Download Squad

DLS @ SXSW - Microsoft booth tour

Victor Agreda, Jr. — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:40:00 EST

I took a whirlwind tour of the Microsoft booth and essentially got a quick demo of some things we've covered before, including Photosynth and Windows 7. Still, it's always nice to see what features you might have missed or features MS thinks you should really pay attention to. In this case they are very proud of their touch support and data-driven application support. Something like Photosynth does a lot of crunching behind the scenes to make a fluid, wonderful experience.

DLS @ SXSW - Microsoft booth tour originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft - Photosynth - Windows 7 - SXSW - Companies

DLS @ SXSW - Patrick O'Keefe of iFroggy

Victor Agreda, Jr. — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 15:00:00 EST

Filed under: sxsw

Patrick is the author of Managing Online Forums and is somewhat of an expert on managing online communities in general, having managed the iFroggy network for several years. I caught up with him here in Austin and asked about first impressions of the conference and a little about his core conversation, "Shameless Self Promotion Without Looking Like an @#$%^&!"

DLS @ SXSW - Patrick O'Keefe of iFroggy originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 13 Mar 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Managing Online Forums - iFroggy Network - Patrick O’Keefe - Virtual community - Patrick O'Keefe

Windows Phone 7 Series at SXSW

Shane Kempton — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 13:44:00 EST

Filed under: Windows Mobile

With a large Windows Phone 7 Series sign calling me I set out to find an actual working example of a new Windows powered phone. With a little finagling was able to sweet talk my way into the Microsoft's blogger lounge at South by Southwest Interactive.

While there seems to be only one example running around here somewhere, which I'm working to track down, there was a demo of the OS on a touch screen TV.

Here are some of the features that stood out....

Winking: this what they seem to be calling the real time updates on the home page tiles. These are awesome and it looks like how the updates look and function depend on the underlying application. For example: text messages show the number of new messages, the social tile shows your friends profile images fade in and out and the Xbox Live tile shows Avatars popping in and out of the tile.

Alphabetical Search: say you're in your contacts and you want to quickly jump to a particular name, i.e. Smith. You can simply click the letter header, it shows the alphabet, then you can click the letter you want. Very slick.

The Calendar: it pulls from multiple calendars and shows the entries in different colors, i.e. personal vs. business.

Some other tidbits: while there wasn't an example, the Microsoft rep confirmed that the text messaging will be threaded. You'll be able to pin searches to the home page creating a new tile so you can quickly get back to them. The example the rep used was a search for BBQ places near your location, mmmm Texas BBQ. That's an extremely useful feature when you're traveling.

From what I've seen so far it's a very well thought out UI, can't wait to get my hands on a real example.

Windows Phone 7 Series at SXSW originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 13 Mar 2010 13:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft - Windows Phone 7 Series - Xbox - Windows Mobile - Download Squad

Happening iPhone app breathes new life into Yahoo!'s Upcoming

Jay Hathaway — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 11:00:00 EST

Filed under: Utilities, Social Software, iPhone

Upcoming, the venerable social events calendar that was founded in 2003 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005, has undoubtedly seen better days. There are other places to post events and invite friends now -- notably, Facebook -- and Upcoming has dwindled in popularity. There's still a goldmine of great events on the site, though, especially if you live in a big city. Happening, a new Upcoming client for the iPhone, makes those events fun and easy to explore.

I had my doubts about the usefulness of Upcoming, but Happening's use of geolocation made it easy to find events near me. It turns out that pub quiz hosts love Upcoming with a passion, and I happen to love pub quizzes. Result: one test run of Happening revealed something to do on every night of the week.

Location is what really takes Happening above and beyond the Upcoming web interface. When you're out with your friends and having trouble deciding what to do, the web interface is little help. If you've got an iPhone on you, though, Happening delivers in two taps.

Version 1.1, which was just released on the App Store, offers the all-important option to add events to your Upcoming calendar. To be perfectly honest, though, I didn't even have an Upcoming calendar until I had Happening.

Full Disclosure: Happening was created by one of our favorite Download Squad writers, Nik Fletcher.

