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Filed under: Games

1 in 5 UK gamers prefer to download their games

Findings in a recent report presented at the London Gaming Conference last night show that 7% of console - and 14% of PC-gamers prefer to download their games in digital, no-box-or-paper-instruction-booklet format.

This isn't as big news as it seems though, as many PC owners also own consoles, and vice-versa -- and I bet there's some cross-over in the demographics.

But, with the recent take-off of digital-only download services like Direct2Drive, Valve's Steam, and Microsoft's LIVE Marketplace, it's no surprise that gamers have been enjoying the lower prices and quicker delivery times inherent to such services. As game developers continue to jump on-board with these services and reap the higher profit margins, we can expect the trend to continue.

As always though, when there's a shift in sales, someone has to lose out -- even if it's not the customer.

In this case it's the real-world shops like EB Games and Game. They've often relied on value-added deals to turn a decent profit -- buy two games, get a third free, that kind of thing -- and with more and more people staying home (really, the number of reasons to leave your home is getting quite low...), I think game stores will soon have to mix things up, or die.

[via Neowin]

Filed under: OS Updates, Microsoft

Ask DLS: shouldn't we be able to download our Vista-to-Windows 7 upgrade?


The Windows 7 beta was downloadable. The release candidate was downloadable. But the Vista-to-Windows 7 offer upgrade shipping with most retail computer systems? Not so much.

It says so right on the Upgrade Option site's landing page: "Upgrades for qualifying orders will be shipped on DVD, beginning on the Windows 7 general availability date of 22 October 2009." Boo.

Why can't we have a download, Microsoft? Apart from the fact that it's one less DVD that needs to be pressed, one less case, one less insert, mailer, and so on - it's also a needless waste of time. If you let me generate a product code like you do on TechNet or did with the previous downloads, my customer could have a fully activated Windows 7 install right now.

I'm not willing to gamble that Canada Post will get his copy here before the activation grace period expires. For now, he's leaving with a Vista laptop which he'll have to bring back later so I can migrate him to Windows 7 once his disc arrives.

What do you think about the lack of a download option? Take the poll, and leave your comments after the break!

Read more →

Filed under: Audio, Utilities, Video

Dirpy rips YouTube audio to mp3

Some YouTube videos are really only worth it for the audio portion. I've seen tons of songs posted to YouTube with still images instead of real videos, and often wished I could just download the audio in one step. Dirpy lets you easily save the sound from a YouTube video as an mp3 for later listening, or save the whole video if you really want to.

One of Dirpy's best features is the ability to specify the portion of the audio you want to download by entering start and stop times, which really helps when you come across a video with a long intro. Dirpy also lets you set ID3 tags for your ripped audio files, so they're probably labeled in iTunes and other players. You can find videos to rip by searching on Dirpy or using the bookmarklet on any YouTube video page.

[via Lifehacker]

Filed under: Photo, Windows, Macintosh, Productivity

Download Facebook and Flickr albums with Fotobounce

It's easy enough to download individual photos from Facebook and Flickr, but neither site offers a way to download entire albums.

Fotobounce is an app for Mac and Windows that lets you quickly do just that, and organize your downloaded photos, too. It also has built-in face recognition, to make tagging those photos a lot easier.

You can also use Fotobounce to upload photos -- pre-tagged with the help of face-recognition -- to Facebook and Flickr. It could potentially be a real time-saver.

There's also a mobile version, so you can remotely access your photos from a BlackBerry or iPhone, and still keep them private.

[via Lifehacker]

Filed under: Internet, Security, Freeware, Browsers, DLS 101

DLS 101 - free tools to help you surf and download safely

Whether you're a novice user or you've got years of web-browsing experience under your belt, it never hurts to have a little extra protection while you surf the Internet. In this installment of DLS 101, we'll have a look at three types of tools - browser toolbars, web services, and URL un-shorteners - that can help keep you safe while you browse!

Web browser toolbars

These options all work in Internet Explorer and Firefox.

McAfee SiteAdvisor
and WebOfTrust (pictured) are great ways to use the "power of the crowd" to keep you safe. Both services keep tabs on the reliability, safety, and trustworthiness of websites. They'll alert you with a big red flag if something nasty is headed your way.

There's also Finjan Secure Browsing, which checks web pages for malicious code and alerts when it finds potential spyware activity on a page.

Many antivirus provider's now include a browser toolbar with their software when you purchase it, including Norton, McAfee, and AVG. They all provide a little extra protection for you while you surf.

