The Download Blog: Software tips, news, and opinions from Download.com editors

Gmail comes to the desktop in gadget form

Josh Lowensohn — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 22:30:00 GMT

(Credit: Google)

Google has put out an official Gmail gadget for its Google Desktop product, giving users the option to run multiple instances of different Gmail accounts as standalone gadgets. The tool includes several useful Gmail features like keyboard shortcuts, mail, and contact search, along with the option to star messages. Users can also compose messages in a little pop-out window, which keeps them from having to fire up their browser.

The app is currently Windows-only and requires Google Desktop version 5 or higher, leaving Mac and Linux users of Google Desktop out in the cold. Anyone looking to use Amnesty's Generator program to convert it for other platforms like OS X's Dashboard are also out of luck, as Google has not offered it as an iGoogle, Web-ready widget.

Google Calendar officially comes to Apple's iCal

Josh Lowensohn — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Google on Monday formally announced full support for the CalDAV protocol along with the release of a small piece of software for Mac computers that lets users easily link up their Google Calendars with the iCal application.

Google had previously launched CalDAV support back in late July, however, consumers had to manually add their calendars directly to CalDAV-supporting applications like Mozilla Sunbird and Apple's iCal. The new Mac utility, named "Calaboration" simply lets users plug in their Google Calendar username and password to send Google calendars over to iCal. The benefit of doing this is the two-way sync. This means whatever changes you make on either end will be synced up to both every few minutes.

I gave Calaboration a spin this morning, and after restarting iCal, it worked without problems. With the current implementation you're able to see other people's schedules, as well as reply yes, no, or maybe to calendar invitations. The only problems I ran into early on were syncing errors where iCal would not let me write data to Google's servers, which was remedied with a closing and reopening of the program after the initial CalDAV setup.

You can grab Calaboration here. If you're a Sunbird user, there's a simple provider extension that does the same thing.

Calaboration lets you pick which Google Calendars you want to sync up with iCal. The same thing can be done in Mozilla's Sunbird or any other calendaring tool with CalDAV support.

(Credit: Google)

MySpace helps develop OpenID extension for Flock

Caroline McCarthy — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 13:00:00 GMT

There's a new OpenID extension for "social browser" Flock, and it was created with the help of password management service Vidoop and News Corp.-owned social network MySpace.

It's now available for download for all Flock users who have upgraded to Flock 2.0. For MySpace, which initially announced its support for OpenID back in July, this is also a push for Data Availability, a universal-login project that the social network announced in May but has since only rolled out with a few partners.

Yahoo, one of MySpace's launch partners for Data Availability, has also thrown its weight behind OpenID.

"As three companies dedicated to empowering users to easily share content and experiences, this was a very rewarding--and relatively fast--collaboration," Max Engel, MySpace's Data Availability product manager, said in a release. "Our goal was to eliminate some of the work involved in jumping between social experiences on the Web so that people can focus on their connections and the incredible content that's out there. This Flock extension will give millions of people an easier way to expand their experiences and expression without boundaries."

The OpenID Flock extension allows for easier credential management within the browser and makes it more apparent when a site will accept an OpenID login. A handful of OpenID extensions already exist for the open-source Flock, but this one's got the seal of approval from some big names.

There are deeper reasons for MySpace being so vocal about OpenID support, though. The standard has seen its toughest rival yet in the form of Facebook Connect, a data-portability project which enjoyed a high-profile New York Times writeup this week and will reportedly be ready for a full debut very soon. (It's already been implemented on a number of sites.)

Flock, unfortunately, isn't an enormous player in the browser space. It has tons of bells and whistles, but is still well behind the likes of Internet Explorer and Firefox in terms of downloads, and has newfound competition from Google's Chrome.

Regardless, MySpace has been paying a lot of lip service to open standards recently, and it's always good to see real developments.

Featured Freeware: FileMenu Tools

Seth Rosenblatt — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 08:00:00 GMT

Nothing less than a boon for users looking to manage their file menus, freeware utility FileMenu Tools focuses on function with a simple interface. Most users should have no problem quickly learning to use FileMenu Tools to bend Windows to their will, but a detailed Help file is available for novices.

Operating FileMenu Tools merely means manipulating select pull-downs and function icons. Users choose a menu and use the Actions function list to add commands, submenus, or separators. Deleting and moving menu items also takes only a click. Clicking a menu item displays basic function descriptions and properties when available. Adding commands is the app's power function. Advanced users familiar with element types, extensions, and variable manipulation won't have any problems correctly filling in all fields for new commands. Other users will find the Help file answers most questions. After just a few minutes, most will have a new command added to a favorite menu.

FileMenu Tools proves that helpful, high performance utilities can come at no cost. The application performs well, functions are logical presented and easily learned, and it improves on basic Windows operation.

