e-Donkey blinkered, RIAA are thrilled

What a pity it is to see the RIAA (those who would have you pay by the minute for listening to your own music) get their way every now and again, as was the case recently when they got one up on eDonkey’s creators MetaMachine. Before even reaching the court, the case was settled for $30 million in exchange for not being sued for what would more than likely be many times that figure.

This is a case of the fat cats using their weight to wipe out not only the misdoers but those who have been using the software fairly at the same time. MetaMachine have agreed to stop distributing the software, even though it is not illegal to download. On top, their web page has been liquidized and now contains a message that will have the executives at the RIAA grinning from ear to ear.

New features in iTunes 7

At its September 12 media event, Apple introduced new iPods, its future iTV release and a shiny new iTunes 7. According to some, this announcement was altogether disappointing and a sign of slowing down in Apple’s spectacular growth. We still couldn’t help getting all excited about the new version of iTunes, and here a few of its features.

The interface has been polished and, apart from the logo having swapped green for blue, there are plenty of cosmetic and under-the-hood tweaks. When you’re playing music, you get to choose between three different views: the classic list, Grouped Artwork view (a list revealing all album covers) and the cool CoverFlow view, great for skimming through your albums. The iTunes Store has lost the Music label because, true innovation, it will now offer movies and games for your iPod on sale. You also get a download manager, where you can organize the podcasts, audiobooks, movies and albums you download.

But the real buzz is in iTunes’ simplified iPod music management. It is now much simpler to organize the media on your portable MP3 player and you can sync your files downloaded from the iTunes store from one PC to another. Personally I like the restructuring of the player and the download manager works great when you’re getting loads of podcasts. I was disappointed when I realized though that CoverFlow doesn’t work with podcasts, even if you have the artwork. A great improvement is the chance to snatch artwork from the store, so no more endless hours spent on Amazon looking for all my album sleeves. iTunes 7 is getting better and I can’t really see any other media player/manager getting close to it.

Softonic’s Tip: Convert PPLive into English

The days of paying for TV subscriptions could be on the way out if emerging streaming media technology evolves sufficiently. PPLive is the most popular program to use peer-to-peer technology to allow you to watch movies, sports and TV shows from around the world.

However, unless you speak Chinese it’s likely to be the most irritating program you’ve ever used, as the interface and program lists are all written in the Eastern language. To save taking a crash course in Cantonese here is the workaround:

By loading up the PPLive TV Engine and right-clicking on the fourth option from the bottom (the one that looks like a squiggle) you’re presented with the chance to change the interface into English. Opening the Channel List menu in the program gives you even more Chinese to try and decipher but you can download a full translation of all the channels from here.

Windows Live out of Beta

In an attempt to gain back strategic ground from Google, their main competitor, Microsoft has officially moved Windows Live Search (previously known as MSN Search) out of Beta. The new search engine lets you find news, RSS feeds, images and videos. Local Search has been improved in terms of imagery and mobile integration and you can get answers to all your questions via the new QnA service. The new interface is sleek and customizable, so you can select what information will appear everytime you visit Windows Live, like adding weather information, sports updates and entertainment news. The menu from the top left icon allows you to check out your favorites, get a safety scan from Windows OneCare, save images in your gallery, trade and buy with Expo and Live Shopping and chat and blog on Spaces. Effectively, Microsoft aims to jump onto the web 2.0 revolution by encouraging users to carry out all their computer activities online.

According to the Redmond firm, image processing and search results should load faster, thanks to a new algorithm and “extensive feedback” from beta testers. Will Windows Live dethrone Google? Just how successful will the new platform be in changing users’ online experience? If you haven’t tried them yet, take a shot at Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Toolbar, and Windows Live Writer.

Weather programs compared

Planning a trip for the weekend? Well you’d better make sure the sun is on your side. There’s a good number of weather forecasting applications around. We’ve taken two relatively popular programs and compared them to see which one fared best.

Weatherbug is free and discreetly fits into your deskbar. You can also choose for it to appear in your browser bar so you get weather info while you’re on the net. Unfortunately, the program is limited to the United States and you’ll realize this when you set it up, because you’ll need to enter a ZIP code. If you’ve forgotten it, you can easily browse for your location in the program. Weatherbug includes a cute little chirp sound alert to inform you of new weather updates. What we liked most was the wealth of features and maps like live camera views of key metropolitan areas (good for traffic updates), the severe weather alert notification and fun weather games and quizzes. On the downside, you’ll need to register Weatherbug when you first start it, and it will install adware (an extra search bar) in your browser.