Happening iPhone app breathes new life into Yahoo!'s Upcoming originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 13 Mar 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iPhone - App Store - Download Squad - Facebook - Nik Fletcher

.xxx TLD delayed once more

Erez Zukerman — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST

Filed under: Business

ICANN has, once again, delayed the decision to create a .xxx top-level domain for porn. The proposal for this TLD came up in 2000 for the first time, and since then, it has been rejected and bogged down in red tape three times. As of right now, it hasn't been rejected outright, but it has been delayed for around 70 days.

To be honest, I don't get it. Having a .xxx TLD would make life easier for everyone -- not just the guys (and girls) who like porn or make their living off of it. Clarity helps everybody. A school or workplace that wanted to block out a major chunk of all online porn would be able to do so with a single configuration change. Of course, many sites would keep running under .com as well, but it still seems like a step in the right direction for everyone.

Unfortunately, it's a step that doesn't look like it's going to be taken anytime soon.

.xxx TLD delayed once more originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 13 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ICANN - .xxx - Top-level domain - Download Squad - Domain name

SXSW Interactive day one in pictures

Victor Agreda, Jr. — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:00:00 EST

Filed under: sxsw

The panels have only just begun at SXSW (you can find a list of day one interactive events here), but I took a quick stroll through the Austin Convention Center earlier today and grabbed some pics of how many people are here (spoiler alert: a ton) and some shots of the Seed booth. Again, if you're on the ground in Austin you can write your takeaway from any interactive panel you attend via this Seed assignment. If you get published, we'll pay you!

Gallery: SXSWi 2008 Day 1

SXSW Interactive day one in pictures originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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SXSW Interactive - Austin Convention Center - Austin Texas - Download Squad - Social media

ImmorTall is a haunting, disturbing, Flash "game"

Erez Zukerman — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:00:00 EST

Filed under: Games

Here's a Flash "game" which I'm not going to tag as a time-waster. Not because it's work-related, but because if this is what you do "for fun", your life is not a fun place. Just saying.

ImmorTall casts you as a vaguely anime-eqsue blobby-looking massive alien. There's a haunting (and deeply irritating) soundtrack, consisting mainly of discordant guitar chords plucked really slowly.

Your job in the "game" is to protect a bunch of villagers (Vietnamese-looking, but can be of any nationality really) from an attacking army. You can apparently take any number of hits from incoming airplanes, tanks and infantry, so you use your body as a shield to protect the civilians. As the game progresses you go over the same scenery again and again, but the attacks become more frequent. Then, you die.

I mean, seriously. I don't think there's a way to win this thing. It's not really a game. What it is, though, is a political statement against war and its futility. At least that's what I think. Otherwise there's really no point to it at all. Still, it did make me feel something (other than irritation at the soundtrack).

ImmorTall is a haunting, disturbing, Flash "game" originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Download Squad - Adobe Flash - Flash - game - Video game

Preview posted of Ubuntu 10.04 installer slideshow, leaves out Music Store

Lee Mathews — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: OS Updates, Canonical

Among the other improvements, tweaks, and retoolings headed to Ubuntu 10.04, the Ubiquity installer slideshow appears set for an update.

Ubuntu contributor Dylan McCall has posted preview images of the new screens which could be coming soon to the OS's Ubiquity installer. Interestingly enough they're cast in the soft browns of Lucid's first alpha releases -- and not the Mac-esque color schemes which recently appeared.

I'm a bit surprised that there's no mention of the U1 Music Store or of the built-in support for the iPhone and iPod touch (thanks to Gnome). The slides seem like the perfect place to make people aware of those features -- and new Ubuntu users would probably enjoy hearing about them.

There's plenty of time for change, of course. These are, after all, preview images for the installer of an OS which is still in alpha. Canonical seems focused on delivering a superb offering with Lucid, and I don't doubt that the finished experience will be very polished.

