Meteor
In Soviet Russia, Meteor controls you!

I don’t get the tag line either, but let’s get going with it!

Ever been sat at home, your media server is hooked up to your 50″ HD TV and you can’t find the remote? I’m sure it’s happened to us all at one point or another.

As a Windows Phone 7 user I like to make the most out of the 100′s of £££ I paid for the phone, so I have every app under the sun, one of which has taken my attention quite recently. Meteor for Windows Media Center. The easiest way to explain what it does is this.

Meteor connects to your Windows Media Center client via its windows based server application, it grabs all your films, the DVD covers and meta data, (if you have it), and shows it nicely on your phone for you to peruse and pick from.

The app itself is split into three sections.

Now Playing – From here you can easily manipulate what is currently playing, whether it’s a song or a movie.

Recent – This area shows your recently played items.

Library – Here is where all the fun happens. Meteor gathers all your library data and shows it here, with sub sections of music, movies and TV shows.

Now the app has only just come out of beta, and its windows service has very limited functionality, personally I’d like to see it with media library settings within the Meteor interface. Maybe in future it will.

Now for some eye candy, below you can see the now playing section of the app, where the data is streamed to the phone to show realtime playback info. Check out the videos below to see it in action.

* Images provided by blog.landdolphin.net

So if you are the guy with the 50″ TV, I’m sure you’ll have some professional solution for your home media entertainment. If you’re not, here is the next best thing, a media guide in your pocket. The app itself is free, but with header and footer adverts. The paid version removes these adverts but doesn’t unlock any additional features.

Check out their website - http://landdolphin.net/meteor/

And if you have Zune, check out the app – Zune Marketplace

Keep your eye out for next week’s WP7 App Review

At Electronic Farmyard we have decided to give a few options for you to try out.

we7 – Our first option for you to try it we7. This service offers in browser listening of 000′s of tracks and albums. So your thinking, ‘well obviously, thats what im wanting to hear from you’, so what else do they offer. Well personally i don’t think a lot, they have recently released an option to stream through android and have social integration links such as facebook, msn, myspace ect. Other similarities to spotify include playlists, bookmarking (starring) and sharing music with friends.

I feel the downside to the website is the amount of adverts they have dotted about the place, at any one time there are about 4 image adverts on the site linking to various products. But after all, it is free music. Their premium options are £4.99 for no adverts listening and premium content. Their Premium+ subscription allows offline listening of tracks.

Overall i would rate this service 3.5/5

Check it out at www.we7.com

MFlow – Remember when you signed up to Twitter after using Facebook for so long, you were like ‘so, it’s just status updates? where’s farmville?’. MFlow’s kinda like that, no ads, no interruptions (well, when you sign up/in there isn’t). You can search by artist, album or track. See what your friends are listening to, tag songs, follow tags. It is very much a twitter of the audio streaming world. And it is truly free, you can purchase tracks from around £0.79; which is the general price these days.

Whats nice is it takes on a Last.FM approach of music, suggesting tracks, allowing you to have random suggestions. Also, if you and a friend join (referals) you both get £1.00 credit for FREE!

Personally for features it doesn’t suit me, id rather use Last.FM which has more songs and an ever-increasing user base. I’m going to give it a 3/5

Check it out at www.mflow.com

Grooveshark – Argh I don’t like this one at all, but it did come up off the top of my head when planning this article. Grooveshark is a music streaming service, providing adverts between tracks. But here’s the catch, the users upload the music. I can see a copyright notice being served to them at some point. And in fact it has already by several music services and authorities.

When i have used it, i’ve always found tracks i like, generally UK top 40 stuff and the odd album i like. I find the user interface to be quite slow when compared to other services and applications.

Overall i would give GrooveShark a 2/5 but feel free to try it, you may find your experiences different.

Check it out at www.grooveshark.com

Youtube Disco – Now for those who like to watch their favourite artists music videos while they listen, or if you are just a YT junkie then this feature they have released is great. YouTube offer a playlist feature, so you can add videos to a playlist, and when one finishes it moves onto the next.

