You thought you had the browser face-off signed and sealed until Google introduced its fleet-footed Chrome browser. Has it been enough to change the game?
With help from CNET Download.com’s Seth Rosenblatt and Webware.com’s Josh Lowensohn, CNET’s Brian Tong takes
Given that TuneWiki was one of the 10 top winners in Google’s Android Challenge, it’s no surprise we’re taken by its originality and ambition.
The free music application for Google Android not only plays your media, but it also helps build your library with songs and YouTube music videos. An additional search for streaming lyrics attempts to get you singing the right words at the right time.
TuneWiki doesn’t ace everything it sets out to do, but if you’re willing to give it some leeway, you won’t be disappointed. Check out the First Look video here for more details and an up-close view of TuneWiki in action.
Related:
Ringdroid: Awesome Android ringtone-maker
Gmote for Android gets Mac and PC music going
Full Google Android coverage
AirRadar is a free utility that can help you scan for, track information on, and join wireless networks. Like similar apps, AirRadar provides much more information than you’d otherwise get through the Mac OS Airport status menu.
Whether you’re testing your signal strength at home or trying to find free Wi-Fi on the road, AirRadar will list all open and closed networks in range, along with information such as signal strength (current, average, and max), type of encryption, MAC address, and channel. AirRadar can keep scanning at any interval you set, automatically join the best open network (or a network of a specified minimum strength), and notify you of new networks in a variety of ways, including through Growl messages and by speaking network names out loud–perhaps a bit dorky, but useful for the visually impaired.
The basic functionality should be more than enough for most users, but you can also have AirRadar provide more than two dozen pieces of live data for a given network, and even track noise and signal strength in graphs. More Mac freeware should be as useful and well-rounded as AirRadar.
In tough economic times like these, good freeware becomes worth its weight in gold. Professionals who squeeze every feature out of their top-shelf software will likely appreciate the investment, but those of us with more modest goals can still do just about anything for free.
Assuming you can put up with a homlier appearance and a few minor character flaws, we’ve got some tools to help you save your hard-earned dough. This list is by no means exhaustive, so feel free to chime in with your own favorite cash-saving apps.
A few days ago we featured gMote, an excellent utility for creating mouse gestures. Some people aren’t into them, and would prefer to keep their hands on their keyboards as much as possible. Heck, I’m one of them. HotKeyz does for those essential multikey combinations what gMote does for mouse gestures: it’s a powerful utility that makes it easy to create and manage hot keys that open programs, shut down your computer, and control media applications.
HotKeyz’s intuitive interface divides hot keys into nine preset categories, including Control Panel, Desktop, and Internet. A simple table lists the 11 preconfigured hot keys that perform basic tasks like launching Internet Explorer, accessing the Control Panel, and adjusting volume. Novices will appreciate the step-by-step guide to creating their own hot keys, especially for more complex operations such as opening your Internet Explorer home page or automatically filling in online log-in information. A reliable help guide also eases the learning curve.
Hotkeyz sits in the system tray when not in use, but of course, it has its own hot key combination. This effective freeware application makes it easy for anyone to create customized keyboard shortcuts.
This low-cost graphics app makes creating Web buttons, banners, and stylized text easy. With tons of premade templates and samples to get you started, Art Text lets you spend your time fine-tuning your work instead of starting from scratch. When you’re done, you can export your work in several formats, letting you put the final touches on your design in your favorite graphics or image-editing program.
Still not convinced? Then check out this First Look video of Art Text for Mac to get a quick overview.
(Credit: Skyfire Labs)Updated on 10/21/08 with more detail.
Starting Friday, Americans won’t be the only ones able to test drive the newly opened beta for Skyfire’s mobile browser.
Now Canadians can, too, after one or two tweaks to Skyfire’s registration process gives northern numbers the green light.
While Canada may be the first country outside of the U.S. with a chance to download the mobile browsing alternative, it won’t be the only one for long–Skyfire won’t announce particulars, but did say that it expects to expand its service to other countries soon. This is the official word, of course. Some users tell us they unofficially downloaded Skyfire months ago using random U.S. phone numbers to register.
