Filed under: Audio, Internet, Windows, Freeware

Back in August I wrote about Screamer, a nice portable streaming radio app. KSoft's Icy Radio offers a similar experience with a couple of nice additions.

Icy Radio is completely portable - just download the zip archive and extract it to a folder. Apart from a large library of audio streams, Icy Radio includes several nice skins and streaming video support.

As with Screamer, you should expect some of the included streams not to work. After all, many of these feeds come from ad-supported sites and their owners probably aren't so keen on the idea of us listening to their music without having to view their banners.

The massive channel list is fully searchable and indexed by genre - more than 60 of them. Adding new stations is easy, and can be done one-at-a-time or in bulk from an XML file. Icy Radio's tabbed main window also sports a favorites list for your top channels and maintains a history of your recordings for easy playback.

Built-in recording supports MP3 and OGG (you'll need to download and unzip the plugin into your Icy Radio folder first). Unfortunately, video streams can't be recorded as of version 0.5.

Icy Radio is freeware for Windows only.

Icy Radio streams, records hundreds of 'net radio stations originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 22 Nov 2008 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Productivity, Web

The basic idea behind the new time-tracking service BubbleTimer is that it's not productive to track how you're spending your time down to the minute. It makes more sense to bubble in your activities in 15 minute increments, and BubbleTimer lets you do that with one click. Once you've added some goals and gathered some data, BubbleTimer becomes a playground for info nerds.

You can export your data to programs like Excel and Apple Numbers, or you can create attractive tables and graphs from within BubbleTimer. BubbleTimer is all web-based, so you can update it from anywhere. It's free to try, but if you get really addicted, you can buy a subscription for $20/year.

BubbleTimer: track the time you spend on your goals originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 22 Nov 2008 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Macintosh, Microsoft, Freeware

About three years after acquiring FolderShare, a utility for synchronizing files across multiple computers, Microsoft is retiring the application and plans to replace it with a similar utility called Windows Live Sync. You could make the case that what's happening is Microsoft is renaming FolderShare rather than replacing it, as the new version will likely look a lot like FolderShare and have many of the same functions. But it will also have a few improvements including:

• Ability to sync up to 20 folders with 20,000 files each
• You can login with your Windows Live ID
• Integration with the Windos Recycle Bin
• New clients for Windows and Mac
• Unicode support for synchronizing files in other languages (beside English)

Why Microsoft is continuing to push this software at the same time as it develops Windows Live Mesh which allows you to synchronize files across mutilple computers, the web, and mobile devices, is anyone's guess.

Microsoft to replace FolderShare with Windows Live Sync originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Google, Googleholic, BlackBerry, iPhone, Mobile, Web

Welcome to Googleholic, your weekly fix of everything Google!

In this edition:

• Google SearchWiki lets you customize results
• Google adds new features to BlackBerrys and iPhones
• LIFE Magazine's photo archive comes online
• GrandCentral App comes to Mac
• Google plans to work with OEMs to pre-install Chrome
• Access Google Docs within Gmail

Continue reading Googleholic for November 21, 2008

Googleholic for November 21, 2008 originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

Earlier today we showed you how to keep your hard drive organized with tools to remove duplicate files and clean up your file and folder management system. But what if you want to just delete all the gunk you download and never use? That's what Auto Delete is for.

This free Windows utility lets you automatically delete old files in a given folder. You can fine tune the settings to delete files that have been hanging out for a day, a year, or somewhere in between. Files can be moved to the recycle bin or permanently deleted. And you can choose whether to include subfolders or not.

It might be a good idea to set Auto Delete to monitor your web browser's default download directory. Odds are if you haven't moved a file out of that directory after a few weeks, you're not really going to use it and it's just taking up space on your hard drive.

[via Shell Extension City]

Keep your hard drive clean with Auto-Delete originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Freeware, Ask DLS, Search

DS Reader Jamie wrote recently looking for some assistance, saying:

I'm not the most disorganized of individuals: my music is in my music folder, etc. etc., but i have a fatal flaw. I put random stuff on my desktop, then it gets cluttered. My solution has been, in a word, poor. I put all the random stuff into a folder that usually goes by the name of misc or sort this out later. I was wondering what kind of advice you'd give for someone in this situation other than, "Get off your ass and go through it all!!"

