Month: October 2008

Windows: If you’re tired of the standard Windows desktop, take it to the third dimension with Shock Desktop 3D. This free tool will transform your current desktop into an amazing 3D environment with highly realistic physics, in which you can turn your icons into cubes and play around with them. Not really the most useful tool in the world, but very eye-catching!

Java phones: Got a Gmail account? Got a phone? If the answer to both of these questions is ‘yes’ then make sure you download Gmail Mobile. This excellent app allows you to check your Google Mail account while you’re on the move. It comes with all sorts of clever features such as offline sending and receiving, full mailbox searching and a chat history viewer.

Mac: Ever been in a situation where you want to access your bookmarks but not wait to open your browser first? AllBookmarks adds a new tool to your Mac OS X menu bar which gives you quick access to all your bookmarks. All Safari, Firefox and Flock bookmarks are displayed and can be selected and surfed to instantly.

As you’re probably aware, there’s a big election going on in America next Tuesday. This means that by this time next week there will be a new resident inside the White House. Whoever it turns out to be (my money is on either Barack Obama or John McCain) they will probably feel a little nervous and apprehensive on their first day in the new job. My advice to the new president would be to spend the first morning in office installing some essential software on their PC. Not only will these apps help him settle into the job, they might just save the World. Here’s what I recommend fellas:

Homeland security

OK, the first thing you need to realise is that a lot of people may be interested in this new PC of yours. Fair enough, you may only be using it to buy Transformers on eBay or hitting the online casinos, but they don’t know that. Do yourself a favour and get protected with Kaspersky Internet Security before someone steals your barbecue grill recipes.

Electioneering

Now you’re in there, remind yourself of how great you did by splashing your campaign desktop wallpaper across your display. If you’re Barack then get this one, or if you’re John go download yours here.

Foreign policy

OK, now it’s time to get down to work. First up, grab a quick geography lesson with World of Where, which teaches you the location of World countries and cities. Maybe then you won’t have the same fuddled international knowledge as your predecessor, who once said: “We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a part of Europe.”

Self-defence

Games can be a good way of training yourself too. In Sam and Max: Abe Lincoln Must Die you’ll be able to hone your powers of deduction and really get inside the mind of a criminal. Best of all, it’s all set in your own back yard (literally). Continue reading “Essential software for the next US president”

Google’s new Android mobile operating system looks like being pretty popular, if sales forecasts of the first Android-enabled handset, the HTC G1, are to be believed. There are already some great apps being developed for the platform, many of which take advantage of the mapping and positioning tools built into the Android framework.

If you’re looking to power-up your G1 device then check out Softonic’s new Android section, which serves up a selection of some great apps and games for download. Each program has been independently tested and reviewed by our team of mobile software experts, so you can find out if it’s something you’d like before you download it. Even if you haven’t got a G1 phone yet, you can still try out these programs using the Android emulator, to give you a taste of what the OS can do.

The Android software platform adds to the already huge collection of mobile software available on Softonic. The site contains reviews and downloads for all the major handheld formats, including iPhone, Symbian, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Palm and Java.

One of the most popular console manufacturers in the nineties, Sega, has now plunged in what seems to be a fruitful niche in the videogame market: online Flash games for casual players.

Sega has recently unveiled playsega.com, a new site for online games on which they intend not only to offer a wide selection of casual Flash games, but also build a whole gamer community around them. The site doesn’t feature many games yet, but they’re all neatly classified into categories that meet all tastes: sports, arcade, puzzles, word games and more.

However, more than the games in themselves, I think Sega has put the emphasis in the social side of casual gaming. As a starter, you have to create a free user account to be able to play these games. Once you’re inside the community, you can create an avatar and select the so-called “Escape”, a kind of virtual home for your avatar.

There are also hundreds of objects (clothes, accessories, furniture) with which you can customize your avatar and escape. The trick is that all these objects have a price in the site’s own currency: Sega rings. You earn Sega rings by playing games and obtaining in-game achievements. The more you play then, the richer you are and the more objects you can acquire for your avatar. Continue reading “Sega turns to online casual gaming”

Roll-up all CrossOver fans. Developers CodeWeavers are bidding one last goodbye to George Bush with their “Lame Duck President Challenge Offer” because he’s only fulfilled one solitary election pledge in his last 4 years in office. According the CodeWeavers:

This is a fully working, fully supported copy of either CrossOver Mac Professional, or CrossOver Linux Professional. No hooks, tricks, timebombs, or gimmicks: it’s the real deal.

To get your free software, simply enter your email here and agree to the terms and conditions. An email will be sent to your email address containing a serial code. Once you receive your serial code, go to the CodeWeavers website and register your software. Once you’ve done that, you will be able to log into your account on CodeWeavers’ web site, and download your product.

CrossOver is an excellent temporary way to run Windows programs within Mac OS although it’s obviously not as good as installing Windows in Boot Camp on with Parallels.

If you’re having problems downloading CrossOver because of the high traffic, you can also download it from Softonic here.

Sometimes, if you’re away from the office or have no other way to access your mail, you have to resort to Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA). I’ve used OWA a lot over the past few years and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s quite possibly the worst web based e-mail client I’ve ever used for these 5 reasons (in order of hate):

1. There’s no search tool

How utterly basic is this? If you’re receiving tons of e-mail everyday, there’s simply no way you can survive without a search tool to find key words, contacts or e-mails. I fail to understand how such a thing has been implemented in web based e-mail clients such as Gmail and even Microsoft’s own Windows Live Mail (formerly Hotmail) for years and yet OWA, which has been around since 2000, still hasn’t.

2. No predictive e-mail addresses

One of the most simple innovations in e-mailing still hasn’t arrived to OWA. I can’t always remember the exact e-mail address of everyone I want to e-mail. It’s a huge time saver when you can simply type the first few letters of someones name and their e-mail address magically appear – not so with OWA.

3. It only works properly in Internet Explorer

What a “smart” move this was by Microsoft. If you don’t use OWA in Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer then you lose half the features. You can’t even see your mail folders on the inbox screen for goodness sake. This is because the “Premium Interface” in OWA only works with ActiveX which, what a surprise, was developed by Microsoft and incidentally is one of the most popular entry points for viruses, trojans and other nasties onto your PC.

4. You can’t filter messages in Firefox

Again, this is so basic. Imagine the mess your inbox would be if all of your messages from colleagues just went straight to your inbox. That’s exactly what you have to deal with using OWA for Firefox. In fact, there’s no option to drag and drop mail into folders, rename folders or merge folders using OWA in Firefox. Anything you want to do involves checking and unchecking boxes like you’re back in 1995 or something.

5. No auto-saving of messages

Imagine you’ve just finished a long highly detailed explanatory e-mail to a colleague. You click send and you get a server time-out message. Result? You’ve lost the message entirely. The only way to ensure that you don’t lose e-mails in case of a crash or server failure is to keep copying and pasting the e-mail as you write it which is just madness. DO NOT rely on OWA if you’re writing long or important e-mails.

If there’s one symbol of how antiquated Microsoft really are, you probably can’t pick a better example than Microsoft Outlook Web Access.