Cyril Roger - Softonic English

The advent of joystick warfare

Future Force Company Commander (F2C2) is the long awaited sequel to the highly popular and controversial America’s Army. To give a quick recap, America’s Army was a first person shooter developed by the US military as an effective way of getting more recruits. You were based as a Marine in the Middle East.

F2C2 is a “realtime strategy” game designed to mesmerize new recruits with an array of technological warfare. Developed by Zombie, the game is composed of four missions where you will have to guide, organize and direct your battalions to glory. It’s teeming with cinematic cut offs, military jargon and detailed military maps.

A recent Wired article points out that it has been developed so it is “harder to lose”. You make use of extremely advanced precise technology against an enemy that “doesn’t learn from experience”. While we can see the obvious benefits of making US forces seem invincible, the tactic could backfire. What type of gamer gets his kicks out of a game where you can’t lose?

Susan Nash, an e-learning expert, is also worried that the video game will trick new recruits into believing that a career in the army is all about “riding a joystick” in a comfy chair. In America’s Army, you weren’t allowed to play as insurgents. In F2C2 you can never lose. In games designed by the US Army to aid recruitment, is this all so surprising?

Check out the video here after the break:
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Accessing special content in Google Earth

So you’ve become addicted to scanning the globe, you know how to make various layers appear, like hospitals, parks or getting driving directions, but do you know where to find the special content from the Google Earth community? It’s fairly simple: open up the layers column on the left, select ‘Google Earth Community’, then ‘Community Showcase’ and just browse through all the new content. We particularly like the UNESCO Heritage Sites, which shows locations of cultural and historical importance. Check out our video:

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Be sure to check out all the content made available in Google Earth. It’s constantly being updated and some of it is really interesting. Just avoid having too many layers on the screen, otherwise it will become overcrowded with information.

Columbine RPG axed from Slamdance

According to gaming blog Kotaku, the Slamdance film festival decided to drop Super Colombine Massacre RPG from its shortlist of finalists. The controversial game allows users to experience the events that happened on April 20th 1999 at Columbine High, by enacting the two shooters, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. In a statement on the game’s website, the creator, Danny Ledonne, explains that he developed the game to answer the question everybody is asking: “Why did they do it?” According to him, after playing the game, you supposedly get a “deepened” and “refined” understanding of the events of April 20th 1999.

Super Colombine Massacre RPG (SCM) was hoping to distinguish itself in the new Guerrilla Gamemaker Competition that will be launched at this year’s Slamdance film festival. But Peter Baxter, co-founder and president of the festival, decided to remove it from the finalists lists after a few of the financial backers pulled out when they learned SCM was in the competition. Ledonne was not angry at the decision but expressed his worries concerning “freedom of speech and video game development”. It is the first time in 13 years that an entry has been removed from the Slamdance festival because of public protests.

Considering how fresh the Columbine story still is in people’s minds, it’s understandable that the game is to face censorship. Yet it’s surprising that it happens at the Slamdance Guerrilla Gamemaker competition, an event for independent game developers that experiment “in art style, gameplay, metaphor, story, concept and time”.

Updating your Windows Media Player library

windows media player.jpg Instead of manually dragging all your new photos, videos and music onto your Windows Media Player library, just use the “media information changes button” in the library tab. That way the application will automatically browse your PC for new content and add what it finds into your library. If you add new stuff constantly, make sure you do this regularly to keep your media collection up to date. Check out our screencast:

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It’s simple and only takes a few seconds. If you have the new version of Windows Media Player (version 11) installed, try it out.

Zudeo: Azureus goes legit

With the release of Zudeo, Azureus is jumping onto the legal torrent bandwagon. This application features the classic and extensive Azureus torrent client and adds to it an online platform from which you can download and submit legal audio and video content.

Zudeo’s interface is a complete shake-up to what Azureus users are used to. The bittorrent developer has decided to focus on online multimedia content and introduce user participation. The first thing the user sees is a list of thumbnails of the latest videos uploaded to Zudeo. You can browse these files by using the left side menu, divided in time, main channels and tags. The menu at the top also links to hot and new content. Zudeo takes the web 2.0 road and you’ll see that most of the files have tags. You can write out a comment and leave a rating. The program also makes it a no brainer to send a video by email and link to content directly from your blog or website. There’s also a little diggit tag for each file, to submit them to the ultra famous social news site. It’s still a shame that Azureus omitted all the other famous social networking sites like del.icio.us or reddit. Maybe in a few months?