On the other side of the ring we have Weather Watcher, a free application that also fits in the deskbar and includes sound alerts. Unlike Weatherbug, this application takes its data from the Weather Channel, meaning you can check out any place in the world. The satellite imagery is very basic however and there’s not much information you’ll get out of it. The real asset of Weather Watcher is a clean interface, with hourly meteorological cycles and regular updates. Weather forecast details appear as you roll over data on the screen.

So to our verdict. Even though Weatherbug is limited to the States, it has many more maps and features and an overall fun user experience. Weather Watcher offers detailed worldwide meteorological data but it just doesn’t have that spark of user attractiveness. That said, you’re best trying them out and choosing the one you like most.

Top 100 games – Revisited

Every now and again someone puts a lot of work in to producing a list that puts “whatever” in their rightful place and gives the world some clear perspective. Top ten lists are a common sight on the front pages of Digg and when a Top 100 list comes out, it is seen somewhat as a definitive guide or authoritative list on the topic it covers. I mean, whose going to make a Top 100 list if they don’t have a pretty firm grasp of what it is they’re talking about?

That’s why the “Top 100 games of the 21st century” list caught my eye. I had hoped to see what top-quality games (if any) I might have overlooked since the turn of the millenium and although there were some dodgy choices in the games high up on the list, I shrugged it off as being typical top 100 style – keep the very best til last. Going down the list, Bob the Builder loses out to Return to Castle Wolfenstein by just two places. Strange, but maybe the author of the list has kids who really like Bob.

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Broadcast yourself on the net with Sopcast

As we wrote in reviews for PPLive and TVU Player, television via streaming P2P is part of the future of broadcasting. The two previously cited programs are good examples of the technology yet in Sopcast they might have found a more than worthy competitor. This streaming P2P television application offers a wide choice of channels in a very sleek looking interface, whilst letting you broadcast your very own TV program over the Internet.

Sopcast’s interface is easy enough for any type of user. You can register yourself on Sopcast, a prerequisite if you want to broadcast your program but if you just want to view TV, you can log in as an anonymous user. We found that Sopcast probably offers the widest choice of channels of all P2P TV streaming applications, and organizes them via categories like sports, news or gospel tv. To view a channel all you have to do is double click the one you want and it will open a Windows Media Player side window. This truly separates Sopcast from the rest of the P2P TV streaming applications. By playing the channels in Window Media Player it allows you to set the size of the screen, adjust sound levels, keep a history of channels viewed…basically everything you can do with the famous media player. Furthermore, Sopcast is the only P2P streaming TV application we encountered that allows you to configure settings like port selection (extremely useful to maximize the use of your bandwidth and get better quality playback) or select among 12 different languages.

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Vista delayed – eye don’t care

So, it seems Microsoft may now not be able to release its Vista RC1 candidate on time due to interoperability problems with existing hardware and software, potentially delaying the pre-release until after the autumn. While we wait for more developments from Redmond’s lumbering software giant, why not give one of the innovative new online OS services a shot?

Web-based operating systems are becoming a great alternative to Windows, as they offer you the ability to work from the same desktop wherever you go – a dream for Net café dwellers everywhere. eyeOS is a new open-source development which treats you to a sweet assortment of features including directories, a competent text editor, messaging, a web browser and an RSS feed reader. You can also download and add a range of applications such as games, productivity utilities, image editors and mapping services. Check out the online presentation (complete with a divine electro backing track) to see why it may be time to say ‘hasta la vista’ to Windows.

Enjoying the freedom of speech

For those of us whose sights are trained on a computer screen all day long, reading in-depth articles on our favourite blogs or sifting through long emails is the last thing we want to do at the end of a day at the office. Imagine our delight then when we came across a program that promised to read all this text for us as we give our eyes a well-earned rest.

The beauty of TextAloud is that it not only reads out anything you copy and paste into the voice window but also allows you to save the resulting speech as an audio file. Effectively this means you can transform any web page, email or text document into a podcast to download to your MP3 player and listen to at your leisure. File sizes are kept to a minimum so it’s possible to save entire novels as an audio file of less than 1Mb.

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Labeling your photos in Picasa

Picasa is our favorite photo album manager, because it’s free and incredibly intuitive.The first time you launch it, it’ll scan your PC for all available pictures and organize them by folders. When you connect a digital camera it’ll recognize it and allow you to create a new album inserting date, location and adding a small description. The chronological structure in Picasa is a good way to keep your collection organized, but better yet, we encourage using labels. Just right click on one photo or a selection and choose “create new label”.

They work like tags so you can add an infinite number of labels, like “camping”, “school”, “friends”, “party” and create specific albums. And if you’re registered on Hello, you can send an album to friends in just a few clicks. Take the time to label all those photos, it’ll give you all sorts of original photo albums.