YouTube Disco takes the artist you want and grabs their music videos, trying it’s best not to duplicate tracks (not all tracks are provided by the same user/record label). Then you have a great one artist playlist with music videos to enjoy

As a music streaming service I wouldn’t give it such a good rating, a lot of the tracks i tried had been removed or weren’t available in the UK. But as a YT feature i think its 5/5 . But in this situation I will give it 2/5

Give it a try at www.youtube.com/disco

Well there you have it, it’s not all of them, im sure i have missed one or two out but have a gander and let us know what you think

Dropbox is to announce 25 million users Today! With an amazing figure of 200 million files per day going through dropbox! Dropbox allows users to share and sync files between users and multiple PC’s (including mac ). Its free service offers a hefty 2GB allowance, which is plenty for the basic user.

Now you may be thinking, 25 million, so what. But if you compare it to late february 2010 when they had 4 million users, an increase of 21 million in just over 12 months is, well, out standing.

Dropbox itself is an innovation,with its great use of bandwith and storage. Only unique files are uploaded, if say user 1224 uploads unique_song1.mp3 and user 6574 uploads the same file on their end, dropbox wont re-upload, it will simply use the current file uploaded. Now the process can’t be explained in a simple paragraph as this, but that’s the jist of it.

Personally i love Dropbox, i could promote it all day (as long as i get free space, i’m upto 8GB woo!). I use multiple computers, working on multiple projects, sharing films, music, images and documents throughout everything i use. Most recently my Windows Phone.

With its funding of $7.2 million from several investors i cant wait to see where Dropbox will go. Check out our low down on Dropbox from earlier last year.

Heres a few interesting things to check out about Dropbox

• Download Dropbox
• Dropbox Cribs Tour (source: techcrunch)
• Dropbox Blog

The beginning of 2010 i wrote an article on a little app called RocketDock, which was preceded by another about the Docklets you can get for it. Almost a year on and im still using RocketDock for quick navigation on my Windows 7 laptop.

Heres how it currently looks.

Now all you might see if a bunch of icons. These are my most used shotcuts that were on my desktop. My desktop is now clutter free and allows me to marvel at my ever changing wallpaper. Mostly of my girlfriend i might add .

If you’ve seen this article, or my previous ones and been to RocketDock’s website, then you may just think, surely i can use desktop shortcuts and Windows sidebar widgets? Ofcourse you can! But personally i find their widgets rubbish and badly designed to match the ‘Windows theme’ and ofcourse, your desktop ends up looking like this.

With RocketDock you have everything sat on one side of your screen, i find top is best unless you like removing your taskbar (there are start menu docklets available)

By now your surely thinking, he’s just here to plug this so called amazing application. So yeah, i do like it. It does have its issues though, before the last release i think i BSOD about 15 times (anger!) and alot of the themes i tried using caused errors. The latest release is the most stable and as of yet i havent heard of any plans to release a new version, but its surely on the developers list – http://punklabs.com/whats-coming-in-2011.

So where can i get RocketDock?

It can be downloaded from the publishers website @ http://rocketdock.com. Downloads include the main application, skins , icon sets and widgets. There is also a set of how to guide for you developers wishing to customise and create Docklets for you to share with the world.

Developer: Singhisoumya
Format: Windows Phone 7
Genre: Tool
Price: Free
Release Date: 01/02/2011
Website: http://www.pcremoteserver.com/

So, whats this app all about. The quote above from their website pretty much says it all, but what can it actually do?

Version 2.0 has the ability to;

Control your mouse: Your phone will act as mouse. You can move cursor and click from your phone. I personally havent found a good use for this yet, i use my laptop with an attached extra monitor but havent found a need, maybe i will one day

Control your Keyboard: Your phone will act as keyboard. You can type from your phone. This i love, especially when searchign for music in itunes

Adjust Volume: You can control PC volume from your phone. This feature is great if your lazy You can control the full volume of the system.

