The Download Blog

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I just wrote about Baseball Slugger 3D earlier this week because it went on sale, but seriously, if you like baseball at all, this home-run derby game is worthy of the regular price of $2.99. I started playing last night using the online matchup system and didn't stop playing for over an hour. Not only is hitting home runs really satisfying, but when you play and lose against someone, you can always go for a rematch, which leads to another rematch...and so on. Then, if you really think a particular opponent is a good competitive match, you can make them your rival, putting their name on the Matchup homescreen so you know when they're online. I wouldn't usually give a game this much coverage, but I can't get over how fun it is! My screen name is Hoobam in the game--let's see who has the hitting skills!

This week's apps are both games. One has has you digging for treasure deep underground, while the other is a fun harbor management type of a game.

I Dig it (99 cents) is reminiscent of games like Motherload and Dig Dug, but offers a nice twist on the old arcade classics. In I Dig it, you are a farmer who has run out of money and has built a digging machine to dig for treasure in order to keep the farm. The game uses an onscreen gamepad for movement, letting you dig down or to either side, and has rockets for flying back to the top. As you dig, you'll find precious metals, gems, coins, and other treasure that you'll need to bring back to the top to sell for cash.

As you make more money, you can enter the barn to upgrade various parts of your machine like your hull strength, your drill, and the amount of cargo you can carry. The game is pretty fun, especially as you go deeper into the ground making it challenging to get back to the top. There's a button to mark your depth to make sure you can get back to work once you've repaired your digging machine. You also can track the different types of treasure on a separate Warehouse screen. This app is very popular at the app store right now, but that might be partly because it's on sale for 99 cents for a limited time. Check out the lite version here (iTunes Store link) to try before you buy.

Harbor Master (99 cents) is a lot like Flight Control, the popular air traffic control game I've written about before, but offers enough variation to make it worth your money. Much like Flight Control, you'll need to draw a path to direct boats into their appropriate berths for unloading. But unlike Flight Control, you'll also need to direct emptied boats out of the harbor, even as more boats come sailing in. Larger ships will need more time to unload, so you'll find yourself juggling incoming boats while you wait for berth space.

At first I thought this game would be too much like Flight Control, but Harbor Master is a great game in its own right with smooth-looking graphics, great sounds, and its own particular strategies. As you get better at managing your harbor, you'll be able to unlock more maps with their own unique challenges; one map has color-coded berths so you'll only be able to park boats that have the same color, while another has pirate ships you'll need to blow out of the water using a mounted cannon. Overall, Harbor Master is a great variation on Flight Control's gameplay and offers enough variation to rationalize getting both games. Those looking for new variation of Flight Control or just a fun game to kill time will definitely enjoy this game.

What's your favorite iPhone app? Do you dig I Dig It? Though they are different in a number of ways, do you like Flight Control or Harbor Master better? Let me know in the comments!

There are few, if any, horizontal platforms that offer users the capability to e-mail, create, and edit documents and pictures, and collaborate across all three major desktop computing platforms as well as almost every major smartphone platform. Glide 3.0 has just updated, introducing changes aimed at parental control and creating a child-friendly environment.

The new e-mail filter lets parents intercept all messages sent to a child's in-box. Parents can then approve or deny the e-mails so children can only see preapproved messages, filtering out pornographic spam, phishing attempts, and other junk. Parents need to create a secondary e-mail account in Glide that they can control access rights too, similar to how Glide allows rights controls for attachments if you're familiar with that system.

From there, parents will be able to access the child's e-mail from a drop-down menu on the upper right corner of the e-mail interface. When the parent enters the child's account, they can approve each e-mail individually or as a group by clicking on the e-mail and clicking Approve or Delete. Since all e-mails sent to the child default as unapproved until given a green light, parents don't have to worry about children seeing unauthorized e-mails.

Both children and adult can take advantage of the new drawing and coloring tool. It works a bit like MS Paint, except with Glide's collaborative tools built in, and a much more interesting interface. Colors appear as crayons in a box, and users can choose from preselected backgrounds, a blank canvas, or images in their own libraries to drawn on. Standard drawing tools are included, such as a freehand pen, line tools, typographic text, and shapes. Glide Draw also offers zooming and undo/redo. The tools can be accessed from the Draw text link at the bottom of Glide's main interface.

