Freeware World

Apple have made the jump into social networking in an unusual way. Ping is only accessible through the iTunes Store, and while Steve Jobs described it as being like Twitter and Facebook, it is in reality massively different, and in my opinion critically flawed.

Here’s what’s wrong with Ping:

Let’s start with the profile page. You can describe yourself, choose up to three musical genres you like, and add a photo. That’s it. No status updates! What’s bizarre and aggravating about that is how Katy Perry and Lady Gaga apparently can leave status updates, and have a Twitter like feed. ‘Normals’ like me can only comment on their updates. Users are second class citizens in Ping.

Ping’s next problem is that it’s such a closed system it feels claustrophobic, and this for me renders Ping utterly broken. Ping is only cares about what you’ve bought or might buy in the iTunes Store.

That’s all!

If you import a CD or MP3 you’ve bought elsewhere, Ping isn’t interested. Facebook and Twitter let me share what I want with my friends, and that’s why they work. Everything in Ping is about buying stuff in the Store.

I wouldn’t mind sharing my purchases and ratings with friends, but in a social network for music, there has to be more. I want to share what I’m listening to sometimes, as that’s more important than what I buy. Having Ping stuffed in the iTunes store and being so limited just make it look and feel like tragic marketing. I can like something in the store, but not in my library. Why not? Why can’t I choose what language Ping is in? Even clunky old MySpace lets you do that.

I love the iTunes library, I really do. As a music manager it’s unbeatable, but Ping is an absolutely terrible addition. I already have the Last.fm scrobbler, where I can share what I’m listening to, and on their site concerts and events can be created and shared by anyone. It’s a great system, and the community led, open atmosphere exposes everything that’s wrong about Ping. Ping feels led by marketers, not by its users.

Of course Apple want to make money, that’s fine. But while the high margin model works for their excellent hardware, successful social networks all have to feel free, and as if the users are number one. Apple shouldn’t let financial aims get in the way of what the community wants.

Ping is the first social network I’ve ever used that doesn’t feel social. Social networks don’t fit with the Apple ideology, because users need too much control, and control is something Steve Jobs doesn’t like to give away. With Apple, you do things their way, or not at all. For iPhones this is wonderful, but not social tools. Mark Zuckerberg certainly won’t be losing any sleep over Ping.

Fall is traditionally the time when things get busy - whether you’re beginning school, hoarding nuts or starting a new hobby, it’s a great time to tackle big projects and take on new tasks. If you’re a Chrome user, you’re in luck - we’ve got some great extensions that will definitely make your work even more productive, so keep reading!

Reading Glasses is the best app for blocking out unnecessary detail when you’re reading online. It’s all too easy to become distracted on the web - flashing ads, unrelated articles, and ugly website can all give you a hard time. Install this add-on and all the annoyances will fade into the background, leaving you to concentrate on the good stuff. Just remember that every link is still click-able, however, so be careful where you point that mouse!

TooManyTabs is pretty self-explanatory. When you’re busy studying and researching, it’s easy to open one link after another. Before you know it, you’re overrun with tabs and have no idea where the important ones are. If you want to be able to sort your tabs, search them and even get a bird’s eye view of everything you’ve got open, then this is the add-on is for you.

StayFocused will help you do just that. It’s a bit complicated to set up, but once you do you can be sure that you’ll never loose hours of your day to Icanhascheezburger again. You can also restrict sub-domains, so even if you block the Life & Style section of the online paper, you can still browse the stock market results without a problem.

Incredible StartPage is just that - a great extension that will make your start page as useful as possible, gathering together your most important and frequently used sites and web apps in centralized place. No more bookmarking or searching -  all the important sites will be there waiting for you, while you’ll also be able to take quick notes and integrate everything into Google Apps.

I’ve always thought it a shame that all those tweets we produce every day eventually end up disappearing into the ether, never to be read again. Then I stumbled across Twournal, a new service that allows you to immortalize your Twitter musings forever by turning your tweets into a book.

You can use Twournal to create, buy and sell Twitter books printed from your tweets. You simply sign up with your Twitter account and the service will generate and mail to you a free eBook containing a date-ordered record of your posts through the ages. It even includes color pictures taken from Twitpic, Yfrong, TweetPhoto, and the like.

If you want to purchase a hard-copy, printed and bound book of your tweets, prices will vary from $15 for a standard book of less than 800 entries, to $135 for a tome fashioned from between 2,400 to 3,200 posts with full color pictures. Check here for the full price list.

At the moment, Twournal is still in invite-only private beta. Luckily for you, we’ve teamed up with Twournal to offer 100 free invites. Head to the Twournal home page and click ‘Create Twournal’ then choose the third option: ‘Create Twournal when you get your invite code’. Enter the code ‘onsoftware’ and you’re ready to start making your own personal Twitter journal!

