The Download Blog

Like indie films? Documentaries? Animation? Ho, boy, have I got an app for you: NFB Films lets you watch over a thousand movies on your iPhone. For free.

The "NFB" stands for National Film Board, a kind of Canadian PBS. The app taps the NFB's mammoth library of documentaries, animated films, trailers (for upcoming NFB releases), and more.

All the movies are streamed to your iPhone, but there's also an ingenious "watch later" option that downloads a selected movie for later viewing. However, these downloads expire after 24 hours, not unlike App Store movie rentals, but that hardly seems unfair.

NFB Films includes a Channels section where you can browse various categories, including Documentaries, Kids Cartoons, History & War, and Environment. There's a search option, natch, and you can add movies to a favorites (sorry, "favourites") list for easier access.

If you come across a film you want to share with friends, the app lets you send an e-mail that includes a link to the Web version.

A while back I went to see 10 Oscar-nominated short films--five animated, five live-action. They were all tremendously entertaining. Since then I've been a lot more open-minded to non-mainstream movie fare like this. So for me, NFB Films is pure iPhone gold. I reckon you'll love it, too.

In my business, I deal with all kinds of software from different categories and platforms every day. There's a lot of great software out there for every platform (and certainly some bad ones, too), but once in a while you find something so unique it truly shines. I wouldn't say the app I'm talking about today is the best game I've ever played, but the design, music, and interface are not really found in any other game and are truly something to behold on the iPhone. Let's just say, I've played plenty of iPhone games, but this one is in a class by itself.

This week's apps include a new public radio app and a unique game in which you explore a creepy bug-infested mansion as a spider.

NPR News (Free) is the official NPR app featuring national NPR radio listings, streaming radio, and full news stories to read. The interface includes buttons across the bottom you can select to read news stories; listen to popular programs either by streaming them live or streaming the most recent; and a stations section where you can listen to NPR streaming live from any state. You also get a playlist section where you can select and queue up several streamed stories to play continuously.

Aside from listening to the many entertaining news stories and programs, what makes the NPR News app especially cool is that you can listen and read stories simultaneously, adding an extra element to the broadcast (like looking at images as you listen). The ability to set up playlists is also useful, perfect for long exercise sessions or--if you have a car adapter--long car trips. Simply go to the Programs section, select a program you like and you'll have the option to add it to your playlist. But even with all the listening options in this app, you can still read the latest news stories in a scrollable feed. If you're an NPR fan, this free app has just about everything you need to listen to exactly what you want whenever you want it.

Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor ($2.99) challenges you to play as a spider, spinning webs, catching bugs, and slowly solving a mystery as you travel from room to room. The interface is fantastic, letting you swipe your screen to jump, a single tap to anchor your web silk, and simply pressing in the direction you want to crawl. Different types of bugs fly around, each with their own challenges as you spin webs (mosquitoes run from you and hornets need to be tackled midair, for example). Each of the bugs have different point values and each room is timed, with a dialog box at the end of each level showing your best time, stats, and score. But as you live you the life of a spider, you'll also stumble upon secret locations with clues to the mystery of the Bryce family.

Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor quickly becomes mesmerizing as you try to figure out the best way to make polygonal webs within your environment. The combination of the hand-drawn rooms, the movement and ability to create webs anywhere, and the mysterious music that accompanies your quest, make this not just an app, but an almost artistic experience. There are four game modes to play through including the main adventure, a Feeding Frenzy to eat as many bugs as possible; Hunger mode, which forces you to eat quickly to stay alive; and a precision mode giving you shorter threads to make webs as you complete the game. Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor is truly a unique game on the iPhone, and I think it will appeal to just about anyone (even the ones who hate spiders).

What's your favorite iPhone app? Did NPR do a good job with their first foray into iPhone apps? What do you think of Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor? Let me know in the comments!

Blurring the line between computer and TV just a tad more, video-streaming site Hulu puts its content front and center with a new desktop app for Windows and Mac. Introduced via Hulu's new Labs testing bed, Hulu Desktop is one of four new apps in Labs. The other three include a Video Panel designer for customizing the look of Hulu embeds, a recommendations list, and original air date-based browsing--but Hulu Desktop is the only one available for download.

