While the rest of you are off gallivanting about in the summer sun, I've been chained to my desk under the San Francisco fog to parse through the worst downloads of the summer. This time around, the range varies from programs that sound useful but aren't, to programs that sound horrible and are, and include one that just defies common decency--and not in a good way.
Be sure to check out CNET TV editor Tom Merritt's video on these five train wrecks and just what I get out of all this. Oh, and a quick disclaimer, just so we're all on the same page: none of these programs are malicious software of any kind, and all meet CNET Download.com's software hosting policies. You're safe in downloading them and trying them out. Consider yourself warned, though: they suck, and maybe even worse than the batch from this spring.
Coming in at No. 5 is Google Maps Downloader. Designed for that rare Venn diagram intersection of cartographers and unnecessarily challenging work flows, this program requires knowing the exact latitude and longitude to save a map. And it's not just one set of coordinates, either. It's way too much effort for something that can be done just as easily with a screen capture. Sometimes it's cool to have professional-level software, but this isn't one of those times.
For No. 4, I present to you yet another entry in the long list of Gnutella clients that already exist for spreading mislabeled malicious software and porn. This one's called TurboWire, and promises even faster download speeds for getting your system-infecting copies of Windows 7 RTM or "Harry Potter".
At to No. 3, the Seanau Icon Collection promises a difficult pronunciation along with a rip-off of a deal. See, the program gives you six generic icons in different sizes, and you can then pay $70 to get the other 2,794 just-as-generic icons. You pay $70, and you get lameness. As Tom pointed out, what's the icon for rip-off?
Windows Movie Maker has its fans, but then, nobody's perfect. This Microsoft program is far, far from perfection, with its buggy behavior, frequent crashes, and lack of modern features. With all the overhauls that Microsoft has been focusing on of late, from Windows 7 to Office to Windows Media Player, one hopes that Redmond will soon focus their attention on this backward little fella. Either that, or kill it outright.
The worst download of the summer has to be the Michael Joseph Jackson Screen Saver. Before you fire off that flame mail, hear me out. It's not the content of the screen saver--if you're a MJ fan, you're going to want to remember him in some way, and there are worse things you could do besides a screen saver that shows you a new version of Jackson's face every 10 seconds--kind of like the man himself. No, the real problem with this, no matter your relationship to Jacko, is that it's a craven attempt to capitalize on his passing. Tragically hilarious? Amusingly offensive? Both, at the same time? Either way, it's awful, so give this No. 1 a big, big pass.
Be sure to check out Tom Merritt's video for a chance to win an extremely special prize.
The end of the aughts is nigh, and the first few months of 2009 have brought us new corporate bailouts, new unemployment figures, and a new batch of download disasters. I don't know about you, but I can't wait to get to 2020. Until then, here are five of the worst downloads from the beginning of '09--maybe we can just laugh ourselves into the future.
Be sure to check out CNET TV Editor Tom Merritt's hilarious video (on the left) on these five gems and just what happened to Peter Butler, my "Worst Downloads" predecessor. Oh, and a quick disclaimer, just so we're all on the same page: none of these programs are malware of any kind, and all meet CNET Download.com's software hosting policies. You're safe in downloading them and trying them out. Consider yourself warned, though: they suck.
5) Internet Speed Up, Bandwidth Saver & Offline Proxy is the name of number five on our list. I'm always wary of programs with names that sound like sentences, and this one's no different. It promises to "speed-Up browsing Internet," which right there makes us want to slap the developer--with a monitor. CRT, preferably. Folks, any time anybody tells you that they've got a way to speed up your Internet browsing and it'll just cost a mere pittance, walk away. It's all smoke and mirrors.
There are settings you can adjust in your browser and other programs that regularly access the Internet to give priority to one application over another. This one claims to make things go faster, and save bandwidth, and work as an offline proxy, and--yes, there's more!--block Trojans.
This wouldn't be so bad were it free, but the eight dollars that this costs would be better spent if you just set them on fire. And where there's smoke, you just don't need to go.