Read more →

Filed under: Internet, P2P, DLS 101

DLS 101: 6 free programs for casual users that download torrents

Most of our regular readers probably have a favorite stand-alone torrent application like uTorrent, Vuze, Transmission, etc. Our friends and family, though, who don't download via torrent all that often may not want a dedicated program.

There are plenty of other programs you can use that come with torrent downloading abilities baked right in. Here are six options I've recommended to my friends. If you have some other options to share, leave them in the comments!

Use your web browser: Opera and Wyzo (pictured above) - What better place to get support for torrents than in your web browser? WIth Opera and Wyzo (which is based on Firefox) torrents are handled just like any other download. Click a torrent, and the download manager kicks in the same as it would if you downloaded an image, document, .zip file, or whatever.

Use your file sharing program: Limewire and Frostwire - Many of you are already using one of these programs to download music, but they can also handle your torrent downloads. The newest version of Limewire features much-improved torrent support (thanks to the LibTorrent project). Frostwire is built on Limewire's foundation, and provides the same functionality. One key difference is that Frostwire won't ask you to upgrade to the pro version, because there isn't one.

Use a download manager: Free Download Manager and FlashGet - FDL does tons of great things that you'll appreciate. It can accelerate and resume your downloads, grab Flash videos from sites like YouTube, easily upload files to share with your friends, and tell you what the community thinks about the files you download. FlashGet also does download acceleration and resuming, and it adds some handy download organization features. And, of course, they both support torrents!

Filed under: Fun, Games, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Freeware, Open Source

25 awesome Cross-platform games you can download for free

Regardless of what operating system you run on your computer, it doesn't have to be all work and no play. Heck, that could turn you into some kind of axe-wielding homicidal maniac bent on destroying your own family while watching over a remote resort hotel in the dead of winter.

I'd certainly never want that to happen to any of our DownloadSquad readers, so here's a list of games that you can install on Windows, Mac, and Linux (and some even on BeOS and BSD). Enjoy!

...And, as usual, if there's a particularly killer cross-platform game that I didn't include, feel free to post it in the comments -- and tell us why you love it!


Battle for Wesnoth - One of the best known open source games around, Wesnoth is an excellent fantasy-themed turn-based strategy game. There's plenty here to keep you busy - multiple campaigns and large maps, and online multiplayer for when you grow weary of playing on your own.

Battle Tanks - It's got colorful, cartoonish graphics, massive explosions, tanks....And best of all, it's got multiplayer. What could be more fun than blowing up your friends while causing immeasurable damage to an unsuspecting city?

Read more →

Filed under: Audio, Utilities, Video, Web services

Farkie: media downloader and convertor for YouTube, MySpace and more


There are a lot of ways to download videos from YouTube, a lot of ways to convert those videos, and a lot of ways to download music from MySpace. I'm used to thinking of all that as requiring a few different apps or web-based tools, but Farkie does it all. Farkie aims to be the only downloader you need for videos, music, flash games and other media on websites, and it's even got a Firefox add-on.

To use Farkie, you just have to paste the URL of the page you want to download from into Farkie's form, and let it do the rest. You'll get a list of all the media on the page (and check boxes for file types, so you can filter if there's a lot there), and you can download any of the available files via links.

It can even convert YouTube videos for you, into wmv, m4v, mov, and a bunch of other formats.

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Windows, Freeware

Save Last.fm and Aupeo tracks to MP3 with Music Downloader

I wrote about LastSharp a while back - it's an application developed in C# that allows you to download tracks from Last.fm. If you'd prefer an option that doesn't require the .Net runtimes, there's Last.fm Music Downloader - which is also totally portable.

Launch Music Downloader and drop in a Last.fm url - it can be a similar artists link (http://www.last.fm/listen/artist/Tool/similarartists) or global tag (http://www.last.fm/listen/globaltags/polka). Click the start button, and the playlist begins downloading to your hard drive. There are a few settings you can tweak: default save folder, album art downloading, download speed limit, and maximum number of downloads.

Files are automatically named artist - track title.mp3 by default, and the deep folder layout option will sort them into \artist\album subdirectories.

It's also worth noting that I was able to download tracks from Aupeo - even though the service isn't available to me in Canada. Finding artist links can be a little tricky, though, without access to their web site.

You might encounter some trouble downloading from Last.fm from time to time like I did, but that's something I fully expect when using an app like this. It's not really the way Last.fm intends its library to be used, after all.