[via webupd8]

Preview posted of Ubuntu 10.04 installer slideshow, leaves out Music Store originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ubuntu - Operating system - List of Ubuntu releases - iPhone - Download Squad

Stock Tweet App makes tracking Twitter stock discussions easy

Jason Clarke — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:00:00 EST

Filed under: Finance, Freeware, Social Software

Stock traders are among the many groups of people who have taken up Twitter as a way to discuss their interests. They've even developed their own shorthand; a stock symbol is typically prefaced with a dollar sign, such as $MSFT, and tweets that discuss stocks often end with two dollar signs.

Stock Tweet App has taken these conventions and used them to build a custom interface for viewing Twitter with a scrolling live stream of all stock-related tweets. Alternatively, you can use the Custom Stock List option to type in the symbol for a few stocks you're interested in tracking, and only tweets concerning those stocks will be shown.

We've previously covered StockTwits in this space, and while they cover the same ground functionally, the styles of the two sites are very different. Of the two, I prefer Stock Tweet App, but there's a sneak peek of a new beta version of StockTwits available which is worth checking out.

Stock Tweet App makes tracking Twitter stock discussions easy originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Twitter - StockTwits - Download Squad - Stock - Online Communities

Firefox Friday: the homogenization of browsers and the death of innovation

Sebastian Anthony — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EST

Filed under: web 2.0, Browsers

Whatever happened to being different?

Once upon a time, difference was revered. Heck, I still think people, deep down, admire difference. It takes guts and balls and nerve to stand out from the crowd, to stand up for the ideas and paradigms that are important to us. Being truly different -- doing something that no one has done before -- pushes boundaries. I'm not talking about wearing eyeliner because the other kids are doing it; I'm talking about innovation.

That's the very definition of 'risk'. Turning up to work in a short skirt is risky. Investing your money in a new venture is risky. Working on something without the promise of an immediate gain (financial or otherwise), is risk incarnate. But despite the chance of failure, and the associated loss of face or funds, we still take risks -- why? Individuals and corporations invest millions of man hours and billions of dollars into innovation every year. In many cases they risk everything for one big pay-off.

Often that pay-off never comes. Start-ups and garden-shed inventors come and go with nary a ripple made in the global market. But does that stop the next generation from risking their chips on a single throw of the die?

No. Human nature dictates that we get up and try again -- unless you're a web browser developer, of course. In that case you're one of those kids that reads magazines to find out this month's eyeliner trend. The major browsers are hopping over each other to be the cool kid in school, while the science lab goes unoccupied and innovation all but ceases.

In 2009, between the five big browsers -- Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera -- we saw a grand total of three new, never-before-seen features: Chrome Frame (pretty cool, and a great way to free those poor sods that are locked into IE6); HTML 5 support (as we've seen since the start of 2010, this is going to be a big thing this year); and... wait, that's it. There is no third. In 2009 we saw two new innovations in browser technology.

Sure, there have been advances but no changes; no alterations in how we surf. True, JavaScript performance has increased considerably. Yes, all of the browsers are approaching some semblance of standards-compliance. Even Firefox and Chrome have finally joined Opera in the ability to customize the browser's look and feel. But so what? We don't congratulate Intel on producing faster CPUs -- that's just what they're meant to do! Where is the 2009 equivalent of per-tab processes or incognito browsing? Where is our damn innovation?

No one really knew, back in 1995, what Netscape's introduction of JavaScript might herald. It was a risky and bold addition to an otherwise lackluster browser, but when Microsoft fought back in 1996 with its own version (JScript), the world knew it was going to be big. Meanwhile, Opera was quietly working on inventions that would soon make an appearance in every other browser: tabs and mouse gestures. Those were the glory days, before pesky considerations like 'stability' entered the equation.

But it's now 2010. Chrome and its rapid development demands a lot of attention, but its only real addition to the field has been per-tab processes. Firefox is treading water and borrowing from Chrome's open source code to stay afloat -- JetPack is the next big thing, but it's still a ways off. Opera, after becoming freeware in 2005, has almost frozen its feature list and is simply focused on improving its performance -- they churn out good browsers, but where has the innovation and creativity gone?