4) Next up is a program that can help you improve the largest organ in the human body. That's right, the Skin Analyzer asks you a series of leading questions followed by leading answers. It starts off somewhat benignly, like a tiny blackhead. The first question asks, "Why do you want to improve your skin," followed by two possible answers: "Mainly for beauty reasons" and "Mainly for health reasons". So far, not so bad.
By the third question, The Skin Analyzer turns into a raging zit of anxiety: if you have "wrinkled and aged skin," for example, you're offered skin care links with paid options such as the Peter Thomas Roth Age Defense kit at the top. To its credit, it do offer a few links to information, like a Web MD article on skin health, but the only real defense against snake oil hucksterism like this is not downloading it in the first place.
Come on, there's nothing here that a quick Google search for "skin care" can't do.
Whack A Gnome
3) Sometimes, the problem with a download is that it's snarzzle-whamaringtone-plockit. I mean, it's a goblin Transpolyporter 6000 that's been spotted in Gnomeregan, and they're struggling with the Trogg scourge and there's a lost Razzle Sprysprocket. Whack A Gnome may have a simple name, but the description defies belief, dictionary, and possibly several international laws on linguistics. It may also be the greatest game in the world, but who can tell when the publisher needs to learn that to get people to download their fozzie-binglot, they need to stop drinking thunderbrew and smoking cannelopy and make a just a wee bit more zertif-qualeebers, right?
2) Lotto Sorcerer is the program I've been waiting for my entire life, and is your instant ticket to unending riches.
Just kidding. There's always one or two special cases, and is there really anything more special than a lottery number predictor that claims to use a neural network? It can bend spoons with it's mind, too. The publisher's description of this geek- and greed-speak mashup says, "Lotto Sorcerer employs neural network (artificial intelligence) techniques to look for non-random and weighted influences in prior lottery drawings, then advises optimum playing strategy."
The "privilege" of owning a program that uses real, honest-to-goodness artificial intelligence to determine how you will fail to win the next lottery you enter will set you back $34.95.
The Ultimate Virus
1) The Ultimate Virus is the ultimate way to get your friends to shove you into oncoming traffic. I thought that the neural network was hard to take, but get this: The Ultimate Virus isn't a virus--it's a practical joke.
It's a program that runs a progress bar informing the user that a virus is being loaded, and then follows it by hiding the taskbar and desktop icons. I imagine the effect on a friend is much like hiding their antipsychosis medication. We're all for having fun, and everybody likes a good prank, but this is the computer equivalent of telling a friend you've siphoned all the gas out of their car when you haven't.
If you just can't resist trying some of these out, even that last one, check out Revo Uninstaller to obliterate all traces of these programs once you're done and friendless.
Sure, you're all jazzed about Barack Obama and looking forward to a brighter 2009, but what about the catastrophes of 2008? I'm not talking about the financial meltdown, Sarah Palin, or The Love Guru, I'm talking about the worst downloads of the year.
Every three months, Tom Merritt (of CNET TV renown) and I collaborate on a lighthearted tribute to the software failures that stick out among the many excellent programs on Download.com worse than John McCain supporters at the Inauguration Day gala.
To qualify, these downloads have to meet the minimum requirements specified by Download.com in our software policies. That excludes all spyware, adware, and rogue software--which disqualifies public enemy No. 1, the notoriously annoying Antivirus XP 2008 and its many variants, which continue to plague Google ads.
Without any further introduction, here are my picks for the most inept, most impractical, and outright goofiest Windows software downloads of last year. If you missed them all the first time, consider yourself lucky.
No. 5. SKAT
In all honestly, this unusually unappealing card game makes my top five worst of 2008 mostly because it's German and named "SKAT." Are you kidding me! That sort of "blue" material might be golden for bawdy comedians, but what about the casual gamer? Unless you're well versed in German and enjoy human-size mice sitting around a photo of an old-timey saloon, you're best passing this diversion by.
