Filed under: Design, Beta, web 2.0, Humor, Fugly Friday

Web 2.0 style is its own special brand of Fugly. Hundreds of sites capitalize on the volcanically-hot design trends that signal a Web 2.0 property, but botch the job and end up looking like they were made with cookie cutters in 2007. But now, botching the job can be even easier, with Tiny Designer! You can create your own hideous Web 2.0 elements in seconds, including plenty of gradients, that ubiquitous lime-green color, and (of course) the always-popular "beta" badge.

Can you believe that the entire Tiny Designer site was made using elements from Tiny Designer? I sure can: it's atrocious. From the glossy sticky notes (why?) to the misappropriated Twitterrific bird at the bottom of the site, everything about Tiny Designer does violence to the entire idea of design. If you're not too stunned by the eyeful of horrors that is the Tiny Designer front page, launch the design gallery and see what other abominations this Frankensite hath wrought.

And all of this is to say nothing of the clunky, stilted user experience of actually attempting to make anything in Tiny Designer. The tool's disorderly UI involves a lot of toolbars stacked on top of one another, and, of course, a lot of gloss. If you thought the dismal results people produced with Tiny Designer were somehow due to user incompetence, you'll change your tune once you try to do anything with it. I'm predicting a long weekend of nightmares about the entire web being rebuilt with Tiny Designer.

Fugly Friday: Tiny Designer originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Business

When Amazon.com removed copies of George Orwell's 1984 from users' Kindles, there was a big uproar over possible censorship. The irony that the book in question happened to be the most famous literary screed on surveillance since - well, since ever - only added fuel to the fire. The resulting backlash caused Amazon to promise never to snatch customers' purchases off their Kindles again, even if another book has to be pulled from the store for legal reasons. The promise came too late for one high school senior, though, who lost his copy of 1984 AND the study notes he had made on the book.

Now the student is trying to start up a class action against Amazon, suing for messing up the annotations he (and, presumably, at least a few other people) made on their digital copies of 1984. Amazon didn't actually delete his notes, but removing the book means that the notes don't refer back to any text, and renders them useless. The suit alleges that nothing in Amazon's terms of service for the Kindle covers the removal of users' purchases -- the license is supposed to be for life.

[via Wall Street Journal]

High schooler sues Amazon for ruining his study notes originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: OS Updates, Windows

If you weren't impressed by the prices Microsoft released for Windows 7 the other day, maybe this news will get you a little more excited.

The Family Pack - which includes Windows 7 Home Premium licenses for three systems - is going to retail for $149.99 in the US. That'll save you a little more than $200. The pack is slated to go on sale on October 22nd.

Details for the Anytime Upgrades have also been released, and they break down as follows:

Windows 7 Starter to Windows 7 Home Premium: $79.99
Windows 7 Home Premium to Windows 7 Professional: $89.99
Windows 7 Home Premium to Windows 7 Ultimate: $139.99

If you do, in fact, wind up with a netbook that has been saddled with the feature-reduced Starter Edition, $80 seems like a reasonable price to pay for the upgrade. And I can't see any of my business customers complaining about $90 to convert a Home Premium system to the domain-ready Professional edition.

Anytime upgrades will be available in the following countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and the US.

Windows 7 Family Pack to cover three machines for a measly $150 originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: OS Updates, Windows

If you weren't impressed by the prices Microsoft released for Windows 7 the other day, maybe this news will get you a little more excited.

The Family Pack - which includes Windows 7 Home Premium licenses for three systems - is going to retail for $149.99 in the US. That'll save you a little more than $200. The pack is slated to go on sale on October 22nd.

Details for the Anytime Upgrades have also been released, and they break down as follows:

Windows 7 Starter to Windows 7 Home Premium: $79.99
Windows 7 Home Premium to Windows 7 Professional: $89.99
Windows 7 Home Premium to Windows 7 Ultimate: $139.99

If you do, in fact, wind up with a netbook that has been saddled with the feature-reduced Starter Edition, $80 seems like a reasonable price to pay for the upgrade. And I can't see any of my business customers complaining about $90 to convert a Home Premium system to the domain-ready Professional edition.

Anytime upgrades will be available in the following countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and the US.

Windows 7 Family Pack to cover three machines for a measly $150 originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Fun, Games, Time-Wasters

Bubble Boom is a fun, simple Flash game that's all about chain reactions. You play by placing a single expanding bubble, and hoping that enough other bubbles run into it to clear the level.

