Freeware World

Yesterday I got a rare chance to travel to Stockholm and meet the team behind the new film streaming app Voddler which is currently only available in Sweden. Next week, we’ll be publishing an exclusive interview with Voddler’s Mathias Tönnesson so watch this space for a fascinating look behind the scenes and for some answers to all of your questions about one of the most exciting applications of the year.

After the interview though, it struck me that Voddler are banking a hell of a lot of their hopes on people being willing to stream content rather than download it whether legally or illegally.

In Voddler’s case, the content is films and documentaries (and eventually TV shows) and the success of the project largely depends on users being happy to stream, rather than own content.

Fortunately for Voddler, the law is on their side in Sweden. It was pure coincidence for Voddler that it was launched last year just as the Pirate Bay trial deemed the P2P file sharing site illegal. Suddenly, Swedes were faced with either breaking the law to download films or turn to more legal methods and Voddler came along at just the right time to take advantage of this.

Technology is also on their side. Internet connections are getting faster and more widely available. Tönnensson explained to me how he’d already been given a preview of Sweden’s next generation 4G mobile network and it streamed Voddler films onto a laptop perfectly with no fixed internet connection. In theory, within a few years there will be little need to physically own films or video content available on Voddler because you will be able to watch them anywhere, anytime absolutely free.

However, old habits may be harder for Voddler change. We’re used to owning data, especially music and films on our iPods, hard drives and even simply for aesthetic reasons around the home. There’s something very satisfying about physically browsing through a DVD or CD collection.

I for one am happy to stream, though. For example, I’ve come to depend on Spotify for most of my music needs and if I had an Android device or iPhone, I’d be willing to pay the subscription fee to use it on the move. But this is only because Spotify offers me almost all of the music I want. As happy as I am to watch streamed movies and videos, it will be very much dependent on Voddler providing the same exhaustive and comprehensive choice of films.

I see no reason to clog-up my hard drive or bookshelves with films and music I’ll probably never watch again. I’m proud to say I’m a swanky streamer and not a downloading dinosaur. What are you?

Windows: Do you find yourself writing the same bits of text all the time, day after day? Then you need PhraseExpress, a highly configurable tool that helps you insert frequently used text automatically on any Windows app. PhraseExpress works with keyboard shortcuts and is very easy to configure and use. A handy tool that will save you loads of time!

iPhone: TweetDeck is one of the most popular desktop Twitter clients out there - and at long last an iPhone version of the app has arrived. It hasn’t half bad either. TweetDeck displays everything that’s going on on Twitter in a highly organized way. As with the PC and Mac versions, TweetDeck for iPhone uses a system of columns to make it easy for you to track who’s doing what.

Mac: EyeConnect (now updated to version 1.6.5) is a media server application. By scanning your network for UPnP AV digital media devices, it can detect any available device to which it can serve multimedia content, and thus share all your Mac’s video, TV, music and photo content with your TV or stereo. EyeConnect is compatible with pretty much any media content including DivX, Xvid, WMV, JPG, iTunes library etc.

If you’d like to get a feel for the Vancouver Winter Olympics, Google Earth is a great resource. Google have added 3D models of the city and the nine venues, and you can go on a flying tour of them all.

If you haven’t got it installed, download it here - it’s fantastic. Open the program then click Layers and check 3D Buildings, which will allow you to see all 3D models around the world. To See the Winter Olympic buildings, you can search for them yourself, or download this file which automatically opens Google Earth and takes you on a tour of the venues.

Google Earth relies on your internet connection to load images and you may find 3D models take a few moments to appear - click the pause button to give them a chance to appear. The tour is cool but it misses the newest addition, the Bobsled course - to fly there download this small KML file. It’s one of the best looking models on Google Earth I’ve seen, and it’s a shame there’s not a virtual sled to ride the course!

[Via: Google Earth Blog]

If you’d like to get a feel for the Vancouver Winter Olympics, Google Earth is a great resource. Google have added 3D models of the city and the nine venues, and you can go on a flying tour of them all.

If you haven’t got it installed, download it here - it’s fantastic. Open the program then click Layers and check 3D Buildings, which will allow you to see all 3D models around the world. To See the Winter Olympic buildings, you can search for them yourself, or download this file which automatically opens Google Earth and takes you on a tour of the venues.

Google Earth relies on your internet connection to load images and you may find 3D models take a few moments to appear - click the pause button to give them a chance to appear. The tour is cool but it misses the newest addition, the Bobsled course - to fly there download this small KML file. It’s one of the best looking models on Google Earth I’ve seen, and it’s a shame there’s not a virtual sled to ride the course!