There are some stringent limitations to getting the desktop client to run properly, although if your system meets their standards, you'll get to play with some cool features. Windows users must have at least an Intel Pentium Core Duo, with a 1.8GHz processor and 2GB of RAM running Windows XP. Mac users need an Intel Pentium Core Duo, with a 2.0GHz and 2GB of RAM running OS X 10.4 (Tiger). Both Windows and Mac users should have at least a 2 Mbps Internet connection, and Flash 9.0.124 or later is a must.

Once running, the desktop client offers a smooth and reasonable facsimile of the features users should be familiar with from Hulu on the Web. You can use a Windows Media Center remote or an Apple remote to control it, further emphasizing the computer as a TV. Using the standard maximize window button in the upper-right corner of the pane will give you full-screen viewing.

Mouse over the video in the windowed mode to reveal the title of the video playing, its user rating, duration, and a button to jump to the main menu up at the top. A video progress timeline, volume control, buffer status, and video quality indicators live on the bottom. A handy preview pane appears when you mouse over the timeline.

The Web-based Hulu navigation in the menu remains the same. A scroll bar on the left smoothly moves from Now Playing down through Recently Added, TV, and Movies. A search feature available from a magnifying glass icon allows for Hulu-wide searching, and the scroll bar's Search option opens up a slick-feeling virtual keyboard.

In my testing, I encountered no stability issues, although some users have noted other results. The Hulu Desktop beta is currently free, although there's no indication from Hulu whether that will change in the future.

Microsoft has struck a deal to bring Netflix's streaming movie service to Windows Media Center, the companies said Tuesday.

Netflix's more than 12,000 "Watch it now" movies and TV episodes are only available to users of Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate. XP users won't be able to access the service.

Owners of Windows Media Center will also be able to search the entire Netflix library, manage their DVD queues, and "filter searches by titles that are available to watch instantly," Microsoft said in a statement.

Microsoft continues to try to boost the amount of content available on Windows Media. In March, the company launched a new sports channel, including replays of the past NCAA basketball tournament.

"We're building on our broader vision to alleviate the need to jump from Web site to Web site to find TV shows, movies, sports and news," Microsoft said in a statement. " "With Windows Media Center, (users) can now find it in one place."

For Netflix, the partnership offers the Web's No.1 video rental service the chance to reach scores of of Vista users. Netflix's deal with Microsoft's Xbox videogame console proved to be a boon for the company.

Netflix has steadily been crossing the once wide chasm between the PC and the television by striking partnership deals with a wide assortment of set-top box makers, including Roku, and LG.

To access Netflix's service, Windows Media Center owners must first subscribe to the rental service. Then, to stream movies, they can start Windows Media Center on their computers by selecting the new Netflix tile under TV+Movies heading.

With many versions of Windows, Microsoft chops features as it gets closer to release.

With Windows 7, Microsoft has actually added a few features as it has gotten closer to launch. One of the most intriguing is a feature that debuted with the most recent release candidate (download) allows a user to stream media from one PC to another over the Internet, a la the Slingbox.

There are some noteworthy limitations. The streaming feature works with unprotected video and music files, so one can't watch video from iTunes or other copy-protected content.

Also the remote media streaming, as the feature is known, requires both computers to be running Windows 7 and requires some setup work. That said, the feature is nice for the scenarios and locations from which it works. It seems particularly well suited to a Netbook or laptop user that wants to listen to some music or view some photos that they don't have on their on-the-go machine.

To get a better sense of the product, I decided to put it through its paces. The feature didn't seem to work when one of the PCs was attached to CNET's corporate network, but worked fine when I went to a coffee house and streamed the media off of a Windows PC at home. (The remote media streaming requires the PC that houses the content to be part of a home network.)

Set-up is not overly complex, but nor is it elegant by any means. To get the PC ready, you have to turn on Internet streaming in Windows Media Player. The other piece is associating both machines with the same Windows Live ID. (The feature may eventually support other ID providers, but for now it's only Windows Live.)

Getting up and running required downloading a Windows Live ID Assistant from the Internet, which sends you to a browser. Again, this wasn't super-technical, but it would have been nice if it did all that without opening a browser and requiring so many clicks.

Once I thought I had everything set up, I decided to put it to the test. Rather than go too far from home, I headed to Nervous Dog Coffee, my favorite spot for getting caffeinated and trying out new technology.

I started with what I thought was the easiest task--opening a photo. The library showed up quickly but opening the photo was slow. Also unexpected was the fact that instead of just opening that photo, it launched a slideshow of the whole folder.

