Crenk » Analysis

Facebook and Twitter to Fight SPAM… again

Dean Sherwin — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:51:56 +0000

SPAM is one of my pet hates. In fact I think that everyone reading this hates those annoying e-mails, comments left on our pages, tweets and clearly misleading advertisements that promise you a months salary in a few hours. I really, really hate SPAM. It’s useless and in this day and age it achieves nothing with its instantly recognisable language format, strange links and oh yeah, the promise of a few million bucks for transferring money.

Twitter and Facebook hate SPAM too. At the same time, both of them published posts to their blog that clearly announce plans to go on the offensive against spammers on their networks.

Twitter is due to start crating tweets and organising the trending topics section. This could mean one of two things:

Either they’ll simply remove an entire trending topic if it becomes too spammed.
Or they’ll painstakingly monitor tweets in trending topics with the first filter being a computer and the last a human.

They told us that the changes may not be apparent immediately – but I can assure you, it’s happening as you read this post.

Meanwhile, Facebook are targeting SPAM and scam ads on their network. This is a really big problem for two reasons. Firstly it lets users make their own ads and publish them – with so many it’s hard to catch all the scams. And secondly, they’ve gotten into bed with some shady advertising networks recently and are having a spot of bother breaking the relationships. Although they have assured us they’re in the process of ending two of them.

Let’s all pray for a SPAM free Internet in the mean time.

Google Wave Federation Begins Testing – Start of SPAM

Dean Sherwin — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:20:59 +0000

Google Wave has not been a big hit so far – everyone though it would be…but it hasn’t. The interface is complicated, buggy and unpractical. People aren’t staying long enough to build a community and worst of all – nobody is quite sure what exactly it’s for yet. However the development team are still making strides.

They have just opened up Wave to third party companies by releasing an API package. This allows companies to host their own Wave like services on their own servers and interact with other companies API Waves. This is currently only in sandbox testing and isn’t live on the internet as of yet.

One thing which concerns me is that this could mean the start of SPAM on Wave. Since its launch people have been confined to specific waves but now we’re seeing a growth in access. Although this growth isn’t enough to start a spamming campaign it could be the start of it. I’m pretty sure that soon the hackers and spammers will descend on Google Wave – then it’s up to Google to stop them on a platform which will supposedly be more open than e-mail.

BBC Hacks Into GMail eMail Account over WIFI

Steven Finch — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 22:20:59 +0000

This article was just written over at TheNextWeb. I didnt want to just rewrite the article for everyone so here is what they said. I was wondering if anyone has any answers, mainly because this is a Gmail account and could affect millions of people.

BBC Watchdog is British TV program that investigates viewers’ reports of problematic experiences with traders, retailers, and other companies around the UK. A recent investigation has discovered that wi-fi hot spots across the country are not secure – leaving tens of thousands of users at risk of fraud.

In this particular case they reveal how easy it is to hack into someones GMail account over Wifi, sending emails and changing their password. According to Danny Sullivan who shared the link on Twitter, if he’d signed via secure https, he’d probably have been safe – can anyone verify?

If you can’t see the video below, watch it here.

Google Page Rank Update, But Does Anyone Care?

Steven Finch — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:37:38 +0000

Here at Crenk we have noticed that our page rank has gone up to a PR 5, and a lot of other people have also been writing about the update. However, does anyone still actually care about Page Rank? or is it now all about building a brand and hitting the long tail keywords?

Random Posts

New York Times Report That Online Advertising Brings in Nearly a Quarter Of Their Revenues

Steven Finch — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:37:47 +0000

Over at Techcrunch they reported yesterday that the New York Times are now receiving nearly a quarter of their total revenues from online advertising.

The New York Times announced third quarter earnings this morning. Total revenues were down 17 percent to $571 million. Of that advertising revenues decreased 27 percent to $291 million, and the online advertising portion was down 8.2 percent to $68 million.

Last quarter, advertising revenues declined an even steeper 32 percent, and online advertising was down 15.5 percent. So maybe this is the first step on its way back to positive territory. Here are the year-over-year declines in online advertising revenues for each of the past four quarters.

Annual Decline In Internet Advertising Revenues

4Q08: -3.5%
1Q09: -6.1%
2Q09: -15.5%
3Q09: -8.2%

Another interesting data point is that because its print advertising revenues are shrinking at a faster rate than its Internet advertising revenues, the Internet portion is actually a bigger percentage (23.5%) of the New York Times’ total advertising revenues than it was year ago (when it was 18.6%).