Existing features in Glide have also gotten a power boost. E-mail import and export capabilities have been overhauled. An Import button will copy the body text of an e-mail into a Glide Write document, while the new Export button creates a PDF, DOC, DOCX, or RTF out of the body text. Attachments can also be one-clicked to a destination folder, and Glide Writer and the Glide e-mail interfaces have seen a design redo.

Interestingly, the Glide Application suite has been integrated into Glide e-mail, so that the word processor, presentations application, photo editor, and collaborative tools are available to all e-mail recipients. Even if you're not a Glide user, the tools will be available to you. This includes automatic group discussions and online meetings. Utilizing Glide Desktop Applications (download for Windows, Mac, Linux, or Solaris) participants can synchronize the files that they're discussing.

Webkit-based browsers Safari and Chrome also earned full support in the Glide OS improvements.

Its stunning cross-platform usability and its equally impressive granular rights-granting for file-sharing and attachments aside, performance improvements appear to not have been part of the most recent Glide OS update. It's not the fastest loading Web application, but users looking for something that will function anywhere on almost any desktop or handheld should check it out.

Apple Insider has spotted a a newly released patent filed by Apple back in late 2007 that shows volume controls that can be integrated into various Web browsers. Described as a way to control "audio signals which may or may not be welcomed by the user" the patent depicts a new panel that sits in the top, right-hand corner of a user's browser and allows per-site controls over incoming audio signals. There's also a mute button that can cut out just the sounds from the browser entirely while leaving sound from other desktop applications untouched.

According to the patent, the key goal is to add a volume control overlay over sites that do not provide it, as well as a system that will remember the user's preferences between browsing sessions. This would be useful in Flash-heavy sites where the controls may be hidden away, or entirely absent. It would also let users create custom sound profiles, so you could have YouTube videos on your computer at work always start out at a low volume level, or your Internet alarm clock site always play at 100 percent.

The patent also describes situations where users can create specific rules that will change how audio can be played back based on whatever other applications are running. So you could theoretically set it to mute all your browser audio only when you're listening to music in iTunes, or using an audio-centric application like Skype, then bring the sound back as soon as you're not getting audio output from those applications. Apple has done something similar on the iPhone by interrupting music when you're getting a phone call, or slightly lowering the volume on notification sounds when you're using other apps.

What makes this patent filing notable is that it's not just for Safari, and is listed as being applicable to multiple browsers, which means it could either be a part of an upcoming OS or as a standalone application. As the usual disclaimer goes though, patents are often filed for technologies that never make it to market.

I've embedded the entire patent after the page break. (Thanks to Patents.com and Scribd for that.)

Update: Several readers have pointed out that Windows Vista has had a similar feature since its release called Volume Mixer that lets you pick out the maximum volume level for each application. However it's worth noting that in Apple's proposed implementation, the user would be able to control it on a per-site basis.

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Editors' note: In the original version of this blog, we used the beta name for this product. The official name is OnlineFamily.Norton.

Back in February, Symantec debuted a new security program that sought to help parents talk to their kids about how they use the Internet. OnlineFamily.Norton has been a free beta since then, but this Monday at midnight, the program will leave beta and remain free at least until the end of 2009. The program was originally called Norton Family Online.

This parental control suite provides parents with an interesting and possibly unique approach to online child safety. OnlineFamily.Norton does provide a blacklist, boilerplate for most parental control software. However, the suite offers more than just an On/Off switch, and provides tools that encourage communication between parents and their children.

There's a wide range of control over what sites a child can access. The restrictions can vary from a strict no-access policy that can block specific sites and site categories, to a more lenient notification e-mail sent to the parents when the child visits sites that parents merely want to be warned about. On the child's side, kids are given the option of e-mailing their parents when they're blocked--if the parents allow those e-mails in the first place.

Jody Gibney, product manager for OnlineFamily.Norton, said, "We want to encourage a different philosophical approach, encouraging parents to talk to kids instead of setting up an adversarial relationship." To further that, the program's House Rules can be customized to suit the needs of individual children within each family, a useful feature since a teenager will have different browsing and social-networking interests than an 8-year-old.

It's impossible for a kid not to know that OnlineFamily.Norton is running on their computer's background, since it warns them that it's activated. The log-in process requires that the Norton Safety Minder for Windows and Mac be installed first. The program allows kids to view the House Rules independently of their parents. Parents, on the other hand, are able to see what sites their children have been visiting, including search results for terms the child has queried.