From there I moved on to music, streaming the Indigo Girls album "All that We Let In." It sounded good, with no noticeable skips, although I could only listen in short bursts as I forgot to bring along headphones.

I then moved onto video, playing a built-in HD clip of wildlife footage that came as part of Windows 7. The clip played with its accompanying audio, though the video was a bit jerky in places.

Satisfied with the results, I packed up the PC and headed into the office. Interestingly, the media-sharing feature didn't appear to work on the same PC once I got into the office. I tried labeling my office network as both a home and an office network, but perhaps a network firewall or something got in the way.

Once I switched from a hard-wire connection to CNET's public wireless network, I was once again able to see content stored on the computer at home. I was even able to stream a Sesame Street episode that I had set to start recording after I left the house.

The quality of that viewing experience varied dramatically. In the best cases, the TV showed up in a small but passable window, while in a couple cases it was in a tiny window or took an unacceptably long time to buffer.

Microsoft says a variety of factors go into the size and quality of the video stream, including the characteristics of the content, the available bandwidth, and the processing power of the serving computer.

At its best, the ability to watch recorded TV is handy; it's not quite the live TV option that Slingbox provides, but still could be useful for road warriors stuck in an airport or at the hotel. But sometimes the delay was enough to send me over to Hulu for sure.

Overall, I found the media-streaming feature to be a nice addition, but both the limitations and the somewhat complicated set-up leaves me the feeling that it will be the enthusiast rather than the mainstream user that gets around to trying this out.

The music discovery Web site imeem.com officially launched its very own iPhone app on Thursday, May 14. Imeem's app is free and bears a resemblance to similar offerings from Pandora, Last.fm, and Slacker, offering the ability to stream, search, and purchase music over Wi-Fi or cellular connections.

But before you write off the Imeem app (download) as some late-arriving Last.fm wannabe, there's one killer feature to be aware of: cloud storage. Apps like Last.fm will go so far as to create personalized radio stations based on a random selection of songs from your collection, but the Imeem app allows you to call up any song or album in your collection and play it without the restrictions associated with most services (i.e. limited skips, and the inability to play songs from the same artist back-to-back).

In order to stream music from your personal collection, you first need to upload your music to imeem.com from your desktop using its free Mac/PC-compatible client. Now before you go thinking that you can upload that 300GB iTunes library to Imeem and stream it anywhere in the world, there's a catch. Imeem won't charge you for the first 100 songs you upload to the site, but anything more than that will require a VIP service ($29.99 per year for up to 1,000 songs, or $99.99 per year for up to 20,000).

Beyond the appeal of streaming your music collection form the cloud, the rest of the Imeem application falls somewhere between the simplicity of the Pandora app, and the more personalized, social approach of Last.fm. The main menu screen offers ... Read more

Like many people, I have a music library that's way too large to fit on my iPhone. (Yo, Apple! Can we please get a 64GB model already?) Fortunately, I can still listen to every track I own thanks to Simplify Music 2.0 (formerly Simplify Media).

The app streams tunes from your PC by way of a music-server program that's available for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. Download it, install it, then choose the folders you want it to scan, monitor, and queue. (Alas, the program can't stream DRM-protected iTunes purchases, so it's time to move everything to iTunes Plus.)

The desktop software costs nothing. The Simplify Music iPhone app has an introductory price of $2.99, but the developer plans to bump it to $5.99 in a few weeks.

Once everything's installed and configured, just leave your system running and hit the road. When you run the app, you'll be able to browse your entire desktop music library by album, artist, genre, or song. Tap what you want and presto: the music plays, complete with album art and even song lyrics (which is so cool, it single-handedly justifies the cost of the app).

Want even more variety? Get some buddies on board: you can stream music from friends' music libraries in addition to your own.

Version 2.0 adds some nifty amenities, including a search function (something the iPhone itself doesn't have--yet), an add-to-favorites option for building an on-the-fly playlist, and a "scrub bar" for easy backward/forward scanning.

As you might expect, a Wi-Fi connection produces the best sound quality, though 3G runs it a close second when you have four or five bars. Even over EDGE, Simplify Music delivered surprisingly good sound, about on par with FM radio.

Though the app was sometimes annoyingly slow to connect to my PC, for the most part it worked like a charm. And much as I'm loathe to leave my system running 24-7, I'm now hopelessly addicted to having access to all my music.