I have been a firm believer that print business will slowly leave only the major players in each market and all the smaller business will have to move online or close. However, with these latest figures I now think even the major players could be in big trouble!

Has Rivals Techcrunch and Silicon Alley Insider Partnered??

Steven Finch — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:03:55 +0000

I noticed this morning that in the Silicon Alley Insider RSS feed that they were not just promoting Techcrunch content, but linking directly to their articles!

Have these two key rival in the technology news space partnered to try to catch up to Mashable in terms of traffic numbers?

VoIP Applications in iTunes App Store, But Why Is There Still No Google Voice?

Steven Finch — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:17:16 +0000

It was just reported by Om Malik that Apple has approved yet another VoIP application. The application in question is Stockholm based Rebtel. Currently, Rebtel is now available to download from the iTunes store, as well as other VoIP applications like Skype.

Rebtel joins a growing rank of Internet telephony applications including Skype, Truphone, Nimbuzz, Fring and Vonage. Given that Apple and AT&T are giving the nod to almost all VoIP applications, Om wonders why exactly Google Voice isn’t getting the go-ahead?

I still think there is a distinctive difference between the VoIP service and what Google Voice offers. Google Voice offers free calls with no cost at all with the USA and Canada. However, on the VoIP service there is still a cost associated when calling phone numbers (only online calls are free). Thus, AT&T and other mobile carriers of the iPhone feel that VoIP services dont harm their call costs, because they think users are too lazy to open the VoIP applications then call, instead of just calling using their phone carrier.

Google Acquisitions and Investments Chart

Steven Finch — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 09:08:48 +0000

Our friends at The Next Web have put found a great chart of Google’s Acquisitions and Investments. Click here for a larger view.

Social Media Revolution

Augusto Alvarez — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 19:07:11 +0000

How much is Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google involved in your common day activities? Did you ever ask yourself that? Where would you be if those didn’t exist?

Well there thousands of those existential questions that you may or may not asked yourself, and there’s no need to get real philosophical about this, but we sure can be certain that those technologies, web apps and more have an important presence in most of our days.

About those presences, here’s a very interesting video about the facts of several of these social tools, technologies and media: “Social Media Revolution”

Here are some of the facts that caught my attention:

Social media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the web
1 of 8 couples married in the US met via social media
If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s 4th largest
TV took 13 years to reach 50 million users, Facebook took less than 9 months to reach 100 millions
Ashton Kutcher has more Twitter followers than the entire population of Ireland, Norway and Panama
80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices
Wikipedia has over 13 million articles
80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees
Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
35% of books sales on Amazon are for Kindle

“Social media isn’t a fad; it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate”

Brilliant New iPhone App: Girlfriend Not Included

Steven Finch — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 16:36:49 +0000

A new very funny iPhone ad but not from Apple. The movie is by New York artist Adam Sacks. via DivineCaroline

Feedburner CEO Moves to Twitter. Is Twitter The New RSS?

Steven Finch — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 22:10:43 +0000

It has been reported over at Techcrunch that the Feedburner CEO has decided to leave the ship and is now becoming the Twitter COO. This has really made me think about RSS and where it is heading and is Twitter the next big thing in terms of keeping track of your favourite resources?

Steve Gillmor stated:

“Rest In Peace, RSS,” he wrote, saying “It’s time to get completely off RSS and switch to Twitter…All my RSS feeds are in Google Reader. I don’t go there any more. Since all my feeds are in Google Reader and I don’t go there, I don’t use RSS anymore.”

Everyday I head over to my Google Reader and see what all the major sites have been talking about and for me there is simply no other alternative to easily read over 200 sites in one place. I know I can follow a lot of major sites on Twitter, but it is very difficult to keep track of more than 200 follows, plus you have to be online and watching when they post or you just miss the news (bad thing about real-time).

Why Do People Go Online?

Augusto Alvarez — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 01:18:34 +0000

Why do people go online? I know, it is a general question that could lead to several answers and also might depend on several factors as well, that also is dynamically changing according to the day or particular moment. But at Ruder Finn Intent Index are trying to simplify this question, analyzing common areas that men, women, youths and seniors could choose to go online.

