Freeware World

I’m off on vacation in a couple of weeks and aim to completely disconnect and glue myself to the sun lounger for a week. That means no internet and no phone calls. That’s not to say I’ll leave my iPhone at home though.

As we all know, the thought of sitting on a beach or next to a pool for 7 days is blissful but the reality is that it gets very boring, very quickly. It’s for this reason that my iPhone is coming with me - purely as an entertainment center rather than a connected device.

I’ve already loaded up my iPhone with ten delightful time-wasting apps, none of which require 3G or a WiFi connection. I’ve tried to select stuff that will keep me chilled, rather than just a bunch of super-charged action games or brain-busting puzzle titles. Any other recommendations are most welcome. Oh, and I’m gonna get me one of these babies as well.

iBooks

Books are the quintessential seaside companion and with iBooks on your phone you can carry as many as you like, plus you won’t have to worry about soggy pages. The iBookstore, included within the app, is expanding its catalog rapidly so you should be able to find stuff from your favorite authors, as well as the latest bestsellers. Get it (free)

Monkey Island 2

My favorite iOS game of all time, and I’m still stuck on the first level. Monkey Island 2 is point-and-click adventure gaming at its very best, and I still marvel at the way you can instantly flick between the old school and souped-up versions just by pinching the screen. If I haven’t completed this by the end of the holiday then I’m not coming home. Get it ($7.99)

Brushes

Painting is a relaxing way to while away a few hours. The scope of Brushes allows you to produce genuine masterpiece, such as those showcased here. The beauty of the app is in its simplicity - there are no fancy effects or drawing tools, so it’s almost as fluid and natural as using a brush and a palette. Get it ($4.99)

iHandy Flashlight

If you’re planning to linger on the beach until it’s dark enough to safely skinny dip, then make sure you’ve got this app installed. This brilliant app comes with a range of lighting effects and can serve as a source of illumination for a variety of purposes. Whether for reading, avoiding crabs, or evening sending out SOS signals, iHandy Flashlight is ideal. Get it ($0.99)

Marvel Comics

I’ve been taking comics on holiday since I was about six. With the Marvel Comic app installed I intended to stash dozens of big boy’s comic books on my iPhone, to be enjoyed while I’m floating around in my rubber dinghy. The app lets you download from a huge selection of titles featuring classics such as Spiderman, Iron Man, Thor and Captain America. Get it (Free)

Postman

Finding postcards to send home is a hassle I can do without this holiday. That’s why I’ve already installed Postman on my phone. I can just snap a shot of me slurping on an ice cream, tap out a greeting, choose a theme, then have them sent to all my buddies on Facebook, Twitter and email next time I hit a WiFi spot. Get it ($2.99)

Flick Fishing

A fishing trip is always a fun holiday activity but there’s no guarantee you’ll catch anything. Flick Fishing is a sublime iPhone game that’s perfect to play on the beach. The flick-based control system means you can pretend you’re actually casting out to sea. And who cares what all those other folk think when they stare at you waving your phone at the ocean? Get it ($0.99)

Pianist

I bet Chopin never composed a piano concerto while sat in his speedos eating pretzels. Get one over on him by installing this great piano emulator on your iPhone. Pianist features a a true multi-touch 88-key keyboard which sounds just like the real thing. You can even record and save your compositions, overdubbing them as many times as you like. Get it ($3.99)

iMovie

Yes, I know it’s only available for iPhone 4 but if you happen to have one of these devices then iMovie turns your phone into a dream holiday gadget. You can use it to make HD movies of your vacation exploits without getting up off the sand. You can edit video, apply themes, and add music and photos before exporting it all to share when you get home. Get it ($4.99)

Rock Band

If the entertainment provided at the hotel isn’t up to much, I plan to rig my iPhone up to the PA system and treat the guests to a rendition of Ace of Spades on Rock Band. This game rocks much harder than Guitar Hero or Tap Tap giving you a better selection of songs and the ability to choose between four different instruments. Get it ($6.99)

When iTunes was updated to display TV show artwork per season, it left many people with a problem. Sure, iTunes retrieved and displayed artwork for the TV show as a whole, but often it couldn’t for the individual covers of different seasons. Sometimes this is because TV shows that have been ripped to your hard drive don’t have the correct metatags to allow iTunes to recognize the exact season. Other times it’s simply because the artwork isn’t available for one reason or another.

In such cases, to avoid having gaps in your pristine iTunes TV show artwork, there are two main solutions to this:

1. Use an application to add metatags to your iTunes TV shows collection

There are several applications you can use to do this. One of the best on Mac is VideoDrive which allows you to search online for metadata and cover art and automatically number season and episodes of TV Shows so that iTunes retrieves the correct cover art for each show. It’s very easy to use, has a slick interface and has tons of customization and preference options:

Not quite as slick but fairly effective on Windows is MetaX which uses the TagChimp and the IMDB to retrieve metatags for your movies and season episodes. Most useful however is the fact that if you really can’t find a season cover, it allows you to take a snapshot of a frame from the DVD (such as the main menu on your DVD which should be similar to the season cover).

