You might be enjoying the dog days of summer now, but look out! The school year is just around the corner, and teachers, books, classes, and winter will be here before you know it. Get a jump on the upcoming school year with a collection of downloadable software for communicating with classmates, managing your homework, learning new study skills, or harnessing the reference power of the Internet. You can even find software to let you call your parents free from college. (Seriously, your mom wants a call.)
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Facebook profiles, instant-messaging networks, various Web mail accounts...who can track them all? With Digsby, all you need is one, simple application that lets you update your social-networking statuses, manage and send e-mail, and chat with your buddies from a single interface. The powerful package uses a lot of system memory, but Digbsy's approach may be the future of socializing online.
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It's always fun to head back to school to reunite with all the classmates you missed over the summer. And then comes the homework...and the research papers...and art projects...and the science fair. Academic commitments only get more complicated as you advance through your school years, and it's best to master your schedule as soon as you can. The publisher of this feature-packed organizer also offers a Lite version for free as well as a portable version that can be run off a U3 drive.
Typing Master Pro Typing Tutor
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What was once a simple but valuable skill has become an utter necessity. The keyboard might not be around forever in its current incarnation, but the rise of technology has made it imperative for all students to master the standard QWERTY setup. Regardless of whether you're writing assignments by hand, the sooner you learn to type the better. This top-rated app includes well-designed lessons, games, and personalized exercises to teach or improve skills.
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Ah, math class. What better place for a nice, quiet nap...what's that? You like math?! Then this free software for drawing graphs of mathematical functions might be right up your alley. The program includes a vast number of predefined functions, and it's easy to add your own. It also calculates length and area of functions, as well as first and second derivatives.
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You might think that the Web has rendered offline dictionaries moot, but that might be a fallacious supposition, at least according to the publishers of the top-rated dictionary software WordWeb. The software can use an Internet connection for expanded functionality, but most of its power is built right in. With a intuitive, integrated interface and database of more than 150,000 root words and 120,000 synonyms, WordWeb is one freeware app that every aspiring writer should check out.
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Ever since Google bought Keyhole's satellite software and merged it with its own mapping software to create Google Earth, citizens of the planet have been provided with amazing photos and valuable geographic information. Start with a view of the entire planet, then manually zoom into any country or city you like, or just type in a name of a location. Version 4 added 3D models of real buildings and structures to the program, and users can even create and submit their own using Google Sketchup.
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While Google has the Earth's most excellent reference, Microsoft takes the prize for information and imagery from across the universe. The recently released and fabulous freeware WorldWide Telescope is the most ambitious attempt to bring the power of massive space- and ground-based telescopes onto your PC. Along with the incredible pictures of black holes, nebulae, and radiation clouds, you can take guided tours of celestial objects led by eminent astronomers and educators.
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For users accustomed to onlike wikis like the Web service Wikipedia, this freeware app is a great find. Whether you're into comparative literature or computer programming, you're going to need to take and organize notes. The big bonus with WikidPid is that, like Wikipedia, you can link notes from one to another in various paths. If you find it works well for academic classes, it's easy to use the software to track information, schedules, and news for athletic teams, community projects, and other personal pursuits. Wikid cool!
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Research in the 21st century doesn't involve as many card catalogs, microfiche machines, reference books, or 3x5 index cards as it once did. Today, online research is the name of the game, but recording and citing sources is still as important as ever. This free add-on for Mozilla Firefox puts that source information directly into your browser, while letting you add and manage related notes. The open-source app also lets you save search queries and store full Web pages or PDF files.
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If you're far away from home at college on a budget, an Internet connection and a PC are all you need to talk to friends and family around the world for free. This revolutionary VoIP software lets users talk between computers for free and charges a reasonable fee to call landlines. You'll need to find a serviceable microphone and get used to occasionally spotty call quality, but the long-distance savings will add up quickly.
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Last night, Microsoft Research released WorldWide Telescope--new, free software that enables users to explore the universe with impressive content from the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center, and other famed ground- and space-based telescopes. Colorful nebulae, distant galaxies, black holes, and radiation clouds are all accessible from your desktop with a few clicks. The software has been released for free in honor of Jim Gray, a Microsoft researcher who was lost at sea last year.
