Latest Posts from Download Squad

Propane is a beautiful, Mac-only desktop client for Campfire by 37signals.

Working on a remote team, one of the core tools in maintaing a cohesive work environment is group chat. Out of the myriad options I keep coming back to Campfire as my chatroom of choice. The archiving, file sharing and integration with Basecamp (our project management tool of choice) make it stand above the other options for us.

For me, the worst part about Campfire is that it is browser based. This factor kept driving me away from it. I prefer a separate app for chat. Propane has solved this problem for me.

Propane provides a clean, simple, useful interface that removes the mess of browser chrome while maintaining the needed functionality of the tool. Tabbed chat rooms, drag-and-drop file sharing, and fine-grained notification customization with Growl integration are just a few of the killer features of this app.

If you are a Mac user and a Campfire user, I'm not sure how you could get by without it. Currently $20 during the beta, bumping to $25 when it's out of beta, licenses are a per-user basis, so one user can install Propane on as many computers as they use. Download it and give it a try before you buy it!

Christmas is a week away. Have you finished (started) your holiday shopping yet? If you are a PROcrastinator (like myself) you've been planning on ordering everything online and having it speed-shipped in the Saint Nick of time. Well there is still time (or not). Check out the lists below for the last possible minute to order your gifts.

Amazon
Amazon order deadlines are:

• Thurs. 17th - Free super saver shipping. Too late! Sorry.
• Sun 20th - Standard shipping. (hurry!)
• Mon 21st - Gift cards by mail
• Tues 22nd, 8pm PT - Two-day shipping
• Wed 23rd, 4:30pm PT) One-day shipping. (Though this varies by item, so be careful)
• Thurs 24th - Local express in select cities
• E-mail and printable gift cards - Immediate at any time. (The ultimate procrastination gift)

Best Buy
Best Buy guarantees Christmas delivery by the following times if you order on the following dates prior to 11am ET, or they will give you a $10-$20 digital coupon (depending on order size)

• Mon 21st - Standard Shipping
• Tue 22nd - Expedited Shipping
• Wed 23rd - Express Shipping

Apple Store
Apple store order times depend on the exact items, but for the most common items such as iPods, iPhones, standard config macs (except for the 27" iMac), and apple accessories, the following dates are pretty solid:

• Sat 19th, midnight PT - Free 2-3 day shipping
• Wed 23rd, 10am PT - Next day shipping

Dell
Dell is promising that their most popular systems can be delivered in 48 hours, meaning that you have until Monday the 21st at Noon PT to order.

• Mon 21st, noon PT - 48hr shipping.

Newegg
Newegg's order deadlines are:

• Sun 20th, 11:59am PT - UPS Guaranteed 3 Day or FedEx Express Saver
• Mon 21st, 3pm PT - RUSH ORDERED UPS Guaranteed 3 Day or FedEx Express Saver
• Tues 22nd, 3pm PT - UPS 2nd Day Air or Fedex 2Day Express
• Wed 23rd, 3pm PT - UPS Next day, FedEx Overnight

Tiger Direct
Tiger Direct's deadlines are based on region so check out their shipping chart, but you might be able to squeak by with a little later than the following:

• Fri 18th - UPS Ground
• Tues 22nd - UPS 2 day
• Weds 23rd - UPS overnight

Think Geek
Order quickly for some of the best geek gear on the planet. Eastern states can still get standard UPS ground shipping if ordered by today, all other states must use an expedited shipping method.

• Fri 18th - 3 Day shipping
• Mon 21st - 2 Day shipping
• Wed 23rd - Next day shipping

Google Labs recently released Browser Size, a browser window size visualization tool. Utilizing browser window size data from Google's home page (and thus monitoring a huge sample size of the world, much less your site's visitors), to overlay statistics, in terms of percentages of users, on top of your site (or any site you choose to enter). This data reflects visible area, not actual window size. That is, it subtracts all the toolbar fluff and lets you see what your users actually see.

This tool is very useful (if extremely ugly) for ensuring that important calls-to-action on your site are plainly visible to the widest audience possible. You can adjust the translucency of the overlay and it even allows you to interact normally with your page with the overlay on top. Nicely done, Browser Size team!

Droplr is the latest of a growing selection of apps that make sharing files and links easy. Droplr takes the game up a notch by adding support for sharing "notes": any sort of text, including code with syntax highlighting. It even supports Markdown text formatting. Simply drag-and-drop the file or URL to the menu-bar icon and the file is uploaded and a link is created, automatically copied to your clipboard, and an option to immediately tweet the link appears.

The Mac-only app gives each account 1 GB of storage space for files, urls, and notes, with a slick file management interface that makes it easy to retrieve previously Droplr'd files and delete unneeded files to free up space. When first loading up the app, they grant you an additional 1 GB of space if you tweet about the fact that you are using the app. Brilliant promotional move (it's why I know about the app...)

A brief test drive has shown me a snappy, easy-to use app. Code highlighting was a little spotty on my few tests, but the fact that it exists at all is pretty neat. You are able to configure which Twitter client you prefer (including twitter.com) the app to use to tweet your links.

Droplr is free to use, supported by small ("but really pretty. Promise!") ads that appear on the page that shares your file or code. Give it a try and tweet about it.

