Month: February 2010

There’s no better foodie fun than spending a few hours browsing the web for new recipes, ideas, information and discussion. Get the most out of your surfing by leveraging a few Firefox add-ons that will make the experience even more fun!

First, you’ll need to search for delicious recipes. There are loads of add-ons that simply add a foodie search engine to the options in the navigation toolbar search. This is a really easy way of making recipe searches even faster, and you can add several without weighing down the browser. I’ve tried a few personally – Epicurious is great for big-name US chefs and BigOven.com will appeal to BigOven users. GoCook, meanwhile, has something for everyone while Opensourcefood takes you to NibbleDish.com, an irresistible web 2.0 recipe resource. If you find recipes you really like, use an add-on like recipefox to “grab” and add them to your collection.

There’s also plenty of tools for Firefox that you might not have thought of, but will come in really handy on your culinary explorations. If you are a fan of international cuisine, you might need a converter for those funny recipes in pounds/grams/fathoms (delete as appropriate). Converter‘s a great one that I can’t live without – although for the dreaded cup/gram problem, you’ll have to manually input the conversion.

Now, I hate to end the post on a negative, but both you and I know that dedicated foodies have a tendency to become a bit chubby. Make sure you keep a handle on your calorie intake with Food and Calorie Finder, a cool add-on that automatically scans the page for food items and displays their nutritional value in a side bar. Now there’s no excuse!

If you’ve dreamed of being Indiana Jones, but find the idea of learning about history and then organizing adventures to go one too complicated, never fear: I have a game that can help:

One Button Bob is a great little flash game that manages to be really inventive, funny and playable, despite only using one button. Take Bob on a treasure hunting adventure, full of killer spiders, monsters, perilous drops and leaps. All you need to play is one button – of course, in One Button Bob, that button will do different things, depending where you are, and that’s what make is so fun to play. The button might mean jump, reverse, or speed Bob up.

The game records how many clicks you make, and if you complete the game, that total will be your score. Can you get a lower score than me? Requires Flash.

Today sees the start of the 21st Winter Olympics, in Vancouver. If you’re thinking of following the Games on TV or, if you’re lucky enough in Whistler, then I can heartily recommend the official iPhone app. The 2010Guide – Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games application is the perfect companion for anyone who is dipping their toe in the icy waters of alpine sports for the first time.

Not only does the app provide a full calendar of events, but it offers concise and succinct guides to each discipline so you can tell your skeleton from your two-man bob. The great thing about the Winter Olympics app is that it allows you to add events to your favorites, building a schedule of all of the competitions you want to watch.

Once you start getting into the Games, you’ll find the Headlines section very handy. It allows you to view all of the latest news from Vancouver, as well as viewing medal tables and following the Games on Twitter.  The 2010Guide isn’t just about sport either, and the app also contains lots of information about all the off-piste activities that will take place over the course of the Games. You can view dates and descriptions of all the dance, comedy, music and arts that will take place.

Yesterday I got a rare chance to travel to Stockholm and meet the team behind the new film streaming app Voddler which is currently only available in Sweden. Next week, we’ll be publishing an exclusive interview with Voddler’s Mathias Tönnesson so watch this space for a fascinating look behind the scenes and for some answers to all of your questions about one of the most exciting applications of the year.

After the interview though, it struck me that Voddler are banking a hell of a lot of their hopes on people being willing to stream content rather than download it whether legally or illegally.

In Voddler’s case, the content is films and documentaries (and eventually TV shows) and the success of the project largely depends on users being happy to stream, rather than own content.

Fortunately for Voddler, the law is on their side in Sweden. It was pure coincidence for Voddler that it was launched last year just as the Pirate Bay trial deemed the P2P file sharing site illegal. Suddenly, Swedes were faced with either breaking the law to download films or turn to more legal methods and Voddler came along at just the right time to take advantage of this.

Technology is also on their side. Internet connections are getting faster and more widely available. Tönnensson explained to me how he’d already been given a preview of Sweden’s next generation 4G mobile network and it streamed Voddler films onto a laptop perfectly with no fixed internet connection. In theory, within a few years there will be little need to physically own films or video content available on Voddler because you will be able to watch them anywhere, anytime absolutely free.

However, old habits may be harder for Voddler change. We’re used to owning data, especially music and films on our iPods, hard drives and even simply for aesthetic reasons around the home. There’s something very satisfying about physically browsing through a DVD or CD collection.

I for one am happy to stream, though. For example, I’ve come to depend on Spotify for most of my music needs and if I had an Android device or iPhone, I’d be willing to pay the subscription fee to use it on the move. But this is only because Spotify offers me almost all of the music I want. As happy as I am to watch streamed movies and videos, it will be very much dependent on Voddler providing the same exhaustive and comprehensive choice of films.

I see no reason to clog-up my hard drive or bookshelves with films and music I’ll probably never watch again. I’m proud to say I’m a swanky streamer and not a downloading dinosaur. What are you?