2. Find the artwork manually

There are many ways of doing this. One is simply to use Google Images which is usually powerful enough to find all but the most obscure TV shows and series:

However, there may well be obscure or lesser known shows where you struggle to find the exact cover art for. There are several sites than specialize in compiling TV show cover art which may be able to help.

One of them is GetVideoArt which is a beta project where users can upload and share cover art for TV shows, films and albums. You can often find different cover art for the same seasons on here due to the fact that it often differs from world region to region.

There are of course many other sites that offer TV show artwork. Amazon is one of the most obvious and you can also try the Internet Movie Poster Awards site which also has a section for TV show artwork.

YouTube’s new Leanback service is set to take channel-hopping to a whole new level. The new free service, launched yesterday, allows users to cycle through YouTube videos as easy as flicking up and down the channels on your TV.

Movies load at full-screen and play through non-stop until you interact with them. The selection of clips that come up is determined by your user history, subscriptions, and videos that friends have liked. Controlling Leanback is done entirely using the keyboard cursor keys and the Enter key - a control system that lends itself perfectly for watching YouTube on your television.

At first I was a bit skeptical about Leanback. The feed generated for me based on my personal profile was loaded with crap. It included terrible stop-motion movies made with Transformers toys, a drunk cat, Family Feud bloopers and loads of dull mobile phone demonstrations. It was no better than all the other dross on late-night cable, and nearly put me off Leanback entirely.

Browse away from the ‘Your Stream’ section and you start to appreciate the real beauty of Leanback. Hit the ‘down’ arrow on your keyboard and you can flip through YouTube video categories and view the most popular clips. Better still, hit ‘Up” and you’ll be able to search the YouTube catalog, loading a feed of videos based around this keyword.

The longer you play around with Leanback the more sense it makes as a platform for watching videos. It’s even turning me on to the idea of Google TV, which I was dead against at first. I’m now keeping my fingers crossed that Leanback will soon replace the dreadful YouTube XL for PlayStation 3. Then my couch will be seeing a lot more action.

Don’t you just hate it when you open a movie clip on your Mac and it opens in QuickTime? Although QuickTime X is an improvement in terms of speed and interface on previous versions, it’s still quite slow and fussy about formats. Instead, I use VLC Player to open video files on my Mac because it’s fast, opens almost anything and is very light on resources.

It’s annoying though to have to Ctrl-click or right-click and select Open With every time you want to open a video file with it. It’s far better to set VLC Player as your default player for all video files. All you need to do is hold down the Ctrl and Alt key when you left click on a video file. Alternatively, right click and hold down just the Alt key instead. Select Always Open With and then select VLC Player and you’re done!

Subtitles is a very simple app that will find - you guessed it - subtitles for your movies. All you need to do is right click on the movie file, choose a language from the incredibly long selection, and click. Your web browser will open up, hopefully displaying a perfect set of subtitles for you to download.

If Subtitles doesn’t find your movie straight away, don’t worry. I had the chance to speak to the app’s developer, Guilherme Barboza, who explained how it works. Subtitles doesn’t search for the movie name (too much scope for error) but instead calculates the checksum. If it doesn’t already have that particular checksum stored in its database, it automatically looks for it elsewhere on the internet. If it still can’t find it, you search manually and the checksum is saved for future use. With more than 120,000 subtitles being downloaded every day, however, the chances that your movie will be correctly identified is getting better by the minute!

On the subject of subtitles, did you know that if you use a media player such as VLC, all you have to do is save the subtitles in the same folder as the movie and make sure they have the same name? If they do, the player will automatically add them to your movie - it’s that easy!

A few days ago reader Michael contacted us with the following question:

I have Windows 7 and want to make my KMP Player my default media player, but when I go to assign a default player, Windows doesn’t show any of the media players I have purchased or downloaded.

Actually, there are several ways to change the default media player (or other program) that Windows 7 uses to open specific file types. Let’s take a look at them, one by one:

The first one, and most obvious, is changing file association within the program you want to use as default. Most programs include an option in their configuration settings that allows you to select the file types you want to open by default.

Sometimes you can even set up these preferences while you’re installing the program. From that moment on, Windows will recognize it as the default app to open the selected file types.

Another way to change a default app in Windows 7 is using the files you want to associate with it. Right click any of them and go to Open with. You’ll open a menu with all the available programs on your system that are suitable to open that file type. Bear in mind though that this file association will only work this time.

If you don’t see the program you want to use on this list, click Choose default program… and select it from there. Don’t forget to tick the “Always use the selected program to open this kind of file” option if you want to make this file association permanent.

But if for any reason you don’t see the program in this list, simply click the Browse button and look for it on your hard drive. You’ll need to select the program’s executable file.

Michael, I hope this solves your problem and you’re finally able to set up KMPlayer as your default media player. Remember you can all keep on sending questions and doubts to ask@onsoftware.com so that we can provide handy solutions for you and all our readers.

Windows: If you need an image viewer, look no futher than XnView. This powerful, awesome photo viewer can display more than 400 different formats, in several modes: thumbnails, full screen and even slideshow. It’s as easy to use as Windows Explorer, and includes handy extra tools such as an image converter and a screen capturer.