The basic card game pits you against Speedy and Jerry, two suspicious and ill-drawn rodents. The rules conveniently list topics in English like "Game Introduction" and "The Deck and The Suits." However, clicking on any topic only gets you more explanations in German. You can pick up on the rules of the game by playing a few with Speedy and Jerry, but if the lame graphics and retro (yet very polite) rodents don't scare you off, the tedium of the action should put you to sleep in a few minutes.
No. 4. MB Free Psychic Color Test
It's one thing to exploit users' belief in their own supernatural abilities, but why does pseudoscience have to be so doggone boring?
The free psychic "game" MB Free Psychic Color Test is based on using your psychic abilities to select the color secretly chosen by the computer. The Beginner level starts with five colors; Intermediate brings 10 colors to the mix; and Expert kicks up the fun to 20 colors.
Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and think hard. Then open your eyes and select a color. If you're right, you'll get a "correct" message; an errant response receives an uplifting "incorrect" salvo: "Don't lose hope! Relax, take a deep breath, keep a calm mind, and guess again." Wait a minute...guess? There's no guessing involved in psychic color testing. I call shenanigans!
To top if all off, exiting the test brings up a shameless donate page from mysticboard.com, the publishers of this crock of software. Mystic Board keeps skirting the very lowest level of our quality threshold, with a number of ridiculously simple programs related to astrology, the occult, and the supernatural.
No. 3. Alien Communicator
While I must give this ridiculous program props for winning the unofficial contest for most mind-boggling software program of 2008, it also doesn't do very much of anything remotely useful, aside from randomly generate letters and numbers.
According to "The Story" that comes with this download, the Alien Communicator "translates alien psycho-kinetic control of the random number generation capability of a PC computer into readable letters." Apparently, thoughts travel much faster than the speed of light in spatial dimensions that are scaled smaller than "the four we are familiar with."
If you actually believe that aliens are trying to communicate with us via random numerals sent through the fifth dimension, I might suggest that you undergo some psychiatric analysis. However, what I wouldn't recommend would be the next piece of software on the list.
No. 2. Psychiatric Diagnosis Suite
When you or someone you care about may have a serious psychiatric problem, the last thing you likely need is a poorly programmed set of canned questions in an interface that's horrible enough to push you over the edge, but that's exactly what you get from Psychiatric Diagnosis Suite. While much of the information in this program is accurate and semicurrent, it's nearly impossible for anyone to use it.
After you are done answering a set of seemingly random psychiatric questions in the standard screen, a series of pop-up windows suggest possible diagnoses: "Please consider Panic Disorder," "Please consider Agoraphobia," "Please consider Alcohol/Drug Abuse" (that popped up twice for me, uh-oh!), "Please consider Generalized Anxiety Disorder," "Error on line 6933 ... Object Required," perhaps we should "Please consider another software program."
Constant spelling mistakes only reinforce the amateur presentation, and to top it all off the program costs $100 and only allows one trial use. If you ever end up with a psychiatrist who uses this ridiculous software, run away!
No. 1. Automatic Print Email
In a year of "change" where many scientists and concerned citizens believe that our environment is reaching the tipping point when it comes to natural resources, there's no reason to waste paper unnecessarily, yet that's exactly what this software does. For the low, low price of $50, this program will print all of the e-mail from your in-box, creating pages after pages of YouTube links, Viagra spam, Evite invitations, and other minutiae from your friends, relatives, and random strangers.
In my option, you're much better off using an actual e-mail program to, you know, read your messages, and then print out the images and letters for which you want hard copies after your preview your messages. For those responsible members of Spaceship Earth, a free program called GreenPrint takes on the notion of paper waste from an opposite approach. It lets you remove items from computer printouts to avoid wasting paper unnecessarily. Now there's an idea for 2009!
The are good programs and bad programs, and then there are the horror shows. Every three months or so, we take a playful look at some of the least impressive software programs to come down the pike.
From Canadian Rock Radio to telepathic communication with aliens, there's a lot not to like about this oddball crew. Just in time for Halloween, CNET TV's Tom Merritt counts down the five scariest downloads of fall 2008.
