The Download Blog

Many of you are getting new PCs these days, either as a gift, or just because there's a shiny new operating system out there. But once you get it fired up and the operating system installed, it's time to populate it with good software. Don't just take all the dreck off your old machine people. Use this as an opportunity to start fresh. Let me give you the seven essential pieces of software for your new PC.

First, there's security. You need an antivirus app, and it's not something you need to pay for. CNET's Download.com gave AVG Free Antivirus edition five stars out of five. And if you're not a big company, it won't cost you a dime.

Now that you're protected, it's time to browse the Internet. Don't just go with the Web browser that came with your operating system. There's Opera, and Google Chrome, and Firefox, and so many other options. And you know what? I'm not going with any of them. I recommend Sea Monkey. Why? Because it has the Firefox Web browser, but it also bundles e-mail, an IRC client, and Web page editor as well. If IRC and Web editing doesn't matter to you, then maybe go with Firefox and Thunderbird for e-mail. However, to get the most bang for your byte, I say go Sea Monkey.

Next, you need to tell all your friends of your experience on your new computer. So get an IM client. On Windows, I recommend Pidgin. For Mac use Adium. They both are free, open-source multiservice clients that work great.

Next, it's time to save you a few hundred bucks. Don't go out and drop dough on Microsoft Office. Open Office from Openoffice.org is better than it's ever been. I use it daily for word processing, spreadsheet manipulation, presentations, and more. If you're an Excel superuser, you may have issues with it, but for the average Joe, it's going to do everything you need--for free!

Productivity is covered. Now for some entertainment. For that, you need VLC media player. It can handle almost anything you throw at it. Have DVDs won't play in that piece of crap software that came with your PC? VLC will handle it. Music? Any format you can think of. And it's got that magic price you love.

Two more and we're done.

Now you need a graphics editor. How else will you put your friends heads on celebrity bodies. For Windows there's nothing better than Paint.NET. It's free and powerful. For Mac? It's tough. I like Acorn, which is free to download but $50 to keep. For free that stays free, try Seashore, which is based on the GIMP engine, or Skitch.

Finally, one last security piece of software. Antispyware. You can go with a cocktail of Ad-Aware, Spybot Search and Destory, Windows Defender, and so on. That's not a bad idea, but if I was backed up against a wall and forced to pick just one, I'd pick Hijack This. Trend Micro has given us one of the most powerful malware removal tolls you can find, and it's freeware.

Now there's certainly many other apps you need, such as registry cleaners, torrent downloaders, FTP clients, and so on, but they start to stray into niches that vary for different types of users. I can say without a doubt that these seven programs are essential for you to install on every PC, no matter who you are.

Tom and Rafe discuss the apps they put on first thing when they get a new computer.

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With a project called Closure Tools, Google plans on Thursday to start helping developers who aspire to match the company's proficiency in creating Web sites and Web applications.

Google is a strong proponent of using JavaScript to write Web-based programs, part of its Web-centric ethos. Indeed, the company has pushed the language to its limits with services such as Gmail and Google Docs, and it developed its Chrome browser in part to enable JavaScript programs to run faster.

But writing, debugging, and optimizing heavy-duty JavaScript can be difficult--in part because a given JavaScript program sometimes works differently on different browsers. Google's open-source Closure Tools project is an attempt to help with some of these challenges.

The first in the suite of tools is the Closure Compiler, a software package designed to boil down a JavaScript program so it's smaller and runs faster. For example, a function named DisplayAddress() could be replaced with just a().

Along with the compiler come some extra tools that run in the Firefox browser. One, Closure Inspector, is an extension for Firefox's Firebug add-on designed to help programmers understand and debug the rewritten JavaScript--linking a() back to DisplayAddress(), for example. Another add-on for the Google Page Speed extension lets programmers see how much the compiler helped.

Google also plans to make the compiler available as a Web application hosted on its Google App Engine service.

The second element is called the Closure Library, a collection of prebuilt JavaScript code that lets programmers handle relatively sophisticated technology--arrays and string manipulation, for example.

Last are Closure Templates, more prewritten code to ease creation of JavaScript and HTML user interfaces.