Audio and Video Player: You can control songs and videos running on multimedia softwares like Windows Media Player, iTunes, etc. I also found this works in several other players, still with its little bugs however (play doesnt yet work in spotify), but we have been informed it will be working in the next version.

Windows Media Center: You can control Windows Media Center from your phone. Now if your rich and have a 60″ television with your PC connected, and you do use Windows Media Center. Then this feature is what you need. WHy look around for the remote, or buy one infact for Windows Media Center, when you can use this little FREE tool!

Power Controls:You can shutdown, restart, sleep, hibernate, logoff PC from your phone.

“The next version of app (2.1) will add the following two major features apart from bug fixes. We have already completed implementation of this version and we are doing its testing.

PowerPoint: Allow user to control presentation using phone
Extend Media Apps: Add support for different media players – Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, VLC, Spotify, etc.

There is lot of scope in this app and we are looking for more ideas to improve this app. We can do anything remotely from phone which user can do at PC.”

This looks like the Remote PC app has lots of potential. I asked if it was on the cards to develop for blackberry or Xbox Kinect but at this time they arent, sorry BB fans.

So how did the developers come up with the idea?

How did you find the Windows application submission process?

Overall i rate this app very highly, its increasing potential gives it alot of room for development. Id love to see what else they can come up with.Visit their website http://pcremoteserver.com/

Spotify announced today that it has reached 1 million paid subscribers. That is either premium or unlimited users. Spotify has been a big player over the past few years in the music streaming business.

Surely this isnt spotifys highest milestone, I am sure even more is to come from this great service!

“It seems like only yesterday we were hatching ideas for a new music service in a tiny office-cum-apartment with a broken coffee machine, and the party we threw having reached one million users almost two years ago today was one to remember.

So it’s with a sense of real pride and excitement that we can announce a new milestone today, having welcomed our millionth paying subscriber to the service. It’s a testament to our fantastic users who continue to support us and spread the Spotify word, either by telling friends or sharing some of the 200 million playlists that you’ve put together so far.

From everyone at Spotify, we’d like to give you all massive thanks. We’ll continue to focus on providing you with the best music service possible, and look forward to adding even more cool new features over the coming months. What’s really exciting is that this is only the beginning.
Thanks for listening!”

Source – http://www.spotify.com/uk/blog/

Check out our review of Spotify

How did i find this little bundle of joy you might ask? Well before i moved out i had 2 PC’s in the same room, side by side. One was a server, and one was my personal PC.

I did have two monitors but it was alot of desk space to take up, yay CRT screens . Put that with 2 keyboards and 2 mice and well, you get the picture. First i bought a switch for them, YAY one keyboard, mouse and monitor between the two. Downside, im lazy and had t push a button to change it over. And, you couldnt see both screens at once. Hence Synergy was born!

Synergy is the baby of Chris Schoeneman. It is re-creation of an older program called CosmoSynergy. It allows a user to share one keyboard and one mouse with multiple computers. The computers don’t even have to be running the same operating systems. And the best part? It’s free! It’s developed under the open source GNU Public License (GPL).

All you now need is 2+ monitors and one keyboard/mouse combination.

Synergy works with Microsoft Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP; Mac OS X 10.2 or higher; and Unix, Linux, Solaris and other variants. Personally i ran, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows 7 on my laptop. All you need is to be on the same network under the same TCP/IP range.

Now, ontop of being able to use the same keyboard/mouse, you can cut and paste text, images, and code between the different computers. It’s like having a common clipboard. You cant drag and drop, thats far too complicated as of yet.

So how do i use it?

Synergy is a client/server application. So choose the main pc you wishto handle the communication. Any really, just the one you use most.

Head over to the synergy website (http://synergy-foss.org/) and download your distro for the correct OS. When its installed on all the required PC’s, on the server just choose ‘host’ when you setup. On the client, put in the ‘host’ ip and click connect. Your all set!

All you need to do is arrange the location of the monitors on the server side. So PC2 is to the left of PC2. PC3 is above PC1.

