Blots is an addictive game that has a concept which will be very familiar to those of you who remember “Lemmings“.

You guide your troop of “blots” along lines which you draw, in order to guide them to their exit safely. But the lines fade away after a while, so watch out! There is also other things such as being able to draw a line between fire and bombs in order to create a “fuse” and therefore blow holes in walls. You may also burrow through some types of ground in some levels.

This is a cool little game that’s sure to please (or frustrate!) fans of that old classic game “Lemmings”.

Have a go and see for yourself!

When you are talking about the sky, you are talking about something that people love.  During the space race of the 1950s and 1960s and ever since, the concept of space and space travel has inspired us as a race to go for bigger and better things and the idea of charting and exploring space has indeed long been in the minds of many children around the world.   In order to keep that dream fresh, those children of course start with the night sky and with Stellarium for Windows you can download a free program that allows you to make sure that even when the sky is cloudy, your child has a chance to look at the night sky in wonderment.

What exactly is Stellarium?  It is a graphical representation of the night sky.   You can change it to different times during the day and different sun angles as well as of course looking at the sky at night.  You can add or remove lines that point out all of the different constellations and of course you can even go so far as to look at the sky from different points on our lovely planet Earth.   One of the main drawbacks of really looking up at the sky, the one point of view, is something that has been defeated by the use of computer software and therefore your child can get a fantastic education all while spending more time looking at something they already love.

More info can be found at http://stellarium.sourceforge.net/

There are so many different ways for people to chat nowadays and one way that is really starting to pick up steam is video conferencing. Whether it is being done for business reasons or for pure personal reasons, there might be times when editing what is being sent out to the other people in the video conversation would be prudent. For businesses, it might be someone accidentally divulging something and for personal chat it might be something embarrassing action wise such as a burp or a cough. Either way, people will want to edit that annoying stuff out and now with AV Webcam Morpher 1.0 you can do exactly that.

There are so many different ways for a person to use the AV Webcam Morpher that it is really crazy! Not only can you change the tone of your voice to make yourself sound like someone completely different than who you are, but at the same time you can also use hundreds of different video effects in order for people to get things across that are closer to what they want to portray. With all of the neat effects that people have been able to come up with for the AV Webcam Morpher, it is no doubt whatsoever that it is definitely the real deal.

More info can be found at http://www.audio4fun.com/

So you’ve just recorded your oh so interesting or hilarious video clip. Next thing to do is share it with the world right?

It takes a lot of time and patience to go around to multiple video sites such as Google Video, YouTube etc. to submit your video. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was some way to do them all at the one time?

Well if you have “Video Clip Submitter” thats exactly what you can do. It’s available in three different versions, express, silver, and gold, the only real difference being the amount of sites it submits to. So if you’re a keen maker and uploader of videos, this may save you a lot of time!

Check it out here.

BS Player is yet another media player, but its one that’s worth checking out. Maybe you don’t like the standard media players such as Windows media player? (You wouldn’t be alone!) How about using this skinnable, highly functional media player that has some useful features.

BS Player plays LOTS of types of video and audio files (check out the homepage below for the full list), it also has some advanced features like TV output settings, aspect ratio adjustment, Multilingual interface, subtitles (all types), media library, skins, hotkeys, etc.

60 million users worldwide and its availability in 90 languages says a lot of people like this player, so go see or yourself. (One negative thing to say though, adware in the free version!)

Click here for more info and more details of its features.

Ever close a file only to realize that you still want to edit it and don’t feel like navigating back to it just to re-open it? Ever wish you could load any program on your computer within two seconds without even having to touch your mouse? Well, a freeware Windows application called “Launchy” takes care of this for you. All you have to do is hit a a keyboard combination on your keyboard to load Launchy, which is just a small input dialog box, and then start typing what you’re looking for on your computer and Launchy will find it for you.

Launchy will even guess what you’re looking for based off limited information. For example, if you just typed “oshop” Launchy would show you “Photoshop CS2” (if you have Photoshop CS2 installed), along with any other files on your computer that have the string “oshop” in them. You then pick which entry you want to launch from the drop-down menu Launchy presents and viola!