The results are very interesting, here are some quick facts:

More than twice as many people go online to socialize (82%) than to do business (39%) or shop (31%).
72% of people go online just to become part of a community.
More men (42%) than women (36%) go online to do business.
Women (91%) are much more likely to go online to socialize than men (73%).
A majority of youths 55% go online to just to play games.
More than half of seniors (65%) go online to be a part of an online community.
Almost half (48%) go online to entertain others.

And even more, if you want you can also review the full results with more specific data.

How do they collect this data? Well this report is updated on quarterly basis, the sample is a minimum of 500 American adults. The index is calculated on the basis of how frequently this people is going online for 295 reasons or intents.

We’ve discussed before about how teenagers do not prefer twitter, and even though in the results shown in this site could be consider quite general, the statistics caught my attention:

82% go online to socialize. No surprise there, where it would be Facebook if that wasn’t true?
72% go online just to become part of a community. What can you say about it? Maybe a constant feeling of people to be included in some group, or self esteem issues?
55% of youths go online just to play games. Well I didn’t see that number coming, I was hoping around a 30% maybe? And the rest to socialize.
65% seniors go online to be a part of an online community. I’m not sure which age represents “seniors” but it is a great thing that elders are always trying to catch up with technology.

And what about you? Do you have your stats?

Chinese Game Server Administrator Arrested for DDoS Attack

Augusto Alvarez — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 17:43:19 +0000

Well I guess bad guys sometimes just get caught. That was the case for this Chinese guy that trying to attack a rival using a Denial-of-Service attack generated an Internet collapse in most of China (People = 1.300 millions, that’s right 1.3 billion people). The attack occurred last May,and the responsible of this attack: 23 year-old that owned private gaming servers and since he wasn’t doing so good in business decided attack his rivals, ending up taking down primary DNS servers in China.

To make a quick review about the story: A Chinese guy (with the surname of Bing) from a cotton factory offered online gaming with some private servers that he bought. So far, nothing out of the ordinary, there are thousands of these types of unlicensed gaming servers. And of course, this underground business usually involves some underground behaviors; Bing’s servers were being attacked by other gaming servers rivals, causing him to lose money. So he decided to strike back their rivals with some DDoS attacks.

Bing spent nearly u$s41.000 on these attacks, renting 81 servers only for this task, but they were ineffective. So they decided to ask for more help, that’s when the attacks collapsed DNSPod that not only served for Bing’s rivals servers, also serves several Internet companies in China.

Although police rarely have the jurisdiction or training needed to pursue such a case, officials confirmed the detention of four individuals, including Bing. Here’s the official report.

These attacks are not uncommon in these days, as we’ve said in this previous post. It is a good thing that authorities are tracking down these criminals.

Top 5 of the Most Anticipated PS3 Games

Augusto Alvarez — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:23:56 +0000

For a few months, I’ve been feeling that all the current PS3 games didn’t get me all that excited to actually go out there and buy them as soon as they are released. Metal Gear 4, GTA IV, FIFA 09 and just a couple more are my favorites and, in different ways, I think they represent just the edge that Play Station has over other similar consoles.

This list represents, in my perception, which are the games that are the most expected yet to come for Play Station 3:

Number 5 – FIFA 10

FIFA 09 made an incredible revolution among sports games in PS3, functionality, features, online gaming, realism were the main aspects that made FIFA 09 the best soccer game released for PS3 (and I think the best in any console).

Among the new features that will be included are: Virtual Pro (use your player with your own photo and see how the games adapts the photo with new face recognition software); new online types of games; several improvements in game play (new type of tactics can be implemented, defensive urgency, more physical play, 360 dribbles, etc etc).

Release Date: October 20, 2009.

Number 4 – Assassin’s Creed 2

It just stays in N° 4 because the first game released in 2007 was not actually all that I expected. It was not bad, don’t get me wrong, I just didn’t enjoy the missions in this games: all the same. Ubisoft seems that received most of the feedback and adds more excitement in this 2nd part.

The main story will be placed in Venice in the XV century and seems that will contain over 16 type of different missions. New weapons and movements, you will be able to swim and throw people to the water, new places to hide, etc etc.

Release Date: November 17, 2009.

Number 3 – Batman Arkham Asylum

This story starts with Batman that just has captured The Joker, and takes him to Arkham Asylum to acts as his prison. But of course, things go bad and The Joker gets loose and frees other members of the asylum.