Then you can seamlessly use your keyboard and mouse between as many PC’s as you want!

http://synergy-foss.org/

So Last.fm. Im assuming most of you technos know it and some of you may actually use it, but what about those who dont know about the great pearly gates of music hiding behind Last.fm?

There are plenty of ways to listen to music online these days, radio compromises of an Internet radio site, allowing the streaming of individual tracks. Merged with a website and sister called AudioScrobbler.

Scrobbling is where Last.fm knows what music you listen to, in any player, Itunes, WinAmp, Windows Media Player are common examples. It then reccomends music to your taste, from 1000′s of tracks. Last.fm isnt far off Pandora if anyones ever used that.

When you first arrive at Last.fm youll notice a very snily sleek red and white ‘interface’. Looks nice but well, its not that useful as it does nothing . Where the fun lies is when you register and have access to the 1000′s of reccomended tracks and playlists.

So now youve registered, now what? Well you need to download the Last.fm scrobbler, its only about 3mb and works on all Windows OS, not sure about linux or mac now i come to think of it (runs off to check), yes it does, and linux!

So youve got scrobbler, your just chilling in itunes and you run scrobbler for the first time. It runs through all your songs, gets information such as playt count, track names, artists ect and sends it to home (Last.fm). They then analyse it and give you several radio stations to work with.

Your Library Radio – Your music, randomised into a radio station playlist.
Your Mix Radio – A mix of your music and new music with similar genres and artists based on Last.fm’s predictions.
Your Recommended Radio – All new music based on last.fm’s predictions of what they think you will like.

Ofcourse they arent always correct, so they have a like dislike button in the last.fm player to fine tweak what your hearing.

Ofcourse I haven’t covered every single feature of the site as that would take all the fun away of visiting it yourself. Other features include mobile versions of the site, ipod, iphone, windows phone, android. All different versions are avaliable for while your on the move. Although recently last.fm announced the mobile services are no longer free on most platforms. A £3 subscription (monthly) is the price for using it on your mobile device, or if you have the latest Windows Phone 7 device, its still free!

Now i love listening to new music, anything thats different, old, new, different genres. Thats why last.fm is ideal for me, i use it at home and on my Windows Phone 7 device. I cant say it will be for everyone, there are people who have specific music tastes. There are those who listen to the same 25 tracks over and over and know every word.

Maybe one day it will become much more mainstream with the likes of spotify. I have to strongly recommend the site and suggest that you give it a try.

http://last.fm/

If you have been active on Twitter for some time you will have quickly noticed that Twitter is not a service that stands still. User patterns and unofficial rules are made and broken at a rapid pace.

One thing that is very interesting to observe though is that the overall seriousness of Twitter has increased sharply. It’s no longer the black hole it started out as, where you post random thoughts to everyone and nobody. Twitter turned into a powerful device to drive both traffic, but most importantly high quality conversation we can get great value from.

In order for you to make the most of twitter, I want to introduce you to a new twitter tool called Buffer that will help you to increase consistent tweeting in a genuine, yet intuitive and simple way.

What is different about Buffer?

Buffer is a service that sends out your tweets at pre-set times if you have put tweets in your Buffer beforehand. Intuitively you might associate Buffer with one of the many Tweet Scheduling functions of Hootsuite, Social Oomph or Tweetdeck out there. However read a little further.

In this case, all you do is add tweets to a queue in your Buffer. Buffer then has pre-set times for you at which your tweets will go out to your twitterstream during the day. Of course you are able to adjust these times if you wish.

Additionally you neither need to visit a site to add your tweets, but you can do it right there from the page you want to tweet about. You can do this with the neat Chrome Extension or Bookmarklet that exists together with your home account.

If your Buffer is topped up with tweets, it will tweet for you at your pre-set times during the day, which you can always change.

Buffer explained in 38 sec:

Why would I rock with Buffer?

Buffer makes your life easier, because you are able to plan ahead with tweets without additional effort to your browsing routine. Like something? Hit the icon and add to Buffer. Logically your quality will increase, since you can choose to produce your tweets at a time when you are in “content-production mode”.