[via gHacks]

Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Web services, Search, web 2.0

Rapidstack searches working Rapidshare downloads in realtime

Rapidstack is an excellent search engine for users who download frequently from - where else - Rapidshare. They claim to filter dead links and return only working downloads, and it worked well in my testing.

Submit your query, and results load below the text box as Rapidstack finds them. Queries can take a little while to execute depending on what you search for, but you're trading a few seconds of waiting patiently for download links that actually work. That's a trade most of us are probably willing to make.

Each filename links to the original URL, and links are also displayed beneath the file name. If you'd rather just head straight for the files, clicking on extract links will open a new tab and produce a plain-text listing of Rapidshare URLs ready to paste into your favorite download manager - like JDownloader.

Filed under: Internet, Video, Web services, P2P, web 2.0

Automatically download TV episodes with Feed My Torrents


If you stay on top of your favorite TV-shows via torrent downloads (and according to TorrentFreak a lot of you/us do), FeedMyTorrents is a service you'll definitely want to check out. Currently more than 100 shows are available, including The Colbert Report, Bones, 24, Desperate Housewives, and just about every other popular series you can think of.

Sign up for an account and you can also create your own personal feeds - useful for starting download remotely with minimal fuss. Just point your rss-enabled torrent client to your FeedMyTorrents combined feed, and it'll automatically begin downloading any torrents you add via the Personal Feed manager.

Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Windows, Freeware, Windows x64

LoadScout grabs only what you need from remote archives


One thing that bothers me about some manufacturers is the way they provide drivers on their website. Why should I have to suffer through a sluggish 70mb download when all I want is the 300k in the drivers\winxp folder?

LoadScout is one possible solution to that problem. Paste the link to your file, and LoadScout will connect and display its contents. Highlight what you need, click the extract button, and choose a local destination directory. If I'd found LoadScout before fighting with Acer's server for an hour and a half yesterday, I could have saved myself a lot of grief.

Zip and rar archives are supported, and you can also download and play segments of remote .avi and .mp3 files.

[ via gHacks ]

Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Windows, Freeware, Open Source, P2P, Windows x64

Open Source Free Download Manager v3 adds tons of new features


Free Download Manager has released version 3 of their application, and the new version sports several new features that make it an excellent option handling all your download duties.

The new release can now manage torrents as well as download and convert Flash video from sites like YouTube. A remote control feature has also been added, enabling web management of your downloads (like uTorrent's WebUI). FDM also allows you to preview certain files and can download partial contents of zip files.

At about 18mb installed, it's not as lightweight as rolling uTorrent, DownThemAll, and any one of the YouTube downloaders out there, but it's an excellent all-in-one option for people that like to keep things simple.

A full list of features is available on the FDM web site. It's released under the GPL and you can choose between the full version or the lite, which lacks the torrent, video conversion, upload, and language plugins (though you can install them later if you choose).

There's no portable download on FDM's site, but Portable Freeware Collection has one available.

Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Web services, web 2.0

Vertor shows you what's in a torrent before you download


Torrent downloads can be kind of a crap shoot. If you'd like a little reassurance about what you're about to download, take a look at Vertor.

The service launched recently and provides automated checking of torrents from a number of trackers, like Pirate Bay, Demonoid, and several others. To date, the service has verified more than 140,000 torrents.

20 second MP3 clips are provided to let you preview album downloads. Movies and TV shows display screencaps taken at regular intervals (usually every 10 or 15 minutes) during playback. The contents of text files (like NFOs) packed with applications and games are also posted.

All downloads are also scanned with antivirus software, though they're currently dissatisfied with its performance. It's slated for replacement with a more reliable engine on December 30, 2008. Even in its present state, it's still more of a reassurance than most other torrent sites provide.

Already downloaded something from another tracker? Using Vertor's advanced options menu you can enter the hash code and see the results of their checks, provided Vertor has grabbed the torrent.

Thanks, Nick!

Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Windows, Freeware

Raptor manages downloads for Rapidshare Free users


There are plenty of good download managers available for Rapidshare Premium members, but what about those of us without a pair account?

Raptor
is a good option for handling multiple RS downloads with minimal fuss. Just copy the download URL, click the plus button in Raptor, and paste. Raptor takes care of sitting through Rapidshare's imposed wait times so you don't have to.

The program defaults to a Russian interface. To switch the interface to English, follow the screenshot below:

Transfer speeds aren't the greatest, but Raptor is still a very handy, hands-off way to download a slew of files. It's much less of a pain than tabbing back to the download page repeatedly until you're allowed to proceed.

Raptor is a free program for Windows only, and it requires the .Net 2.0 framework.

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