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uTorrent: bite size torrent downloads

uTorrent has quickly become a favorite among torrent users worldwide thanks to an innovative interface, minute CPU usage and extensive download details. The program is undoubtedly one of the most reliable torrent clients on the market, thanks to an ultra quick installation process and a minimal use of PC resources. You can have a good number of torrents downloading and still be able to use your PC without suffering any lags.

The interface is simple to use and is divided into the list of torrents and extensive details like peer data, download and upload speeds, file pieces and blocks, or a graph of your current speeds. In an attempt to help you structure all your torrents, the application allows you to set labels to your individual downloads. You can also view the torrents according to whether they are downloading, completed, active or inactive. If you download a good deal of torrents at a time this is a good way of keeping track of the progress of them all. Furthermore, you can easily set up the web interface for uTorrent, which allows you to check your torrents from any PC connected to the internet. All you need is to have one PC taking care of the downloads and set up access to the interface of your uTorrent session.

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eMule content database updated

The eMule database has managed to keep updating, even with a number of legal battles raging in the P2P and bittorrent worlds. All the changes have been implemented to make eMule a better user experience, “more secure”, “more functional”, and “user friendly”.

The message center has been improved and will work under a “forum based structure”. I never really chat with other userswhen I’m downloading but I suppose it’s a great way to exchange suggestions and recommend what files to download or avoid.

Following the example of a number of torrent clients, eMule has added 6 RSS feeds and set up syndication tutorials for the big three browsers, IE, Firefox and Opera. The advanced search feature has been upgraded and according to Slyck, should give you more “specific” results. I tend to find what I’m looking for, but hey, if this little improvement can rid search results of irrelevant files it can’t be bad. As Slyck arguably writes, the new “file statistics feature” will greatly improve usability. It basically allows you to see how many people are sharing a particular file “without having to download the file to find out”. That feature and the improved search should guarantee that more quality files are exchanged.

Security enhancements are probably the most important part of this update and we hope it’ll make it even safer to download P2P, although it can’t protect you from the odd dodgy file. Make sure you update your eMule to benefit from all these exciting enhancements.

BPM Studio: Music mixing for DJs

BPM Studio is a popular choice among Softonic users which might be down to the wealth of possibilities available in this music mixer. This application will allow you to read, edit, mix, encode and write your tracks with precision.

DJs and music fans alike will appreciate the hardware look of the interface and the inclusion of all the essential buttons and functions expected in a professional mixer. It’s very easy to switch between the 3 different views: lists, mixer and ripper, streamlining your music creation process without disruptions.

Thankfully BPM Studio Pro integrates an explorer view of your music library, for quick dragging and dropping of the tracks you need. Although the application only comes with 30 original sounds and tracks you can effortlessly add all the sound you need. The program keeps a record of the tracks you searched for and the play lists you created for quick access. However we were a bit disappointed by the search function, which will not come up with any result if you don’t type exactly the word you are looking for.

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The Venice Project in Beta Testing

The Venice project has opened up to Beta testers. A few lucky users who have applied on the website will receive a copy of the soon to be released online video application. Another way of obtaining an entry is by receiving an invite from one of the lucky Beta testers.

To recap, The Venice Project is a new online TV experience currently being developed by the creators of Kazaa and Skype. Neither truly a P2P app nor a web TV streamer it very humbly aims to “redefine the way people think about television”.

Janus Friis, one of the main developers of the Venice Project, provides a couple of screenshots. So far the application looks to us like a cross over between Apple’s Front Row and the web tv app, Democracy. Channel menus are clear and transparent and thumbnail views of channels give you an idea of what to watch. The controller is similar to Windows Media Player’s minized controls, and features the essential action buttons and quick browsing between channels. from other screenshots, it also seems likely that you will able to chat with other users and put up ratings and comments of the shows you’ve been watching.

Over on Techcrunch one lucky tester commented “the video quality isn’t the best I’ve seen from p2p video but its watchable”. He also revealed the presence of numerous pop up ads. We’ll keep you informed as more information from Beta testers is revealed.

Bittorrent acquires uTorrent: a good deal for users?

μtorrent.jpg You may have heard that Bittorrent recently acquired uTorrent, the lighweight client. As Om Malik writes in a post, not too many users are “thrilled” by the deal. A quick look at forum posts reveals a majority of the utorrent community disapproves of the transaction. “This is possibly the worse news I have read in weeks” states one user. Another one says “it was good while it lasted”.

But is there really so much to fear from Bittorrent acquiring uTorrent? As Om Malik says, the deal could be what Bittorrent needs to push legal content to even more users. And with $28million raised in financing, Bittorrent will be able to invest more into uTorrent to keep developing and improving it. A perfect example of the headway that the lightweight client is doing is the new Web UI which will allow you to check your torrents from any computer, as long as you’re connected to the net.