Due to consistent, high-quality tweeting, we saw that many people increased their followership at a fast pace when using Buffer.

And as goodie, treating yourself to a topped up Buffer is also something that simply gives you a good feeling of having planned out your timeline on twitter.

Make sure to leave a comment with your thoughts, I will reply to every single one.

So for the ‘noobs’ of the world, what is Windows Phone 7? It is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft. With Windows Phone 7, Microsoft offers a new user interface with its design language named Metro.

WP7 Features

User Interface – The new ‘Metro’ interface is really quite interesting. The home screen, called the “Start screen”, its made up of whats called ”Tiles”. Tiles are links to applications, features, functions and individual items (such as contacts, web pages, applications or media items). Users can add, rearrange, or remove Tiles. Tiles are dynamic and update in real time – for example, the tile for an email account would display the number of unread messages.

Alot of the main features of WP7 and 3rd party applications within WP7 are organized into “hubs”, which combine local and online content via Windows Phone 7′s integration with popular social networks such as Facebook and Windows Live. An example is the pictures hub, it shows local content either downloaded via internet/usb onto the phone, or via the integrated camera.

It also shows online content via facebook photo albums, and the People hub shows contacts aggregated from multiple sources including Windows Live, Facebook, and Gmail.

A great aspect of WP7 is its multi touch interface, allowing multiple touch points on the screen to be recognised simultaneously. Great for gaming, image and web browsing.

Contacts

Contacts are organized via the “People hub”. Contacts can be manually entered into contacts or import from Facebook. A “what’s new” section show news feed from facebook and a “me” section show the phone user’s own facebook status. This is what i love about WP7, i started with a new blank sim card, no contacts stored on it what so ever. After setting up the facebook app it grabbed all my facebook contacts, their emails, contact details, profile pictures and everything. Giving me a full address book. It only took me around 20min to add the extras which wont be on facebook. After all who has their doctor or local butcher as a friend :p

Media

WP7 uses microsofts Zune as its management and sync link between your phone and your PC. The multimedia experience is divided in to two distinct hubs, Music + Videos hub and Pictures hub, if youve ever had a Zune HD, its very similar.

Marketplace

So where do i get all these cool apps?! The Marketplace ofcourse! If you’ve ever had an ipod touch or iphone, its exactly the same. Not quite as full yet, the development platform for 3rd parties hasnt been live for long (about 9 months at current).

Now this doesnt mean there arent any apps, when i bought the phone i thought just that but when i found the marketplace the doors in my mind were open to the hours of pointless fun downloading apps that do nothing but entertain the mind. I think i can sum that up in one word…FartMachine.

What do i think?

Above has been just a quick summary of the OS itself. I purchased the HTC HD7 on a whim one day after new year. No reason in particular as to why i made the purchase. I upgraded from an O2 XDA running Windows Mobile 6.5; WP7′s predecessor.

First of all, i absolutley love the phone. As microsoft advertise it, it brings you so much closer to your online social life. Integrating facebook, windows live, twitter into the main features of the phone. Its ability to receive push notifications gives you real time updates on almost any app.

As its the only WP7 ive tested so far i cant compare it with other models.

I do plan on grabbing a HTC HD7 Pro in the coming weeks to give that a bashing.

Over the next few weeks i will be reviewing what i think are the best apps for WP7 and going into more of the features WP7 can offer.

What is Spotify?

“Spotify is a new way to listen to music

Music is everywhere. Any track you like, any time you like. Just search for it in Spotify, then play it. Any artist, any album, any genre – all available instantly. With Spotify, there are no limits to the amount of music you can listen to. Just help yourself to whatever you want, whenever you want it.”

Thats what they say anyway, and there right! Spotify is probably the best free music streaming tool out there. You can pick any song that they have in their extensive library, their search tool allows you to pick an artist, song and album.

“Think of Spotify as your new music collection. Your library. Only this time your collection is vast: 8 million tracks and counting. You can create as many playlists as you like from this collection – just drag and drop the tracks you want. And because the music plays live, there’s no need to wait for downloads and no big dent in your hard drive. You can listen at any time, no matter where you are. Through your computer or your mobile phone.”