To capture him back, Batman will use tons of gadgets and also the “detective mode” to get rid of all the bad guys. You will find awesome battle scenes with great video and motion, including “take down” options to use with your enemies, you will also get improvements in your weapons by gaining experience points.

Release Date: August 25, 2009.

Number 2 – Castlevania The Lord of the Shadows

The Castlevania saga makes an extraordinary comeback with the Lord of the Shadows. Great artistic pictures and looks like a more incredible game play. Here’s the trailer, enjoy:

(Yes, the game narrator is Patrick Stewart, X-Men’s Xavier)

Release Date: TBA 2010

Number 1 – God of War III

Soon as I completed God of War II and watching the game box with the message “God of War III for Play Station 3 – Coming Soon” I knew that the PS3 will be mine and all of my expectations will be on this game.

As for PS2, God of War will be a must for all PS3 gamers. The new features will include: bigger areas and scenarios, more brutal combats, intricate puzzles to solve, new weapons, using a new lighting technology inside the game play (simulates a human retina behavior with brightness and darkness), PS3 exclusive game.

Here’s the trailer:

Release Date: March 2010.

Well that is it for my list.

What is yours?

The Future of Home Entertainment and Films

Dean Sherwin — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 18:04:59 +0000

Netflix is a great service. I think that the days of strolling to the DVD store to pick out a few of your favourites are ending rapidly. Why should you pay full price for a DVD when you could stream loads every month for the same price? The same kind of service is taking place with our games consoles. Less than two weeks ago Games On Demand was released for the XBOX 360.

This allows you to download games paying a reduced price for them. I downloaded Battlefield 1943 and Assassin’s Creed – it’s just like having the game on a disc without the trip to the store. It saves the distributors money, it saves the producers money and more importantly it saves you money. But this rapid change in the way we get our movies will have big repercussions.

Firstly, there will be job losses. All those staff at the DVD store will be given their notice. What’s the point in keeping on staff when there isn’t enough business to pay them? The only solution for the big entertainment stores is to head online and try to create a Games on Demand or Netflix alternative.

Secondly, the whole hobby of collecting special edition DVDs and first editions will die. Because we can simply press ‘Download’, movies are starting to loose their individuality and allure that they’ve had for generations. The only thing, I believe, that will stop cult films and massive hits from loosing their spark will be the cinema.

Thirdly, you can say good bye to physical media. Games consoles are now being sold with hundreds of GM of memory. Soon, all media players (the equivalent of today’s BlueRay players) will just be giant memory card sitting underneath your TV.

But it may not all be bad news for the businesses, collectors and DVD player makers out there. When VCRs came out everyone assumed that the cinema would be finished in ten years. Yet here we are. I also think this will be good for piracy. Yes there will be more films online but once they are protected properly, sharing should diminish. After all, the main reason why people watch illegal copies of films online is because they don’t want the trouble of buying a DVD. If they offer videos of a very high quality at a small price, video viewing that’s all above board will come back.

The future looks bright for home entertainment indeed.

Web 3.0 will be Apps 1.5

Dean Sherwin — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 08:52:53 +0000

The future is undoubtedly in Apps. Think about it. Over the last year thousands upon thousands of apps have been released and they are rapidly starting to replace websites views. Twitter, Facebook, iTunes and every large newspaper in the world have apps for mobile devices so people can use their services – otherwise they go elsewhere. Even those that may not are linked in with apps. Many websites have news feeds to apps such as Snaptu.

Soon, I predict that anyone wanting to book a flight, buy online or just surf the net will use apps instead. They offer all of the usefulness of the internet with all the easy design and eye pleasing qualities of software.

They’re also easier to use than internet browsers. If you want to read the news you simply click one little button instead of navigating to the page and then trying to find the kind of stories you want.

Apps are taking over a lot of my internet usage. If I want to check the weather, read movie reviews, tweet, use Facebook or search for pictures I use Snaptu. If I want to combine all my instant messaging into one I use eBuddy. It’s all streamlined, easier and quicker than using clunky browsers, not to mention they can fit in your pocket.

Without a shadow of a doubt, Web 3.0 will be App 1.5.

