Filed under: Utilities, Office, Web services

Deadline is a really great web-based alternative to the standard desktop to-do apps. There are several ways to interact with it and access your to-do list, including via Jabber/Google Talk, through Atom, RSS and iCal feeds, and email. Deadline understands input in natural language, so you can write something like, "call mom on Tuesday," and the web app will schedule it appropriately.

The Deadline UI is well-designed and not distracting, with edit and delete buttons readily accessible next to each item. Inspired by Twitter, to-do items have a 140 character cap to accomodate SMS support (which is forthcoming for Deadline, but not quite there yet). The 140 limitation doesn't have much practical effect, because date, time and location information can be submitted through brief natural language, no fancy syntax involved. There's an XML API, too, if you want to experiment with Deadline yourself.

Deadline - simplest web calendar ever? originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Design, Mods, Web

Is there anything more addictive than Twitter? If you're in full-blown Twitter addiction, you might be looking to spruce up your Twitter profile page. While you can change a few of the colors, the most effective way to differentiate your Twitter profile is to change the background image. If you want something professionally done that will really wow people, check out Twitter Image. They've done free designs for a number of well-known twitterers, and you can browse through screenshots of the professional designs they've done. Or, if you like, you can browse their currently two pages of royalty-free generic background images.

The free ones are part of a limited time offer that Twitter Image is offering for popular twitterers. If you have more than 2000 followers, Twitter Image will create you a custom background for free. For everyone else, they are currently offering 25% off (or more) of the $100 price, though the "or more" part is not clearly defined.

What I'm wondering is if there is actually anyone out there that is willing to shell out $100 for a background image for their Twitter page? While I'm not a heavy Twitter user, I follow over 100 people regularly, but do so almost entirely through client applications - in my case, Twitterrific on both my Mac and my iPhone. I could care less what background is on my own Twitter page, much less those of the people I follow - in fact, I find the customizations either forgettable, or annoying.

Am I out to lunch? Is there a market for $100 background images? Where do you stand? Let me know in the comments.

Custom Twitter backgrounds, only $100 unless you're popular originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Internet, E-mail, Productivity, Web services

If you're not a power-user of RSS feeds, or if you are, but RSS just isn't fast enough for you, notify.me might be just what you're looking for. Notify.me sends updates from any site with an RSS feed directly to your IM, SMS, or email. Facebook, Twitter and Craigslist are just a few of the popular use cases.

To make notify.me even easier to use, there's a browser bookmarklet you can add, to avoid any copy, pasting or typing when you want to add notifications. You also get a username@notify.me email address, which you can sign up to various email lists with, and then use notify.me to direct those messages whereever you want to receive them. A desktop app that will catch all your notifications is coming soon, and you can already see it in action in the notify.me demo video.

Notify.me: get site updates via IM, SMS or email originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Mozilla, Beta, Browsers

Mozilla has added a tab tearing feature to Firefox 3.1 beta, which can best be explained by saying, "watch the video above." But in a nutshell, what tab tearing lets you do is drag and drop tabs, not just within your browser window, but outside of it as well. For example, you can click and drag a tab outside of your Firefox window and it will open a new browser instance. Or you can grab a tab from one browser window into another browser instance.

Now before you say anything, yes, I know that the Opera web browser has been able to do this for ages, and Google Chrome has supported similar behavior since it was launched. But that doesn't make mean it's not nice to see the feature come to Firefox. It takes more than innovation to make a good web browser. You also have to be willing to recognize good ideas where you find them and be willing to implement them in your product.

[via Mozilla Links]

Firefox 3.1 beta adds new tab functions originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: News, web 2.0

Newsified is a simple, but brilliant, idea. Take your favorite social news sites, the ones you normally read on the web or through RSS, and lay them out like ... a newspaper. It's an old-school approach that actually proves really useful when it comes to deep sites like Metafilter and Digg. You only see a small percentage of the popular content on the front pages of these sites, but Newsified gives a broader view at a glance.