For starters, Jamie, you hit the nail on the head - but don't fret, chum, you're not alone. Though I've planned ahead far enough to partition my drives on the laptop I'm using to post this article, the D: drive is a nightmarish mess of downloads, old backups, ISO images, and other files.

Let's get started by downloading your choice of duplicate file finders, like Easy Duplicate Finder or CloneSpy. Both work well, and will save time by getting rid of unnecessary files before we start organizing. For the rest of the work, we're going manual - we created our messes that way, so that's how we're cleaning them up!

Continue reading Help! How do I tidy up a disorganized hard drive?

Help! How do I tidy up a disorganized hard drive? originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

If you've been to a tech event since SXSW in 2006, you've probably seen some kind of large monitor displaying info from the conference-goers. Often, this means Twitter tweets by attendees. Brightkite has just taken this a step further, with their own "Wall" feature. Because Brightkite is a location-based service to begin with, the wall has a built-in way to gather data. This means the usefulness of the wall isn't limited to events: you can just display it in any place (like a coffee shop, for example) and show all the people who are posting messages nearby.

I love the Brightkite Wall. It could turn out to be a brilliant way to show new users what the service is all about, as well as making an interesting public installation. It also opens up Brightkite to people who don't even have Brightkite accounts: you can put the appropriate location at the top of the wall, next to the Brightkite shortcode, and anyone can text a message onto the wall via SMS.

Brightkite's new killer feature is ... a wall? originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iPhone and iPod Touch users can upgrade their software to version 2.2 today. The update, which weighs in at around 250 megs, adds some highly-anticipated features. The two biggest for me are Street View in the Maps app and the ability to download podcasts from the iTunes Store. There are some smaller tweaks that you might appreciate, as well: that bug that sometimes kept messages from downloading in Mail is fixed, and you can click the home button when you're on any page of the home screen to go back to the first page.

Street View on the iPhone is every bit as cool as it sounds. It looks good in landscape and is really smooth to control. I suspect it won't be long before we start seeing photos of people holding up iPhone street view pictures of the place they're standing. Less flashy, but just as useful, walking and transit directions are available in maps now, as well. If you're an iPod Touch user, you're unfortunately out of luck on Street View for now, so far it's iPhone only.

Downloading podcasts was at the top of my wishlist for the iPhone (although I know a lot of you have lists of your own). It's always frustrating to finish an episode of a good podcast while you're out walking or on a train, and then wait until you get home to hear the next one. Not a problem anymore, thanks to the latest iPhone update. All in all, 2.2 offers some excellent new features. The only thing I have to complain about is the new Safari layout, which feels cramped with the address bar and the search bar smooshed in next to one another.

iPhone 2.2 firmware is out, with Street View and podcasts originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Internet, Search

If you do a lot of shopping at Amazon and a lot of comparison shopping or product research on Google, you might want to check out the GoogAzon add-on for Firefox. Once installed, any time you search for an item on Google, you'll also see the top search result for your query from Amazon.

If a single product listing isn't good enough, just click the "see top 10 items" button and a list of 10 items from Amazon will drop down. Hovering over a link brings up an image of the product. You can also click the Share button to email a product link.

Despite it's name, GoogAzon isn't limited to Google searches. It also works with Yahoo! and MSN Live.

GoogAzon does appear to inject an Amazon Affiliate code into the links, so the plugin's author will likely make a few bucks any time you actually buy an item found through a GoogAzon search. But it shouldn't cost you anything extra.

[via Firefox Facts]

GoogAzon Firefox Add-on ads Amazon listings to web search results originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Video, Web

Long before Hulu, or even YouTube were offering online video, and long before Apple or Amazon were selling digital downloads of TV shows and feature lenght films, there was CinemaNow and MovieLink. The two sites may have been well ahead of their time, but they also never managed to get the kind of attention that newer online video sites have garnered. Last year Blockbuster purchased MovieLink for about $7 million. And this week, software firm Sonic Solutions picked up CinemaNow for just $3 million.

CinemaNow has a library of about 6,000 movies and TV shows. Sonic Solutions hopes to leverage CinemaNow's technology and assetts to expand its service that allows you to download videos and burn them to DVD.

[via paidContent]

Online movie site CinemaNow sold for $3 million originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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