Twitter is for Old People

Augusto Alvarez — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 18:35:13 +0000

Only around 15% of all the Twitter users are less than 25 years old, who would know? An official report from Morgan Stanley says that teenagers just don’t use Twitter.

You won’t be surprised if I tell you that people under 25 years are the main Internet users, only this group of people takes the 25% of all population; but they also just represent 16% of all Twitter.

And which age group takes the majority on Twitter? 25-54 years old, they take up to 64% of the Twitter population (me included of course). 20% for people over 55 years and 16% for those under 25. Yeap, you read it right, 20% of Twitter users are over 55 years.

If you start thinking about it (and when I say “thinking” I mean checking your list of followers and following) you would probably notice that you have a bunch of friends, a selected group of celebrities (yes, I know, we all have @aplusk), and would probably see a large number of marketers, companies, brands, channels, journalists or even PR guys. And that’s not exactly the main focus of teens these days.

It doesn’t feel like the teen wave didn’t appear just yet in Twitter? Can we expect a new teen market for Twitter as it was for Facebook?

Crenk Recession Watch

Dean — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 11:31:20 +0000

Undoubtedly, the recession wasn’t really hitting the internet as hard as what it was other industries. Sure we has a bit of trouble over at Microsoft but that’s because they are also a trading company in the real world. What I mean to say is that the online world was fighting off the worst of it.

In fact, companies such as eBay and Amazon actually didn’t do so bad. People began to sell their stuff when they needed the cash and others bought them because they didn’t have too much cash to splash. It was all making perfect sense until the internet could take no more as real companies started to turn their back on it.

Advertising is plummeting. A new report states that advertising on a worldwide scale is down by five percent. In America, the figure is even bigger at 7% worth an estimated 0.4 Billion dollars. Companies who usually do quite well from advertising such as Monster reported that they lost 31% compared to last year.

Wouldn’t you know it; internet giant Google is the only ad publisher to report a growth, however even this is in single digits.

Now that advertising is failing the next sector to be hit will be entertainment. Big companies that have real world trading have more of a chance of survival but for online magazines and games where they often depend on advertising alone to keep the ship afloat – there may be trouble ahead indeed.

The IDC, who released the report did have some good news however.

“We think the industry will continue to see losses in the third and fourth quarters, but the growth rates–or the loss rates, if you will–will eventually begin to improve,” Karsten Weide, program director for digital media and entertainment at IDC, said in a statement. “However, we also believe the industry may have to wait until mid-2010 until it sees real growth again.”

Funny Techcrunch Comment

Steven Finch — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:51:56 +0000

Im not really too sure why Im writing about this on Crenk, apart from the fact that it was on a technology news site. This morning I posted a comment on a Techcrunch article about YouTube Founder Chad Hurley funding the USA Formula 1 team, and I was the first person to comment and thought it was funny to see the comments to follow. Here is a quick look. It just made me laugh.

How to Find Your iPhone UUID

Steven Finch — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 10:50:45 +0000

If you are beta testing an application, or working with a developer to track down an issue, the developer will almost certainly have to ask you to provide your UUID. This page describes details of what a UUID actually is, and how to find it.

When manufactured every iPhone is assigned an identifier that is unique to that physical device. This is commonly referred to as it’s ‘UUID’, an acronym for Universally Unique Identifier. It’s worth noting that the UUID is anonymous, e.g. if you have a UUID there is no way to tie that to a person.

iTunes will only install applications that have been digitally signed by a developer using an Apple-provided certificate. Applications can either be signed for the AppStore where they can be used by anyone who purchases a copy, or for AdHoc distribution where users install the application by adding it to iTunes. With Adhoc distribution the developer must include the UUID of all devices in the certificate for the application. This is intended to prevent people freely distributing their applications.

Below are instructions for retrieving your UUID. Alternatively you can download Erica Sudan’s most helpful and free AdHoc Helper Application from the AppStore.

1) Start iTunes and connect your iPhone

2) On the Summary page for your iPhone, click on the word “Serial Number:” text

3) The serial number should change to the word “Identifier”, followed by a long string of numbers and digits

4) When you press CTRL+C (Windows) or Command/AppleKey + C (Mac) and the UUID will be copied to the clipboard and can then be pasted into an Email / IM window / whatever

Spam Increased 141%

Augusto Alvarez — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 17:50:55 +0000

Spam levels have increased in the last few months, since March more precisely, in a 141% said McAfee Threat Report from Second Quarter in 2009. The main reason resides in another increase: botnets (infected computers used for spamming and other attacks) up to 16%. Need an explicit number? That translates in 117 billion spam emails every day.

