Filed under: Video, News

We recently reported on Netflix' decision to get rid of their profile feature, a decision that was not at all popular with customers. Here at Download Squad, we got several comments bemoaning the company's poor judgment and threatening to cancel their subscriptions to the service. Apparently, our readers were not alone. Thanks to pressure from calls, emails and petitions, Netflix has realize their error of their ways and agreed to keep profiles.

Today, Netflix users received this email:

"You spoke and we listened. We are keeping Profiles. Thank you for all the calls and emails telling us how important Profiles are.

We are sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused. We hope the next time you hear from us we will delight, and not disappoint you.

-Your friends at Netflix"

This is completely brilliant on the part of Netflix. They're going to get more goodwill from listening to users and keeping profiles than they ever lost by theatening to take them away. For users, nothing has changed, but the public perception of Netflix is bound to go up, now.

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Filed under: Internet, Search

Sure, Wikipedia may be one of the best places on the internet to find information on just about anything in a hurry, but what about when you're stuck in an elevator during a blackout and you can't remember who wrote The Republic? Relax! Pocket Wikipedia provides quick access to important articles offline - and on just about any kind of device.

The download includes about 24,000 images and over 14 million words covering about 5,000 articles. Each one has been carefully hand-picked from Wikipedia's massive repository of community-assembled knowledge to avoid some of the more important omissions from Wikipedia's own Cd-Rom version Pocket Wikipedia is currently available for Windows, Linux, and PocketPC only.

Want it? Keep in mind the old adage "All good things come to those who wait." None of the mirrors we found were all that fast, but it's too good a download to ignore.

[via Best Freeware and Lifehacker]

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Filed under: Photo, Web services, web 2.0

Web based image editors have been popping up for some time now. Even the de facto image editor Photoshop couldn't resist setting up shop. But sometimes you just want to simply resize or crop a photo and not be inadated with a multitude of tools and swatches. Enter picjuice, an online image editor with simplicity in mind.

As soon as you pull up the site it's clear that "ease of use" was the main objective here. The only tools available are Crop, Resize, Flip, Rotate and Adjust.

The controls for each tools are simple as well, depending on the tool selected you either get an A or B option, a slider or in the case of the Crop tool, a cross hair to select the area you want to use. These simple controls will aid in a shorter learning curve over the more feature rich sites.

In our testing we actually found the resizing tool here better than the one available from Photoshop Express. In Express, the resized image looked jagged but not in picjuice . However, the site seemed to be only compatible with JPG or PNG files as when we tried a GIF file picjuice would hang when we tried to edit the image.

Currently in beta, picjuice joins the already crowded online imaging arena. Hopefully, its limited get down to business attitude will help to differentiate itself from the competition.

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Filed under: Fun, Blogging

If your blog is looking a bit lonely why not get it a pet to keep it company? There are many sites that specialize in the creation of these Tamogotchi like characters but one site that caught our attention was doll-doll because instead of animals the creators decided to make them like little people.

Once you've selected a doll, customized and name it, you then copy a line of code containing your doll's information to your blog. From there, your little doll will live on your site. And like Tamogotchis of the past, you are responsible for it's well being by making sure you feed it regularly. If you slack off in caring for your doll, it may die.

Visitors to your site can also play with your doll and kill it as well (usually by giving it bad food). But unless you are the owner of the doll, death by visitors isn't permanent.

This is probably a good thing as you can imagine how many drive by killings might occur.

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Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Macintosh, Freeware, Social Software, web 2.0

Cocoalicious is a really slick -- but, unfortunately, Mac-only -- dedicated browser for your Del.icio.us bookmarks. If you're a bookmarking junkie, and you have way more sites saved to Del.icio.us than you could ever hope to keep track of, this could be an ideal solution for you. It's laid out a bit like Apple Mail, with your tags running down the left side, your bookmarks on top, and a browser pane at the bottom.

You can put bookmarks directly into Cocoalicious -- it syncs with your Del.icio.us account -- or use the bookmarklet to add stuff to Cocoalicious straight from your browser. This way you can take advantage of autocompletion, tagging by dragging, and other features that make Del.icio.us easier. Cocoalicious also supports Spotlight, so you can search for your bookmarks straight from the Finder!


