When I think about searching online, my first and often only thought is, "how can I do this with Google?" Well, Google's great at search, but that doesn't mean it's the best tool in every situation. Consider searching for PDFs containing specific information; wouldn't you like to see a nice clean list of PDF titles with links both to the PDF in question and an HTML version of it? PDF Search Tool offers exactly that functionality.

To be fair, Google can do this too, particularly if you use the search argument "filteype=pdf", but PDF Search Tool feels somehow more purpose-built. For those that are inclined, it's interesting to see what happens when you search for a well-known author's name; PDF Search Tool almost feels like a pirate ebook finder when used that way. Not that you would. Or should.

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PDF Search Tool helps you find PDF files by content originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I just spent way too long (about 10 minutes) blasting a polar bear on a sled into a bunch of penguins using bombs and land mines. Can you say that? Well, you can now. Check out Polar PWND, an online physics game where the aforementioned polar bear on a sled is essentially a bowling ball, and the penguins are your pins.

The game uses a left-to-right platform view, and though the control scheme for placing objects could be better, it's serviceable and doesn't get in the way of the game play too much.

Polar PWND is not a long game; there are only 10 levels to beat. I see that as a plus, actually. I hate it when a Time Waster consumes me and it has 80 freaking levels and I can't get anything done because I have to beat just one more level... you know how it is. Polar PWND on the other hand can be completed in one brief sitting.

Thanks to Javier for the tip.

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Polar PWND - a beary good physics Time Waster originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I never thought I'd be writing about Toyota, a major car manufacturer, here on Download Squad. While we've mentioned cars before, usually it's in the context of an on-board entertainment system or a goofy experiment.

But it turns out that the accelerator problem that has prompted a massive recall of Toyota vehicles could be related to the onboard software the car manufacturer employs in these cars. Computers have become more and more integral in modern vehicles, and Computerworld reports that some vehicles like the affected Toyota models are fly by wire. Fly-by-wire, if you're not familiar with the term, refers to the idea that the controls that the user manipulates like the gas and brake pedal are not physically connected to the throttle and brakes on the car, but rather are simply inputs into the car's computer, which then controls the throttle and brakes digitally.

A problem with the software on board the car's computer could certainly cause odd behavior, and we all know that software can be buggy. But given the importance of fly by wire software, I have to think that Toyota put it through an incredible level of testing. Though the investigation has turned to looking at the software as the culprit, I'm hoping that it turns out to be a red herring. Though I guess it's only a matter of time before we hear about some real-world big tragedy caused by a software malfunction.

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Toyota's woes could be software related originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 09 Feb 2010 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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10+ great tools for safer web browsing originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 09 Feb 2010 11:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

If you're looking or an easy way to increase your touch-typing speed, head over to Klava. Klava's a free, online touch-typing tester that delivers a never-ending stream of words in patterns that help you focus on the most troublesome letter combinations, increasing your overall typing speed.

The tool offers a few different word sets including standard and advanced English, and even a few programming languages for the software developers out there that would like to increase their speed.

As someone who taught himself to touch-type using an ancient piece of freeware on my Windows 3.1 computer, I can vouch for the effectiveness of this type of tool. Dedicate twenty minutes per day, and your typing speed will increase in no time.

[via Lifehacker]

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Klava is a free online touch-typing speed tester and skill enhancer originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Who do you think of when you want to search for what's happening now? Increasingly people are searching social networks like Twitter and Facebook, and Google has increased the speed of its index to offer more up-to-date real-time information. In the realm of technology, Techmeme has had a lock on live news for a few years now.

But there's a site I recently learned about that you might not be aware of that has a unique take on allowing you to search for and presenting news and current affairs called Silobreaker. Silobreaker's current list of categories includes Global Issues, Technology, Science, Business, Energy, and World. Clicking on any of these top-level categories presents a menu of 4 to 6 sub-categories that allow you to further refine your view.

Silobreaker pulls from news sources, blogs, and multimedia sites to put together a hub of related posts and articles for any given story. In the sidebar, they offer an In Focus section with direct links to the people or organizations being discussed, a Network graph that helps you to visualize how each of the publications or services that are used in a story's summary are related, a Blogs section listing relevant blog posts, and a self-explanatory Audio/Video section.

Silobreaker's approach to sourcing out relevant information and determining what's hot seems to be working, and the way they present the collected information is second to none. Watch for the service to grow by leaps and bounds.

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Silobreaker offers alternative search service for news and current affairs originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Get rich quick by extorting university student pirates! originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 09 Feb 2010 09:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Firebug web development extension comes to Google Chrome originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Listary spruces up Windows find-as-you-type originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Firefox 4 gets animated: New videos show slight browser tab changes originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Google Stream? Google will launch "huge" new social features tomorrow originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Liquid Scale is an iPhone / iPod Touch app that allows you to resize images by removing unimportant elements in the photo, leaving the important ones untouched. It's a technique called seam carving that we've previously mentioned, but what's interesting here is that it's now available to be used on the iPhone.

