Softonic English

If the advent of Widgets (and now, Gadgets for Vista) has proven anything, it is that the customization and extensibility of popular applications represent a huge market: everyone seems to demand a slightly different experience from these ubiquitous, monolithic programs and operating systems. IE, the world’s most popular web browser, has long been a base onto which toolbars, mods and skins have been tacked but Microsoft only seems to have embraced this market with the launch of its much-improved version 7.

The cunningly titled ‘ieaddons.com‘ serves as a dedicated home for Internet Explorer add ons, from where users can download, review and purchase extensions for their browser (it’s worth noting that many of the extensions here are for sale, in stark contrast to Mozilla’s offering). Among our favourites are the astoundingly good FoxyTunes – which allows you to control most desktop media players from your browser window and the essential Google Toolbar which adds a lot of functionality to your IE.

While there are many more free extensions available for Mozilla browsers (such as Firefox), it’s worth remembering that many of them are also available for Internet Explorer, where they’ll work just as well. As something of an added bonus: Microsoft are offering a cash prize and trip to Mix07 in Las Vegas to the developer who creates the best IE add on before February 9th! Rumour has it that the Pussycat Dolls might be in attendance.

To coincide with the release of Sid Meier’s Railroads, the original Sid Meier’s Railroad Tycoon (SMRT), straight from 1990, has now been made freely available in full. The game takes you back to the 19th century where you create your own transportation empire by building railroads, buying new trains and setting up connections between cities.

Those of you who are worried about compatibility: fear not. You won’t have to access DOS to play the game because it features its very own DOS Box. Original gamers of SMRT, will fondly appreciate the minimalistic graphics, midi country music, pixelized area maps, but most of all, the crux of the whole series, managing your money and assets. You start off with a million dollars (of which you’ll have to pay back $500,000) and must first choose a good location, build a station and then start laying tracks. You’ll soon become familiar with all the varieties of locomotives, like the Norris, Crocodile or Ten-Wheeler. The game really starts to get addictive when you see your network of railroads reach more and more cities and your income start to rise. Depending on the level of difficulty you choose, you’ll also come across rough competition and you’ll have to protect your assets from truly aggressive entrepreneurs.

Even though the graphics don’t compare to what you’ll find in the latest release, Sid Meier’s Railroads, the simulation aspect of Railroad Tycoon is as much thrilling now as it was 10 year ago. All aboard!

Security is one of the main concerns among computer users. This is why it’s important to count on reliable applications that can protect our system and data from potential dangers, especially when going online. Sometimes, free security apps are regarded as being less safe but you might change your mind after testing AVG Antivirus.

AVG is one of the handiest antivirus systems I’ve seen so far (and believe me, I’ve tested a few, including big shots like BitDefender, Panda and Kaspersky). Being a smaller application, AVG may not feature such a wide range of tools or utilities as the other antivirus programs do. However, it makes up for it by offering a neat, effective protection which stays silently minimized in your system tray and only activates when needed.
Continue reading “AVG Antivirus, the free alternative”

The big buzz in software currently surrounds peer-to-peer and streaming television. TV is big business and companies like Microsoft have spent years trying to get us to watch it on our computers. For a while, it looked as if the public were resolutely committed to a separation of TV and PC but with the advent of YouTube, BitTorrent and the iTunes store, more and more users seem to be happy watching TV shows on the smaller screen. Clearly, though, with the exception of Apple’s deals with various TV networks and movie studios, the popular, viral content distribution model is far from what Microsoft envisioned 10 years ago.

For those of you who haven’t heard of The Venice Project, we’ve already prepared a brief summary of what it does. Since then, we’ve finally had an opportunity to try the program and we were really impressed by what we saw. Bound by the confines of a seriously strict non-disclosure agreement, we have to be pretty careful with what we say… but there are some aspects of the program we couldn’t resist sharing with you.

On starting TVP, it’s immediately obvious that this is a member of that new generation of applications: the hybrid between old fashioned desktop apps and modern ‘web 2.0’ software. The stylish, minimal-yet-chunky design makes excellent use of transparencies and overlays to provide a very modern web feel to the program. The main menus can be hidden or shown with ease and are a snap to navigate.

Continue reading “Venice Project Beta preview”

You’ve probably noticed the increasing expansion of web-based applications as a quick and convenient replacement for the traditional desktop software we’ve all been using so far. The list is pretty impressive: online email, word processors, personal organizers, RSS managers… Even if you’re not an Internet guru, it’s still easy to understand the reasons for this gradual change.

First of all, Internet connections have spread around the globe at an incredible pace. Many users now enjoy broadband connections at quite affordable prices, which means that they’re permanently online and can use web-based apps at any moment.

Second, we can now connect to the internet from pretty much anywhere, thanks to wireless technology. We can browse the web wherever we feel like it, so it’s far more practical to have our email or documents in an online application, visible from a variety of electronic gadgets, rather than limiting access from a desktop PC app.

One last point is the growing development of the so called Web 2.0, defined by Wikipedia as:

perceived or proposed second generation of Internet-based services—such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies—that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users.

New functionalities such as Ajax have made it possible to develop very complete and attractive web-based apps that are every bit as good as our old good desktop programs.

What do you think? Which web-based applications do you use? Why do you prefer them to desktop software?

Whenever a security flaw is found within a popular application it’s usually nothing more than a chance for tech reporters to take a cheap shot at a major developer. That’s what we thought when we read about the discovery of a hole within the widely-used Adobe Acrobat Reader.

However, it turns out that the bug is a little more serious than everyone first thought. According to security specialists, the glitch within the software allows hackers to access all information on the victim’s hard drive via malicious JavaScript to PDF files hosted on websites.

Billy Hoffman, lead engineer at SPI Dynamics said: “This means any JavaScript can access the user’s local machine. Depending on the browser, this means the JavaScript can read the user’s files, delete them, execute programs, send the contents to the attacker, et cetera. This is much worse than an attack in the remote zone.”

While there is no patch available at present, the problem can be rectified by downloading the latest version of the PDF viewer, Adobe Reader 8.0.