For many people, the holidays mean food. Nom nom nom, chomp chomp chomp, and suddenly you've gained a few extra pounds. Skinnyo is a social website that tries to help you stage a preemptive strike in your struggle against chubbiness. At the core of the site is the weight graph, somewhat similar to the graph used on FitDay. Once you create an account, you can join all sorts of "challenges," or you can even start your own challenge.

Some of the public challenges at the time of writing are "Christmas Countdown," "Let's make the world 20 lbs lighter," and "2kgs in 4 weeks" (the loser buys the winner an HTC Desire HD!).

A challenge can have a limited number of participants, and it can also be private. The profile page, shown in the screenshot above, lets you micro-blog your way to a skinnier bod. Each update has your latest weight trend prominently displayed right next to your image.

Most of the people I know don't even like knowing their own weight, much less making it a public announcement. But if you're socially-inclined, Skinnyo is one interesting way to lose some weight.

Skinnyo helps you lose weight using peer pressure and challenges originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 26 Nov 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Find My iPhone (or iPad, or iPod touch) is now free originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 22 Nov 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TopWinPrio gives a priority boost to your focused application window originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 22 Nov 2010 10:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Aethyr lets you download shared iTunes libraries originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 22 Nov 2010 08:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Computer benchmarking applications abound for Windows machines, but what if you want to judge the capabilities of your current Mac against one you're considering buying? Though I'm in that situation far less often than I'd prefer, when I do need to measure the relative performance of two different Macs, I turn to Xbench.

Xbench is a free performance benchmarking utility that measures the following items: CPU, Threads, Memory, Quartz Graphics (2D), OpenGL Graphics (3D), User Interface, and Disk. For a full list, including the sub-categories of what Xbench measures, check the bottom of the Xbench homepage.

When you run the app you can run all or only some of the tests, however running the entire suite only takes a few minutes. When you're done, you're presented with a report showing how your machine performed in each area.

By itself, it isn't that interesting, but if you send your report to Xbench's website using the Submit button, you can then compare it against other machines' scores.

Xbench performance benchmarking for Macs originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 20 Nov 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Along with pornography, it seems that online egg timers are a driving force for change and innovation on the Internet. I'm not sure there's any other way to explain the proliferation of egg timers. Granted, people may be using these timers for more than just eggs, but this burgeoning market segment never ceases to amaze and surprise me. My latest find is simply called Online Egg Timer, which is a great name for SEO.

The interface is dead-simple and very friendly, and it sports a friendly URL format as well. You can just go to www.online-eggtimer.com/90/120/240 to instantly start three timers: one for ninety seconds, one for two minutes, and one for four minutes.

Granted, the URL format could have been a tad friendlier if it allowed for other time units too, like CD allows for /2h4m15s. But Online Egg Timer does have one alarming advantage over CD: it emits a very loud ringing sound once the time is up.

Online Egg Timer is another slick, stylish timer originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 20 Nov 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Writer's block is a drag. You just sit there staring at the full-screen, distraction-free editor that you spent forever tweaking so it would be just right. You're all set up to write, and ... nothing comes. Blank. The cursor blinks, the clock ticks by, and everything you can think of just seems trite and boring, like a stereotype of a story rather than the story you wish you could write.

Of course, I'm not talking about myself! Consider this a general comment on the human condition. I just found something that might come in handy if you ever find yourself in a similar situation: it's a neat little Web service called oneword.

As you might expect, oneword gives you just a single word, and then it has you write about it. What's not implied in the name is that you get just 60 seconds to do this. One word, 60 seconds, go!

It is a pretty invigorating experience. I couldn't not write, really. Once your time is up, a small form pops up where you can email your text to yourself.

The service is free, and you can also open an account so that you don't have to keep filling in your email and can access a few other features, such as "word ups" - a way to give and receive feedback for pieces of writing.

Oneword.com helps get your creative juices flowing originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 19 Nov 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

eBay Mobile 2.0 for iPhone adds RedLaser barcode scanning originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 19 Nov 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

AirPrint on Mac OS X with Printopia and FingerPrint originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 19 Nov 2010 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

CrossLoop brings remote desktop control to Android originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 18 Nov 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Clean your Market search and browsing history on Android with History Eraser originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 18 Nov 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Free Partition Master from Easeus now works on 64-bit Windows, too! originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 18 Nov 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Let's say you have a girlfriend. And let's say that girlfriend is in a faraway land, and the only thing keeping you connected is that tangle of wires we fondly call "the Internet." Or maybe you've got a bunch of nerdy friends, each ensconced in his own basement, or perhaps in distant parts of the country.

