Continue reading Angry Birds fail to negotiate peace treaty with pigs in a new comedy video

Angry Birds fail to negotiate peace treaty with pigs in a new comedy video originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 22 Nov 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Social Media Sobriety Test stops you from tweeting and Facebooking under the influence originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 04 Nov 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Chrome Whitelist, which couldn't be more aptly named, builds a whitelist out of domains that you provide it, and then it blocks access to all other sites when active. It's a simple and effective method to keep distractions to a minimum while trying to get work done online, but as can be said for all tools of this nature -- there's no accounting for willpower.

So, if you're simply trying to keep on track until your work's finished, it's easy enough to simply allow docs.google.com, but not mail.google.com or any other site that isn't absolutely pertinent to the task at hand. On the other hand, when the urge to check your multiple social networks gets unbearable enough, it only takes a couple of mouse-clicks to get to the whitelist.

Which brings us to the next obvious use for a browsing whitelist -- people other than us. The first thing that comes to mind is kids, but I wouldn't recommend this extension as any sort of parental control device. Most kids are clever enough to get around actual parental control restrictions, so a simple Chrome extension isn't likely to hold up for longer than the five seconds it would take for little Johnny to notice the new icon next to the Omnibar.

But don't count this extension out just yet, because even if it can't stop you or your kids from visiting Facebook, it can give you at least a couple of minutes of enjoyment if you slyly install it on a friend's laptop. Or your girlfriend's. Or your wife's. That's gotta be worth something, right?

Chrome extension lets you whitelist sites, but doesn't account for willpower originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 18 Oct 2010 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Remember when the Pirate Bay tried to raise enough money to buy the Principality of Sealand? Well, this is a bit different. Torrentreactor.net, one of the most popular torrent sites on the Internet today, says it has bought the small village of Gar, in the Tomsk province of Russia. The single requirement was that the town rename itself to "Torrentreactor."

Whether this is legit or not is still unclear at best. The folks at TorrentFreak, who were first to report on this, say that while they've attempted to contact the authorities in Tomsk, they haven't received any word back yet. This, coupled with the fact that torrent sites in general are notorious for pranks and publicity stunts, makes the whole thing look like a hoax. It certainly doesn't help that the image used by Torrentreactor.net has what appears to be a well-shopped sign that reads "Torrentreactor" in Cyrillic text. When you view the image, note the weathering of the text. The town was supposedly just renamed, so the text should be brand new, shouldn't it?

According to Torrentreactor.net, the village has been sitting in near desolation until now. The 214 inhabitants make a living their selling vegetables in other nearby towns. There are three computers in the whole village; one at the administration office and two at the school -- but only one has access to the Internet and it's via dial-up modem. None of the villagers had any idea who or what Torrentreactor.net was.

The total price of the transaction came out to 4.5 million Rubles, or the equivalent of $148,000 USD, which isn't a bad price for an entire village. The lion's share of the money is apparently to be split amongst the villagers, with the rest going to needed repairs and upgrades for the roads, school, and farm equipment. Torrentreactor.net is also going to pay the equivalent of $30,000 USD to get the town wired for broadband, as well.

Of course, this is all according to Torrentreactor.net, so take it with a grain of salt until there's some sort of official confirmation from the Russians.

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Torrentreactor.net claims to have bought Russian village and renamed it "Torrentreactor" originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 08 Aug 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

FriendDA is not even a website; it's just a single Web page, pre-formatted for printing. It's a form, that at first glance appears to be a standard NDA (or other legal form).

But when you read past the first WHEREAS, the whole thing becomes much clearer. I quote:

WHEREAS I possess a bright idea that I am choosing to disclose to you, The Advisor, with the mutual understanding that you are my friend and that you will not screw me.

The FriendDA then goes on to elaborate on the "manners of screwing" (their wording, not mine), and also makes it clear that it has no legal validity whatsoever.

So why make it, then? It's supposed to be "slightly more than a hearty handshake" - meaning, if a friend of yours agrees to the FriendDA, you should feel secure enough to share your awesome new start-up-worthy idea with them. I find this interesting, culturally. Reading the original blog post which announced FriendDA back in 2008, you can see people are in two minds in the comments. Some think it's quite silly (which I can understand), but some seem quite excited about it. What's also interesting is that the author, Rands (pseudonym for Michael Lopp), is a senior engineering manager at Apple, at least according to Wikipedia. And we all know Apple's stance (and ferocity) on legal matters.

