The Download Blog

Create your own Harlem Shake videos

My guess is the whole Harlem Shake craze is just about winding down its 15 minutes of fame.

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But wait! While there's still a shred of interest left, you've got time to make your own videos. Free Android app Harlem Shake Creator Lite and iOS app Harlem Shake Creator HD (both from the same developer) make it ridiculously easy.

In case you've been off-planet for the past month or so, a Harlem Shake vid starts out with a single person, usually masked for no particular reason, doing a little jig to … Read more

DoubleTwist for Android adds MagicRadio

DoubleTwist, one of our favorite music players for Android, today gets a new feature that could help the app lure users away from competitors like Pandora or Spotify.

Called MagicRadio, DoubleTwist's new feature is meant to be a "holistic" music discovery service that can take into account your overall musical tastes as it programs stations for you to enjoy. The company hopes this add-on can attract users who are looking for more-nuanced stations than a Pandora search box and a simple artist name can produce.

While MagicRadio can certainly create stations based on simple parameters like artists, … Read more

Google Now starts arriving in latest Chrome, Chrome OS

Google has begun putting flesh on the bones of a skeleton it's been building to add Google Now to Chrome and Chrome OS.

The latest raw builds of the browser have an option in the about:flags panel to enable the Google Now system. "Sadly, we still can't play with it yet because the Google Now server URL still remains secret," commented Chrome watcher Francois Beaufort, who spotted the change.

The infrastructure dovetails with a new rich notification system being built into Chrome and Chrome OS, a mechanism that will let developers use HTML-formatted pop-ups. That … Read more

Microsoft backs away from Flash ban in IE10

An about-face in Internet Explorer 10 shows Microsoft is not merely backing off from its hostility toward Flash Player, but actually warming up to the Adobe Systems browser plug-in for competitive reasons.

In September 2011, Microsoft declared that browser plug-ins are a relic from the Internet's early days, calling them bad for battery life, security, reliability, and privacy, and said that it would ban them when IE10 was running with Windows 8's Metro user interface, now called the "immersive UI."

But Microsoft gave Flash a reprieve in May 2012 by building a special version of Adobe'… Read more

Add notes to Gmail messages in Firefox

As mentioned in the guide for adding notes to Gmail messages in Chrome, the need for a default note feature really shows when you're trying to remember more information about an e-mail. Perhaps you were supposed to call instead of e-mail the person? Or maybe you want to share an e-mail with a friend, but your cellular signal isn't so great right now. Adding Notes for Gmail to Firefox allows you to keep track of these details more easily.

Notes for Gmail was kind enough to give CNET 1,000 beta invitations for our readers! … Read more

Use Easy Uninstaller to quickly remove downloaded apps

When looking for an app that does something in particular, you may find yourself installing a handful or two for a bit of trial and error. While space on your device may not be an issue, you won't want to keep all of the apps that fail to perform the way you need them to. At this point, you're faced with the fun task of either going to the Google Play Store, or opening the Applications menu in the Settings area, to remove the apps you don't want. How fun! OK, not really.

If this is a … Read more

Microsoft offers students three months free of Office 365

Microsoft is dangling a new offer to get students to try its Office 365 University software.

As of today, students with a qualifying .edu e-mail address can register to receive three months free of Office 365 University and an extra 20GB of space for their SkyDrive online storage. Share the offer on Facebook and you'll get an additional three free months of Office 365.

Geared for college students and teachers, a license for Office 365 University costs $79.99 for four years and is good for up to two PCs or Macs. The educational suite includes the same applications … Read more

New apps unveiled at SXSW

Every year, the geekiest of geeks make their annual pilgrimage to Austin, Texas, for the increasingly hip and increasingly crowded South by Southwest festival.

The event is split into three branches for film, music, and interactive, but we at CNET tend to focus on the last of these, for obvious reasons. SXSWi, as the tech-focused portion of the festival is sometimes called, acts as a sort of gigantic picnic-slash-cocktail-party for tech entrepreneurs, investors, and even regular enthusiasts to mingle at and talk bits and bytes.

And while the sentiment has noticeably tapered off a bit this year, many app developers … Read more

Read unlimited comics on your iPhone or iPad

It's an awesome time to own an iDevice. You can get unlimited movie and TV streaming from Netflix, unlimited music from the likes of Rdio and Spotify, and even unlimited magazines from Next Issue (for iPads, anyway).

Great news for comic-book fans: Now you can get unlimited comics as well. Marvel Unlimited, previously a Web-only service, just debuted for iOS. (It's coming soon for Android.) Less-great news: The app needs work.

True to its name, Marvel Unlimited provides full access to the publisher's extensive library of comics, which currently numbers over 13,000 titles. You'll find … Read more