Mac: Adobe is acclaimed worldwide for its impressive software tools, many of which have become true industry standards in different fields. This is also the case with video production and Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. The all-new Adobe Premiere CS5 takes another leap forward in its development and provides the professional video creators and producers with all the tools they need for their daily work.

iPhone: GT Racing: Motor Academy is Gameloft’s attempt to fill the hole left by Gran Turismo’s absence on the iPhone. This racing game is much more of a simulation than you normally find on the iPhone, but does it do the job? This free version of GT Racing: Motor Academy gives you a taste, with three cars and one track to race round, the incredible Mazda Laguna Seca Raceway.

YouTube has recently released an online, in-website video editor so that you can crop, merge and add a soundtrack to your videos.

Even though the initial interface looks a bit confusing, it’s really simple to use. Drag and drop your videos onto the timeline, crop them by clicking on the scissors icon that will appear when you mouse over and add audio by clicking on the audio tab underneath the YouTube logo.

There’s a good selection of music available, so you’re sure to be able to find a soundtrack you like. Just remember that adding an audio track will erase all of the original audio! Changes are applied immediately, and you can preview everything in the window to the right. When your creation is ready, give it a name and hit Publish.

It’s perfect for combining your own video clips of holidays and events, or doing other simple merging tasks. True, it’s not very advanced, but it does the basics very well. If you are looking for a more video editing power, however, check out this post on the best of the best!

There is such a thing as too much information. As Google recently discovered with Buzz, helping people connect to and access information instantaneously in ever more imaginative ways isn’t always a big success.

The feeling amongst many was that with Buzz, Google had gone a bit over the top in trying to bring more information and interactivity to the masses. In the end, Buzz ended up being an overwhelming and rather confusing product that failed to live up to the hype.

Google TV is the next big Google product due to hit the airwaves this fall. Having conquered the internet, it was only a matter of time before Google took on the broadcasting world. However, I can’t help feeling that once again Google may have misjudged just how much information users really want and need, how much they’re prepared to pay for Google products and whether mixing the internet with television viewing is necessarily a good idea.

Google TV is a software platform for set-top boxes and HDTVs based on the Android operating system. However, its not an exclusively Google product. The company have teamed-up with Intel, Sony and Logitech to develop it meaning this is one of the most commercial ventures Google have ventured into.

In particular, three issues immediately spring to mind regarding whether it will take off or not:

1. It requires purchasing set-top box

Unless you have a web enabled HDTV, you will need to purchase a set top box to access Google TV. This could be the the first stumbling block as its questionable how many users will be willing to pay for a new set-top box when they’ve already got one for their current TV provider. After all, one of the things that has made Google products so popular is that not only are they great, but they’re free as well.

2. Program searching and recording are no big innovations

Google’s expertise in search technology will surely make searching for your favorite content and programs easier than ever. However, most digital set-top boxes allow you to search and one-touch record programs already. Google are hardly pushing the boundaries by making this one of their key selling points of Google TV.

3. Web surfing via the TV is no big deal or pleasure

You can already surf the web on your TV using browsers built into devices such as Playstations and Wiis. However, how many people really use it on a regular basis? Not many and the reason is because surfing the web on your TV simply isn’t a comfortable experience compared to using a computer. Using an on screen keyboard, reading lengthy articles and navigating without a mouse mean that most people prefer to use their computer for general web surfing. The Xbox, Playstation and Wii have failed to succeed in this area - why should a Google set top box.

Traditionally, Google products have been motivated by a simple desire to make users’ lives easier. However, some suspect that Google TV has been motivated by a desire to make serious money from advertising. It’s not clear the format Google ads will take on Google TV but the company are surely seduced by the fact that TV advertising is where the big money lies. The New York Times certainly thinks so saying that the aim of Google TV is to “ensure that its…search and advertising systems, play a central role.”

That said, there are some exciting prospects to Google TV. The ability for independent developers to create widgets for your TV in the same way as they can for Android phones is particularly intriguing. Imagine for example a widget that can automatically record your favorite sporting events automatically or track when programs made by your favorite director will be aired. And as Android on mobiles has proved, just because Google are new to a particular field, doesn’t mean they can’t succeed where others have failed.

Tune-in this fall to see how this latest venture fares.

Windows: It started as a handy app to download videos from YouTube, but aTube Catcher is now much more than that. You can still download online videos from various popular sites, but also record your screen, convert videos from one format to another, capture streaming videos and create custom DVDs. All of this, for free!

iPhone: What better way to warm up for the World Cup than a game of X2 Football 2010? Just like Pro Evolution Soccer did on consoles and home computers, X2 Football has gained cult status among iPhone gamers. In fact, the game even looks and feels a lot like Pro Evoltion Soccer, only a little scaled back, of course. This Lite version of the game allows you to train and take penalty shoot outs.

Mac: eBay has been one of the Internet’s big success stories and it’s still going strong today. It’s probably the most effective way to find cheap stuff and, of course, get rid of things yourself. There can be few better tools for posting and tracking items on eBay than the newly updated GarageSale either. It’s beautifully presented, easy to use, and brings all of your bids and items under one convenient umbrella.