December, 2009 - Softonic English

Today’s downloads for Windows, Mac and Mobile

Windows: My favorite app to manage photos is undoubtedly Picasa. Google’s great photo app has just hit version 3.6 with great new features, such as an improved tagging experience, the ability to geotag your images, an enhaced importing system and above all, the all new collaborative web photo albums.

iPhone: If you need to get something noted down quickly it can often be better to dictate it. Not all of us have a personal secretary following us around though, and for these people Dragon Dictation could be the answer. This free app records your voice and converts it into text in a very simple fashion. After loading Dragon Dictation just click on the record button and start talking.

Mac: Formerly known as simply Episode and Compression Master, Episode Encoder is a superb tool for compressing and encoding video. In terms of speed, it’s one of the quickest encoders you’ll ever use and even better, it has a user friendly interface that makes managing and encoding video a pleasure. Episode Encoder is ideal for those who need to compress and distribute video via the Web, DVD, mobile phones and portable devices.

OnSoftware advent calendar 2009 – Day 12

Day 12 of the advent calendar and today’s window hides one of the most popular apps of the year. It got a major update earlier this year, prompting much adulation from the OnSoftware team.

xxx is undoubtedly one of the most widely used VoIP clients you can find. You can not only have voice chats on your computer – just like telephone, only for free – but also make real phone calls at much lower rates – Elena

Top Christmas desktop wallpapers

Just to get everybody in a festive mood, we’ve rounded up some of the merriest wallpapers around. Whether you’re a traditionalist or a minimalist, there’s one for you, so take a peak, get downloading and bask in the Christmas spirit!

Click on the image to go to the original wallpaper. Some are available in different resolutions and all can be installed in the normal way – by right-clicking on the image and choosing ‘Set As Desktop Background’.

Continue reading “Top Christmas desktop wallpapers”

OnSoftware advent calendar 2009 – Day 11

We’ve reached day eleven of the OnSoftware advent calendar. This means it’s exactly two weeks until the big day! Have a peak inside today’s window – but not until you’ve had a guess at what Mac app Nick is talking about.

The Twitter client wars are going into overdrive at the moment and I received a tip-off about this one from actor Stephen Fry. If a prolific tweeter like him rates it, then it must be good. Overall Tweetie is, by some margin, the best Twitter client I’ve ever used. The best thing I’ve tried on the Mac this year since Spotify – Nick

Friday Timewaster: Perfect Balance 2

It’s physics based puzzle time again, with Perfect Balance 2, which is a bit like Tetris, except instead of fitting shapes together, you have to balance them. It’s extremely easy to pick up – on each level you have a selection of shapes, and a structure in the play area. Your job is to place the shapes on the structure so none of them fall. Easy!

Of course, the game gets fiendishly difficult as it progresses, but it’s never impossible, and very compelling. As well as dragging and dropping shapes, you can rotate them with the A and D keys. If you mess up, hit R to restart in an instant. Unless you’re tired of this type of puzzle game, there’s really nothing wrong with Perfect Balance 2 – just remember you still have to eat and sleep! If you register with Kongregate, you’ll be able to leave high scores on the site too. Requires Flash.

Easy to use Winrar tools for Mac

WinRAR One tool that former Windows users miss when they switch to Mac is WinRAR. WinRAR is a powerful archiver that seems to have been with us since the dawn of time and the good news is there is Mac version – simply called RAR. However, it’s an absolute pain to use because there’s no Graphical User Interface – it only works from the command line in Terminal and it’s not even free.

For those new to Macs, this is obviously really annoying so here are a few free alternatives to archive and unarchive RAR files on your Mac.

Zipeg Exactly what a RAR archiver should be on the Mac. Simply drag and drop a file onto the main interface and Zipeg unzips them in a jiffy. There’s also a cool preview function which allows you to see what you are going to decompress before you do it. This is great if you can’t remember what’s in a file or are suspicious about its contents. It supports a huge variety of archive formats from ZIP and RAR to TAR and 7Z.

RarMachine If Zipeg is too complicated for you, then you can’t really go wrong with RarMachine. This simple tool is rather limited by the fact it only handles RAR files, but all you have to do is drag and drop files into the small interface to archive and unarchive RAR files. It’s not free to use anymore but for a modest $7 to upgrade, it’s hardly going to break the bank.

RAR Expander This is another tool limited to RAR formats but unlike RarMachine, it is completely free to use. It has a simple user interface with which you use to open archives by browsing to them. It supports both single and multi-part archives, and has support for password-protected archives as well. It also uses the official unRAR library internally so it is fully compatible with archives produced by WinRAR.

OnSoftware advent calendar 2009 – Day 10

Today’s advent calendar window hides behind it one of my favorite iPhone games of the year. Have a guess what it is, then go download it!

xxx is a Volkswagen-sponsored racing game which makes wonderful use of the iPhone’s hardware to deliver a high-octane, realistic driving experience. The control system is probably the most refined, yet simple you’ll find anywhere on the iPhone platform – James

Play Ace Attorney in your browser

Hold It!! Until now, if you didn’t own a Nintendo DS, you couldn’t experience the Ace Attourney series. Best described as ‘point-and-click lawyer ’em ups’, the games mix puzzle solving, crime fighting and tons of bizarre memorable quirky characters. There’s nothing else quite like them, and while there’s no plans to bring them to home computers, you can get a flavor of the legal madness over at Eurogamer, who have a flash based demo of the next installment – Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth. As well as being an excellent demo, it features a DS skin, so it’s almost like the real thing – so as long as you have Flash installed, play it here!

Tips and ideas to create your own Christmas cards

Christmas is one of the best-selling seasons for holiday card manufacturers. However I still prefer handmade cards: they’re cheaper, you have fun while creating them and they imply a personal effort – which is always better than a standard card you can buy at the nearest mall.

You don’t need to be a computer whiz or have highly artistic skills to create your own customized Christmas cards. Some basic Photoshop knowledge is more than enough to come up with a nice, unique design. You could start by a simple text-based card with an original snow effect on it.

If you feel more daring, you could try to design a Christmas card in Photoshop. We’ve published a couple of tutorials on the blog to help you out. The first one is the easiest: a simple question of taking advantage of Photoshop’s custom shape brushes (a tree and some snowflakes) and repeating them on different layers.

The second one is a bit more difficult, but looks great. Create a tree made of stars and add your personal message to it! It may take a bit longer, but it’s worth the effort. Just think about the face of the card’s recipient when they get something created by you.

Finally, don’t forget the internet is full of resources to create your own Christmas card. A quick look at DeviantArt, for example, will reveal dozens of wallpapers, icons and other eyecandy to easily make your custom cards more attractive.

Jolicloud Express pre-beta now available to download

The developers of eagerly awaited netbook OS, Jolicloud, have just announced that the new pre-beta release of the OS is available to download. The OS comes in two downloadable versions: Jolicloud Express, a Windows .exe file which will install Jolicloud directly from your Windows desktop; or an ISO for those experienced in such dark arts as partitioning.

If you’re a beginner, we recommend that you stick with the Express edition – just make sure that you back up any important data, photos etc on your netbook before you begin: installing any OS can sometimes cause problems.

When you’ve downloaded and tested the pre-beta, come back and let us know what you thought!