Simplify Music makes that a reality, meaning I'll probably think twice about springing for a new iPhone just to get more memory. With the money I save, I'll be able to buy a lot more tunes.

The iPhone famously solves many of life's little problems--you can't decide where to eat, you've got nothing to read, you need to update your Facebook status right now--but who's going to solve the iPhone's problems?

For instance, maybe it's low on storage. Or it's having trouble connecting to a Starbucks hot spot. Here's a list of five common iPhone ailments and the apps that aim to cure them.

• You're running out of storage. Apple may have a 32GB iPhone waiting in the wings, but how does that help you and your storage-strapped model now? Here's one radical idea: delete all your music. Then install Simplify Media, a $3.99 app that streams your entire music library from your Windows, Mac, or Linux PC. I've been test-driving the app for a few days and it works like a charm. Just think of how much space you'll free up for apps, videos, photos, and the like.
• You're texting your way to the poorhouse. Tired of dropping an extra $20 per month for unlimited texting? How about a one-time fee of $5.99 instead? That's the price of Textfree Unlimited, which, true to its name, lets you send and receive an unlimited number of text messages. It's not perfect--you need to enable "push" mail if you want new-message notifications--but it'll definitely save you money.
• There's no way to check your SMS count. Prefer to stick with old-school texting? It would be nice if you could see how many messages you have left for the month. Pageonce just took the wraps off Cell Minute Tracker, a 99-cent app that shows not only your SMS usage, but also your AT&T account balance, rollover minutes, and more. (You can even pay your bill.) Check out Jessica Dolcourt's full review.
• There's no to-do list. Third-party apps to the rescue! Chapura's KeyTasks provides robust task management, and it syncs with Outlook. (But $9.99? Ouch!) Appigo's Todo offers iCal syncing for Mac users for an equally ouchy $9.99. If you'd rather sync your tasks to the Web, try Remember The Milk. The app's free, but you need a $25/year pro account.
• Connecting to Starbucks' Wi-Fi is a hassle. Oh, the hoops you must jump to tap a Starbucks Wi-Fi network. For a mere 99 cents, Easy Wi-Fi lives up to its name, making AT&T hot-spot connections a one-tap affair. No monkeying around with text messages and all that: you'll be online faster than you'll be sipping your latte.

Do you ever wish you could listen to your entire music library on your iPhone or iPod Touch, not just the tunes that fit in memory? That's the idea behind AudioIn, which turns your PC into a music server that streams songs via Wi-Fi.

Yep, it's Wi-Fi only, meaning it's suitable for only around the house. And what's wrong with that? AudioIn works much like Apple's AirPort Express, except that instead of tying you to one room, it lets you move around.

To use the $4.99 application, you must first install AudioServer, which, for now, is a Vista-only utility. (It should work on XP as well, but for some reason the developer says it "may not.") Once up and running, AudioServer captures the audio from iTunes, Windows Media Player, or just about any other source, then streams it to your device.

However, don't mistake AudioIn for a Sonos-like music-library manager. Out of the box, this application offers nothing more than play/pause controls and a volume slider. You can't view your library, choose which songs or artists to play, or even skip tracks.

Actually, you can skip tracks if you don't mind a little tweaking: AudioIn lets you configure up to 18 control buttons to reproduce keyboard commands. So if you want a next-track control for iTunes, for instance, just program a button to be Ctrl-Right. It's a hassle, but it works.

Another hassle: AudioIn requires headphones. For whatever reason, it can't reproduce tunes through the iPhone/Touch speaker.

Ironically, AudioIn's interface looks like a big speaker--but it's not. It's actually meant to represent a trackpad, and sure enough, you can drag your finger around it to remotely control your mouse cursor. Given that AudioIn's purpose in life is to free you from your PC, I'm not sure I see the point of this capability.

If you're not interested in that feature and don't want the programmable buttons, AudioInLite is a little more reasonable at $2.99. (There's also a free version that limits you to 60 seconds of playback, just so you can test the waters.)

In my tests, AudioIn worked as advertised, streaming non-DRM songs at a quality that I'd describe as "pretty good." It's definitely a nice little application to have when you're doing household chores, chilling on the patio, or otherwise away from your PC.

But it's also annoyingly limited, with a quirky interface and slightly out-of-whack price. I think most users would be better off with Simplify Media, a similar application that's iTunes-only but much more robust.