However, the program doesn't provide "reams and reams of information," as Gibney put it. "We want to provide [parents] with enough information to start a discussion without overwhelming them." The program will flag social-network profile inconsistencies, such as discrepancies in a child's stated age or name, for example.

The differences between the beta and the free version are apparently limited to interface enhancements designed to streamline the setup process and provide better access to the information that OnlineFamily.Norton collects. The free version will be available at midnight on Monday. A one-year subscription starting January 1, 2010, is expected to cost $60.

Do you have an app that you wish was on the iPhone, but hasn't been developed or ported over yet? Certainly we all have our wish lists when it comes to apps, but one that I've been waiting for since the beginning is the chat and VoIP program, Skype (Mac or Windows). Fortunately, the folks over at Skype have finally put together a great app for iPhone, and if you've never used Skype, I'm here to tell you why you will be soon.

This week's apps include Skype for iPhone and a simple game that offers an excellent interface for simulating one of the most difficult (and most stressful) jobs in the world.

Skype (free) for iPhone and iPod Touch (!) lets you make calls to other Skype users for free with great sound quality and an interface that's easy to navigate. Current Skype users can log in using their regular username and password, or you can create a new account from the app. From there, simply add contacts who also use Skype and you'll be able to call them and text them without using your AT&T minutes or affecting your text limit. What might be even better, if you own an iPod Touch, all you'll need is a headset with a microphone to use your iPod Touch just like a phone!

In order for it to work smoothly, you'll need to have a reliably strong Wi-Fi--Skype calls will not work with 3G or Edge networks. To enable voicemail or get your own online phone number, you'll need to sign up with Skype at its Web site, but the rates are pretty affordable. Even without a paid plan, as long as you tell your friends to download Skype on their phones and let them know you're calling beforehand, you'll be able to talk as long as you want, wherever you want to call, without using your minutes.

Flight Control (99 cents) seems like a relatively simple game at the beginning, offering 2D graphics with you looking down at an airport runway. As passenger jets begin to fly into your airspace, your job is to draw the flightpath to the runway so that the plane can safely land. Sounds easy, right? The only problem is, it gets much harder. Soon, biplanes and helicopters begin to show up and they each have their own runway and landing zones. As the game progresses your screen will become covered with aircraft, and it gets harder and harder to direct them to their landing spots without a midair collision. If there's one collision your game is over.

I downloaded this game a week ago and I still keep coming back to try to get a new high score. Flight Control is both incredibly challenging and very addicting and definitely worth the 99 cent price tag.

What do you think? What app do you wish would come out for the iPhone? Have you used Skype yet? What's your high score at Flight Control (mine is in the screenshot at the time of this post)? Let me know in the comments!

UPDATED: Corrected list of supported messaging protocols.

Known for its security software, Symantec on Tuesday launched a new program aimed at educating parents about their children's online usage. Norton Online Family, now available in beta, is a parental control suite with multiple levels of restriction and an emphasis on usage reporting.

Citing a Rochester Institute of Technology study that found a huge gap between the percentage of parents versus children who report no online supervision, Symantec says that Online Family is intended to bridge that gap by "fostering communication" between parents and their kids. According to the RIT study, only 7 percent of parents think their children have no online supervision, while 66 percent of kids think they go unsupervised.

To address that, Online Family uses a desktop client called the Norton Safety Minder for Windows and Mac that reports to the parents' Norton Family account with options to e-mail notifications, too. Norton Online Family features parental-controlled customization levels based on the computer's user accounts, so that multi-child families can have different monitoring levels for different kids. It runs in the system tray, too, so that its presence is obvious to all users.

Online Family can log Web sites, block sites using both a topic blocker or a traditional blacklist, and report on social-networking activities. When it tracks visited Web sites, it automatically filters out advertisement URLs that get pinged when visiting media-rich sites. This makes the log easier to parse through.

Online Family includes some innovative features that lend credibility to the claim that this is more than just a souped-up keylogger or blacklist. The blocked sites feature, for example, can be set so that kids can "appeal" to their parents for approval via either e-mail or a Norton-based chat app. It can also be set so that it lets kids through to see the flagged site, regardless of parental approval, but then the parents' log flags the visited site. The responsibility of discussing the content, of course, is left up to parental discretion.

Importantly, Online Family tracks how children represent themselves on social-networking sites, and alerts parents when a child misrepresents their age. Age misrepresentation, Symantec said, was often an indicator of a child associating with people or groups that the parents weren't aware of. It also keeps track of how long a kid has spent on a social-networking site, what time they log in and out, and how often they visit the site.