These are just two situations where something like YouTube Social could come in very handy. It's a neat service for watching videos together with friends, synced in real-time, with chat thrown in for good measure.

What I like most about it is how easy it is to start with: you take the URL of a YouTube video (say, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G5JaicYuVU), and just stick the word "social" after "youtube." So you get http://www.youtubesocial.com/watch?v=6G5JaicYuVU.

You then get a rich (almost cluttered) interface with your video taking center stage, and a TinyURL link that you can send to your friends. They just need to click the link to join you. Now, whenever you play the video, pause it, or even scrub to a different position, their videos follow suit. There's a chat pane where you can all talk about what you're watching, too. You can also give the "remote" to someone else so that they get to control the video.

The only downside is that the service is heavily Facebook-driven. I mean, the only way to get a proper nick ("username") in the chat is to be logged onto Facebook. That's pretty annoying; other than that, it's definitely a handy service!

YouTube Social lets you watch videos with friends online originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 18 Nov 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mozilla Labs Rainbow updated to version 0.2 -- now works with Windows and Linux as well as Mac OS X originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 18 Nov 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Microsoft Lync 2010 replaces Microsoft Office Communications Server for workplace collaboration originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 17 Nov 2010 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Process Explorer 14 brings better multi-process app support, new monitoring tools originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 17 Nov 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Let me just come right out and say it: TeamViewer is the best remote control application for Windows PCs today. I've tried numerous apps, and nothing comes close to TeamViewer's performance on a WAN. For LAN situations, Windows Remote Desktop rocks. But when you've got the whole wide Internet between you and the computer you'd like to control, nothing beats TeamViewer. I use it several times per week, for extended sessions (hours on end), and it's always a joy to use. So yes, I'm a rabid fan, and I'm not ashamed.

And now, TeamViewer has announced a new beta for version 6. If you use TeamViewer 5, you'll notice the look and feel is different. But changes are more than skin-deep:

• Custom QuickSupport is a feature that lets you connect to existing customers much more quickly, without getting their ID and password newly every time.
• QuickJoin is a new feature that lets you send the session data to participants beforehand. This is great for presentations - the participants connect to your computer, and not vice versa. You no longer need to enter the data for each of the participants manually.
• Reconnection after reboot makes sure TeamViewer will re-establish the connection even after the remote computer went down and came back up.

There are several other options; if you're not using TeamViewer yet, you really should start. But remember this is still a beta, so if you use it to control nuclear reactors or a personal army of killer robots, you may want to hold off on the upgrade.

TeamViewer Beta 6 is now out, remote control freaks rejoice originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 17 Nov 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Google has just introduced a new product, and this time it's a PC application (with a browser-based UI). It's called Google Refine, and it solves a problem that is enormous for some people: it lets you take massive sets of "messy data" and massage them into shape so that they're uniform, make sense, and can be statistically analyzed.

The video after the jump shows a very good example, which is based on a CSV file exported from a publicly available data source (a government contract system, in this case). The data is very realistic - descriptions are inconsistent (Firm Fixed Price on some rows and FFP on other rows), and even the number formats are inconsistent (you get 0.78 on one row and a number in the millions on another row).

Google Refine lets you very easily hone in on those inconsistencies and fix them in a myriad of ways. This is an important data tool because those heaps of messy data are often public records, which are available but not transparent; being able to quickly analyze them could expose some very interesting patterns and anomalies in the way that public institutions and governments behave.

[Thanks, Yanksy, for the tip!]

Continue reading Google Refine lets you fix and handle huge, messy sets of data

Google Refine lets you fix and handle huge, messy sets of data originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 17 Nov 2010 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Two quick ways to read library e-books on your iPhone or iPad with Bluefire

Two quick ways to read library e-books on your iPhone or iPad with Bluefire originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 16 Nov 2010 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Reeder for iPad updated for iOS 4.2 with background syncing originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 16 Nov 2010 07:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.