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Filed under: Weekend Review

Download Squad Week in Review

Download Squad logoBeen so busy trying to figure out Steve Jobs would announce next week that you haven't had time to read the news this week? We'll save you some time. First, it's probably a new iPhone. Second, here are some of our favorite stories from the week that was:
  • Wikia Search human powered search engine becomes useful
    Ever wish you could rearrange search results in Google? Well, you can't. But you can customize Wikia Search, the search engine from the makers of Wikipedia to your heart's content. Don't like the order of the search results? Just vote your preferred results up. In theory, this could be an excellent way to deal with the inadequacies of machine ranking. In practice, web publishers are just going to spend all day fighting for the top listings.
  • VLC on the iPhone and iPod Touch? Yep
    The iPhone is a remarkable device that lets you make phone calls, surf the web, watch movies, and listen to music. But if you want to watch DiVX videos, listen to MP3 files, or use any number of other formats, you're out of luck. Or at least you were last week. Because this week, the open-source VLC media player was ported to the iPhone. And there was much rejoicing.
  • As June 30th approaches, are you stocking up on Windows XP licenses?
    Microsoft has set a June 30th cutoff date for Windows XP sales. Sort of. While it won't be impossible to pick up a copy of the 6 year old operating system after that date, it will be a bit tougher. Since Windows Vista isn't exactly what we'd call popular, and Windows 7 is at least a year or two away, now might be a good time to pick up a spare Windows XP license in case you need to install the OS on a new computer.
  • Ubuntu Netbook Remix gets real official
    Dozens of computer makers showed off new cheap mini-notebooks at the Computex trade show in Taipei this week. And while many of those "netbooks" run Windows XP or Vista, many more are running Linux. Canonical wants in on the action and is planning to release Ubuntu Netbook Remix later this year. It's basically a custom version of Ubuntu with a new program launcher designed for small screens and optimizations for the low-power Intel Atom CPU. Canonical showed off an early build of the system this week.
  • Ever use Pandora? Ever use Pandora...on AIR?
    While there have been desktop clients that let you listen to streaming music service Pandora without a web browser for ages, the company finally released its own official client this week -- to mixed reviews. On the one hand, it's great that you can listen to music without having to launch a browser. On the other hand, the desktop client, based on Adobe AIR, is kind of bulky and feels more like a web service than a desktop application.
  • NexusFile - Putting Windows Explorer out of its misery
    Looking for a good replacement for the Windows Explorer? NexusFile supports tabs, favorite folders, has a built in FTP client, and disk cleanup tool. And it's free.

Filed under: Web services, Social Software, Search, web 2.0

Wikia Search human powered search engine becomes useful

Wikia Search
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has relaunched Wikia Search. And this time, the site actually might be worth using.

When Wales announced that he was working on a human powered search engine to compliment his human powered encyclopedia, we were skeptical but curious. When the public alpha launched earlier this year, we were disappointed. Up until this week, Wikia Search was basically just like any other search engine. A computer scanned the web for pages and decided which were the closest match to your search query. The only thing setting Wikia Search apart was the ability to create user profiles.

Now Wikia Search has added a slew of editing tools that could actually help improve (or utterly screw up) search results. Here's how it works. Wikia Search has a computer-created index of about 30 million sites. But you can edit any page. For example, when we searched for "download squad" this site came up as the second listing. We gave it a five star rating which moved it to the top of the page. And then for good measure, we hit the edit button and wrote a new site description. You can do this for any site. you can also add comments, annotations, or "spotlights," which highlights the entire entry so that it looks a bit like a sponsored result you would get from Google.

[via WebWare]

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Featured Time Waster

Forumwarz - a potentially offensive time waster

I pwn UAfter spending the better part of an hour on Forumwarz I still can't decide if it's just sick or if it's kind of fun. It's a bit like a car wreck on the highway. I know I shouldn't be looking but I can't quite turn away.

It's sick, it's twisted, it's the internet on it's worst level and darn it, it's kind of fun. At least for a little while.

Forumwarz is a parody role-playing game that takes place on the internet - or at least the Forumwarz version of it. Your goal is to complete missions that are given to you through a mock up of GoogleTalk called Sentrillion.

Your first "friend" is ShallowEsophagus who begins giving you missions to pwn various forums by being a troll. Depending on the character type you are assigned at start up, you have tools like drooling on the keyboard or bashing your head on the keyboard that you can use to destroy forum threads and eventually, pwn a forum.

Future missions involve buying illegal software from the Russians, pwning more difficult forums and other internet oddness.

Completing missions gives you cash, called Flezz in game, and items that you can pawn or use in other missions. The game is NOT for those easily offended. It's crass, coarse and there are frequent f-bombs in the fake chat sessions.

This is also a game for a more mature audience as it requires you to shop at the Drugs R Fun store to get various concoctions to improve your playing, engage in certain cyber activities to get more Flezz and just generally use a more adult perspective.

If you can get past that, here are the more enjoyable and time-wasting aspects.

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