Download Squad

Filed under: Internet

Display GMail unread message count on the favicon

by Lee Mathews Jan 3rd 2009

If you've always got GMail open in one of your Firefox tabs, you can't always see the unread message count - when you have a whole slew of other tabs open, for example.

Install the Gmail Unread Message Count in Favicon script for Greasemonkey, and that problem is solved. The script overlays the current count on Gmail's envelope icon and it will display even when you're not parked at your Inbox. It's nice to be able to keep tabs on new messages without tabbing back to Gmail.

The icon will also become brighter as the number of unread messages increases. You will, of course, need to have the Greasemonkey addon installed as well.

[ via Lifehacker ]

Tags: favicon, gmail, greasemonkey

Filed under: Fun, Internet, Web services

BlahblahFish shows just how bad machine generated translation can be

by Brad Linder Jan 2nd 2009

You know how when you enter some French, German, or Japanese text into a web-based translator, the results always look a bit... suspect? BlahblahFish is a website that shows you what it looks like when you translate an English phrase into another language and then try to translate it back to English. The results are often baffling and occasionally downright funny.

If you get a particularly funny translation, you can post it on the site where other users can vote. Not surprisingly many of the translations that have been posted so far are somewhat dirty. But I also found out that "great googly moogly" translated into Korean comes out as something like "Indirect nine moogly where is serious."

[via Neatorama]

Tags: blahblahfish, translation

Filed under: Fun, Games, Windows, Freeware, Windows x64

Rayhound: A space shooter where your only weapon is gravity

by Lee Mathews Jan 2nd 2009

It seems a bit odd to call Rayhound a shooter when your ship doesn't actually have a single gun, but that's the best single-word description I can offer.

Your opponents, however, have lots of firepower and they're not shy about using it. How exactly do you go about defending yourself? Use your enemies' strength against them.

Use the mouse to control your ship's movement and left-click to engage your ship's gravity field. Time it right, and you'll gain control over enemy attacks and be able to redirect them to your advantage. Hold the mouse button down to keep the field engaged to drag their fire with you and release when you're ready to strike.

The visuals are simple yet stunning, especially in later stages when enemies become more numerous.

Rayhound is a free download for Windows, and is totally portable so Linux users might also be able to give it a shot using Wine.

Tags: shooter, space, time-waster

Filed under: Internet, Microsoft, Browsers

Internet Explorer share drops to an all-time low (again)

by Lee Mathews Jan 2nd 2009

Despite some excitement generated by Windows 7, things aren't all rosy for Microsoft as they continue to lose ground in the browser market.

On December 1, NetApplications announced that Firefox had maintained more than a 20% share for the first time in history. Last month, Mozilla's browser crept over 21%. Now out of "beta," Google Chrome has broken the 1% barrier, and Apple made gains as well - thanks in part to strong holiday sales of the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Interestingly enough, current economic conditions and holidays seem to be contributing factors. Layoffs and long weekends mean more people browsing at home, and more people browsing at home, apparently, means increased use of alternative browsers.

This isn't the only bad news for Microsoft lately on the browser front. Several bloggers (myself included) have reported stability problems with Internet Explorer 8 in the Windows 7 beta build.

With Internet Explorer numbers steadily on the decline and the fact that it keeps placing poorly in comparative testing, will it be able to maintain its hold on the enterprise?

[ via Alley Insider ]

Tags: browser-share, browsers, internet-explorer, stats

Filed under: Utilities, Open Source

WinCDEmu mounts disc images as Windows drives

by Brad Linder Jan 2nd 2009

There are plenty of apps that let you mount a disc image (like an ISO file) as a virtual drive in Windows. And to be honest, WinCDEmu is just another one of those apps, without too many special features. But the utility is light weight and open source, so it might be worth checking out if you're into those things.

Once you've downloaded and installed WinCDEmu, you can have Windows treat any ISO, CUE, BIN, RAW, IMG, or SMB network share as a hard drive just by double clicking on the file. If another program is already your default utility for mounting images, you'll need to right click on the file and select "open with vmnt" to use WinCDEmu. You can unmount a file by right clicking on the virtual drive letter in Windows Explorer and clicking "eject."

[via gHacks]

Tags: mount, virtual-drive, vmnt, wincdemu

PicClick: Visual browser for ebay and Amazon

by Brad Linder Jan 2nd 2009 {1 comments}

PicClick is a tool that lets you browse eBay and Amazon product listings by sifting through images rather than text based descriptions. The web app was developed by Ryan Sit, the same guy who brought us ListPic, a visual browser for Oodle classifieds. The new site works reasonably well. You can click on eBay or Amazon and then pick a category to start looking through images. Drag the slider bar...

Find the hidden menu in Google Mobile for iPhone

by Jay Hathaway Jan 2nd 2009 {5 comments}

Google's iPhone app, Google Mobile, was already pretty handy with the addition of voice search, but it turns out that it's got more features than anybody realized. The Google Mobile team just blogged about an easter egg, a hidden menu in the app that enables some extra goodies. To find it, go to the settings tab in Google Mobile, and keep trying to scroll down below the "About" option at the...

AlertThingy 2 adds support for Facebook, Flickr, more services

by Brad Linder Jan 1st 2009 {6 comments}

When AlertThingy launched in April of 2008, the Adobe AIR-based application was a desktop client for social networking/micro-blogging service FriendFeed. The developers eventually added support for Twitter, which started an arms race between AlertThingy and Twhirl, a Twitter client that added support for FriendFeed. Now AlertThingy has been updated to version two, and it supports the following...

A look back at 2008's biggest Download Squad articles

by Lee Mathews Dec 31st 2008 {2 comments}

2008 has come and gone, and it's been a great year at Download Squad. Our site got a long-awaited facelift and some new faces (including me) joined the ranks. Thanks to all our visitors for all the great tips and comments, and keep them coming! Before we usher in 2009, let's take a quick look back at some of the biggest posts from the past year! Top 5 iPhone Buzzkills. This was a huge year...

Free Video Converter offers simple video editing, conversion

by Brad Linder Dec 31st 2008 {5 comments}

There are plenty of free Windows applications that let you convert files from one format to another (for example, from MPG to H.264). And judging by its name, you'd think that Free Video Converter was just another of those apps. But the free utility also offers basic video editing capabilities. You won't find any fades, transitions, or titles in Free Video Converter. But the program does let you...

Featured Time Waster

Grab your BFG and play Doom in your browser - Time Waster

This one really takes me back. As soon as I saw the opening screen, I could picture a dozen people crammed into my dorm room watching my roommate and I deathmatch over our awesome null modem cable.

Yes, Doom 1 has been recompiled in Flash from the original source. It plays just like I remembered the original, and could definitely become a giant Time Waster for anyone else who was hooked on Doom when it was first released.

Playing through a few levels almost made me forget how terrible the movie was (sorry, Dwayne).

There's no music, but I usually had that shut off and listened to my Discman. All the old cheat codes work as well: in case you've forgotten, IDDQD activates "degreelessness" and IDKFA will enable all weapons, keys, and ammo, and boost your armor to 200%. Not that I'm saying you'll need to cheat, but when you remember something like that after 14 years, you give it a try to see if it still works.

You'll need Flash 10 to play, and a non-PowerPC computer to run it.

By the way: if you also enjoyed Heretic (think Medieval Doom with a crossbow), you can find an updated Shockwave version of it on this site.

Thanks, Blake!

View more Time Wasters