By default, the hotkey combination Launchy uses is “Alt+Spacebar”. However, this hotkey is the standard Windows hotkey to open the shortcut menu on Windows applications (the menu that let’s you minimize/maximize/restore/etc windows) and I like using Alt+Space+X to quickly maximize windows without using my mouse so I changed the hotkey in Launchy’s preferences to ‘Win+Space’ so that I can just press the Windows Logo key (located directly next to the Alt key) and spacebar to load Launchy. (more…)

There are a number of important things in the world today and while Windows XP does have a lot of interesting stuff to it, there are certainly other things that it could benefit from having as well.  For example, there are a number of different things that can be incorporated into the Windows XP install CD through the use of this addon pack.  It was a pack created by Ryan VanderMeulen and it includes a number of useful addons that people interested in getting additional functionality out of Windows XP might want to take a close look at.

Some of these include:

• Shell extensions for the copy to and move to functions that are available in file manipulation;
• HashTab 1.9; a specific program that increases the functionality of Windows XP;
• Microsoft Calculator Plus 1.0; a replacement for the calculator file that normally comes with Windows XP and an upgrade in terms of what you can actually do with the calculator itself;
• MS HighMAT CD Writing wizard;
• MS Make Cab;
• An extension to the font properties and the OpenType fonts that come already with Windows XP;
• A remote desktop client; something that is lacking in the original Windows XP install.

More information can be found at http://www.ryanvm.net/msfn/updatepack.html

There are always times in life when we need to have some of our important information stored. Whether you are talking about the school notes that you want to use for the test, the work notes that are top secret or the phone number of that girl you just got at the bar last night (wink), you need a place to store information that you want not only to be kept safe, but also to be kept secret. InfoCryptor refers to itself as being a multi-user secure information storage application and upon taking a closer look at what it actually has the ability to do, this turns out to be exactly the case at hand.

Whether you are looking to store text documents, notes, passwords, e-mails, security codes, diagnostics or anything else, you will find a way to store it with ease with InfoCryptor. The interface is very easy to use so that you don’t have to spend hours accessing the information that you want to keep safe. More impressive than anything else perhaps is how amazing the software itself actually is. InfoCryptor can be your friend and your assistant all bundled up in one and this ultimately is why it has become so popular amongst so many different people.

More info can be found at http://www.cynapse.co.in/infocryptor/index.php

In the latest updated version recently released, Cynapse InfoCryptor 1.50.1203, the Major change is the fixed component update URL.

One of the most important things in today’s world has to be without a doubt the idea of programming.  It’s all around us in today’s world and object oriented programming in particular has definitely become a very useful skill to have. Of all of the different object oriented languages around, C++ is perhaps the most used one. Along with its sister languages of C# and C (the original one of the series), it has been a great help to a lot of programmers to build the software of their dreams.

Few things in the realm of computer science are more satisfying than putting the finishing touches on a piece of programming and with the Code::Blocks Studio you can have that satisfaction again and again in a way that is much easier than what those old time program compilers would have you do.

Gone are the days of looking at the blue screen with the yellow text; gone are the days where you had no functionality whatsoever! This program allows you to write and compile your C++ software in a method that provides you exceptional functionality in a package that is exceptionally user friendly. Programmers sometimes fear user friendliness because they fear it cuts back on functionality; but this software is the exception to that rule.  

Give it a try and you’ll see why! More information can be found at http://www.codeblocks.org/ 

More and more nowadays, it is getting more important for people that want to be in on the full pleasure of the Internet to have a way to convert from one audio format to another.  Whether you are just an interested bystander that is recording stuff on your computer or alternatively a very tech savvy person that wants to expand your knowledge of digital sound, then the HarddiskOgg 2.51 is definitely the piece of software that you absolutely can not afford to be without.

What’s so great about HarddiskOgg 2.51?  Well, what it does is it takes a wave format input stream, such as the one that you might generate from talking from your microphone into the computer, and it converts that wave input stream into an actual format stream different from the wave file you originally started with.

The best part about this is that it actually has the ability to do this in real time so you can actually get some excellent Ogg Vorbis hard disk recordings in real time as you generate the wave file and have that file changed to the Ogg Vorbis format.  The spectacular nature of the program combined with its very easy to use interface prompted one person that was reviewing it to simply just say “I love it” and leave it at that.

More information can be found at its website at http://www.fridgesoft.de/harddiskogg.php