In an earlier era, programming tools were expensive packages bought by a select few, but open-source software, new marketing strategies, and new business methods have made that approach the exception rather than the rule these days. Now programming tools are often a means to another end--encouraging programmers to produce the software that will make Windows or the Palm Pre useful and therefore popular, for example.

In Google's case, the objective is often to make the Web more popular because it sees more activity on the Web as corresponding directly with more activity on its revenue-generating search site. Among the high-profile projects to this end are Chrome, Chrome OS, and Android, all subsidized by Google's powerful search-advertising business.

One interesting contrast to Closure is another Google project called Google Web Toolkit. It's designed to accomplish some of the same goals as Closure, including paving over browser incompatibilities and producing high-performance JavaScript. But with GWT, coders write programs in Java that gets translated into JavaScript.

So one last question: why the name?

Google's reply: "Being a functional language, the concept of a function closure is fundamental to the JavaScript language."

Popular iPhone gaming developer Ngmoco released Eliminate Pro yesterday, its much-anticipated, online, first-person shooter. This well-polished "free" game features smooth looking graphics, onscreen controls that are fairly effective (no match for a controller or keyboard/mouse setup, but that's to be expected), a number of power ups to improve your weapons and armor, and five playable maps. In-game kills and winning matches earn you credits you can use to buy new weapons and armor. There are eight armor types, five weapon types, and items to buy like armor designs (skins) to give you a new look. The best part is that you get to play an online FPS from wherever you are on 3G or Wi-Fi against your friends or against players from around the world. The game uses the Plus+ network, so you'll need to register your character before you start playing online. Sounds pretty great, right? Not so fast.

Once you've played a few online games you will quickly see how the revenue model for Eliminate Pro is somewhat less than ideal. Here's the rub: in order to earn credits (for all the great purchases) in online matches, your 12-node energy bar must be charged. Each online game uses up four nodes, so you get three games before you run out of energy (about 15 minutes). So if you want to use the game for free, once you're out of energy, Eliminate Pro displays the time remaining until the next recharge in minutes, which comes out to about four hours. At the end of four hours, it only gives you four nodes of energy back, so you'll only be able to play one credit-accruing game every four hours. This is where the in-app purchase model comes in.

While you can play the Eliminate Pro online and against bots with an empty energy bar, you will not accrue credits. To recharge your energy bar, you'll need to buy one of four packages of power cells via an in-app purchase. The price scheme goes like this: 99 cents for 20 power cells, $1.99 for 45, $9.99 for 280, and $29.99 for 975 power cells. But the real kicker is that each power cell only fills up one node, meaning you will use 12 power cells to fill up your energy bar (notice how a 99 cent pack of 20 lets you fill up one 12-node bar, but not enough to fill another). In other words, if you want to keep earning credits and buying fancy items, you'll be paying roughly 60 cents per 15-minute game session.

Though this game is highly polished, with just about everything a gamer could want in an iPhone online FPS, the in-app purchase system seems too steep to me. Those who are excited about the game and want to continue to play for free will be playing a highly crippled game needing to wait 4 hours before they can earn a few more credits. Those willing to spend the money will quickly realize the game is eating up their cash quickly.

I'm very interested in what people think about this particular pricing model. I think the game itself is pretty great--not as good as Modern: Combat Sandstorm for gameplay, but the best for online first-person shooters. I suppose the casual gamer will have no trouble playing for 15 minutes a day on this game and slowly earning credits over time to buy items. But the people who want to spend time playing the "complete" game will need to pay--and quite a lot if they really like the game and want to get powerful quickly. Finally, I wonder what this means for other iPhone apps in the future and whether we're going to see more pricing models like this one. Will everything become pay-to-play?

What do you think? Is the free version good enough for the amount you would actually play? How much are you willing to spend to continue playing the complete game of Eliminate Pro? Is this pricing model fair? Is this a preview of pricing models of other future apps? Let me know in the comments!

So these are my picks, based on your feedback, of the best free apps you can find on the Net. You might consider them essentials. And what's the risk? You do get them for free, after all.

And you could also get a free Magic 8 Ball Yoda. I admit it's a bit beat up, but that's why we call it a "lame prize," right? So post your answer to the trivia question in the comments below and cross your fingers that your name will be drawn.

