Review – Aviary

When I need to quickly touch up an image or create a simple one to upload somewhere I hate having to load up a big editor on my PC.  I figure why not have one that can get the job done in a snap and start-up quickly too?  That's when I find Aviarys website particularly useful.

The apps are made in flash and are rather powerful.  This also means that you don't have to install them and can use them anywhere.  On the site you can find many handy apps like a vector editor and an image editor (which easily beats stuff like MS Paint) and even a sound editor.

I uninstalled a program I was using to learn a bit about creating vector images when I found this site just to give you an idea of how impressed I was.

There are many other online image editors out there but I've found that this one is the most complete.

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URL: http://www.aviary.com/

 

Review – Canabalt

This little flash game got me hooked on the first try.  Imagine if you will a game so simple, you only need to use one key on your keyboard.  Sounds like an old school game from Atari or something, right?  Well what if I told you that you didn't even need to move around, but only jump using that one key?

Canabalt is a very fast-paced side scrolling game where your player is running at high-speed through a city under attack and you must help him jump over obstacles, through windows and from one rooftop to the next.  It sounds rather simple but you really must pay attention because anything can and will happen.  The events and buildings are generated randomly every time you start the level so there's no way you'll be memorizing a way through it all anytime soon.

This one is a classic and a definitive keeper.  Most highly recommended to anyone.

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URL: http://www.adamatomic.com/canabalt/

 

Review – Fancy Pants Adventure

I've never seen such quality in a flash game.  This one is so much fun with an incredible attention to detail.  Lots of action, tons of special moves!  A great time all in all.
I can't really describe it to you, you must play it to believe it.  I recommend this game to anyone at any time.
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URL: http://armorgames.com/author/DrNeroCF

Review - Dropbox

If you ever need to share or sync your files with different computers, users or even on smartphones then this app is for you.

Dropbox creates a folder on your hard drive and monitors it for changes.  Anytime a file or folder is created, modified or deleted in it the program syncs it with your Dropbox account online.  From there, any other Dropbox client set up with it will automatically update its own copy.

Another nice part of this service (which uses Amazon S3 so it is fast and has good uptime) is that you can easily share links to files that are placed in your public folder.  You can send these to other people who do not have a Dropbox account and the link will always point to the updated version of your file.  Public links cannot be searched so people can't stumble upon your other files, and you have 10 gigs of bandwidth a month for your shares.

You also have a gallery folder which can be used to create and share image galleries with others.

Your free account will give you 2 gigs of space but you can refer people to the service and get more quite easily.

An excellent service at an excellent price (free for basic) I suggest you try it out if anything in this article has caught your eye.  After all, having an offsite backup can always come in handy, and Dropbox lets you recover deleted files and even go back to earlier versions if you wanted to undo file changes.

One last note: If you click the Alternate URL link below when you join up and install the program, we will both get 250MB extra space.  I’d appreciate it.

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URL: http://www.dropbox.com/

Alternate URL: http://db.tt/tBUR9hJ

Review - Grooveshark

I found this site a short while ago and must say that I've been hooked ever since.

Using a browser that supports HTML5 (such as the previously reviewed Chromium) you have access to an on-demand streaming music service.  Contrary to another one of my favorites, Shoutcast, Grooveshark has not only a couple of streaming stations, but a vast library that you can listen to by searching for artists and song titles.

The songs load quickly so you'll be listening to your favorite tunes in no time.  Try typing in some obscure one hit wonder from years ago and you will most likely find it.  I've read that since it is managed by users some of the songs will be of lesser quality, but those I've played so far sounded great to me.

So the next time you're relaxing around your home or working on the computer, why not stream a few tunes to pass the time?  Like they said during Intermission: "Music soothes even the savage beast".

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URL: http://www.grooveshark.com/

Review – Mozilla Plugin Check

This webpage offers a quick plugin version check to make sure those you have installed are up to date.  This makes sure you have any updates, patches and bug fixes to keep your browsing and security at it's best.

It does a faster checkup then Secunia PSI but only checks your plugins to make sure they are safe, instead of your installed software.

Just another way browser companies are trying to keep web users safe.

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URL: http://www.mozilla.com/plugincheck/

Review - VirusTotal

Having a good anti-virus these days is essential.  Sometimes however it's good to have a second opinion.  Well what if you had 42 of them?

VirusTotal is a nice site to have around for times when you seriously want to scan a file and make sure that it's clean.  When uploading, it calculates a hash of the file and lets you know if it has been scanned in the past to give you the result right away and avoid waiting for the scans to take place, although you can ask it to re-analyze it since newer definitions to the scanning engines have since come out, detecting newer viruses and removing some false positives.

Another nice feature is a shell extension that you can install on your computer to upload and scan files with a simple right-click.  This is optional however, and is available for your convenience.

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URL: http://www.virustotal.com/ 

Review - filehippo.com

I remember just a few years ago waiting impatiently for the programs that I would use to include update-checking to save me from having to track down all their websites (some long gone, others moved causing 404s) just to see if a never version had come out.

Later on many if not most of the programs on my hard drive had updating included, but having to run each one, one at a time, was still rather tedious.

Many mass-updating websites have come and gone, but one still remains: filehippo.  Now this website hosts some great freeware, along with some open-source and trialware programs.  What more, it would be hard to miss an update since the site offers many ways to notify you: A news feed via RSS, updates via twitter and even a very nice update-checker that will scan certain folders on your hard drive and show you any available updates that you can then read up about on filehippos website and download right away.

Last point for this review is that software on a computer should always be kept up to date.  You not only get new features here and there, but you also get bug fixes and therefore increased security and productivity.  Newer versions are sometimes not better however, there may be features that you would use that have been removed.  You could either write the programmers to ask them to include them once again, you could find a new program that does what you'd want it to, or you could download a earlier version of the one you now use which is also available on filehippo.com.

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URL: http://www.filehippo.com/