Every few months, we like to playfully poke fun at some of the less successful software on the site. While there are countless great products created (and covered in this blog, hopefully) every week, these five software applications are not included in that group. These programs are the other sort of download software--the head-scratching variety.
We love you, software publishers, we really do. Some of your products...are another story.
Watch CNET TV's Tom Merritt count down this summer's list of the worst software on Download.com, and see if you don't find yourself wondering, "What were they thinking?"
2008 is nearly halfway over, which means that poor CNET Download.com senior content manager Peter Butler has reached deeply into the trash heap to pluck out, shake off, and crown with glory the most useless downloads published this year. He's handed the best of the worst over to CNET Executive Editor Tom Merritt for show and tell. Hey, even truly horrendous software deserves its moment of shame fame.
To every sweet there is a sour; to every storm cloud, there is a silver lining. We took care of the sour storm clouds first with a demonstration of the worst downloads of 2007 on CNET Download.com. I reiterate editor Peter Butler's disclaimer that the absolute worst downloads, stuffed with spyware or adware, never make it near our site.
The amusing mudslinging for misdirected software aside, may we now present Tom Merritt's ever-humorous take on the five most awesome downloads to break out in 2007. These applications that will save you time, and possibly a whole lot of cash.
If you missed it the first time, here's another look at those useless or embarrassing applications that went belly-up.
On a regular basis, Mark Sikes and I comb the download catalog looking for the absolute worst downloads for Windows that we can find. We then turn over our findings to Tom Merritt at CNET TV, who turns our selections into a rousingly entertaining video.
The end-of-the-year edition is an especially exhaustive search. We have over 75,000 Windows products live on the Download.com site, and thousands more are submitted each week. Mark and I have done the dirty work so you don't have to, and Tom is ready to count them down is his inimitable style.
One semiregular disclaimer: These products aren't actually the absolute worst downloads of 2007, because the most horrible downloads are the sort that we wouldn't allow on the Download.com site because they violate our software policies. These downloads are skating a fine line between irrelevance, uselessness, and incompetence...but there are no spyware or pop-up ads involved.
Watch this CNET TV video to see which of 2007's dubious downloads made our coveted worst of the year list.
(Credit:
Prodege, LLC)
Pity poor me. Everyone else is out drinking spiked eggnog, full of holiday cheer, and here I am, stuck as the PC Grinch, casting snarks and aspersions upon software that intelligent, dedicated people have spent long, hard hours developing. However, the Download.com users occasionally demand blood, and if I'm the one who must bear the sacrificial knife, so be it.
Before I get to the list, I'll start with a disclaimer: These 10 programs are not the worst software programs in the world. These are simply the 10 programs that I had a major beef with in 2007.
Download.com has a strong set of software policies to which any software titles must adhere in order to be listed on our site. The absolute 10 worst downloads in the world won't be found anywhere near our library.
However, you will find some crappy software titles among the 75,000+ programs on the site. Even worse, a good piece of software can sometimes be devalued by a crappy update. Lastly, there are some software programs that simply shouldn't be. These are programs that run smoothly and perform adequately, yet lack a valid purpose, i.e. solutions to problems that don't exist--the pointless downloads.
If a software program has no value to users, we'll pull it off the Download.com site. If we get user complaints about software, we will investigate, and we can remove titles for poor quality or poor publisher behavior. But if software is "so bad it's good," or if it straddles the fence of mediocrity, we'll leave it up to the Download.com audience to determine its value.
Long disclaimer aside, you can read my picks for worst software of the year in a Download.com slide show devoted to the Top 10 worst downloads of 2007. If you agree or disagree, or have a suggestion of your own for the worst downloads of 2007, tell me about it in the blog comments.
You've heard of summer movie flops, but sometimes software can fall just as flat. With the thousands of software programs we see every month on CNET Download.com, there are bound to be a few duds. CNET's Tom Merritt runs through the five worst downloads of summer 2007.