Like Canabalt, Solipskier is a game all about forward motion. Guide a crazed headphone-wearing skier along a piste of your own making, nailing as many jumps and drops as you can manage without allowing the skier to fall out of the screen altogether.

All you need to do is click and drag the mouse to create your ski route, and the skier will follow behind. Let go of the mouse button and you’ll stop creating snow, but if you do it after a jump your skier will perform tricks in the air, increasing your score.

Solipskier is simple but hard to put down and full of neat little sound and graphical touches. You’ll need Flash, and you can play it here.

While most people have been taking it easy over the summer vacation, Gmail seems to have been working overtime. The email giant is just getting better and better - a new interface, updated undo send and even multiple account login! The latest feature to make it to our inboxes is Gmail Priority Inbox.

The feature hasn’t been fully rolled out yet, so don’t worry if you can’t see it in your account - it hasn’t appeared in mine yet, but as you can see from the screenshots, Tom’s already prioritizing with the best of them!

Gmail Priority Inbox is going to work like this: using technology similar to its anti-spam features, it will automatically identify important emails based on your usual email patterns - what you read first and who you actually reply to. It will then put these emails in a separate part of your inbox, so you can read them first and leave the less important stuff until later.

Even if Gmail Priority Inbox gets it wrong, there is also a feature to mark individual mails as more or less important, moving them in or out of the priority area as appropriate. If this feature works well, it will be huge, especially for high-volume emailers. I can’t wait to try it out, so hurry up Gmail - I want Priority Inbox now!

Last week Twitter announced a small but handy development - the arrival of a drag-on Twitter bookmarklet. Bunches of sites have a Share on Twitter option, but for those that weren’t down with the 140-character revolution, you’d have to take the link, shorten it with a 3rd-party service and then craft it into a minute yet fully-functional tweet. No longer! Go here, grab the bookmarklet, drag it up to your bookmarks toolbar and tweet anything from anywhere. And while you’re over at Twitter, log in and follow us!

e7 is a great little browser game, where you’ve been taken to an alien planet to stop a huge bomb that’s been created to destroy Earth. The ground is unusual on this planet, and you can use it like a trampoline to jump into the air, or propel yourself at alien ships out to stop you complete your mission.

With it’s minimal Flash graphics and eerie rushing wind, e7 is atmospheric, and has a strange sad feeling to it. The gameplay is different, and there are only a couple of sticking points that might take a few goes to get past.  It shouldn’t take much over half an hour to complete, and it’s worth the effort. Play e7 here.

We’ve all been there. You hit send, and promptly think “doh”! Whether it’s because you’ve called your boss an jackass, or you’ve forgotten to add some essential information, a short grace period on recently sent emails would be fantastic.

Many of you will already know that this feature has been available for a while in Google Labs. What’s newsworthy now is that it that you can configure Undo Send to give you 5, 10, 20 or 30 seconds to cancel the send. Just 5 seconds to reconsider a hastily-sent email? If you were that quick, you probably wouldn’t have sent it in the first place!

If you’re looking for more than one video on YouTube, it makes sense to open them in new tabs - it saves you time and makes the process more efficient. Unfortunately, YouTube’s autoplay function means that unless you want to hear what hell surely sounds like, you’ll need to pause them one by one, which kind of defeats the purpose.

Luckily there are add-ons for both Firefox and Chrome that will help turn autoplay off!

Chrome users can give Stop AutoPlay for YouTube a try. This simple extension works like charm, pausing your videos but letting them buffer, so when you get around to watching them, they’ll be ready to go.

Firefox users have various options, among them TubeStop. This add-on works perfectly on YouTube, as well as on any site that has YouTube video embedded, but unlike Stop AutoPlay for YouTube, it doesn’t let the videos buffer. Bear in mind, though, that if you have a slow internet connection, this can actually be a good thing.

Another option is Stop Autoplay. Fans of this add-on claim that it works on most sites with autoplay features, not just YouTube. That’s because it stops the automatic start of Flash elements in general, which is something that you may or not want. Even so, it stops YouTube videos in their tracks, ready for you to hit play when you’re set to go.

Via OnSoftware ES.

I’ve always professed that I’m no oil painting, but Aviary’s new Facebook app has proved me wrong - because now I actually am. Aviary Effects allows you to turn your Facebook photos into works of art, quickly and simply.

The application lets you apply effects to any photos of you from your Facebook albums and even get creative with photos of your friends. There are six different effects to choose from. Besides Oil Paint, you can also select Pop Art, Etch-a-Sketch, Warhol, Sketch and Lego. Each effect can be customized, changing the intensity via a slider, as well as altering the background colors and amount of brush strokes.

I should point out that Aviary Effects seems a little unstable at the moment, and it managed to crash Firefox a few times when trying to apply an effect. Nevertheless it’s a fun way to breath new life into all those profile pictures that have been there for years.