Sebastian Anthony
United Kingdom - http://www.mrseb.co.uk
Based in the middle of nowhere, England, Sebastian finds his lonely, friendless, hoboesque existence to provide the perfect vantage point for bias-free, objective opinionation.
Foobar2000 v1.0 Beta -- holy crap, it's finally here!
Foobar2000, if you were wondering, is a very light-weight music player. It's incredibly flexible thanks to its modular design and fully-featured developer kit. There are mods and plug-ins for Foobar that make it one of the most useful music players: if you're the kind of music buff that likes downloading 'quadrophonic gold remastered' albums in AC3 format from Torrent sites, then Foobar is the music player for you. If you have a large MP3 (or FLAC, AAC, MP4...) music collection and simply want to listen to it, Foobar is also the one for you.
There's all the usual functionality there too, like ripping CDs or fixing ID3 tags. My personal favourite is the keyboard shortcuts that you can set to work globally -- so even if you're playing a game like World of Warcraft, you can skip and pause your music using a finger-breaking keyboard shortcut. Handy. There's also a neat Windows 7 shell integration plugin, if you're fortunate enough to be using Foobar2000 AND Windows 7!
If you're one of those old boring types that's still using the antiquated WinAmp, or you're using the slow-and-disgustingly-bloated iTunes, give Foobar2000 a go -- you'll be surprised at just how good it is.
Official download (torrent) / MajorGeeks direct download (seems link was broken -- fixed now)
Filed under: Games, Time-Wasters
Waste some time and toss the turtle
by Sebastian Anthony Nov 20th 2009
Toss The Turtle is the epitome -- the end of the line -- the ULTIMATE 'fire a canon ball as far as you can' game, a genre that you might remember from the (really) olden days. The basic premise is obvious: you gotta toss the turtle as far as you can.
But oh boy is it more complicated and involved and awesome than simply firing a canon. This could be significantly more than a 10-minute-time-waster, I assure you.
Finally, serious competition for iTunes...from Sony!
They've been awfully quiet the last couple of years, except for the recent PS3 price reduction and slow drip-feed of good games. But it seems, after the appointment of a new CEO back in 2006, the results of some internal reshuffling might finally be coming to fruition!There's no name for the new software reported on by BusinessWeek. There's also very few details of the functionality Sony's iTunes-killer will actually utilize to draw people away from Apple's soft, white allure and into their black, serious grasp.
BusinessWeek suggests that the software will try to differentiate itself from iTunes by including Picasa- and YouTube-like functionality, allowing users to upload videos and photos from their (Sony?) cameras. Other than that... who knows what Sony has up their sleeves?
Sony are huge however -- multi-national robber-baron 'XBox' huge -- with an additional vast library of music and movies. They also have a large installed base of PlayStation owners (that's fast increasing!) It wouldn't be a surprise to see some kind of 'PlayStation App Store' included in Sony's new software.
We shall see!
[via BusinessWeek]
Filed under: Games, Mozilla, Browsers
Proper web browsing on a console: Firefox coming to the Sony PS3?
It seems the age of humdrum, crippled browsers on consoles might finally be coming to an end! Though the details are very slim, with the only source being an unnamed insider very close to Sony, it is exciting news indeed if it turns out to true.Games consoles have always had feeble browser offerings, with PS3's default browser generally considered one of the worst and most unreliable. Porting Firefox to the PS3 would make a lot of sense, especially if Sony intend to inroads against the competing XBox Live service. Or perhaps they need a proper web browser for their newly-announced iTunes-killer...?
Obviously this is very much a rumour, but it would make a lot of sense -- and it will probably appear quite soon, considering how hard Sony are pushing for a larger slice of the console market at the moment.
I wonder if Flash and the ability to stream videos from sites like
[via CNET]
Filed under: Internet, Video, Google
YouTube 1080p roll-out begins
So far there doesn't seem to be a way to search for the high-high definition videos, and the only example I have is a Nokia video of some poor, disadvantaged Indonesian farmer -- but I'm sure it's only a matter of time before YouTube/Google officially announce the changes to their video player.
In the meantime, if you find any videos that have been enabled for 1080p playback, share them in the comments!
The Nokia video is included after the break, if you want to see what the quality looks like.
[thanks to Revo for the tip!]
Beginning of the end for the Internet in the UK
Often lauded as the 'CCTV state' and 'the most surveilled country in the world', the UK may soon deliver a killing blow to the Internet as we know it. Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing is reporting some leaked legislation from the UK government that would remove any kind of freedom or privacy that the Internet grants its users. The proposed amendments to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act would ...Good for only a week: $10 cashback with Bing!
You need a PayPal account, and you have to spend $25, but good until November 25th 2009 you can claim $10 cashback thanks to BING! The list of participating stores is huge -- Ebay, BestBuy, Barnes & Noble amongst others -- so it shouldn't be a problem finding something to spend $25 on, especially with the holiday season now upon us! The only 'tricky' thing is you need a Microsoft Live and ...The power of popular culture: 'unfriend' officially enters the American language
Did you even know that there was a New Oxford American Dictionary? I didn't. But with their recent addition of 'unfriend' to the American language, that might soon change. Maybe this was their way of leaving the realm of obscurity... and into hilarity!
"It has both currency and potential longevity," says Christine Lindberg, Senior Lexicographer for Oxford's US dictionary program. She goes on to ...Look out! Outlook wants to become your new social media and collaboration hub
digg_url = 'http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/11/18/outlook-2010-social-connector-activity-streams/'; It's been a long time coming, and perhaps a little too late, but you can now track your friends' and colleagues' social networking activity in Outlook 2010. Dubbed the 'Outlook Social Connector' (OSC), the functionality is available right now to all Office 2010 Beta testers. The list of ...IE9 unveiled. Faster, more standards-compliant -- DirectX accelerated!
It's only three weeks into its development, but Internet Explorer 9 has officially been unveiled today at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC). In fact, as I write this now, they're still talking about IE9 and other tech advances over on the Microsoft PDC09 website. Their goals with IE9 seem pretty obvious from the graphs shown in their presentation: faster, more standards-compliant ...
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
