Latest Posts from Download Squad

I'm not sure how I missed this when it came out, as I'm a big fan of both eMusic and Pandora. It seems that Jon Strunk, a product manager at eMusic, has created a terrific Pandora/eMusic mashup.

All the details can be found on Jon's blog, but the service works as you'd expect. While Pandora plays tracks, eMusic offers them up for download (if they're available). Because I have both Pandora and eMusic accounts, when I first visited the mashup I was auto-magically signed in to both services and my default station started playing. Genius.

Inquisitor, the free OS X app that adds "search as you type" functionality to Safari, has been updated. According to the official blog the app "provides an enhanced web searching experience by learning from your use of it over time and then tailoring the experience to suit you best. Websites that you've visited before are flagged and prioritized and search keywords you've used recently show up ahead of the rest. Best of all, your usage history is stored on your computer and yours alone, so unlike services like Google Personalized Search, you don't need to worry about some corporation watching and recording your every move." Since the last time we profiled Inquisitor a number of new features have been added. Your previously visited sites are now prominently displayed as such. Adding additional search engines is a snap, and over 30 have been included by default. There are also several updates to the Preferences [screenshot]

[Thanks Steven!]

One of the great things about WordPress is how easily you can have it up and running, completely customized to your liking, in such a short period of time. After setting up WordPress for several of my friends, I found that having a 'checklist' makes things go even faster - so I decided to write it all up and share with you.

Please don't hesitate to use the comments to suggest additions etc, I'll update the checklist accordingly.

Depending on how you've installed WordPress (manually or by a "one-click-install" that many hosting providers offer) - one of the very last installation steps is to choose a blog name and provide an email address. That's where this checklist begins. Click on a heading below to get started!

1. Create blog title, add email address
2. Change your password
3. Disable visual rich editor
4. Add users
5. Change the tagline
6. Edit Membership permissions
7. Set a date and time format
8. Modify Reading and Writing settings
9. Edit Discussion settings
10. Modify Permalinks structure
11. Pick a theme
12. Customize your theme
13. Write down CSS info
14. Change title format
15. Edit blogroll
16. Edit the About page
17. Add some categories
18. Edit the example post for testing
19. Install plugins
20. Check blog and test plugins
21. Create a favicon.ico
22. Create a shortcut to the Dashboard / setup WordPress client
23. Start posting

Read more »

Line Rider it ain't, but my roommates have been playing Throw Paper! for the last two hours, and there's no end in sight. I have no problem admitting that I've only been able to get 6 in a row - though it appears my step-sister is some kind of click-and-release freak because she's at 28.

Note: Submitting your score doesn't seem to work right now - I've already emailed the game author to see if it's fixable.

[Thanks, Chris!]

The folks over at Netvibes have been very busy as of late. In the last few weeks they've released 10 new international versions of their "customizable Web 2.0 home page/portal solution" (buzzwords aside, it's a terrific service). If you haven't given it a try yet, perhaps one these new versions will entice you: Greek, Turkish, Quebecer, Ukrainian, Russian, Danish, Canadian, Polish, Brazilian and UK.

If you want to help Netvibes to build a local version for your country, I'm sure they would be thrilled if you contact them.

There was certainly a lot of fanfare when Google announced that they were going to allow people around the world to watch in-season full-length games on Google Video. Well, it seems that Comcast now allows anyone in the US to stream up to 2 live games a day. When Comcast and the NHL first made this announcement, the games were only viewable to Comcast High-Speed Internet customers. This year, anyone in the US can watch the games - even DSL subscribers - via the Comcast Hockey Live site.

Before you get too excited there are a couple of things to keep in mind. Local games are usually blacked out, and to watch the live streams you'll need a PC with Microsoft Windows Media Player 9.x or higher and IE 6+ or a similar generation browser. So Mac users are out of luck (shock).

After you unwrap your new Mac this holiday (or maybe found a great Boxing Day deal) be sure to install the very latest version of BonEcho, the G5 and Intel optimized version of Firefox.

The new builds also include:

• an overhauled version of the aqua form widgets
• the user agent has been changed so that the browser will identify itself as Firefox rather than BonEcho

To help Neil (the gentleman who creates these builds) avoid having to answer the same email over and over, please remember that the Firefox name and icon are copyrighted and cannot be used with non-official builds. These are non-official builds, so they cannot have the official branding (hence the BonEcho name and icon). However, if you read through the comments on this TUAW post, you'll get all the info you need to give BonEcho a total Firefox makeover.

via digg

There are a lot of file sharing/hosting/storing sites out there. A lot. So one of my first predictable questions for DivShare co-founder David Altschul was of course, "Why use DivShare?" His answer: "DivShare sets itself apart from other free file hosts in a number of distinct ways, most notably in that we offer unlimited uploads and downloads, no waiting lines for files, auto image galleries, no popups or spam, an intuitive member dashboard, and all files stay online forever. Perhaps the biggest reason why bloggers and webmasters should choose DivShare over the other free file hosts is our co-branding options. Blogs can quickly and easily add their name, URL and logo to their hosted file pages via the dashboard. An example of co-branding can be seen here (warning: the link may also start a download - you can cancel it - but it's actually a pretty good song).

I have to admit, everything David says sounds great (files stay online forever?!). But how does it actually perform? Well, the aforementioned song downloaded at an average rate of 550KBps, which isn't bad at all. I uploaded a 10MB video, and though there's no fancy Flash-Ajax upload timer, it took less than 2 minutes to complete. On an upstream-weak cable connection, that's pretty darn good. Since DivShare launched this month, only time will tell if the service remains as excellent as it is right now. Happy uploading!

P.S. You can't upload files larger than 100MB.

ImageChef is a family-friendly site that allows you to create custom images for your blog, forum signature or general amusement. Without having to register any kind of account, you can modify text in a variety of image templates. The resulting pictures can be easily saved or emailed to friends.

ImageChef will host your pictures if you're a registered user (registration is free), and provide the snip-its of code so that you can embed your artwork in your MySpace, Friendster or TypePad account.

Though sometimes cheesy, the provided image templates do allow for some creative Tom Foolerly. If you find yourself wasting a lot of time, please feel free - no, encouraged! - to post a link to your creation via the comments.

Social music site Last.fm has recently updated their OS X client to version 1.1.0. While the site is short on details for the new version, there are some fairly obvious UI changes that include new icons, font changes and button sizes. This beta version is only compatible with Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger).

I've been using it all day today, and I'm happy to report that it hasn't crashed yet. This is good news, as the previous version (1.0) would frequently decide to stop working on my MacBook Pro. As Last.fm user sandymcc points out, the ability to play multiple tags at the same time seems to have disappeared. For those of you who have updated, what changes have you discovered?