The problem is a lack of necessity. The browser war has ended, and with it innovation has died. It was an odd war, with no real monetary or territorial significance. Rather romantically, the browser war was always been about the end user; it was all about enriching our web experience -- but then the war ended. With HTML and JavaScript standards finally reached, big corporations marched on in and fortified. It was no longer about merely satisfying the user; it was time to capitalize.

Classically, users can't desire something new, something they've never seen before. We can whine about stability, or speed, but we don't ask for things that don't exist -- and thus the browser has become a platform, rather than a tool. Websites and apps now dictate browser innovation, when really it should be a symbiotic relationship, with ideas flowing in both directions. Mozilla, instead of sticking to its guns and innovating, is playing into Google's hands by copy-catting Chrome -- Google wants a platform. Google, unlike Firefox, is a large corporate entity that needs a platform for its web apps and Chrome OS. Firefox needs to be different, but is too afraid to push in its chips and take a risk. Your market share is going to continue dwindling, Mozilla; do something about it!

The only real risk-taker left in the field is Microsoft... but it too wants a platform for the Office 2010 web apps! The browser, in 2010, will become a slow-moving, stability-and-security-comes-first operating system. With the maturity of the Internet comes the inexorable maturity of the browser: back in 1996, the dreaded Blink and Marquee tags were considered proprietary inventions of Netscape and Microsoft; today... shit, I can hardly tell the difference between the browsers. I use them all interchangeably. The web browser has never been less pertinent than it is today.

Looking forward, 2010 could still be bright. Mozilla's JetPack needs to get a move on, and Opera must continue to push HTML5. Perhaps, if we're lucky, Microsoft will risk it and roll Pivot into IE9. That'd be some actual innovation. Woah.

Firefox Friday: the homogenization of browsers and the death of innovation originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft - Opera - Safari - Firefox - Internet Explorer

Google to strip unique client ID from future Google Chrome installs

Lee Mathews — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:30:00 EST

Filed under: Google, Browsers

Whether you were aware of it or not, Google has always tagged Chrome installs with a unique identifier. It's long been reported as a privacy-compromising feature, though as H-Online states in their post today that has never been proven. Analysts have tried to do so via packet sniffing but there's been no smoking gun to date.

Google's official word on the matter has always been that the client ID is only used to determine when a user requires updates and by the crash reporter (a feature which isn't enabled by default). Nevertheless, they've decided the identifier won't be a permanent part of future Chrome releases.

According to details published in a new data protection whitepaper, Google reports that future versions of Chrome will only require the unique ID to check for the first automatic update. Once that update has been successfully installed, the ID is removed.

Privacy-minded folks like the developers of SRWare Iron still have other concerns, of course -- like omnibar suggestions, alternate error messages, and the Chrome updater.

Google to strip unique client ID from future Google Chrome installs originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google Chrome - Download Squad - SRWare Iron - Google - Error message

WeatherBar puts the weather right in your Windows 7 Superbar

Lee Mathews — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:00:00 EST

Filed under: Fun, Windows

I've never been one to run sidebar gadgets on my desktop. If they're on top, they're usually covering something I need to see. If they're in back I forget about them entirely. The developer of WeatherBar had an interesting idea: why not take advantage of Windows 7's Superbar instead?

Extract the zip file, launch WeatherBar, and enter your location. Within a few seconds the taskbar icon will update to show you current weather conditions in your area (it even utilizes the Windows 7 progress indicator to show relative humidity in the background). Right-click the icon to pull up its Jump List and WeatherBar displays a four-day forecast with low and high temperatures.

The author's project page on CodePlex doesn't include any files, so you'll need to head over to this page at Softpedia to download WeatherBar.

I love the idea of gadget-like functionality on my Superbar. Know any other Windows 7 apps like this? Share them in the comments or send us a tip!

WeatherBar puts the weather right in your Windows 7 Superbar originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Windows 7 - Microsoft Windows - Taskbar - Features new to Windows 7 - Windows

Play yourself at Rock, Paper, Scissors with an open source training glove

Sebastian Anthony — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:00:00 EST

Filed under: Fun, Games, Open Source

We've all been there...