Skyfire’s claim to fame is its zoomed-out browsing mode that replicates desktop browsing on a much smaller screen. A mouse lets you navigate around the page. You click as you would on a desktop browser to zoom in for a closer look.
By using a proxy server to help serve and render Web pages, Skyfire can also stream Flash video and support Ajax and Quicktime.
However, it’s far from the only one of its kind. Skyfire mobile browser, which updated to version 0.8 just over a month ago, currently poses the most substantial competition to Opera Mobile 9.5 beta. Both Opera Mobile and Skyfire are available for Windows Mobile and Symbian phones. Opera Mobile slightly edges Skyfire in the model count with its additional support for Symbian UIQ handsets and its more toned feature set, but young Skyfire is quickly catching up and raising the stakes with a simplified interface that still packs the links in and decent video support.
As Skyfire fans its flame to Canada and other countries after that, Mozilla continues to develop its own mobile Firefox Mobile, code-named Fennec. We previewed the alpha installation for two Nokia models, and so far it looks great. But we’ll really know where each stands on speed, video support, and navigability when the alpha code for Windows Mobile is released and we can compare Opera Mobile, Skyfire, and Firefox Mobile side by side.
In the meantime, Canadians and Americans can surf over to Skyfire.com to download the version 0.8 beta.
The are good programs and bad programs, and then there are the horror shows. Every three months or so, we take a playful look at some of the least impressive software programs to come down the pike.
From Canadian Rock Radio to telepathic communication with aliens, there’s a lot not to like about this oddball crew. Just in time for Halloween, CNET TV’s Tom Merritt counts down the five scariest downloads of fall 2008.
Griffin Technology, makers of the iTalk hardware add-on that allows you to record lenghty audio on non-microphone-equipped iPods, recently released a software-only recorder for the iPhone, iTalk Recorder. It’s halfway to being a great app. But the other half is really annoying.
The iPhone side of iTalk Recorder is quite good. It’s very easy to set up a recording in one of three quality levels, rename it as you like, and then play it back on your phone.
The problem comes on the PC or laptop side. To get your recording onto your computer, you can’t, as you would think, just dock your iPhone and then drag the file over, as you can with pictures. Apple doesn’t yet give developers the hooks to allow that. So what Griffin does is give you a little app for your computer that lets you sniff out your Recorder-equipped iPhone over WiFi, and transfer the files that way. The snag? The Windows version of the sync software isn’t available yet (update: it’s in closed beta; Griffin just sent me a preview).
If you’re on a Mac, this is worth a try. PC users might want to wait, or try one of these other iPhone recorders.
(Credit: CNET Networks)You may have noticed a trend in my iPhone apps of the week posts: I mostly download games. To offer a little balance to my posts, this week I have a couple of useful iPhone apps that aren’t just for when you want to waste some time. Both are free so you can take advantage of these useful tools right away.
Preview the results before hitting the send e-mail button.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
Free Translator is a language translator that lets you send e-mails in different languages. The concept is fairly simple: choose a source language, choose a target language, and then hit translate. When you’re finished, you can send the translated message via e-mail–great if you have non-English-speaking relatives living in another country. Free Translator can translate between 31 languages. Like all software translators, your mileage may vary as far as accuracy, so try to keep it simple and most likely the recipient will be able to understand what you’re trying to say.
Browse Wikipedia easily with this app that's perfectly formatted for the iPhone.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
Wikiamo makes Wikipedia a much better experience on the iPhone because it automatically formats the screen for easy readability. It offers forward and back buttons for quick navigation between pages you’ve already visited and the ability to create and use bookmarks for info you want to save. You also get your viewing history to go back to favorite pages, and Wikiamo caches pages so you can view them even when you’re not connected. I think my favorite feature is the contents button, which sends you immediately to the table of contents so you can get the specific information about your selected subject immediately.
What’s your most useful downloaded iPhone app? Got a good game for me to try? Let me know in the comments!