FARR goes the distance

Seth Rosenblatt — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 01:40:00 GMT

Find and Run Robot keeps your hands right where you want them, if you're a keyboard addict. This launcher seems to have been designed for people who want to keep their digits pounding the plastic, so every step of the program has been keyed for those with quick fingers.

FARR uses a quick key combo, the arrow keys, or your mouse to launch programs and files.

(Credit: Donation Coder)

Hit the Pause/Break key to bring up the launching window, and as you type FARR narrows down your choices. Search results are numbered and automatically sorted using built-in scoring systems unique to the program. If you want returned result number 9, for example, simply type ALT-9 and hit enter--there's no need to touch the mouse or continue typing a longer string. A Launch History tab keeps track of what you've launched.

While the launching and searching functions are fairly basic, the options are almost overwhelming. Users can do nearly anything with the application, from adjusting the font size, style, and color to monitoring your clipboard, taking basic screen captures, Web searches, customizing hot keys, and calculation functions. FARR is also fully portable, making this a must-have whether you're on a desktop or a laptop.

Running in your system tray, FARR is innocuous and uses little RAM. The installer weighs in at about 5.5MB, while it chews up not even 7MB as it runs. Given that there are more than a dozen pages of settings you can tweak in the options menu, you may want to stay clear if you're the indecisive type. Otherwise, Find and Run Robot should keep you rockin'.

Five financial Android apps to regulate your dough

Jessica Dolcourt — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 22:41:00 GMT

With the economy in continuing decline, keeping tight control over your money is no longer just for obsessives. These financial apps for Google Android help you count every penny.

Personal Budget Droid is a simple budget- and bills-tracker that lets you create multiple monthly budgets for groceries, housing costs, and so on. You enter every budget name and transaction by hand, but the app keeps a transaction history and calculates how much you have left for each category.

The more sophisticated FireWallet works with budgets inside various accounts and protects your information behind a four-digit pin you change from the all-zero default. It's a bit trickier to navigate, but also shoehorns in more options. In addition to a more refined interface, FireWallet has graphs and charts to help visualize your spending, and a rudimentary tool to alert you of upcoming bills. Both it and Personal Budget Droid are missing templates and more powerful features to optionally suck in real-time data from your checking, savings, and stock portfolios. Time for a mobile version of Mint?

Flick to either side for a calc that rounds up; up or down gets you a breakdown of numbers to pass around.

(Credit: TouchTip)

TouchTip is our current favorite tip calculator for Google Android. Flick a finger left or right to slide between a simple tip calculator that rounds up to the nearest dollar or ten dollars, and one featuring a ten-digit keypad. Both views use the bill total, tax, and number of diners to calculate your total payment. Flicking up or down produces a breakdown of what you owe that you can pass around the table to friends.

Personal Tip Jar hails from the same developer as Personal Budget Droid, and shares a few visual characteristics, including a useless "news" tab. Yet Tip Jar is a great niche nod to those whose incomes are built substantially on tips. While a fuller budgeting app could easily accommodate gains from tipping, this application provides a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly summary at a glance.

Stock apps on Android are extremely mediocre, but the simply named Stock App is better than other skeletal tickers. This one opens with Dow, Nasdaq, S&P 500, Yahoo, and Google presets. You can add your own by pressing the menu key, and can browse frequently traded stocks. Stock App displays the value and percentage change up front; double-tap an entry to see more stats. While it's functional, Android is sorely missing the completeness of a stock-tracker like Bloomberg for iPhone. Get to it, developers.

Google reveals Chrome extensions plan

Stephen Shankland — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 18:58:00 GMT

Google has published its plan to build into Chrome what is arguably its most requested feature: the ability to accept extensions that can customize how the open-source Web browser operates.

And guess what? Google's dependence on advertising notwithstanding, one of the extension examples the company points to is the ability to block advertisements.

The Chrome extensions document, spotlighted Saturday by Google programmer Aaron Boodman, doesn't include a timeline, but it does shed light on why the project is a priority for Chromium, the open-source project behind Chrome.

"Chromium can't be everything to all people," according to the document. "User-created extensions have been proposed to solve these problems: the addition of features that have specific or limited appeal; users coming from other browsers who are used to certain extensions that they can't live without; bundling partners who would like to add features to Chromium specific to their bundle."

When Google launched Chrome three months ago, it promised a Chrome extensions framework. Extensions are a popular feature of Chrome's most likely rival, Mozilla's Firefox, and one very popular extension is AdBlock Plus.