Google Earth added a similar feature called Google Sky with its Version 4.2 release. Google also offers a browser-based version of Google Sky, while Microsoft requires the download and installation of the WorldWide Telescope software. Google Sky is a bit more user friendly right now, but Microsoft has the advantage of a wealth of content. For example, Google Sky offers infrared, microwave, and historical views of objects in the universe; WorldWide Telescope allows nearly 50 different types of viewing, including infrared dust maps and cosmic microwave background, along with a bevy of other options that I couldn't even begin to explain.
Google Sky has the advantage of being quite a bit easier to pick up and use immediately, but in actuality, WorldWide Telescope is a totally different beast. Google Sky is a bonus feature that Google added onto its Earth-imagery application; WorldWide Telescope's primary objective is to create a visual representation of the universe on your desktop. You can peruse telescope images of Earth with WorldWide Telescope, but there's not the detailed satellite imagery of your neighborhood that you get in Google Earth.
Collections in the Explore tab offer shortcuts to amazing photographs like this one.
(Credit: CNET Networks/Microsoft Research)The main WorldWide Telescope interface includes seven tabs for navigating: Explore, Guided Tours, Search, Community, Telescope, View, and Settings. Clicking each tab presents a variety of options across a bar along the top of the program, and clicking the arrow below each tab results in a drop-down menu with options. Some of the tabs, such as Explore and Search, include collapsible submenus with further options at the bottom of the interface.
The bulk of the screen is devoted to the program's primary purpose: displaying detailed images of objects throughout the universe. With default view settings, constellations are outlined in orange, and red "figures" display the constellations' conventional representations. For example, the orange constellation Ursa Minor looks like a bizarro version of the Stanley Cup, but the red figure displays the classic "little dipper."
You can move around the sky by clicking with your left mouse and dragging the screen. Holding down Shift while doing so will rotate and tilt the view. Likewise, clicking and holding the center mouse button also rotates/tilts. You can zoom in with the "+" sign or Page Down, and zoom out with the "-" sign or Page Up. Scrolling the mouse wheel also zooms, but not at the fine level of the buttons. Right clicking on any object will pop up the Finder Scope, which displays information like name, location, size, and position of celestial bodies.
Ten existing collections group telescope destinations such as planets, constellations, nebulae, and stars. A few of the collections are devoted to sources, such as Hubble Images, Chandra Images, or the Messier Catalog. An empty collection titled "My Collections" lets you save your favorite places in the universe to visit them later. Simply click "Add New Item" to save a spot on the screen to your new group. Collections can also be played back as slide shows to impress your spouse or colleagues.
Benjamin's journey to the Ring Nebula is awfully cute (and informative).
(Credit: CNET Networks/Microsoft Research)Perhaps the coolest feature of WorldWide Telescope is the ability to watch guided tours of the universe conducted by experts and users, such as Alyssa Goodman of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics discussing the dark regions of galaxies that form stars and planets or Dr. Frank Summers or 6-year-old Benjamin taking a journey to the Ring Nebula. Loading a guided tour creates a new tab at the top of the interface, and you can navigate forward or backward through the tour as you like.
There are well over 30 tours already included in WorldWide Telescope. If you don't find the one you want, creating a tour yourself is fun and easy, as well. Select "Create New Tour" from the Guided Tours drop-down menu, and enter in the basic details for your tour, such as author, description, level (i.e. beginner, intermediate, or advanced), and taxonomy. After your create your tour, adding slides is as simple as adding screens to a collection. Just hit "Add a Slide" and your screen will be saved to a timeline across the top of the interface.
You can add text, images, and shapes to enhance your tour, and you can even layer a soundtrack and voiceover using upload widgets at the right of the guided tour options. I'm not exactly sure how you can upload or share tours with other users, or how user tours like Benjamin's make it into the WorldWide Telescope interface. The program's Help file instructs users to "click the top of the Guided Tours tab and click Submit Tour for Publication," but I didn't see that option available. Maybe my tour stinks.
