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Filed under: Games, Linux, Open Source

Off the Clock: djl is a must-have app for Linux gamers


Now that I've managed to pick up a spare laptop on the cheap, I finally have a dedicated Linux machine to experiment with. Priority number one since I'm Off the Clock for the weekend: get some games installed that are more fun than the ones Ubuntu ships (sorry Nibbles and Gnometris).

Enter djl. Think of it as a kind of FOSS version of Steam. Except, of course, that all the games are totally free. Currently, djl's repositories warehouse about 120 games -- all of which can be installed with just a few painless clicks. New games are submitted frequently, and you can read about them on the app's news tab.

Just about every popular game you can think of is available: Battle Tanks, Cube, Hedgewars, Numptyphysics, OpenArena, Urban Terror, Warsow, and many more. If it runs on Linux, you can probably install it with djl. Games you download are added to the -- you guessed it -- games tab. Uninstalling and updating is also a breeze, making djl an awesome way to manage your collection.

There's even a built-in chat where you can talk to other djl users: find out what they're playing, or maybe find yourself an opponent for some head-to-head combat.

[via Unixmen]

Filed under: Utilities, Mozilla, P2P, Browsers

MediaFire pees on Skipscreen's boots, seeks to ban Firefox add-on

When I wrote about Skipscreen back in April, I figured it was probably the kind of add-on that someone, somewhere wouldn't like. Possibly the free hosting providers whose roadblocks Skipscreen is designed to circumvent.

Fast forward to today, and that's exactly the case. MediaFire has decided that Mozilla needs to remove the add-on from its directory immediately, citing violations of the MediaFire TOS. Skipscreen hijacks bandwidth, they say. It acts like a robot/spider/retrieval app -- which we forbid, they say. It reformats our web pages without our consent, they say.

The last claim I find particularly weak. Why? By their logic, if you've designed a MediaFire CSS remix and posted it to Userstyles.org, that makes you a nasty little thug.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has already penned a response on Skipscreen's behalf, spelling out in great detail how the add-on functions within MediaFire's rules. Technically, anyway. Whether or not the letter wins Mozilla's favor remains to be seen.

Both the takedown request and EFF response have been posted on Skipscreen's blog - have a look, and share your thoughts in the comments!

On a deliciously ironic note, Skipscreen supporters have decided to strike back by uploading copies of the Firefox addon to MediaFire servers. I see what you did there.

Filed under: Fun, Utilities, Video

Off the Clock: RealPlayer SP downloads and converts web videos (even SFW ones!)

Believe me, I'm as shocked as anyone to be writing this post, but RealPlayer SP ships with a substantially reduced amount of suck compared to previous versions. Yes, the new version sucks so much less that I'm actually ok with using it to download and convert web video.

There are still glimpses of the past, of course. The installer does offer a toolbar (at least it's Google and not Ass...er, Ask). It also offers the pro version and a 14 day trial of something, but I can't tell you specifically what it was. Instead of reading, I quickly located the "leave me the hell alone" button and closed the screen.

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Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Windows, Open Source, Humor

Off the Clock: Pr0nSpider helps you - er, your friends - safely download NSFW images and videos

Intro: Off the Clock is something we've kidded about in our newsroom for a while. The plan: write up some apps that aren't quite made for the 9-to-5(ET) RSS feed. Nothing serious, just harmless, grown-up, after hours stuff.

It's pretty rare that you can tell a software developer is totally up front about what truly motivated him or her to develop an application. In the case of Pr0nSpider, however, it's painfully clear to anyone who's been in his situation that he's being straight up with us.

Any technician I've ever met is all too familiar with the "thems not my pr0ns" speech. Born of the frustration caused by yet another "I dunno how my PC got so screwed up, dog" phone call, Pr0nSpider aims to keep your clueless-but-horny pals from getting into trouble. Well, at least from getting their Windows PC in trouble.
Here's how the magic happens. Fire up Pr0nSpider and select some categories (like the Jeopardy-esque Potpurri). Press go, and it springs into action, hoovering the appropriate inappropriate images from a handful of well-known sites. They're automatically dumped into Program files\Pr0nSpider\Output (or Program files x86\... on 64-bit Windows).

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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

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.

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

Anti-Malware Toolkit updated, supports loads of new apps


Lunarsoft, producers of Anti-Malware Toolkit, have been hard at work since I mentioned it on Downloadsquad back in August.

The handy updater now supports 37 different downloads in five categories, including:
  • Spyware: Spyware Blaster, CCleaner, RogueRemover, SUPERAntiSpyware, Malwarebytes, Spybot, Hijack This
  • Definitions: Avast, Avira, Spybot, Malwarebytes, SUPERAntiSpyware
  • Utilities: Dial-a-fix, JavaRA, Autoruns, Process Explorer, Rootkit Revealer, Unlocker, LSPFix, MS Malcious Software Removal, Windows Installer Cleanup
  • Uninstallers: Avast, Avira, AVG (x86 and x64), BitDefender, Kaspersky, McAfee, One Care
  • Recommendations: Firefox, Opera, Thunderbird, Avast, AntiVir, Comdo (x86 and x64), Auslogics Defrag, PageDefrag, UPHClean
Support has also been added automatically create category folders instead of saving everything into your specified download directory.

It's a great application for keeping your flash drive up-to-date with a ton of good, free malware removal tools. Anti-Malware Toolkit is a free application for Windows only. It can be downloaded from the author's site or from Freeware Files.

Filed under: Internet, Photo, Utilities, Productivity

FlickrDown: bulk photostream downloader

My wife takes a lot of photos of the jewelry she creates, and she uses Flickr to store and share them. Recently, however, she was shooting out of town and ran out of room on her SD card. Her solution: plug in to a friend's PC and upload them to her photostream.

When she got home, she wanted a quick way to download all 300+ images for editing. That would have been a pretty tedious chore, were it not for FlickrDown.

You can search by username, e-mail address, tags, or groups. Results display quickly, and downloading is as simple as checking a few boxes, browsing for your destination folder, and clicking download. Authorization is supported - and necessary if you're going to download private photos.

FlickrDown will automatically create a new folder inside your destination to make sure your selected photos are stored neatly. Folders are named based on your search text or the group name. You also don't have to worry about it overwriting existing files - it will automatically append -fd to the new ones.

My only minor gripe is that the download progress shows in a separate window (and adds another button to the taskbar). It's easy to overlook since FlickrDown so good at what it does.

FlickrDown is freeware for Windows only, and the .Net 2.0 runtimes are required.

Filed under: Internet, Video, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Mozilla, Freeware

Yank YouTube/Google/Vimeo videos with VideoDownloader

VideoDownloaderFor downloading videos from sites like YouTube and Google Video I'm pretty satisfied with KeepVid, but if you spend a lot of time on those sites you might find VideoDownloader handy. It's an extension for Firefox that makes downloading videos from more than 60 (!) web sites a painless two-click operation. It's mostly just a front-end for the web service of the same name, but you needed more icons in your status bar, right?

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The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

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, ...

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