Monster's Den The Book of Dread is a lo-fi, highly addictive, dungeon-crawling, RPG. Choose one of three campaigns (dungeons), create a party of four characters from seven possible character classes (warrior, cleric, mage, ranger, rogue, barbarian, and conjuror, the classics), select from one of three difficulty levels (beginner, standard, and EXTREME), and you are off to kill monsters and gather items.

Seemingly endless levels, each with their own boss, and hundreds of possible magic items (weapons, armor, potions and scrolls) make this game very compelling for the avid dungeon crawler. I played one of the campaigns to level 118 (hangs head in shame...) before giving up on finding an end boss.

Random encounters, epic rare monsters that drop wonderful items, and the promise of more treasure just around the corner make up for this game's complete lack of graphics.

If you enjoy fighting orcs, undead, dragons, dwarves, humans, creatures from Greek mythology, and myriad other foes for the promise of experience points, stats boosts, and new spells and abilities, then do NOT play this game (or you might never stop...)

1. Selective sync. Ability to choose which files or folders get sync'd to which computers.

2. Watch any folder. Sync folders outside the My/Dropbox folder (thus essentially replicating the functionality of SugarSync). This would be sweet, though I wonder how it would affect the current simplicity and performance of the app.

3. Share folders without forcing other members to lose space. I'd be interested to see how they handle this one. It could open up loopholes for vastly expanded storage space for groups of people.

4. Email files to Dropbox. Use an email address to upload files to your dropbox space.

5. Mac resource fork support. Perhaps the most cryptic of the requests. The resource fork is essentially metadata attached to the file that helps the Mac OS understand the file better. It defines things like custom icons, window sizes, menu definitions and the like. It is also how Mac OS can do extension-less file names. These things are generally stripped by backup programs (like Dropbox). This would be an extremely useful feature for Mac users.

Can playing a video game four times a week for twelve weeks help you stop smoking? Apparently so for some.

A small study conducted by the GRAP Occupational Psychology Clinic and the University of Quebec has found positive results from a specially designed, experimental, VR video game.

Smokers who play the game have a slightly higher chance of quitting the habit than those in a control group (playing a similar game with different objectives). Those who played the cigarette crushing game cite the game itself as an added defense in staving off cravings.

This type of "VR Therapy" is also used in treating post-traumatic stress disorder in Iraq war veterans, and is gaining popularity in many other areas such as drug addiction and bullying. Researches say that what a person does in the virtual reality game actually has an impact on their real-world experience.

There's been a lot of buzz about cloud computing over the last year or two as more and more applications (email, Office, note-keeping and so on) move to the web. Then, a little over a month ago, I started seeing a lot of buzz surrounding something called CloudApp.

A more generic sounding name, I could not imagine. All I could tell from the "OMG CLOUDAPP!!" tweets was that there was a new app named CloudApp, that beta invites were being issued soon, and that a lot of people were very excited about receiving an invite. I'm not sure anyone knew any more about it than I did other than "OMG IT'S IN THE CLOUD™ " and "OMG IT'S AN APP" and "OMG CLOSED BETA INVITE ONLY".

Three possibilities crossed my mind:

1. Sociological study of the feeding frenzy surrounding beta invites and tech buzz words.
2. Twitter phishing scam
3. (remote possibility) an actual app.

Possibility #2 was confirmed in my mind when I saw the following tweet:

Read more »

A key part of interface design is an exercise known as "wireframing." In this design phase, elements of an interface are blocked out roughly to show relative placement, interaction, and functionality. It is a rapid way to talk through functional requirements of a project and get buy-in from stakeholders without having to waste a lot of time on visual design that won't remain in a finished product.

Mockflow is a flash-based, online, collaborative wireframing tool for Web and Software designers. It contains a fairly complete set of wireframe elements and icons for use in your wireframe with flexible customizability of all the elements. The killer app of the tool is it's ability to collaborate in real-time with other team members online. Very, very useful for distributed teams.

I tend to use Adobe Fireworks for all my wireframing (and everything else) but a coworker pointed me toward this tool and it captured my attention. I find flash-based tools distasteful, they always feel slow to me, but this one was simple enough, with enough features to make it compelling to use. Definitely the right tool for the right situation.

The basic version is free, but ad supported and you are limited to two collaborators. Upgrading (introductory price of $49 / year) grants you unlimited collaborators and projects, is ad-free, and gives you 500 MB of storage. Definitely worth a look for distributed Web teams.

The flash-based tool will render a page in recent versions of the most used browsers, and will let you view an image of the rendered page one at a time, side by side (2-up view) or my personal favorite, onion skin view, which stacks two images from two different browsers on top of each other and gives you a slider to adjust translucency back and forth so you can see just how horribly Internet Explorer renders your page elements relative to every other modern browser.

The service is currently free and I expect that I will be using it quite heavily.

At the time of writing, the supported browsers are:

• Firefox 2.0 - Windows XP - version 2.0.0.18
• Firefox 3.0 - Windows XP - version 3.0.4
• Internet Explorer 6.0 - Windows XP - version 6.0.3790.3959
• Internet Explorer 7.0 - Windows XP - version 7.0.5730
• Internet Explorer 8.0 - Windows XP - version 8.0.6001.18702
• Safari 3.0 - OS X - version 3.2.3
• Safari 4.0 - OS X - version 4.0.3
• Firefox 2.0 - OS X - version 2.0.0.18
• Firefox 3.0 - OS X - version 3.0.4