Features

Playlists

Drag and drop your favourite tracks into playlists to save them until the next time you listen. The playlists are saved to your account, and accessible from wherever you use Spotify.

Share

You share music by copying the link of a playlist or a track and send it to your friends. They open that link and – voilá – Spotify starts playing your music on their computer. Another great sharing feature is the playlist which you and your friends can manage together. Simply right-click any of your playlists, select ‘Collaborative playlist‘ and then share it. Whoever receives the collaborative playlist is now able to add or remove tracks or even rename the playlist all together. Music made simple.

Mobile music

Or even better, with Premium you can also use Spotify with your iPhone or Android where music is streamed – or saved as an offline playlists – on your mobile phone.

Offline mode

Taking your computer outside where there’s no internet? Don’t worry. With Spotify Premium, you can select which playlists are to be ‘available offline‘, and you can keep listening.

Spotify is Available Offline

Top lists

The most popular music on Spotify is regularly gathered and displayed. You can filter by individual country or just display your own personal top list. All tracks have a popularity meter that measures its total amount of recent plays.

Music purchases

If you want even more freedom, we give you the option to buy individual tracks or albums by simply clicking the Buy button. From streaming to MP3 files in seconds.

Simple search

To dive into our huge music catalogue, simply type the name of an artist, album or track and hit enter. We’ll give you the results instantly, and our automated suggester will help you remember the spelling, all to make it easy to find the music you love. If you want to be more exact in your search query, check out the advanced syntax.

Artist radio

Top artists have a dedicated radio stream (that you control using the ‘next’ button). The stream plays songs that are similar to the songs of that artist.

Use from anywhere

Your account can be used from any computer; just login with your existing username. With Premium, this works even if you’re abroad.

Biographies

The top artists include biographies from the All Music Guide and we’ve got cover arts and images for thousands of available albums.

Similar artists

Each of the top artists contain a list of other artists that are similar, giving you the ability to surf around between artists and discover new music.

So How Do i Get Spotify?

Well… there are three ways, free, day pass or premium.

Spotify Account Types

Free

“Financed by advertising, the free version of Spotify is the place where most people start. Simple to download and install, in no time at all you’ll enjoy having all the music in the world at your fingertips, instant access to whatever song you want with no restrictions, and the ability to create and share playlists with friends.”

Unfortunatly Spotify free currently is an invitation only platform where members with a premium account get so many invites for free accounts, up until recently there was a loop hole around this invitation only system but this has since been rectified and invites are a must.

Day Pass

“No recurring fees. No advertising. Just you and your favourite music. You might be planning a romantic dinner for two, or partying with friends into the early hours of the morning. A day pass is ideal for the casual Spotify user who decides that all they want right now is music.

Day pass does not give access to premium features such as mobile and higher bit rate.”

I did trial the day pass, personally it wasnt worth the 99p i paid for it at the time, all it meant was that i had no adverts dueing my listening times, the adverts play for about 1:30 and come on very 5-8 songs, now personally that isnt an issue for me, they are quite often entertaining or informative so from my point of view just dont ;P

Premium

“Spotify in its purest form. As a Spotify Premium member you’ll enjoy unlimited access to a world of great music without advertising. Plus the ability to take your music with you anywhere on your mobile phone.

With Premium you can also make your precious playlists available offline, and stream at a higher bit rate of 320kbps – so you can listen to all your favorites in hi-fidelity. You’ll also hear new albums before they’re released, get entry into exclusive ticket lotteries and VIP competitions and take advantage of unrestricted travel access. To listen to your music whenever and wherever you want, just go Premium.”

Now ontop of the free spotify platform you receive the following

Mobile music – Use Spotify on your mobile phone (iPhone, Android and Symbian devices).

If i had an iphone this would be perfect for me, unfortunatly i dont so i havent had the opportunity to test this app, maybe ill find someone who has

Offline mode – Make your playlists available for those times you don’t have an internet connection.