The number that is quite disturbing as well, is the botnets that are currently infected: 14 million computers. 150k every day, that represent 20% of all the computers that are acquired every day. And these botnets and zombies they are not only responsible for most of the spam, also they generated other attacks like denial-of-service to the White House, New York Stock Exchange and South Korean government web sites.

About South Korea, that’s the country that increased the most in the botnet activity, up to 45%; but yes, the US keeps in the top of that list with over 15% of the entire zombie population.

These spam numbers do not come alone, malware attacks have increased, specially the ones that infect the Windows auto-run that do not require any user intervention to “spread the evil”. That type of malware even outnumbered the Koobface or the Conflicker attacks.

This is a battle that will never end I think, I’m sure that those that depend on this kind of battles will not let it end.

What do you think?

Build Software Appliances with SUSE Studio

Augusto Alvarez — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 16:47:28 +0000

There is something true about open-source developing projects, it’s really hard to find some developer platforms that are user friendly, that could actually motivate young developers to start working with these environments. But there’s always an exception: SUSE Studio was launched recently, bringing dev guys a fresh new interface where they can build their open source applications.

Of course that the building platform will be mainly for SUSE Linux Enterprise or openSUSE, but has several features and possibilities available:

Includes applications templates, including: JeOS, minimal X11, KDE and GNOME (the last one is the preferred for SUSE platforms).
You don’t need to install anything in particular, you just need a web browser to start working with SUSE Studio.
You can generate ISO CDs for you appliances or even LiveCDs.
You can add third party repositories that you can include to your applications.
Written in Ruby on Rails. Never heard of it? Here’s a list of the most common web apps built in this platform: Ruby in Rails applications.

You can find more resources about this platform, like reviews or even screencasts.

Sky TV to Launch 3D Channel Next Year

Dean — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 09:17:09 +0000

Since 3D filming was created the only way to marvel at the spectacle was to go to the cinema and pay extra for the pleasure. At the moment, Ice Age 3D is about as close as you’ll get to the 3D experience. However, recently huge advancements have been made such as Fujifilm announcing the world first consumer 3D digital camera. Now, Sky TV in the UK say that they will be offering Europe’s first ever 3D TV service by next year.

“In the next step in the Sky+HD journey, Sky today announced that it will launch the UK’s first 3D channel next year,” said Sky in a press release

“The service will be broadcast across Sky’s existing HD infrastructure and be available via the current generation of Sky+HD set-top boxes.” This is good news as the UK has just undergone a massive nationwide digital switchover and people having to change their set-top boxes all over again would anger some.

However, those wanting to enjoy 3D films, entertainment and sport will have to change their TV for a 3D ready TV. These are expected from large companies such as Panasonic and will be on sale in 2010 to coincide with the launch of the 3D service.

“3D is a genuinely ’seeing is believing’ experience, making TV come to life as never before. Just like the launch of digital, Sky+ and HD, this is latest step in our commitment to innovating for customers.” said Sky.

Top Thunderbird Email Addons

Steven Finch — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 22:38:19 +0000

Thunderbird is an Outlook like email client that is free to download and is made by Mozilla, the same company that makes Firefox. The best thing about Thunderbird is that developers from all over the world are able to make addon tools to use, unlike Microsoft and Outlook. Thunderbird is multi-platform and multi-lingual. Here is our list of the top 10 Thunderbird addons.

(1) Contacts Sidebar – handy addon that lets you display all available address books in Thunderbird sidebar. This lets you easily access all your contacts from the main window, quickly edit contact details, drag’n drop files on top of a contact to send it as an attachment and more… (Thunderbird: 1.5b – 2.0.0.*)

(2) QuoteCollapse – automatically collapses all the quotes within any message, making it look neat and less cluttered. To expand quotes back to standard view just click inserted ‘+’ button. (Thunderbird: 0.7 – 2.0.0.*)

(3) QuickMove – must-have addon letting you quickly file messages to your frequently used folders using keyboard shortcuts. (Thunderbird: 0.5 – 2.0+)

