Blosics 2 Level Pack is an awesome user-generated Time Waster

When Lee reviewed the original Blosics time-waster back in 2009, he concluded the review with the words "I just wish there were more levels, but I'll be heading back for another round."

Well, it seems like Lee's wish has been granted, with the Blosics 2 Level Pack. Gameplay is exactly like the original: You shoot cannon balls out of a certain area of the screen, trying to make a tower of bricks topple. When the bricks fall into the abyss you gain points, but every ball you shoot also costs you points. You also have four different balls sizes - the larger the ball, the more expensive (and powerful) it is. It comes down to figuring the most effective trajectory and tactic for toppling the tower.

The are 30 user-generated levels, and it's very addictive. I made it all the way to level 15 before the need to perform some actual work caught up with me. Very engaging.

Filed under: Fun, Games, Time-Wasters

Blosics 2 Level Pack is an awesome user-generated Time Waster originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 22 Nov 2010 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How to Get Student Discounts Forever [Saving Money]

Holiday discounts be damned, nothing saves you money like an old fashioned student discount. Here's how to continue making use of those discounts long after your time as a student has passed. More »

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What The Comcast/Level 3 Fracas Is Really About: Money

The headlines are pretty rough: Comcast hates Netflix! Net neutrality is dying! Communist forces from Russia and Cuba are attack a small town in Colorado and a ragtag band of high school students band together to fight them (although, arguably, this may have nothing to do with Comcast/Level 3)! But what's really going on here? First, let's understand how data gets from the cloud to you. This stuff costs a lot of money and carriers didn't do it out of the kindness of their hearts. They want to be paid for their data centers. That's where Level 3 comes in. Level 3 acts as both a backbone - meaning a massive, nationwide carrier of data - and a Content Delivery Network. Back in the old days, the backbone would be the only thing on the net. But once it became clear that hosting all your data on one server was a bad idea, CDNs grew up and allowed content providers to cache their data in different physical locations. You'd hit one CDN in California and I'd hit one in New York. Things worked faster that way.

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Use Your iPad To Manage Your Finances In Style

When it comes to budgeting and managing your finances on your iPad there are several apps to choose from, but very few compare to Checkbook by iBear LLC. This newly released app has everything you could want or even ask for when it comes to both style and functionality. Easily keep track of your mortgage, [...]

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Is That a Computer You're Wearing on Your Head?

Motorola announced Wednesday that it will develop a hands-free wireless computing headset with micro-display specialists at Kopin -- a move reminiscent of previous attempts to create wearable computers and communications devices. The device will offer voice, audio and PC capabilities on a virtual reality-style 15-inch monitor that will also support simulation software and streaming video.

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If Causes Had Its Own Social Network It Would Be Jumo

Facebook co-founder and former Obama social media guru Chris Hughes has just launched Jumo, a social network for charities, in beta today. �Jumo aims to help you discover what causes matter to you by allowing you follow specific charities as well as keep tabs on what your friends are following. Seems simple enough. On Jumo each cause/charity has its own relevant news stream, sort of like what would happen if the Facebook app "Causes," coincidentally started by Sean Parker and former Zuckerberg roommate Joe Green, had its own social network that allowed you to actually "friend" charities.

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Is That a Computer You're Wearing on Your Head?

Motorola announced Wednesday that it will develop a hands-free wireless computing headset with micro-display specialists at Kopin -- a move reminiscent of previous attempts to create wearable computers and communications devices. The device will offer voice, audio and PC capabilities on a virtual reality-style 15-inch monitor that will also support simulation software and streaming video.

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Internet Explorer 9 preview 7 available, takes SunSpider crown; Beta now downloaded 13 million times

As of a few moments ago, you can now download Platform Preview 7 of Internet Explorer 9. The main focus of this update is the continued enhancement of the Chakra JavaScript engine; as a result, IE9 now leads the SunSpider benchmark by a few percent.

Like its predecessors, this preview lacks any kind of useful UI -- but if you have the Beta installed, you can follow Lee's guide to hack the Beta UI onto the preview. The Beta, incidentally, has now been downloaded over 13 million times. We're not seeing significant use of IE9 amongst Download Squad readers, but with almost 4% of Ed Bott'z ZDNet readership using IE9, there's definitely some evidence of its growing popularity. With my sources indicating a January release of IE9, Microsoft really ought to release a second beta...

Anyway, in infinitely more exciting news, there's a bunch of cool new HTML5 demos on the Test Drive site to play around with! Shakespeare's Tag Cloud is very cute (and educational!) Galactic, on the other hand, is an excellent example of the 'Open Web' 3D games that we can expect to see next year. It also acts as a very good benchmark tool -- I may have to do another head-to-head browser shootout!

Update: I just tested IE9 on the 'real world' Kraken benchmark... and it beats Firefox!

Another update: The IE Blog has been updated with more information about Preview 7.