There are a few niggling bugs in WorldWide Telescope--zooming with the mouse wheel often scrolls through thumbnail panes in search results accidentally, and canceling the download of a guided tour inevitably crashed the program for me--and the help content is hidden underneath the Explore drop-down menu, which could leave newbies high and dry upon starting the program. However, the software boasts a hoard of amazing telescope imagery to be explored as well as very cool features that let you view, save, and manage that imagery in many different ways. WorldWide Telescope appears to be an invaluable tool for hobbyists, astronomers, students, educators, or anyone curious about the universe.
After taking Candace Clicks to a nice dinner for Valentine's Day, Power Downloader thought it would be a good idea to go look at the night sky. To get the best view, Candace and Power made their way just outside of town where the lights from the city wouldn't detract from their view. Though the view was amazing, neither Power nor Candace knew much about which stars they were looking at besides the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, and the North Star.
Access to several informative overlays are found on the left side of WinStar's interface
(Credit: CNET Networks)The next day at the Powerlair, Power Downloader decided to find a program he could send to Candace which would help identify the night sky as a way of remembering their night together. After some searching at Download.com, Power came across an application called WinStars. With this application, Candace could explore the galaxy in 3D, look at well-known constellations, and track any of a number of comets and satellites. Several different overlays would let Candace look at the names of stars, planets, and constellations. She could also retrieve detailed photos from the Internet if she wanted a closer look. For even more realism, WinStars would let her view the sky in Planetarium mode, which frames the stars nicely with an outdoor scene to simulate looking up at the night sky from earth. Included animation controls would put the stars in motion at the click of a button.
After sending off an e-mail to Candace with a nice note, Power Downloader delved further into Winstars' many features. He quickly realized the program was so packed full of features, Astronomy enthusiasts and students would appreciate all of the expert-level tools. Though Candace might not use Winstars more advanced features, Power hoped she would open the program and be able to relive their Valentine's trip to see the stars.
Google Earth's Sky View
(Credit: CNET Networks, Inc.)The unpredictable Aurigid meteor shower might happen over the weekend, or it might not. But whether you're in foggy San Francisco or balmy Iraq, you can use the latest Google Earth update to check out the stars above your head, day or night.
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Google takes a gander at a galaxy.
Google just launched a new version of Google Earth (news, download) from which you gaze up from the surface of the planet, not just down on it. It's a good way to see which stars and planets are over your home, right now. You can also check out a rich database of Hubble Space Telescope images that is overlaid on the celestial map.
The new Google Earth has a lot of additional education and reference material linked to it, pulled in from the Net as needed. The program is a great way to learn about the night sky. It has two big limitations, though: your point of view is limited to Earth (you can't see the stars from other locations) and you have an extremely limited control of time. If you want to see where the planets were on your birthday, for example, you can't.
If your curiosity about the universe bumps into Google Earth's edges, I'd recommend also checking out these two applications:
Celestia (download) is a 3D simulation of the galaxy. Its special power is not its imagery (Google's is better, although Celestia does a good job with planets and asteroids in our solar system), but rather that you can zoom in on any object in the program's database and see the galaxy from that perspective. You can also see the position of stars at any point in time and can control the rate of time's passage to see how objects move over the millennia.
Stellarium (download) is a gorgeous planetarium for your computer. Its sky and star visuals are a lot more compelling then either Google's or Celestia's, although Stellarium does not have detailed Hubble overlays. Like Google, it's Earth-bound (you can't move your point of reference), but like Celestia, it gives you good control over time so you can see the heavens wheel about. My favorite feature is that it will also overlay constellation lines from other cultures (Chinese, Inuit, and so on); Google only shows the Western constellations.
There are also Web-based online planetaria. They have good data, but they don't give you the smooth visual controls that the downloadable applications do. See Sky-map.org, WikiSky (review), and YourSky. You can control a powerful stargazing telescope yourself via the Web at the pay site Slooh (review). There are also astronomy gadgets covered over on our gadget blog, Crave.
Finally, if the real galaxy doesn't appeal to you, check out the collaborative work of fiction called Galaxiki. Be advised that it was named one of the "Five stupidest start-ups of the summer" by Valleywag.
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