[via Lifehacker]

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Filed under: Audio, Internet, Video, Web services, Search, web 2.0

We'll let you in on a little secret: There are a ton of music videos and live performances on YouTube. What? You knew that? Well, then you also probably know how hard it can be to find every song on an album and play it in order. YouTube is really designed for searching for videos one at a time. But Jogli helps organize the mess.

Jogli is basically a search engine and music video player. Search for an artist and Jogli will bring up a list of possible results. Click an artist name and you'll find a list of albums. Click an album and you'll be presented with a list of songs. In many cases not each song is clickable, but many are.

When you hit the play button, a YouTube video will start playing in the corner. But you can also queue up additional songs and even search for new songs without stopping your recording. Jogli is a lot like MyStrands, another site we covered earlier this year. But the way Jogli organizes songs by artist and album sets it apart from the competition.

Thanks Chen!

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Filed under: Fun, Games

Sometimes you just want to unwind with a simple flash game. Nothing overly complicated and to involved, just a simple one mouse click game. And Ferry Halim of Orisinal fame has created such a game called Sunny Day Sky.

The goal of the game is to simply glide from car to car using your umbrella . And the only control given is a click of your mouse button to open and close the umbrella. Points are given for the number of cars that can be passed and of course the more you pass in a single jump the higher the points.

The graphics and the colors used gives the game a very soft and inviting feel to it. The music reminds us of the Happy Working Song from Disney's Enchanted (not that we listen to the soundtrack here or anything like that).

So if you're just looking for a simple one click game to zone out with, give Sunny Day Sky a shot.

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Filed under: Security, Windows, Microsoft, Freeware

So you're thinking, "Hey, I want to be totally irresponsible with my computer and load it up with crapware!" Really, isn't everyone getting tired of having to be so stinking responsible on the Internet all the time? We certainly are. We're ready for system protection that isn't afraid of our reckless browsing, indiscriminate downloading, and general apathy towards good computer usage habits.

...Which is why we love Windows Steady State. It creates a cache file in which your operating system operates, meaning any harmful changes can be undone by simply emptying the cache. After downloading it's a snap to install - just a few obligatory clicks and the usual EULA mumbo-jubmo and you're set.

Our first test was pretty a pretty low-intensity workout. We surfed, bookmarked, set up a POP account and downloaded a few messages, and cluttered up the desktop with a dozen or so hilariously named folders. After issuing the old Windows - U - R we waited anxiously for the system to reboot.

There it was, just as it had been before - no trace of any of our activity. The desktop was still tidy, no favorites or emails were anywhere to be seen. So far so good, but let's try some real abuse!

Continue reading Windows Steady State Bulletproofs Your System

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Filed under: Design, Fun, Internet, web 2.0

Imagine you had a drawing program in which you couldn't draw what you wanted because each tool had a mind of its own. Also imagine you couldn't select the colors to use as it would decide it for you. If this is your idea for a drawing program then you should definitely check out bomomo.

In all fairness, bomomo never claimed to replace any drawing program you may be already be using. Actually, it never claims to be anything really. Maybe its just a web based application that just draws shapes in pastel like colors.

Using bomomo is pretty self explanatory. Select an available brush/tool and start moving your mouse around while holding your button to draw. Shapes are random so don't expect to be able to draw right angles or parallel lines, just think organic.

Bomomo might be used more for the creation of abstract art instead of drafting up plans for a multi story building so that may explain the hours of frustration we had while trying to use the program. Then again we're not really art experts as we think the velvet picture of dogs playing poker is a classic.

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Filed under: OS Updates, Linux, Open Source, Canonical

Never one to rest on their laurels, the Ubuntu team is hard at work on the next cutting edge version of their popular distro, Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex (who the heck names these releases?).

As with most other Ubuntu alphas, there isn't much to write home about yet. However, much to our surprise, it has a new interface theme, for the first time since Dapper Drake. "That ugly brown theme", as many people on the internet referred to it, has been the standard on Ubuntu for over a year now, and you either love it or hate it.

"NewHuman" takes the art of Ubuntu in a new direction, and only time will tell if it makes it into the final release, scheduled for October of this year. Those who are interested in participating in the testing process may download an ISO image from the official site. As always, the Alpha versions are not recommended for production machines, so distro shufflers need not apply.

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