And AdBlock makes a specific appearance on the list of extension uses that Google said it would like to support eventually:

• Bookmarking/navigation tools: Delicious Toolbar, StumbleUpon, Web-based history, new tab page clipboard accelerators.
• Content enhancements: Skype extension (clickable phone numbers), RealPlayer extension (save video), Autolink (generic microformat data--addresses, phone numbers, etc.)
• Content filtering: AdBlock, Flashblock, privacy control, parental control
• Download helpers: video helpers, download accelerators, DownThemAll, FlashGot
• Features: ForecastFox, FoxyTunes, Web Of Trust, GooglePreview, BugMeNot

Demand for extensions is real.

In an unscientific CNET News poll about why people don't use Chrome, about 19 percent pointed to the lack of an extensions feature. And on Google's issue tracking site for Chromium, a Chrome extensions feature is the top-requested item.

"Of all the Firefox plug-ins, this is the one essential one," said Firefox user Ole Eichhorn. "Chrome is faster until you factor in all the cruft that gets downloaded as ads, then it isn't faster anymore. When Chrome supports AdBlock, it will be the winner, but until it does, Firefox is the only choice."

In its document, Google described some of its goals for Chrome extensions. The extensions should silently update, just like Chrome does. They should be isolated for security reasons and only get access to resources it's entitled to use. Installation should be easy, taking only two clicks.

They should permit rich user interface options--rich enough to implement some parts of Chrome as extensions, Google said. Among the interface options should be "toolbars, sidebars, content scripts (for Greasemonkey-like functionality), and content filtering (for parental filters, malware filters, or AdBlock-like functionality)," Google said. Some interfaces will require the user to grant specific permissions, such as "access to the history database" or "access to mail.google.com," Google said.

Google will play a major role in extensions, providing a central service that can be used to issue updates and to blacklist "malicious or harmful extensions" so the browser won't use them.

"It's likely in the future we may want to provide a consumer front-end which would allow users to more easily find the most popular, highest quality and trustworthy extensions," Google also said.

Featured Freeware: Portable FeedReader

Seth Rosenblatt — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 08:00:00 GMT

The world is full of feed readers. Portable FeedReader's claim to fame is its portability, obviously, but there's more to like than just being able to cram it on your USB drive with room to spare.

The program offers a standard RSS feed-reading interface with three vertical panes. One lists the feeds, the second shows the titles of the selected feeds stories, and the third serves as a viewer. Although the panes' width can be changed by clicking and dragging, the viewer pane is a bit narrow to comfortably read a typical Web page story. Portable FeedReader offers at launch selections from preloaded feeds, and adding a feed is a simple process.

Occasionally, the reader didn't respect the default browser settings and opened a new browser window instead of a new tab, but that's largely a minor quibble. Whether a novice or an expert, Portable FeedReader is worth trying out. And the price can't be beat.

Round numbers: 10,000 iPhone apps?

Jonathan Skillings — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:54:00 GMT

How many iPhone apps does it take to make 10,000? It all depends on how you do the counting.

(Credit: 148Apps)

Apple watchers this weekend have been ruminating on the overall tally and on the counting methods following a report on 148Apps, a site that keeps tabs on iPhone applications, seen here in its entirety:

In just 142 days, the iPhone OS app store has added over 10,000 apps! An amazing feat for any platform. To commemorate this we've put up a special page. More on this after the weekend.
10,000 apps!

(We'll hazard a guess that there are actually on the order of 10K mini icons on that "10,000 apps!" special page. A listing to the right side of all those icons gives the total number of apps as 10,091.)

MacRumors.com, meanwhile, quibbles with the overall number, even as it says the actual 10,000 active app mark should be reached "in the next few days":

While several sites have reported that 10,000 iPhone Apps have been released into the App Store, the actual number of active iPhone apps that can be downloaded is about 9,676 as of today's count. The discrepancy comes from the fact that many apps have been removed from the App Store for various reasons (trademark infringement, discontinued apps, pulled and released).

The biggest category of iPhone apps, according to 148Apps, is games (2,333), followed by entertainment (1,122), utilities (1,015), education (737), and productivity (517). The average cost of the apps is listed at $3.12; about one-quarter are free of charge, while one is listed at $899.99.

Featured Freeware: WinFlog

Seth Rosenblatt — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 08:00:00 GMT

This handy pair of executables adds muscle to the monitor's power-off function. WinFlog's small multitabbed interface offers four easily invoked functions. WinFlogTurnOff's executable needs no interface as the application simply and immediately turns off the monitor.

Operating WinFlog is very easy, especially for XP users. The program's primary tab lists two options to add a Turn Off Monitor option to the My Computer Icon right-click menu and to the desktop right-click menu. The functions are just as easily removed from the menus using single-click buttons on the same tab. The program's second tab uses a similar set of buttons to add Turn Off Aero and Turn On Aero options to the My Computer icon's right-click menu. Only Vista users will benefit from this option.

Both freeware executables offer useful monitor control functions for any level user.