Month: August 2008

Symbian: Bored of looking at the same old interface on your Sony Ericsson phone? Then get Sony Ericsson Themes Creator 3.29 installed right away. The application allows you to customize everything in your Sony Ericsson mobile phone, from standby, to the app launcher, menu and calendar. Thanks to the tabbed interface you can quickly move between the different sections.

Windows: Ever wanted to create your own poster? Take a look at Poster Forge 1.01.10 and you’ll be able to design one in just a few easy steps! You can choose between different templates (an old Far West “Wanted” poster, a movie-style poster or an inspirational one), use any picture you like and customize the poster with your own texts.

Mac: There must really be something wrong with you if you don’t have iTunes 7.7.1 installed on your Mac. Apple’s media player not only lets you buy songs, videos and download podcasts from the Apple store but you can also organize your whole media library, create playlists and synchronize your media on your iPod devices. iTunes is a great piece of software to enjoy your tunes and videos.

Mac Tricks And Tips have published a list of top 100 essential programs for Mac. It’s pretty often I come upon this type of post when looking for Mac news to give out. While the majority of them are often very similar, some differ on a few applications, depending on the writer’s interests and knowledge. This list, as you’ll find, is divided into six sections: computer files, internet, tools, little apps, multimedia and work. It would be hard to really pick out clear favorites in each category, but let me try out.

In computer files I’d single out the Quicksilver productivity app, because of its intuitiveness, UnRar X, because it is so precious when opening up archive files and AppZapper because it allows you to fully uninstall all associated files of a program.

My favorite Mac internet apps would definitely be the Transmission BitTorrent client, Adium for chatting on any IM service, Cyberduck to upload and download files and Unison to handle newsgroups.

Out of multimedia I’d single out the ultra versatile VLC player, Aperture for professional image editing, Google Earth for its originality and Pixelmator as an enjoyable alternative to Photoshop.

Of the so called little apps the only one that really stands out for me is iAlertU, an ingenious program for keeping thieves away from your Mac.

Moving on to tools, Carbon Copy Cloner is an excellent and free backup solution in case you don’t have Time Machine, Coconut Battery is great to monitor your battery, and Growl is an essential tool to receive updates. Also check out Monolingual for translations and either Parallels or VMWare for virtualizations.

Last but not least, the best work tools for Mac are iWork as an office suite, Quicken for personal finance and Filemaker to organize your folders.

Windows: Gmail is great and everything, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be improved. As the name suggests, Better Gmail lets you enhancement your Google Mail experience by adding new functionality to your inbox, customizing its appearance, and generally improving your productivity. Best of all, the application is free to download and install!

Mac: I love how easy it is to work with Time Machine, Leopard’s new backup system. In a way though, it lacks proper settings. Mathusalem 1.0 b11 gives you all these advanced options you might be looking for. You can choose an external server to send to, archive and password-protect your files, set schedules for automatic backups and exclude paths and directories. If you want to give more power to Time Machine, Mathusalem is the way to go.

Phones: Ever wished you could access your tasks and appointments more quickly on your phone? Well, now you can do so instantly, from your Today screen using this impressive Windows Mobile add-on. Facade 1.4.8 adds several new icons to your home screen that provide you with quicker access to your applications and system information.

And no I’m not talking about the country – I’ve never been there but I’m sure it’s very nice (it’s the biggest island in Indonesia and the 13th largest in the world by the way). No the Java I’m talking about is the one developed by Sun Microsystems that if I had my way, I’d put in a bus and happily drive off the end of Java into the deep waters of the Indonesian sea.

From as long ago as I can remember, using Java has always been a traumatic experience. I can’t believe that by now, neither Apple nor Microsoft have come up with an alternative to the Java platform. Of course, the one redeeming feature of Apple and Microsoft is that Java works across all platforms but surely Apple and Microsoft could have put their differences aside to work together to create something more usable than the hell that is Java. Here are 5 reasons why I can’t stand it:

1. It’s slow – Whenever you click on a link or enter a page that uses Java, you know it’s time to put the kettle on. If you’re lucky (or unlucky), you’ll also have time to pick up the kids from school, go to the gym and perhaps write that novel that you’ve kept putting off. Using Java Applets can be a particularly painful experience and playing games based on Java is sometimes like playing chess in treacle.

2. No warnings – There’s often no warning that you’re about to click on a link or enter a site which requires Java. I think this should be mandatory in the same way that browser’s often give you security warnings about certain sites. But no, when you click on something that involves Java, there are no warnings other than occasionally that annoying little coffee cup that appears in the corner of your toolbar (in Windows at least).

Continue reading “5 reasons why I hate Java”

Having failed miserably in my attempts at beach volleyball and table tennis in my desktop Olympics, it was time to try something more familiar in my quest for glory. And what can be easier than cycling? They say it’s just like riding a bike. Having dug my cycling shorts out of the wardrobe I settled down to play Rad Challenge, a polished mountain biking game that looks great and plays even better. You start out with a practice session and the simple controls make it easy to hurtle down the mountain without coming off too much. Then it’s on to the qualifying to decide your start position, before going head to head with the best in the final. I pulled off some gnarly jumps along the way, but ultimately my four nasty crashes ended my chances.

Rather than sitting around nursing a bruised ego, I got straight back in the saddle by installing Pro Cycling Manager. This one gives you the chance to not only race yourself, but also guide a whole team to victory. The road race proved mightily difficult due to the fact you have to keep watch of eight racers at the same time. You need to pay close attention to each team member’s position and set them instructions to help each other through. Unfortunately, this was a little too confusing and eventually I stopped giving the team instructions, left them to their own devices and went for a coffee. They came 7th.

Moving onto the velodrome in Pro Cycling Manager, I felt confident I could still snatch something from the cycling events. This time, you just control one player against five other cyclists in a high speed chase around the circuit. It’s all about maneuvering into the right position and controlling the racer’s level of effort using the cursor keys. I got off to a bad start but my sprint finish saw me fly through the pack and finish second. I won a silver medal – my first of the Games. Bring on the next event…

You may call it ‘ping-pong’, ‘flim-flam’, or even ‘whiff-whaff’, but whatever name it goes by table tennis is probably the best fun you can have with a table and a ball. The sport has been part of the Olympics since 1988, and as part of my quest to become a gold medalist without leaving the house, I turned my attentions to beating the computer opponents on some of the best PC table tennis games.

And what a difficult challenge it proved. I started with Table Tennis Pro, an award-wining 3D ping-pong simulator. The graphics and sound effects in this one are very realistic and there are dozens of ways in which you can customize your games, as well as several game modes. Unfortunately, the mouse-based control system  got the better of me and invariably each point would consist of me either smacking the ball too hard off into the distance, or missing the thing completely. I scored zero points. Bad start.

Despite my dismal failure in the first game, I was still keen to prove myself as ‘King-Pong’ so I installed 3DRT PingPong, another graphically impressive table tennis sim. This time, there’s a wide range of weird and wonderful characters to choose from, each with their own unique skills and abilities. I must have picked a dud though because my character was defeated 11-2. 3DRT PingPong is certainly a lot easier to control than Table Tennis Pro, but it’s difficult to maneuver the bat onto the backhand. My advice is stay to the left.

I may have been heading out of my own version of the Olympic table tennis tournament but I was determined to go down fighting. I took my one last shot at victory with Cannon Smash, a free game that really gets into the physics of the sport. With transparent wireframe arms, precise targets and all manner of arrows appearing every time you take a shot, this is one for the ping-pong purists. For me though, Cannon Smash signalled my retirement from the sport. It all got too complicated and I lost 11-1. Don’t worry, there are plenty more events left to try…