When i purchased a months subscription this is why i did it, its perfect, i listen to music on it at home, make a playlist, switch offline mode on then jump on a train for 2 hours and i have my music right there!

Higher sound quality – Stream music in a higher bitrate, up to 320kbps.

For those music buffs who notice the bad sound quality then Premium would be for you, instead of streaming at 128kbps Premium gives you 320kbps. Personally, not a clue what the difference is and as long as it sounds good im happy.

Travel access – Go anywhere in the world and listen to your favourite music.

Now some of the music on Spotift can only be played in certain countries with the Free and Day Pass Platforms, Premium gives you the ability to listen to the complete Spotify library with no restrictions.

Spotify Interface

Spotify Interface

Overall Opinion

Spotify is a great tool, if you can get it. With it being invitation only is is very restrictive and unless your willing to pay for premium your going to have to wait until it becomes open access. The music on there can be outdated at times, it can take upto 3 or 4 weeks before the latest UK chart songs are put on there but then again si that really an issue? Spotify has opened me upto a new world of music with its suggestions and it is almost comparable to Itunes Genius which does a similar job.

I really cant wait until i get enough money to pay for a years worth of Premium, maybe one day ill buy a monthly subscription or ask for one as a gift, at £9.99 a month is it really worth it? would it be used Would i rather have the music on my PC?

You can download Spotify From spotify.com and can either get on the waiting list for a free account or pay for premium.

Ive been using FileHippo for the past few months to keep me notified of any updates for the software installed on my Laptop and PC.

What is FileHippo in the first place?

“With FileHippo.com our aim is to provide you with the simplest method of downloading the newest versions of the best software – without the usual excessive popups or spyware and without the low quality software.” – FileHippo.com

Features

• Only the best software/most popular software
• Very fast servers with 100Mb connections
• Old Versions of Software Applications are Archived
• All software is 100% spyware and virus free.
• Filtering feature to allow you to only show Freeware and/or Non-beta software.
• Full support for resuming downloads and download managers.
• Change log and technical details for downloads.
• RSS feeds for all updates, categories and for individual programs.

SO that’s the FileHippo website in a nutshell, they simply choose some of the most popular software on the net (allowing you to pick from 100′s of applications) and host them for you to download. Some major titles include.

• Itunes
• CCleaner
• Firefox
• AVG Anti Virus
• Flash Player
• Adobe Reader

FileHippo splits its hosted software into several categories including the following.

• Browsers and Plugins
• File Sharing
• Messaging and Chat
• Anti-Malware
• Firewalls and Security
• Anti-Virus
• Audio and Visual
• CD & DVD Tools
• Drivers
• And More…

But Surely i will have to keep looking for updates on their site?

I knew you’d ask that FileHippo have created a local application for its users which scans your Windows based PC for supported software, checks the versions and then sends this information to FileHippo.com to see if there are any newer releases.

FileHippo Update Report

The client is FREE, just over 100kb to download and only takes seconds to run! For myself the software gives me my results in about 3 seconds.

What are the requirements?

• The Update Checker works on any Windows PC running Vista, XP, 2003, 2000, ME or 98.
• It requires that the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 is installed.

My Verdict

The FileHippo website is very useful, i sometimes find there download speeds are faster than the source which is nice too. Their Update Checker tool for me has been very handy, alot of my software is updated weekly so its nice to know i have them uptodate. I simply set the UpdateChecker to run every week and then it gives me the links to download my updates. Cant go wrong really.

You can visit FileHippo at http://www.filehippo.com and you can download the Update Checker from http://www.filehippo.com/updatechecker

Well I first wrote my RockeDock article on 21st January. It is March and here’s an update of how I’m doing with the application.

My Current RocketDock Layout

After my first review I went through a sting of trying 100′s of Docklets for the application. Alot of them were very similar, most from the official website and some from other sources. Overall alot of the Dockets are the same, just with slight variations. You can only have so many types of clock and system monitor; but I guess if people want it blue with silver and someone else wants it green with black somebody will make it.