[Via: Google Earth Blog]

Windows: Tired of your old media player? Looking for something else? Then you should give JetAudio Basic a try. This awesome app has recently been updated to version 8.0.4 and features everything you could expect from a media player. Plus you’ll also find a series of extra tools to rip audio CD, burn your own disks and convert files from one format to another, among others.

iPhone:  Doodle Jump has been one of the most popular games in the app store for some time - and it’s easy to see why. It has what I like to call the ‘just one more game’ factor, in the sense that it’s very difficult to put down. Doodle Jump casts you as a little green man in a cartoon sketchpad world. The object of the game is to get as high as you can up the scrolling screen by bouncing on platforms. Just don’t fall down!

Mac:Mass Effect 2 could be the game of the decade, and it’s only just begun! This is a selection of 24 official wallpapers for your desktop. Set in 2183, just after the end of the first Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 is a huge game, which sends players all over the universe involved in a real space-opera of a story that is just as dramatic as it is action packed.

Windows: Tired of your old media player? Looking for something else? Then you should give JetAudio Basic a try. This awesome app has recently been updated to version 8.0.4 and features everything you could expect from a media player. Plus you’ll also find a series of extra tools to rip audio CD, burn your own disks and convert files from one format to another, among others.

iPhone:  Doodle Jump has been one of the most popular games in the app store for some time - and it’s easy to see why. It has what I like to call the ‘just one more game’ factor, in the sense that it’s very difficult to put down. Doodle Jump casts you as a little green man in a cartoon sketchpad world. The object of the game is to get as high as you can up the scrolling screen by bouncing on platforms. Just don’t fall down!

Mac:Mass Effect 2 could be the game of the decade, and it’s only just begun! This is a selection of 24 official wallpapers for your desktop. Set in 2183, just after the end of the first Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 is a huge game, which sends players all over the universe involved in a real space-opera of a story that is just as dramatic as it is action packed.

When it comes to photo editing and manipulation, Photoshop is undoubtedly the best software you can find for the job. Though it started back in 1987 as a basic graphic app developed by Thomas Knoll, the first version of Photoshop was officially launched at the beginning of 1990 – exactly twenty years ago.

I’m a big fan of this great program (as you can tell by the loads of posts I’ve written about it) so I thought it would be a nice idea to write this post as a celebration of Photoshop’s 20th birthday. I’m sure you’ll be shocked to see how different the first Photoshop looks from the one you have on your computer!

Like I said before, Photoshop started off in 1987 as a very basic graphic app for Mac called Display, created by Thomas Knoll, which could only display images in black and white.

Thomas’s brother, John, was working for Industrial Light and Magic and asked Thomas to work on a enhanced version of this program that could help him process digital images. The idea seemed to work, and in 1988 the two brothers decided to create a commercial photo editing tool based on Display, but using a new name: Photoshop.

Thomas wrote all the code, while John focused on plug-ins. They also managed to reach a deal with Adobe in September 1988, and early in 1990, the first version of Photoshop was launched.

Since then, two decades of changes and improvements have turned Photoshop into one of the greatest photo editing applications ever. Not only is it the standard tool for many professional designers and developers, but it has also become an essential tool for newspapers, magazines and online media.

The dominance of Photoshop in today’s world of graphic design has also caused controversy about the abuse of photo manipulation. From the US Air Force pilot about to be eaten by a shark to President Sarkozy’s vanishing love handles, we’ve all seen many popular examples of photoshopped images.

But the best examples of the power of Photoshop often come from anonymous users, like the community behind Worth1000. Once you start browsing this site, you never know when to stop. Some of these creations are just so good that it’s hard to believe they’re not real.

Oddly enough, the same happens with Photoshop Disasters, though this time you won’t be browsing amazing Photoshop compositions like the ones in Worth1000; on the contrary, it’s a collection of hilarious Photoshop outrages that have inexplicably made their way to printed media all over the world.

Happy birthday, Photoshop!

(Photoshop splash screens, interface snapshots and examples taken from Hongkiat.com, Blogvecindad.com, Oddee.com and Photopreneur.com)

As Jon already pointed out, today is Clean Out Your Computer Day, which makes it the perfect time to review some useful applications and routines for spring cleaning your Windows computer. That said, I hope you don’t limit these routines to one single day every year; all computers can benefit largely from frequent cleaning sessions, in terms of drive space, speed and performance. Here we go!

1. If you install new software apps quite often, you should probably check the list of installed programs on your system and start cleaning there. Ask yourself whether you still need that 500 MB program you haven’t used lately, and don’t be afraid to uninstall anything you don’t need anymore.

2. After months browsing the web, your browser history files and cache memory will have surely reached a huge size. Trim those down the easy way by using the browser’s own history manager (Tools > Clear Recent History in Firefox) or using a third-party app such as Free Windows Sweeper.

3. Check the folder where you save all the files you download from the web, and make sure you clean them up. Keeping a program’s executable file after it’s been installed is just a waste of space!

