Filed under: Weekend Review
Download Squad Week in Review
It's been a busy week at Download Squad HQ. We've been busy covering the releases of several new web browsers, updates to several operating systems, and we've been continuing our never-ending quest to find as many ways as humanly possible to waste time while using a computer. We're also expanding the Squad a bit. You may notice posts from some new bloggers over the next few days. Feel free to say hi, and please don't haze them. You know, unless you really have to.
And without further ado, here's a list of some our favorite stories from the past week:
- Firefox 3 is pretty much ready
After years of working, testing, and tweaking, Mozilla plans to officially launch Firefox 3 on June 17th. This week saw the release of Firefox 3 RC3, which is basically identical to Firefox 3 RC2 if you're using Windows or Linux, but the latest version fixed a critical bug on Mac systems. - Mozilla shows off Firefox mobile interface concept video
But it's not all about desktop browsers over at Mozilla HQ. The developers of Firefox are also hard at work on a project to craft a mobile version of Firefox that will run on cellphones. The company unveiled a concept user interface this week that might make its way into the final release. Or it might not. - Microsoft TownSquare: A social network for business communications
Microsoft may own a stake in Facebook, but it looks like the company's not putting all of its social networking chickens in one basket. Microsoft is also working on a social network for internal use by businesses who want to faciliate communication and collaboration among employees. - TidalTV: Web video doesn't get much more TV-like
Tired of internet video looking more like video stuck on a web page than TV? TidalTV is a new video site that looks almost exactly like an interactive program guide from a cable or satellite network. And it features a combination of live video streams and on-demand programs from several networks including HGTV, National Geographic, and CBS. - Viewzi visual search engine gives you a dozen ways to search
Ever find yourself staring at Google Images wondering why it's so hard to find images? Viewzi can help. This highly customizable search engine lets you flip through images about a dozen different ways, and tries to predict which views will be the most helpful depending on your search terms. It's a bit overwhelming, but also extraordinarily cool. - Opera desktop browser 9.5 is final - Take your stuff with you
Mozilla's not the only company with a new web browser to promote. Opera 9.5 went gold this week, and the latest version of the browser is faster than ever, has a nifty new skin, and has a new Opera Link service that lets you sync your settings across browsers on multiple machines. - HotPads shows real estate rents, foreclosure rates, and demographics heat maps
HotPads is a real estate search engine with more eye andy than you can shake a stick at. Not that you typically shake sticks at real estate search engines. But HotPads lets you search by location, price, and number of bedrooms like any other real estate listing site. But HotPads also shows you heatmaps with information like the average rent, foreclosure rates, age, or income levels in a given area. - Parallels for Mac hits 1,000,000 users
No matter how much you love your Mac, the truth of the matter is that there are still some programs that are Windows only. So it's probably not surprising that Parallels, a program that lets you run Windows on a Mac without rebooting is so popular. Whether you use it on a daily basis or just on the rare occasion when you really want to fire up MS Paint, we're betting there's a decent chance you've got Parallels or another virtualization program if you've got a Mac.
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, ...