Instead of using the Docklets with RocketDock I chose after that to use it for navigation. StackDocklet 2.0 came in very useful and gave me access to multiple files/folders. I am also connected to several networed drives when working at home and I found its access to these netwoked drives faster than I had expected.

Items 8. & 9. on the above image both used the StackDocklet 2.0. Below is an image of how it works, it simply shows a grid based layout of a directory for your choice.

StackDocket Example from RocketDock

This is making it far easier for me to get to the files and folder that I want. Seeing as I am at University working on many assignments and group projects it lets me open the work I need easily and if i create a new folder I can easily add a new StackDocklet.

So far it’s all hunkydory, you’re probably thinking something must be mad about it. Well actually there isn’t, it’s low on resources even though it’s a visually pleasing tool. It looks good on all backgrounds. All application icons look good even when resized to fit the Dock.

Once again you can Download RocketDock from its Offical Website http://rocketdock.com/

For those avid Twitter fans heres a nifty little tool to help you twit away on any windows macine you have, wether its at home, in the office or on the move. Twhirl uses the Twitter API to download the tweets on your twitter feed, including your own, it also has the capabilities to compose tweets, direct messages and to find other tweeters.

I have more than one twitter account…

No need to worry. Twhirl can mange multiple accounts and also has the ability to link you to your Friendfeed, Identica and Seesmic accounts so you can post to them too! Seesmic are the devlelopers of Twhirl.

Why do i need an application like this?

For those of you who currently use Twitter you may simples head to twitter.com and away you go. For those of us who use twitter alot (its becoming more common for me to use twitter along side of facebook) this application makes it much simpler to post tweets to our feed. In Twhirl you simply open it up, type and press send (or hit Enter really hard, its more fun that way =P )

Where can i download Twhirl?

You can download it from http://www.twhirl.org

Are there any other options out there?

As a matter of fact there are, there are many actually. One of my other fravourites is Tweet Deck, this is currently in open beta and combines the use of twitter, facebook and many other social networking sites. From its multi columnised interface you can have your twitter feed in one column, your facebook in another and your friends twitter feed in another! But who wants all that at once eh

You can check Tweet Deck out http://www.tweetdeck.com/

Well ever since using chrome from the beta release ive been suprisingly happy with its developments, it now supports addons and customisations. In recent releases a sync option has become avaliable allowing me to sync my laptop chrome with my home pc chrome… cant go wrong really

You maybe thinking its just another way for google to make you use google, well your wrong, you can easily switchyour default search engine to any other on the web, including facebook!

Now one thing i do love about using my laptop is that its fast, with windows 7, 4GB of RAM and its new fast awake sleep mode i wanted a browser that can compare and here it is… Google Chrome, ta da! it has on my PC a boot time of 1 second, i myself would call that fast, wouldnt you?

Google Chrome GUI

Now im not going to go into the details behind Chromes development, i simply just want to tell the world how much of a good browser it is. Heres my next reason to proove that;

Ever gone onto a website and had it crash your browser? annoying i know. Now IE and FF both store your session data so you can return to your previous browsing session without too much effort. But Chrome in this situation doesnt take any of that, its better . With its multiprocess architecture Chrome runs each of its tabs and windows in a new process meaning if a website crashes your browser chrome responds by only closing that thread, not the whole application… Problem Solved!

Google Chromes GUI is extremly streamlined, to be perfectly honest 95% of what you see is the website your on, no tool bar and barely anything else. Theres simply a tab strip at the top and to the right you have a simple ‘File’ menu where you can access all your config, save, print ect options. Each of the tabs can be rearranged into whatever order you see fit and they can also be pulled out of the tab lineup to form their own window.

Chrome is a very innovative application, its taken the browser out of its stereotypical box, after using it since its first public beta release its become my only browser of choice, bye bye IE, hello Chrome. I have it syned with my laptop and home pc so my bookmarks follow me everywhere. I cant wait to try the google OS as it based on the core of Google Chrome, when i get a copy im sure a review will hit the Farmyard ASAP

You can download Google Chrome from Here