Filed under: Microsoft, Browsers

Internet Explorer 9 preview 7 available, takes SunSpider crown; Beta now downloaded 13 million times originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 17 Nov 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dislike [Shoes]

Luckily for humanity, these "social network sneakers" are concepts. For now. I fear there's no fail whale in existence that will be big enough to stop the slobbering social media masses from demanding these be created via a "Like" page. More »

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The top Windows Phone 7 app -- YouTube -- is just a website shortcut

Sitting at the top of the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace is the most anticlimactic app of all time: YouTube.

After installing and eagerly clicking the icon I was greeted with... m.youtube.com. Yes, the YouTube app is a shortcut to the built-in Web browser. No more, no less... just a shortcut.

I suppose you could say that this is the first smartphone Web app -- but really, it's just laziness. Incidentally, did you know that Windows Phone 7 also lacks a Windows Live Messenger app? Maybe there's a Web-based client that I can use instead..

[via @ryan, and others]

Filed under: Video, Windows Mobile, Google

The top Windows Phone 7 app -- YouTube -- is just a website shortcut originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 13 Nov 2010 20:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Daily Crunch: Downstream Edition

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Nao developer program kicks off: $4,800, robot included

We've been following Aldebaran Robotics' Nao humanoid robot literally since it took its first steps, and it looks like interested developers will finally be able to get their hands on a bot of their own quite soon. To do so, they'll have to sign up and quality for the just-launched Nao developer program, which costs €3,600 (or roughly $4,800) and will initially be limited to just 200 participants. That hefty price does naturally include the robot itself, along with a complete software suite, and "privileged access" to Aldebaran Robotics' source code. Interested? Hit up the link below for the complete details.

Nao developer program kicks off: $4,800, robot included originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 28 Nov 2010 06:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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TiPb Picks of the Week

Every week a few of us from team TiPb will bring you our current favorite, funnest, most useful App Store apps, WebApps, jailbreak apps, even the occasional accessory, web site, or desktop app if the mood strikes us. As long as they?re iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch related, they?re fair game. To see what we picked [...]

TiPb Picks of the Week is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Samsung Nexus S reappears at the FCC with a pair of new antennas

Thinking that the not-yet-announced Samsung GT-i9020T (a.k.a. Nexus S) might be delayed due to a last minute addition of a dual-core processor, as recently seen in the seemingly similar i9100? Well, it's looking like that possibility just got a lot less likely -- the GT-i9020T has now turned up yet again at the FCC, with the only changes being a pair of new Bluetooth / WiFi and GPS antennas. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean there won't be any more changes, but it does give us a bit more confidence that a GT-i9020T model will actually be released... sometime.

[Thanks, John M.]

Samsung Nexus S reappears at the FCC with a pair of new antennas originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 28 Nov 2010 18:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Firefox Friday: a round-up of this week's Firefox releases and news

Stop! Stop your Friday afternoon it's-only-two-hours-until-weekend procrastination! Focus on this tab for just a moment because I have a lot to tell you. We've covered so much Firefox news this week that you can't possibly have read it all. You need this round-up like you need a Friday beer.

Enough waffling... let's rock.

Firefox 4 Beta 7 has been released for Windows, Mac and Linux

Almost two months late, Mozilla finally squeezed out the first feature-complete Firefox 4 Beta. Beyond the fact that FF4 has a staggering number of new features, it's not clear why the browser is slipping so behind schedule. Still, if everything goes to plan, we should see three more beta releases followed by a release candidate around February or March.

If you haven't yet tried out Firefox 4, now's the time to take it for a spin. There are still plenty of rough edges, but my guide should walk you through most of the cool new features. Most importantly, thanks to the inclusion of a suped-up JavaScript engine in this new build, you'll quickly notice that FF4 is now as fast as Google Chrome.

Continue reading Firefox Friday: a round-up of this week's Firefox releases and news

Filed under: Mozilla, Browsers

Firefox Friday: a round-up of this week's Firefox releases and news originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 12 Nov 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Future Ubuntu bumps could be a daily occurrence

We're getting used to software developers releasing early and iterating often. Web browsers are perhaps the best example, with Google, Mozilla, and Opera dropping bleeding-edge snapshots like so many quarters into a one-armed bandit. Operating systems, however, are another story.

Canonical is looking to change that, and frontman Mark Shuttleworth thinks that you may see Ubuntu pushing things in a similar direction. "Today we have a six-month release cycle," Shuttleworth said. "In an internet-oriented world, we need to be able to release something every day," he told The Register. This would go beyond the package updates Ubuntu users -- and Linux users in general -- are used to receiving via their package manager. Major new features, subtle UI changes, or new core applications like the recently-added Shotwell photo manager could be delivered piping hot, fresh from the development teams working on a particular aspect of Ubuntu.

Future Ubuntu bumps could be a daily occurrence originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 23 Nov 2010 18:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Ultimate Black Friday Gadget Cheat Sheet [Updated] [Black Friday]

It's the biggest shopping day of the year. There are tons of deals—and not-really-deals—out there. So we combed through every one we could find, and ranked them all. We're always updating, so make sure to keep checking back. More »

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