So ... is this proof that anything you put online will eventually find an audience, especially if you're a published author? Or is it clever socio-political commentary on the litigious state of current American society as reflected by steeply declining moral values? Weigh in in the comments.

FriendDA is a totally non-binding NDA for friends (tech culture) originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 01 Aug 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Image via TorrentFreak (click image for full size).

In an ironic twist, The USCG seems to have been caught quite red-handed in an attempt to lazily steal code from a competitor's website. They didn't just take bits and pieces, either; the site they had "built" was a nearly complete reproduction of the original. To further deepen the irony of the incident, it was the crew at TorrentFreak who called them out on their shenanigans by posting screenshots of both sites and their source code.

You may remember the USCG for their mass-litigation back in May of this year over infringement of The Hurt Locker -- in which they began suing thousands of file-sharers on behalf of the film's makers.

After grabbing their screenshots, and no doubt having a good laugh at the USCG's expense, TorrentFreak contacted the Copyright Enforcement Group, to let them know that their settlements site had been ripped off by the competition. The CEG promptly replied that they had never authorized anyone to use their site's code, and that the USCG would be receiving a cease and desist letter from them. It didn't take long for the doppelganger-site to begin a quick metamorphosis into a completely different, bare-bones replacement page. Needless to say, the entire ordeal is pretty embarrassing for the USCG.

U.S. Copyright Group caught stealing competitor's code originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 31 Jul 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Hapless boob steals iPhone while it demos realtime GPS tracking app originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 22 Jul 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Facebook Stories lets you share your story about how Facebook isn't creepy or bent on world domination originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hitler finds out about Opera 10.60 originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 05 Jul 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Last month, we had some fun with Google's explanation of their recent redesign of search results, but it looks like Google isn't quite done yet with not copying Bing.

In their quest to make their search engine sexier and more appealing to the fickle masses, Google's now begun to let users add a background image of their choosing to the main search landing page. Is this cool? Yes. Is it copying Bing? We'll let you decide, but note that the picture above is a screenshot of Bing's landing page uploaded to Picasa and set as my Google Search background image. Google's suggestion that it only looks vaguely familiar only makes it funnier. (Click image for full size.)

And that's where the militant commenters will start saying that it's not copying, since Google lets the users pick their own backgrounds, while Bing just force-feeds fake Feng Shui. As much as I'm tempted to agree with them, I end up remembering the kids in school who would copy your answer in a test, and then expand on it and make it even better than yours. You know the type.

Whether it's obvious copying or not isn't all that important anyway. It's actually a pretty nice little feature; you can choose any image you want so long as it's at least 800x600 in size, and you simply pick from whatever's sitting in your Picasa account. Then, whenever you hit up Google's landing page, the image fades into opacity in the background so it doesn't slow down your searching.

They're still rolling the feature out at the moment, and somewhat slowly at that, so you may not see the option to add a background image for a few days.

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Google lets us wallpaper the Search page - I set mine to a Bing screenshot originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 02 Jun 2010 22:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It's May 31st, which makes it not only Memorial Day here in the States, but also the first officially unofficial Quit Facebook Day.

You may have noticed that Facebook has been getting a lot of attention from us recently, and it's really no surprise given the amount of public sentiment toward the social-networking site. About a week ago, one of those posts was about a movement to get users to leave the network in droves, spearheaded by the website QuitFacebookDay.com.

Well, it's time to ante up.

Earlier this month, a couple of our writers up and quit the network, setting their accounts on the path to peaceful rest. According to the counter on QuitFacebookDay.com, some 26,000 users have pledged to quit just like they did, making this Blue Monday a Facebook Blue Monday -- or so they hope. Considering the fact that Facebook has somewhere in the range of 400 million users, 26,000 just doesn't seem substantial enough to make Mark Zuckerberg shed a tear.

That being said, we're still curious. Are you quitting today?

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It's Quit Facebook Day, are you in or out? originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 31 May 2010 07:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

QuitFacebookDay is a website with one, simple agenda: To get you to stop buying bottled water.

Well, actually no, but perhaps you can guess the agenda by the domain and the ten-foot-tall header.

What? Did I hear someone say "Drama Queen"?

Yes, I admit this is kind of dumb, but I really could not resist. Human beings are social creatures, so what better way to quit a social network than... socially?