Oh, and someone asked that we start posting the answers to the trivia questions. Duh. Why didn't we think of that. So the answer to last week's Worst Downloads question was Alien Communicator.

Best of luck this week!

Despite increasingly better software, blogging on phones is still a real pain compared with doing it on a regular computer. However, credit is due to WordPress, which has gone to great lengths to make the latest version of its iPhone app much better for users to both create and manage their blogs on a small screen (and without a keyboard).

Besides a new look, one of the biggest changes is that the app remembers exactly what you were doing between sessions, so that if you quit it, or get a phone call, it will take you right back to the page or menu you were looking at. This also keeps you from losing anything you hadn't saved if you're interrupted--even if you were in the middle of a writing a sentence when your phone rang. This should change the beginning of such a conversation from "I am so mad at you right now" to a simple "hello."

In addition to remembering what you were doing, the app does a much better job at letting you manage user comments. The approval screen itself looks almost identical, but the app now lets you quickly switch between the ones that have been approved and the ones that still need to be looked at. It also displays each users' Gravatar (user icon) next to their username and URL, which ends up taking up a little more space than it did in the previous iteration of the app but adds a sense of familiarity with its desktop sibling.

Other small changes include the app remembering which order you uploaded the photos in so that they display in that same order in your post. Although the app still hasn't been updated to include videos, which means 3GS owners will have to add whatever video they shot through WordPress' Web interface instead. The app also now stores passwords in a user's keychain, which means those credentials could be accessed by other applications you may want to give access to later on down the line--like, say an app that lets you post videos to a WordPress blog.

Oddly enough, the new WordPress app is completely different from the original, which still exists but will no longer be updated. The company attributes this to having switched between having an outside contractor make the first version, whereas this new one was built in-house.

Every three months we corral Seth Rosenblatt to forage through the latest downloadable software and come up with a list of the worst. Why? Because Seth loves a challenge. And you people love "Top Worst" lists. It's all about the schadenfreude, isn't it?

Anyway, this Top 5 still has a lame prize, so get to watching, and then return here and post your guess in the comments. We'll draw one winner from the first 10 people to get the answer right.

The PortableApps Suite is a storehouse and management system for "portable" versions of some of the most popular freeware around. That collection used to be limited only to open-source programs. But on Wednesday it started making portable versions of closed-source freeware to users. The first batch of portable freeware includes Web browser Google Chrome, VoIP client Skype, BitTorrent client uTorrent, antispyware tool SpyDLLRemover, and three others at the time of writing. The new portable versions of these programs work both independently and in tandem with the PortableApps suite.

In a statement published on its Web site, PortableApps.com founder and CEO John Haller said that PortableApps "remains committed" to open-source software, but that closed-source freeware publishers would find other venues for USB stick-friendly versions of their programs if PortableApps didn't open its doors to them. For users that want to support only open-source programs, he said that the PortableApps directory will soon be filterable.

PortableApps is also planning to accept portable versions of commercial software, although it hasn't announced a timeline yet. Readers can check on the latest updates to the PortableApps catalog at their Web site, although we do host most of them at Download.com as well.

The upcoming version 3.6 of Firefox will be able to tell if you're listing to starboard--and pass that information along to applications running in the browser.

That's because the browser will be able to detect the orientation of laptops and mobile devices equipped with accelerometers that can tell which way is down. The reason for the work: Web applications running in the browser will be able to use the information, useful for labyrinth-type games with virtual marbles rolling around boards, and any number of other gaming situations.

Mozilla evangelist Christopher Blizzard announced Firefox's coming orientation interface Monday.

"One new feature that we're including as part of Firefox 3.6 is support for web pages to access machine orientation information if it's available," Blizzard wrote. "Many modern MacBooks and ThinkPads contain devices and drivers that expose this information. We've added support for Linux, Macs and some ThinkPads where drivers and devices are available."

Mozilla is working on the technology for mobile devices, too, where orientation-aware games are a big deal.

The move is one of many by browser makers eager to transform their software from passive receptacles for showing Web sites to an active foundation for interactive applications. Firefox 3.6 is scheduled for beta testing shortly and final release later this year.

Yahoo has worked on browser-based orientation technology through its BrowserPlus software.