Month: February 2010

After Microsoft’s keynote on the new Windows 7 Phone, the future of the mobile platform developed by the Redmond company starts to take shape. Let’s take a look at the main characteristics of this new version.

First of all, Windows 7 Phone features a radically different design, much simpler than what we were used to see on mobile interfaces, and particularly on Windows Mobile devices. There are fewer icons and the screen doesn’t feel as ‘crowded’ as on Apple’s iPhone, Android devices or the last generation of Samsung phones; a decision taken and encouraged by Microsoft, which has criticized “those screens covered with miniature icons” from its most direct competitors.

The new Home screen in Windows 7 Phone is divided into several squared areas, each of them devoted to a different topic: calls, text messages, emails, social networks, and so on. These topics can be easily customized and adapted to your needs.

Besides the Home screen, Windows 7 Phone is built around 6 main hubs which, when put together, create your digital identity: Continue reading “Windows Phone 7: The essentials”

Windows: If you’re searching for a reliable tool to protect your system from all sorts of malware, Ad-Aware is the answer. The all-new version 8.2 of this excellent security suite includes important new features such as an email scanner to keep you safe from dangerous attachments, a real-time file scanner that detects malicious files and a rootkit removal system.

Mac: CleanApp helps you to thoroughly eliminate applications that you may have uninstalled in Mac OS X but that have left behind unwanted files and folders. Normally, when you remove a program, only the application itself is moved to the trash which means that there can be many other files left behind that you’re not aware of. CleanApp makes sure that nothing gets left behind.

iPhone: Tower defense games have been done to death, but PopCap has breathed life into a often dull genre with Plants Versus Zombies. PopCap have taken this incredibly addictive game and put it on the iPhone, with almost everything intact. Utilizing your gardening skills, with the occasional help of Crazy Dave, you have to harvest sunlight to grow an army of plants to destroy the hordes of approaching zombies.

So you’ve visited the Winter Olympics in Google Earth, got your iPhone setup to follow the results but what about the most important thing of all – watching the events live! Well, if you don’t have a TV in the office or can’t get time off work to watch your favorite events, fortunately there are several ways to watch the 2010 Winter Olympics online.

Firstly, check out when your favorite events are scheduled. I like the BBC Winter Olympics Schedule for this.

You can of course also use the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics website for this too.

Now for viewing options. Most terrestrial broadcasters in your country are streaming much of the Winter Olympics online so all you need to do is visit the websites of the main terrestrial channels in your country. For example, the BBC is showing live coverage in the UK. Continue reading “Watch and follow the Winter Olympics online”

A question we hear a lot around here is “Do you know any programs that will help me do X?”. The problem when it comes to duplicate files, however, is the opposite – the question’s more likely to be: “There are so many dupe programs out there, how do I know which one is best?!”. So what’s important when it comes to zapping dupes?

First, make sure you’re using the best tools for the job. If you need to focus on music or images, grab a format-specific cleaner, because it will offer you specific tools for the files in question. If you want a general cull of duplicate files, it’s worth paying attention to how the program analyzes your files. This is especially important to make sure you don’t accidentally delete files that are not actually the same. There are various ways the program will do its job, so have a look at the following before you download anything:

Name

This is a simple but not very accurate search. Just think – you’ve saved the same document twice under different names. If you just search by name, you’ll still end up with two copies clogging up your hard drive! Continue reading “The lowdown on removing duplicate files”

Windows: If you have dozens of movies on DVD and want to make sure they stay as shiny and crisp as the first day you played them, why not backing them up? With DVD Shrink you can easily backup video DVDs to your hard drive and then burn those files to a blank DVD with your favorite burning software. A backup in time will let you enjoy them forever!

iPhone: If you’re fed up with asking people where the nearest supermarket is, where to find a taxi rank, or whether there are any decent bars or restaurants in the vicinity, then check out AroundMe. The iPhone software automatically detects your current location and provides one-click access to lists of the nearest banks, bars, cafes, gas stations, and more.

Mac: Nowadays, there really is no need to pay for Microsoft Office if all you need to do is basic editing of documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Whenever people ask me what I can recommend as a free alternative to Microsoft Office, I’ll frequently recommend OpenOffice.org (now updated to version 3.2). OpenOffice.org is a multi-platform and multilingual office suite that is compatible with all major office suites.

OK, that’s been true for a while, but with PopCap’s release of last year’s Plants Vs Zombies for iPhone, zombies are once again becoming difficult to avoid!

If you feel like getting down with the undead, but find games like Left 4 Dead too gruesome, here are my top three brain-eating alternatives:

1: Plants VS Zombies. If you haven’t played this, download the demo, now available for PC and Mac! Zombies and gardening combine to make incredibly addictive gameplay. It’s part of the ‘tower defense’ genre, but don’t let that put you off as it’s an almost perfect game. Can you afford to miss a zombie Michael Jackson?

2: Attack of the Paper Zombies !!! This free indie game for Windows is a great mix of real-time strategy and the undead, although in this case, the lifeless hordes are also aliens! The pencil and paper graphical style is probably unique for a zombie game too. Download it here.

3: Pixel Force: Left 4 Dead. You may remember that re-imagining things can be a terrible disaster – Planet of the Apes, for example. However, Pixel Force: Left 4 Dead re-imagines Valve’s fantastic cooperative shooter as a Nintendo Entertainment System game from 1986. It feels like the real deal, too. I think the original’s more exciting, but this is still a cool game. No Nintendo required, you can download and play it in Windows.