Month: March 2011

As Angry Birds has proven beyond all reasonable doubt, humans love throwing at other things to knock them down. Crush the Castle 2 continues that trend, this time with a medieval catapult fight – you have to destroy a variety of royal families hiding out in a range of incredibly poorly built castles!

Crush the Castle 2 is well put together, with enough new items to catapult into castles to keep the gameplay interesting as you progress. There are also some funny achievements like ‘Ladies First‘, awarded if the first person you kill is a princess or queen!

Play Crush the Castle 2 over at Kongregate, requires Flash.

Zimly and TuneWiki are two of the top Android music players on Softonic. I’ve reviewed them both, and I gave them an identical – and very respectable – 8 out of 10. If you’re trying to choose between them, though, I guess it doesn’t make your job that easy! In an attempt to make it a little simpler to choose, I’m going to run through both of them, briefly concentrating on what each does best.

Continue reading “Android Music Players: Zimly vs. TuneWiki”

Apple have just released the latest update for Snow Leopard, 10.6.7. This release seems mainly to be aimed at stability and bug fixing, and while this isn’t the most fascinating of subjects, it is important.

The main highlights of 10.6.7 improve reliability for Back to Mac and make the App Store more stable. More specifically, it fixes the freezing that could result from clicking the Updates tab in the App Store. Dedicated Mac fans are more interested in the fact that it should be one of the last updates before Lion is released – exciting stuff!

For a more detailed description of the of the update, read this.

Although the official release is tomorrow, Firefox 4 is already available for download from Mozilla. It looks just like we expected after seeing RC1 and 2:

Firefox 3 has been looking old for a while now, allowing Chrome especially to become the browser of choice for many. However, as Elena saw in her review of the release candidate, there are lots of new features that mean Firefox is firmly back in the running.

Download Firefox 4 for Windows here.

Download Firefox 4 for Mac here.

Mozilla announced that official finished release of Firefox 4 will be released on 22nd March. The news was posted on Mozilla’s Developer Message Board by developer Damon Sicore:

Today’s triage session concluded with all systems go for a Firefox 4 launch on March 22nd. We will continue to have triage sessions on a daily basis to watch for major issues; however, at this point, we’ve concluded RC1 will become Firefox 4 final.

Fantastic job by everyone involved in this release. Amazing work!

The date comes as no coincidence after the release of Internet Explorer 9 was announced 2 days ago. At the moment, you can download Firefox 4 as a release candidate for both Mac and Windows.

The European Union (EU) has taken decisive action against social networking sites such as Facebook and plans to enshrine a “right to be forgotten online” law. The law will set limits on how long websites and social networking services can store your details as well as the amount of data that is visible online after you’ve requested its removal.

According to The Guardian:

In a package of proposals to be unveiled before the summer, the commissioner intends to force Facebook and other social networking sites to make high standards of data privacy the default setting and give control over data back to the user. “I want to explicitly clarify that people shall have the right – and not only the possibility – to withdraw their consent to data processing,” EU justice commissioner, Viviane Reding said. “The burden of proof should be on data controllers – those who process your personal data. They must prove that they need to keep the data, rather than individuals having to prove that collecting their data is not necessary.”

The announcement comes about a year after the EU warned Facebook that privacy settings should be simplified and prompted the company into making them easier to understand.

In an electronic age where our every move can be monitored, it’s been argued by some that concerns about privacy on sites such as Facebook are irrelevant and over-hyped anyway. However, if it does concern you, and you feel unsure about how to tweak your privacy settings in Facebook, check out our guide about how to use them correctly.

Sleeping scores highly in my list of favorite things, so it’s no wonder I welcomed the chance to review Android app Sleep as an Droid with welcome arms when I saw it covered on Lifehacker a little while ago. Even the first line of the app’s description makes me feel relaxed – “Track your sleep and wake up gently with nature sounds in optimal sleep phase“. Could it get any better?

I liked the sound of Sleep as an Droid so much that I decided to try it out myself for a few days before reviewing it for Softonic. As well as being interested in the app on a personal level, I thought that given the nature of the function of Sleep as an Droid, it would be better tested over a few days. To use Sleep as an Droid, you first need to make sure your battery is fully charged, or, as the developer’s recommend, keep it plugged in. That’s not an option for me, so I took my chances. It worked fine, especially when I turned off unnecessary battery wasters, such as wi-fi and updates.

The next step is to set your alarm. To make sure you get it right – and to get the most out of the app – have a look at this before you’re feeling sleepy! The basics are the same as always – what alarm tone you want and if you want the alarm to repeat or not. You can also schedule different schedules for different days. After these basics are taken care of, however, it’s time to get to the interesting bits.
Continue reading “In Depth: Sleep as an Droid”