When bubbles hit your chain and expand, they only stay onscreen for a short time, and if nothing runs into them, your chain is over.

There are also some special colored bubbles that have a wider burst radius, or provide extra points or multipliers. The game is ridiculously easy to play, but the bubbles move so fast that it's hard to apply any strategy.

If you're a chess person, Bubble Boom is probably not for you. If you're the kind of person who enjoys popping sheets of bubble wrap, on the other hand, definitely give it a try.

Bubble Boom - chain reaction Time Waster originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Internet, Web services

As we all marvel at the miracle of modern technology today (you're soaking in it right now), let's raise a glass to your local System Administrator: the guy or gal or team who keep the servers humming and the network intact and safe. Have a happy SysAdmin day today, the 10th anniversary of the "event," and take your IT crew out to lunch or something.

Here's a gallery of sysadmin pics we found on the internet, but feel free to share your own in the comments or tag a Flickr photo "downloadsquad" and it'll appear in our tag pool.

Happy SysAdmin Day! originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 31 Jul 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: OS Updates, Windows, Microsoft, Windows x64

First you got your hands on a leaked copy of the Windows 7 RTM. Bad idea, says Microsoft.

Then you tracked down 7loader, which took advantage of a leaked Lenovo product key. We know it's out there, came the nonchalant reply from Redmond.

And now, thanks to a cooperative effort, the workaround has already been defeated. The official blog post touts improvements in Windows 7, which "already includes an improved ability to detect hacks, also known as activation exploits, and alert customers who are using a pirated copy." The post continues, stating that no systems will ever be sold using the particular OEM key that was utilized by the exploit.

So what's Microsoft's real goal here? "Our objective isn't to stop every "mad scientist" that's out there from dabbling; our aim is to protect our customers from commercialized counterfeit software that impacts our customers' confidence in knowing they got what they paid for."

Sure...There's absolutely no reason it would have anything to do with crippling the biggest Windows competitor on the market - pirated copies of Windows.

Microsoft and Lenovo quickly swashbuckle Windows 7 pirates originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 31 Jul 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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

Portable application suites are extremely popular downloads. The granddaddy of them all - John T. Haller's Portable Apps - just cleaned up at OSCON and passed the 100 million download mark. It's not the only suite around, though. I covered it and three others in a previous post, but hadn't yet heard of Kitchen Sink Collection.

It's packed with more than 1.2Gb of software and includes all the core applications you would expect, like Firefox, FileZilla, Thunderbird, Sumatra, and OpenOffice. That's just the tip of the iceberg, however. There are loads more applications covering every kind of chore from listening to/grabbing internet radio (Screamer) to rootkit detection to accessing EXT2/3 partitions.

The contents scanned clean with both Microsoft Security Essentials, except for a false positive on Angry IP Scanner. KSC's 440Mb 7-zip auto-extractor is available for direct download from the developer or as a torrent from Mininova.

Update: as pointed out in the comments, the maintainer has pulled the download. From his site:

So just got a letter from the owner of portableapps.com saying that I'm violating trademark law, the GPL, and several software licenses.

Unfortunately Kitchen Sink will need to be offline until I can get that ironed out. Here's why:

• I'm doing this for the love as I'm not getting paid. I've got some revenue sources (adwords and donations), but I have yet to make a dime off either one.
  
• I'm unemployed and don't make near enough money to hire a lawyer to help me make sure I'm totally in compliance with 200 different licenses.
  
• I'm a big fan of the GPL and violating the license even implicitly is not something I'm comfortable with.
  

If I can't get this cleared up, I'll shutter the project for good.

Kitchen Sink Collection offers 1.2 gigabytes of portable Windows apps originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 31 Jul 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: E-mail, Google, Troubleshooting

Even if you don't have a Gmail account, you may have seen an email message from a Gmail user with "on behalf of" in the "From:" field. This occurs when someone uses Gmail to send a message from a consolidated address that they've added to their account, but the message is delivered by Gmail's SMTP servers. Google has introduced a fix for the superfluous, confusing "on behalf of" language, though.

To fix the issue, you just have to set up your alternate account to use its own mailserver instead of Google's. Go to "accounts" in your Gmail settings, and under "Send Mail As," you should see your alternate addresses. Click "edit info" and "next step," and you should find the option to send using your own SMTP server.

You'll just need to enter the username and password, and you're good to go. Goodbye, "on behalf of!"

[via Lifehacker]

How to turn off "on behalf of" in Gmail originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 31 Jul 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple iPhone 3GS 16GB