The new program monitors client-based instant messaging, too. This includes Google/Jabber, Yahoo, Microsoft Live, AOL, Skype, ICQ, Trillian's native chat protocol, as well as Trillian's multi-protocol features and Digsby's, too. However, site-based messaging can not be tracked. Once a child logs into Facebook, for example, Online Family won't be able to follow what they're doing within the site.

Other monitors include a personal information blocker, where personal information specific to the child can be blocked from being sent out from the computer, a parental notification whenever a kid creates a new account on any site, a time monitor to enforce a "computer curfew," and a notification for when the Norton Safety Minder is turned off.

Online Family requires a Norton account, and the registration is free until the program leaves beta. Final pricing for the Online Family stable release that's expected in the spring has yet to be announced, but the beta trial is free for now. Symantec has said that they want to make Norton Online Family affordable, though, so it's unlikely that the price point will be exorbitant.

Forget the iTunes Remote. The newly released Air Mouse 1.5 ($5.99) makes a mean universal remote out of the iPhone and iPod Touch. With it, you'll be able to control almost any program on your Mac or Windows computer.

I was always a big fan of this app, which works with the help of a Windows and Mac servers to establish a local network between the computer and the iPhone. It then gives you two modes for controlling the keyboard and mouse: a touch pad, and a slightly less effective (read: higher learning curve) and more traditional air mouse that you activate by pressing a button and arcing your arm. Version 1.5 completely blows away every competitor we've seen by adding an incredible array of new features without bumping up the price.

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Since Monday, I have been running a prebeta copy of Windows 7, the next operating system from Microsoft.

At first glance, build 6801 of Windows 7 appears very much like Windows Vista; that's because enhancements to the look and feel part of the operating system typically come late in the development process. Right now, the core programming is being set, and there are already some changes in how Windows 7 will handle computer security.

Gone is the Security Center, introduced in Windows XP SP2. Instead, there will be an "Action Center" that incorporates alerts from 10 existing Windows features: Security Center; Problem, Reports, and Solutions; Windows Defender; Windows Update; Diagnostics; Network Access Protection; Backup and Restore; Recovery; and User Account Control.

Changes to the User Account Control (UAC) may raise an eyebrow or two. While vastly unpopular in Windows Vista, the dialog boxes that pop up whenever a user tries to install new software, among other reasons, served a purpose.

In Windows 7, users can adjust consent prompt behavior using a slider control, if they have administrative privileges. Microsoft says they'll still be protected against malicious software, even if they never see another alert. I'm wondering if that's actually a bad idea: if people never see an alert, they might think nothing bad ever happens to their computer. We lose an element of user education.

Windows 7, which Microsoft unveiled at its PDC 2008 event this week, also introduces something called the Windows Filtering Platform (WFP). The idea is that third parties can take advantage of aspects of the Microsoft Windows Firewall in their own products. Microsoft says "third-party products also can selectively turn parts of the Windows Firewall on or off, enabling you to choose which software firewall you want to use and have it coexist with Windows Firewall."

I mentioned this feature to one major security vendor, which responded by saying it couldn't imagine running its product side by side with Windows Firewall. Also, if Microsoft had a compelling component in its firewall, this vendor said it would just build its own version, not use Microsoft's.

Other security features have been tweaked in the current build of the next Windows operating system. Scrollbars were removed in the configuration settings screen, as has the Software Explorer feature, and real-time protection in Windows 7 has been improved to reduce the impact on overall system performance.

Windows 7 extends BitLocker drive encryption support to removable storage devices, such as flash memory drives and portable hard drives. This means that users can keep sensitive data on all of their USB storage devices.

Biometrics enhancements include easier reader configurations, allowing users to manage the fingerprint data stored on the computer and control how they log on to Windows 7.

And System Restore includes a list of programs that will be removed or added, providing users with more information before they choose which restore point to use. Restore points are also available in backups, providing a larger list to choose from, over a longer period of time.

Returning from Windows Vista are Kernel Patch Protection, Service Hardening, Data Execution Prevention, Address Space Layout Randomization, and Mandatory Integrity Levels.

This information could change, as Microsoft nears the final build. Microsoft still expects to ship Windows 7 "within three years of Windows Vista," which means that it could be available sometime before January 2010.

Click here for more news on Windows 7.