For those that are unfamiliar with it, the seam carving technique analyzes images to determine the most and least important elements, and when you use it to decrease the size of an image it removes the least important parts first, in tiny 1 pixel wide slices. It can be a slow process, particularly on larger images, but the result is often much more compelling than what can be done with a simple crop. Of course, if you're not careful to use the effect sparingly, the results can go from impressive to flat-out weird pretty quickly.

Liquid Scale is available for $2US in the App Store.

[via Daring Fireball]

Liquid Scale removes unwanted picture parts to resize images on your iPhone originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Universal sues Grooveshark music service originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Microsoft and Facebook have worked together for two and a half years now, with Microsoft selling display ads on the social network. In a newly-announced deal Facebook will be taking over responsibility for selling their own display ads -- which makes sense given that they've got their own ad network.

Microsoft's Bing web search service will be extended to Facebook worldwide, and Microsoft will continue to provide search ads. Beyond the advertising changes, Facebook will now have access to Bing's full set of features to implement as they see fit within Facebook, which could lead to some exciting new features.

Microsoft's strategy of exposing Bing to the at least 350 million active Facebook users is an attempt to kick-start the service's growth which is already recognized among web power-users as being comparable to Google in terms of quality.

Microsoft and Facebook renegotiate advertising and Bing integration originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I almost (not quite, but almost) feel bad for Adobe right now. Apple has been unceremoniously dumping on Flash in a big way since the iPad announcement, and all Adobe can do is claim they don't ship known-buggy Flash releases and announce how much better Flash will perform on Macs when Flash 10.1 is released. Flash still has critical mass adoption among traditional computing devices (desktops and laptops), and almost all mobile platforms other than Apple's have either stated they will use Flash or are working towards it.

And yet, the size of Apple's iPhone and iPod touch (and soon iPad) markets just can't be ignored, and neither can the swelling anti-Flash sentiment coming from the very influential tech elite.

Is better performance on the Mac going to fix what ails the Adobe / Apple relationship? Don't bet on it. But since Flash isn't going away for a long time, the improvement will be nice to have for Mac users.

Adobe says Flash performance on Mac to rival Windows in Flash 10.1 originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

10 free ways to keep track of changes to any website, without an RSS reader originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Google Listen: Podcast manager, search engine for Android originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Google working on real-time voice translation app for phones originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It has come to light that there is a security flaw in the NTVDM (NT DOS virtual machine), which is the process that runs when you open a command prompt (DOS window) on any 32-bit version of Windows. This flaw has existed since the very first version of the service on Windows NT and could allow a specially written 16-bit application to escalate the user's rights to that of administrator -- proof-of-concept code already exists for such an attack.

Microsoft has acknowledged the flaw in the NTVDM, but does not intend to immediately fix it. Instead, they have released a One Click Fix for this issue which changes a registry setting to prevent the NTVDM from launching.

The problem with this approach is that there are still 16-bit enterprise applications out there (both on client, and on servers) that work perfectly well and need to continue doing so. The options for companies relying on such legacy applications are limited: they can either stop using their applications (not really an option for some), or they are forced to live with the possibility that users could gain administrative rights on their machines.

The question boils down to whether Microsoft has an obligation to correct this problem in what is by today's standards an ancient piece of code that's sole purpose is to allow people to run ancient software. I would argue that while it's fair for Microsoft to stop shipping the NTVDM as they have in the latest version of Windows Server 2008, until they stop providing it across all of their operating systems, they need to support it and if that means fixing a very old security hole properly, then so be it.

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17 year-old security flaw in NTVDM makes the DOS prompt an enterprise nightmare originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

What key do you prefer to hear music played in? Most people aren't aware of a preference in this regard, but you might be surprised to learn that there are some clear key-related patterns to your listening habits.

HacKey uses your Last.fm account to determine your favorite music based on a unique listing of your top 50 tracks by play count (both overall and for the last six months) and your last 50 "loved" tracks. It then queries the Echo Nest API to get the keys for each song, and presents it to you as a pie chart, along with the percentage split between songs that are in a major and minor key. Once the pie chart has completed populating, you can mouse over a given key to see song titles that are in that key.

Is HacKey particularly useful? Not really, but if you're enough of music junkie to be scrobbling your listening habits to Last.fm, you'll probably find HacKey at least as entertaining as I did. And if you happen to like rock music as I do, I'll bet your favorite key is A Major like mine was.

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HacKey determines what keys you prefer music to be in originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.