4. Use disk analysis tools like SpaceSniffer to locate the largest files and folders on your system, and decide whether you need to keep them or not. Maybe it would be a good idea to store those gigabytes of old photos somewhere else…

5. Last but not least, use your favorite cleaning tool to get rid of any other additional junk data your computer has been storing in the background, such as Windows temporary files, recent document lists, log files and more.

These are by no means the only tips we’ve we’ve got about computer spring cleaning. If all this isn’t enough for you, check our previous posts about how to recover hard drive space, five tools to clean up your computer, cleaning tips for a faster PC, how to free up disk space with Scanner, how to use a USB memory device to clean your PC and how to configure advanced options in CCleaner.

What about you? Do you have any other personal routines for computer maintenance?

Windows: After a few betas and release candidates, our favorite torrent client has finally made it. uTorrent 2.0 is now available for download with the same speed, ease of use and simple interface we’ve grown to love. The new version also features support for UDP tracker and a completely overhauled setup menu, among other new features.

iPhone: Want a Kindle but can’t afford one? Then try Stanza. It’s ebook reader and library for your iPhone, offering commercial titles, which can be bought through bookstores in the app, and free titles from providers like the Gutenberg project. This is a really good application. It’s well organized, easy to use and makes reading on the iPhone as comfortable as possible on such a small screen.

Mac: Imagine if you could access your iTunes collection from any Mac, anywhere in the world. MyTunesRSS allows you to do exactly this by accessing your iTunes folder over a local network or the internet. Initial setup involves setting up a server using the IP address of the computer that contains your music. Once connected, the user interface is like a stripped down version of iTunes showing you your tracks and categories.

I was surprised to learn that the new version of Firefox is 15% faster than the previous version. When I say surprised I actually mean I didn’t believe a word of it. I decided to challenge this figure by putting Firefox 3.5 and Firefox 3.6 up against each other in a series of three benchmarking tests. I also included comparisons with the latest versions of Chrome, Opera and Internet Explorer. In the name of transparency, I’ve decided to explain the benchmarking process for each of the three tests I applied. Why not try it for yourself and see which of your web browsers runs the best?

Test One:  Peacekeeper Browser Benchmark

Peacekeeper is a free service that puts your browser through its paces in a series of thorough tests. It checks performance in the following areas: rendering, social networking, complex graphics, data, Document Object Model operations, and text parsing. Each test takes about five minutes and simple involves hitting a button on the Peacekeeper site in the browser you want to test. To make a fair test you should ensure that you just have one tab or window open, and disable or uninstall any extensions you have running.

Peacemaker gives each browser an overall performance score, and you can view a more detailed breakdown of how that score was arrived at by clicking the ‘Details’ link on the graph. Here’s the graph generated by the browser tests I performed:

Test Two: SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark

The second test I performed was the same one run by Computerworld in its tests on Firefox 3.5 and 3.6. The SunSpider JavaScript benchmark is a utility that tests the speed of a browser by running a series of JavaScripts and measuring the speed at which the software process them. It breaks the results down into a series of different categories based on the scripts it ran. These results are a little harder to interpret than the Peacekeeper test, but you can look at the total time and use this as your benchmark for comparing the browsers. Here are the overall times (fastest first) for the browsers I tested:

• Chrome 4.0 - 649.4ms

• Firefox 3.6 - 1415ms

• Firefox 3.5 - 1700ms

• Opera 10.10 - 3051ms

• Internet Explorer 8 - 6346.2ms

Test Three: The Acid 3 Test

The third and final test is much quicker and simpler than the previous two. The Acid 3 Test is used to measure a browser’s compliance with web standards, particularly relating to the Document Object Model and JavaScript. To pass the test a browser needs to attain a score of 100/100 and the final image it displays must match the reference image.

Of the five browsers we tested, only Google Chrome and Opera attained the maximum 100 out of 100. Firefox 3.6 (94) and Firefox 3.5 (93) both almost made the grade. Microsoft should hang its head in shame though, because IE8 only scored a measely 20 out of 100, meaning it falls way short of standards compliance.

Analyzing the results

Our benchmarking supports Computerworld’s claim that Firefox 3.6 is much faster than version 3.5. In fact, according to the SunSpider test we ran, the newer release comes out 17% quicker than the previous version. It’s still not as speedy as Chrome though, which was more than twice as fast as Firefox, and way ahead of Opera and IE.

What’s more, the Mozilla browser performs very well against its competitors in the Peacekeeper benchmark. Again, it’s only Chrome that pips the latest version of Firefox. And again, Internet Explorer is left floundering in final place, this time in a test than examines the overall capabilities of the browser.

So, my advice based on these results is to upgrade to Firefox 3.6 if you haven’t already done so. Better still, install Chrome and use that to browse the web instead. Having said this, ut’s definitely worth running the benchmark tests on your own browsers because the results can vary considerably depending on your setup, the amount of extensions that you have installed, the OS you’re using, etc.