(4) Signature Switch – allows you to create multiple email signatures (Private, Business, etc.) and quickly switch between them right from the main toolbar. Also provides configurable signature auto-switch option based on the email recipients. (Thunderbird: 0.7 – 2.0.0.*)

(5) Remove Duplicate Messages – helps you quickly locate and remove duplicate messages from the selected folders (and its subfolders). (Thunderbird: 1.0 – 1.5.0.*)

(6) Nostalgy – lets you assign single-key keyboard shortcuts to common thunderbird operations i.e., move/copy/delete messages, change folder, add/remove/view tags, add attachment, scroll the message while keeping the focus on the thread pane and lots more. (Thunderbird: 1.5 – 2.0.0.*)

(7) GMailUI – adds Gmail-like mail archiving and powerful message search (i.e. ‘from:Makeuseof to:Aibek’) functionalities into Thunderbird. Makes excellent addition to already existing ‘Saved Searches’ feature. (Thunderbird: 0.8 – 2.0.0.*)

(8) Attachment Extractor – integrates one-click attachment extract option from selected messages. Once attachments have been extracted it can delete, detach or mark messages as ‘read’. Way easier than going through messages one-by-one. (Thunderbird: 2.0 – 2.0.0.*)

(9) Auto Zip Attachments – adds an ‘AutoZip’ button to the compose toolbar allowing you to compress all attached files to a single ‘zip’ file. (Thunderbird: 1.5 – 2.0.0.*)

(10) Send Later – integrates extra ‘Send Later At’ (’Ctrl+Shift+Return’) feature to the message compose window, allowing you to send messages on a particular future date and time. It can be a contract cancellation notice, a ‘Happy Birthday’ or a friendly ‘Don’t Forget’ note. (Thunderbird: 1.5 – 2.0)

How To Download Flash Games

Steven Finch — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:20:32 +0000

Flash games are becoming more and more popular as internet speeds increase. Have you ever wanted to download those flash games and play them on your desktop without any annoying ads?

Here we’ll show you how to do just that. First how to download flash games to your PC and then how to play them offline. So if you’re hooked on some addictive flash game this guide should help you get it offline and play it on your desktop.

Download Flash Games:

Downloading flash games to your PC is a fairly easy process and there are lots of ways to do it. One way to get the game file is to look inside the page’s source code and find the direct link to the game file on the site. Another option is to wait for the game to load in your browser and later get it from the temporary files folder of your browser. Or you can just go to the site called File2HD and let it get the game file for you. We have already featured it earlier as a MP3 and video download tool for Myspace.

File2HD can help you download flash games from most of the online gaming sites. That being said, it doesn’t work with Kongregate, one of the best sites for Flash games. Althou I had no problems getting flash games from hugely popular sites like AddictiveGames.

So how does it work:

1. Go to the page with the flash game you want to download.

2. Copy the page URL and paste it into File2HD.

3. Set ‘Filter’ to ‘Objects’ option and click on ‘Get Files’ button.

4. Next, File2HD should retrieve the direct link to the game file.

5. Right click on the link an use ‘Save Link As’ option to save the game to your computer.

Play Flash Games Offline:

Once you have the game files on your system you can use a simple freeware program called FlashOffliner (Windows only) to take those raw .swf flash files, turn them into playable games, and neatly organize them under one menu.

Here are the steps you need to do:

1. Download and Install FlashOffliner.

The FlashOffliner setup comes with 2 games by default and 3 more that can be added later. If you want to install them as well then check step 4.

2. Once you have FlashOffliner up and running, you should see a new icon in the taskbar. Right click on the icon to see the list of available games and program options.

3. It takes two steps to add a downloaded flash game to your FlashOffliner games list. The first thing you need to do is click on the ‘Create New Flash Offliner Package’ and then point it to the downloaded file. Then you will be asked to name your new game and for a couple of more optional details. At the end it should create game_name.fop file for you.

4. Again right click on the FlashOffliner icon and this time select the ‘Install FlashOffliner Option’. Point the app to the newly created game_name.fop file to “install” the game.

5. This will install the game and add it to your FlashOffliner games. See screenshot below.

That’s about it, now you can simply click on the game of your choice and play it offline right on your desktop. By default the game window size is set to 800×600 but you can easily resize it to 400×300, 640×480, 1024×768 or Full Screen mode.

Now that you know how to take flash games offline check out our short post on best online flash games.