Filed under: Fun, Games, Time-Wasters

Micro Olympics is a simple,yet addictive Flash-based game that brings wasting time and shooting things out of a cannon to a whole new level.

There are three varieties of Micro Olympics, the original, Micro Olympics on Mars and Micro Olympics Christmas. All three have the same guiding principal: shoot your plane, flying saucer or Santa's sled further than your competitor.

You control the height of your launch by clicking on the cannon and stopping at your desired angle. The velocity of the launch is then chosen by when you click on the canon as you see the velocity increase and decrease. Match the right angle with high enough velocity and you're golden.

In each round you are given three opportunities to best your competitors average distance. After each launch session, you are awarded points based on distance, bonus points dependent on other features and money that can be used at the end of each round to buy add-ons that will help you obtain higher distances, either through power-ups or bonus points.

The first few rounds are pretty easy, but after that, I got stuck and had to start playing with power-ups to increase my distance. Thirty minutes later, I finally remembered that I better start writing up this post instead of playing Micro Olympics.

The graphics are pretty hilarious, especially when landing (Christmas Olympics is worth a play just to see how Santa lands in the snow -- adorable). The sounds are fun too, but office workers might want to make sure that you disable the effects and background music or mute your workstation before playing.

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Filed under: Photo, Utilities

If you, like us, capture and edit a lot of screenshots, the new version of SnagIt might interest you. We have covered past versions so let's focus on what's new with 9.0.

Version 9 adds a sequential capture feature, automatic or custom tagging, visual bookmarking, ribbon-based menus, multi-image capabilities, a quick access toolbar and other features. The TechSmith web page lists better work flow as one of the main new features. You can decide if you want to capture everyhing and edit later or capture one image, edit, capture another, edit, etc.

The version is free to try and $49.95 to purchase.

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Filed under: Internet, Web services, Google, Googleholic, web 2.0

Welcome to Googleholic, your weekly fix of everything Google.

In this, yes, we're alive edition:

• Google tests automatic Blogger support for Google Reader
• Gmail adds "never send it to Spam" filter
• CalDAV support comes to Google Calendar
• Multilingual Google
• Google Maps transit directions come to more phones

Continue reading Googleholic for August 1, 2008

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Filed under: Internet, Web services

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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

With the number of apps I'm downloading steadily on the rise, I'm always on the lookout for tools to simplify the process for me. QWinApt aims to give us poor Windows users a utility with the same killer functionality of Linux's Synaptic package manager. It's a great idea, and an improvement from Win-get (which Brad reviewed in 2007), but it's still not quite up to par with its Linux cousins.

Getting QWinApt running requires two small downloads, the core app itself and wget to actually do the downloading. Extract them both to the same folder, launch the executable and you're on your way. All that's left is to choose a location for your downloads, and the package manager will open.

The graphical frontend is clean and simple (we'll overlook grammar and spelling - it's free, right?) and breaks down applications into main categories. Those categories are repeated in your download folder, so when you check an app (or apps) and hit apply, they'll download into the matching folder.

Then you're on your own. Unlike Linux the installers won't launch silently, you'll have to soldier through them yourself, which is QWinApt's biggest limitation. If you maintain an app store on a file server, however, it does offer a simple way to bulk download a number of good quality apps without having to visit dozens of different websites.

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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

DM2 looks like any other shell enhancer at first, offering all the expected tweaks: it'll minimize apps to the system tray or to floating icons, hide, align, and change opacity of windows, and roll up windows to the title bar. With DM2, however, that's just the beginning.

Minimize, restore, and maximize just aren't enough options, so DM2 amps them up by letting you add right-click and control, alt, and shift click actions to them via the app's control center. For example, I've set right click on the minimize button to roll up, right click close to send to tray, and shift + right click close hides my window. But wait, it gets better.

Continue reading DM2: Window Management Wizardry

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