Newsified pages exist for 6 sites so far: Digg, Reddit, Metafilter, Mixx, Delicious and YouTube. It takes the most popular front-page content from those sites and puts it in a prominent position at the top of the page. Then, as you read down, you'll see the deeper content that you might have missed, laid out in convenient capsule form for your consumption. It's a quick, fun way to read news. In fact, I like the concept so much that I'm giving it a try as my homepage this week.

Newsified gives your favorite social news sites a new look originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Internet, Security, Windows, Commercial, Freeware

ZoneAlarm has been around for years, and is still one of the most popular Windows firewall programs around (about 1.6 million CNET downloads to date).

As reported on gHacks, Checkpoint will be giving away the 2009 Pro version tomorrow - complete with one year of updates. We're not sure about the exact URL for the promotion, but gHacks thinks it will probably be associated with this address.

ZoneAlarm Pro adds anti-spyware protection to ZoneAlarm's firewall product. Pair that with your favorite antivirus program, and you have a full security suite!

The latest version of the ZoneAlarm family has received good reviews. CNET Australia reviewed ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite 2009 and said, "ZoneAlarm Internet Security 2009 provides top-notch fundamental security protection that is light on system resources, allowing you to work unencumbered." It's also a perennial favorite of PC World, winning Editor's Choice awards four years in a row.

If you're not a fan of ZoneAlarm, you may want to check out Comodo's latest offering.

We'll see if the Checkpoint servers can cope with the increased demand. I'm sure we all remember what happened with the Codeweavers giveaway last month.

Download Zonealarm 2009 Pro for free on 11/18/2008 originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Fun, Internet, Adobe, Freeware, Web

If you're not a fan of Flash, you definitely don't want to check out Sprint's new Plug Into Now dashboard. If you dare to click through, you'll be treated with sensory overload, internet style. The page is a cornucopia of snippets of information, with one theme: Now. A computerized female voice periodically speaks, saying things like "13,628 letters are being mailed right now", or "8,971,000 workers are out sick right now".

The voice also invites you to click on the page, where you will find such treasures as a button that says Push Me, then when you push it, gleefully displays a message that the button doesn't do anything. The page has all sorts of running tallies, such as how many coffee cups are being manufactured at this instant, or the current population of the world.

As much as I feel like this dashboard is an abomination, it's hard not to explore it.

[via Daring Fireball]

Sprint's Plug Into Now dashboard originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tr.im shortens and tweets URLs, tracks stats, and more originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 17 Nov 2008 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Design, Windows, Freeware, Mods

While Vista has now been available for almost two years now, there are a lot of people that are happily sticking with XP, myself included. And while there aren't enough flashy features to tempt me to switch to Vista, one that I do like the look of is the Vista sidebar. Happily, deviantart user joshoon has posted a package that allows you to install the real Vista sidebar on your Windows XP computer.

Installing the sidebar consists of installing three packages: Alky for Applications, Windows Sidebar Installer, and Gadget Extractor. Alky for Applications is where the magic happens allowing Vista-specific software to run under XP. An interesting side-effect of installing the Windows Sidebar Installer is that the Vista-specific fonts are added to your XP installation.

Because this is an XP-compatible version of the actual Vista sidebar rather than a copy, all of the widgets that you could install in Vista will work on XP.

[via Lifehacker]

Get the Vista sidebar in XP originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Fun, Games, Time-Wasters, Web

Assembler is a fun physics-based game where you get to toss around boxes, beams and other shapes, trying to get a box into a target somewhere in each level. It's difficult to write a review of Assembler without becoming distracted for an hour, playing Assembler. The puzzles become challenging in later levels, but a lot of the fun is in throwing boxes around, hitting them with beams, and making goofy little catapults.

Some levels have more than one target to reach, and a lot of them have metal bits that you have to work around. Solving the puzzles isn't conceptually difficult so much as tricky to actually execute. You can see the structure you need to build, but making it balance properly is another matter. The Assembler high scores are based on time, too, and it's even more challenging to complete some of the levels when you're trying to do it as quickly as possible.

Physics-based fun with Assembler - Time Waster originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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