe these sound like rather wild suggestions but what’s clear is that Apple Macs are selling better than ever before – and in a time when economies around the world have started to slow down.

Fortune recently reported that Mac sales worldwide went up 60% last month compared to the same period in 2007. At the same time, Apple’s share of the US Market has almost doubled from 9% to 14% over the same period. Fortune reports that in dollar terms, Apple captured a full 25 percent of the U.S. computer market last month.

These are pretty impressive figures for a company that traditionally has only accounted for a very small percentage of computer sales. As many Mac converts will tell you however, this ascendancy has been in the pipeline for a very long time. One aficionado comments:

At last large numbers of people are coming to realize (what old Macheads knew all along) that Mac OS is simply superior to Windows. This difference in technology prowess between Microsoft and the new Apple is so clear: Zune vs. iPod Touch, Windows Mobile vs. iPhone, Vista vs. Leopard. People think that Apple is a dwarf next to Msft’s. juggernaut but Apple’s revenues were over half Msft’s last year (which is not so small and the think the gap is going to close up). Apple stock was up 1500% in the last five years, Msft. was only up 30%. And wait until the new iPhone and iPod Touch apps come out after the SDK release. People are salivating to try out the apps. As people like John Doerr (Google, Amazon financier) believe, it’s the birth of a new platform as big or bigger than the PC.

Predictions that Macs would start to sell like hot cakes did in fact began as far back as 2006 when Arstecnica rightly pointed out that new features such as Boot Camp (allowing you to run Mac OS and Windows on a Mac), the adoption of Intel processors by Mac and of course the iPod (and now the iPhone) have all helped boost sales.

However, if Macs do continue to sell apace, Apple may become a victim of its own success according to one report. Although Apple stores are outselling PC stores, the cost of supporting those customers – at least in the USA – is coming at a very high price for Apple. As AppleInsider reports:

With staffing levels to provide sales and technical service climbing much higher than they normally would be at other stores – averaging at 40 workers per store – Apple’s expenses for taking care of customers are growing faster than for store profits. Profit margins at the retail stores were just 21.3 percent during fiscal 2007 versus 24.7 percent for every other division. iPod sales for each official store have also dropped by about 50 percent on average over the last year placing more pressure on Apple to fare well in its Mac business.

However, the future looks bright for Apple with the iPhone set to become one of the biggest selling mobiles ever and Windows Vista likely to suffer ever increasing vulnerability attacks and slowdowns. Let’s hope that the temptation for Apple will not be to skimp and save on components or outsource too much of its IT support because the irony could be, that the high quality advantages that Macs have over PCs, may be lost in the effort to stop Apple becoming a victim of its own success.