The site is basically an all-out anti-Facebook rant. They explain in fairly simple terms why you should quit Facebook. The bottom line is that you don't have to quit all by yourself, and be a lonely maverick. You sign your name and add to the number of "committed Facebook quitters", and come May 31st, you all quit together.

At the time of this writing, there are 13,379 "committed quitters". Assuming they all really do quit, that would work out to approximately 0.0000334 percent of the entire Facebook user base! Way to go, guys!!!

No, but seriously though, I really think change is coming. Maybe not exactly via this bullhorn, but you guys just wait and see -- by 2012, we'll have another strong player in the social networking arena.

[I bet you can be 'the first to like this page' with that ShareThis button... -Ed]

QuitFacebookDay lets you ... you guessed it! originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 24 May 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Facebook has become a major hot-button topic recently, what with the endless privacy issues and bug reports floating around and all, so you may be thinking about leaving the social network. Unfortunately, kicking the habit may not be so easily done.

Maybe you want to deactivate your account, and let it sit while you think things over. Maybe you're afraid of outright deleting your account out of fear that you may become an elusive Internet hermit. Maybe keeping the account active is the only way your Mom will get off your case about not calling home often enough. Or perhaps you just don't want to abandon all your friends, who don't even use email or chat services anymore because of Facebook dependency. Sure, you've tried explaining it to them, but they still don't understand why you would want to leave such a fantabulous, wonderfully free social network. It's the greatest thing since sliced bread -- don't you know?

Maybe you find yourself stuck in a loathsome, controlling relationship with Mark Zuckerberg, and you just can't force yourself away from his buggy social clutches. Maybe you feel like you need some help.

Sadly, Dr. Drew Pinsky doesn't take cases like this for cheap, but you can still get the help you need to kick the Facebook habit right in the face, once and for all -- and you can do it with a userscript.

The script, called No Facebook, can be installed in any browser running Greasemonkey/Greasekit or in Chrome as an extension. Basically, when you have the script enabled and try to visit Facebook, you get directed to a page with nothing but the friendly reminder pictured above.

Now, whether you've decided to deactivate, delete, or simply leave your account open, you can at least exercise some control over your junkie self. Just remember -- you're not alone.

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New userscript lets you "Just Say No" to Facebook originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 14 May 2010 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Ahhh, the good old days. When men were real men, and websites were horrific white-on-dayglo-yellow creations lovingly crafted in notepad, complete with animated GIFs of randomly dancing M&M's and poor MIDI versions of Oasis' Wonderwall on auto-play.

Miss those days? Do you? Come on, you can admit it... we're all friends here. Okay, you don't have to say anything -- I can see it in your eyes, and I have just the thing for you!

Enter the Geoceties-izer! This incredible service lets you feed it with any website, and spits out a complete copy of the site, exactly as it would have looked like had it been created in Geocities back in the happy 90's. You really have to try it -- the screenshot above does it absolutely no justice; I just didn't know where to begin! Should I zoom out and show the broken images and wide expanse of yellow? Should I zoom in on that dancing M&M?

And how can I convey the incredible emotional impact a poor MIDI rendition of Wonderwall can bestow upon an unsuspecting ear, right when it autoplays on page-load, amidst that sea of eye-searing yellow?

You really, really have to experience this. If you're using headphones, don't. Share it with your office-mates. Just click. You may not get the same Wonderwall-on-yellow background I got (on a second attempt I got Alanis and Bill Gates with devil's horns), but it is sure to please.

OMG, "Isn't it Ironic" in MIDI.

[Via: Woot blog]

Geocities-izer lets you browse your favorite website with 90s goggles originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 12:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Torrent site sends condoms to MPAA in serious April Fools' message originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 01 Apr 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Unhappy Hipsters is full of anti-hipster juice originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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8 reasons to love furries, and more, on Linkbait Generator originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Internet Explorer Six, resident of the interwebs for over 8 years, died the morning of March 1, 2010 in Mountain View, California, as a result of a workplace injury sustained at the headquarters of Google, Inc.

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How you know IE6 is dead: the funeral's already scheduled! originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Make your friends think twice before they click with ShadyURL's NSFW-looking links originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 19 Feb 2010 14:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Think you've mastered Linux? Prove it, with Suicide Linux originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 19 Feb 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.