Those dark, dreary, lonely nights when you're up to date with your video games and you're out of books. You look at your last good friend, your ever-present ally that's seen you through thick and thin: your hand. Just one more time... I'll get a girlfriend soon, I promise...

I'm talking, of course, about Rock-paper-scissors: the fairest of compromise, the inexorable justice of fates, THE ULTIMATE EQUALIZER. Have you ever played it on your own... or tried to? No, I didn't think so, but Steve Hoefer has; that sad bastard. He cites a love of 'computers interacting with us on our own terms', but we all know it's because his weiner is horrendously chafed and in desperate need of rest.

He simply slips on his glove and goes to work: 'Ick... ack... ock!' (or however you do it in your country... you weird Americans!) -- and all the while, the glove is learning his habits and playing against him! How cool is that?! If you often open with rock, the glove will start with paper. That's about it really, but as is always the case with 'mods' (yes, this must surely be the first 'glove mod' I've seen), it's all about the making. Go check the masterful nerd's site for a complete walkthrough (yes, you can quite easily make one of these yourself!). For me, though, the most interesting bit was the 'open source hardware' used to process the glove's inputs and power the outputs. At its heart is a programmable prototyping platform called Arduino. You can purchase the boards, or make them yourself! The language used to program the platform is also open source-- cool.

It's all a bit nerdy, but as you can see in the video after the break, well worth the effort. No longer will nerds have to carry dice in their pockets to decide what to get for lunch at the canteen.

Play yourself at Rock, Paper, Scissors with an open source training glove originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rock-paper-scissors - Video game - Open source - Games - Download Squad

WinAmp adds a music store, powered by 7Digital

Lee Mathews — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:30:00 EST

Filed under: Audio, Windows

Big news today from our friends over at the official WinAmp blog: you can now purchase and download music right inside your WinAmp window!

Like the Ubuntu One Music Store, Winamp's downloads will be provided by 7digital. As I mentioned with U1, one of the key features here is availability: 7digital is available nearly everywhere, unlike some competitors (such as Amazon). 7digital also boasts a massive catalog of about 6 million tracks available as high-quality MP3 (and some WMA) files.

Right now the download store is only live for US and UK Winamp users. Patience, Winamp fans across Europe -- you'll be receiving access over the next several days.

Check out the enthusiastic official post from the Winamp crew for more details!

WinAmp adds a music store, powered by 7Digital originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Winamp - Download Squad - MP3 - 7digital - Multimedia

Google's Blogger gets a ridiculously easy template editor

Jay Hathaway — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:00:00 EST

Filed under: Design, Blogging, Web services, Google

Plenty of free blog services come with a selection of templates, but Google has decided to take the next step with Blogger. The popular blogging site now allows you to dress up its templates with colors and images of your choice by using a simple graphical editor. Blogger Template Designer includes fifteen templates, with one, two, and three column layouts for each.

Besides adding colors and backgrounds, you can also use the Template Designer to change fonts and drag-and-drop widgets into your layout. Although it doesn't give you the control of hand-coding your own design, it has the advantage of being fast and ridiculously easy.

The Template Designer isn't live on Blogger yet, but you can use it on your own blog by going to Blogger in Draft, which is Blogger's testing ground for new features.

No offense to Blogger users, but the site doesn't necessarily have the same design-savvy audience that, say, self-hosted Wordpress.org attracts. It's awesome that Google has introduced a way to give your blog a unique appearance without knowing a lick of CSS.

Check out the video after the jump for a brief demo of the Blogger Template Designer.

Google's Blogger gets a ridiculously easy template editor originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Blogger - Google - Blog - Download Squad - Design

New legislation to prevent piracy in France fails dismally; piracy continues to rise

Sebastian Anthony — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:00:00 EST

Filed under: Internet, P2P

In what must surely be the least surprising news of 2010, a study by a French university found that piracy increased after France's enactment of a 'Three Strikes Law'. Under the bill, which went into power in July 2009, repeat offenders can be cut off from the Internet. If being cut off is deemed not suitable for the villain's heinous crimes, the judge can instead levy a 300,000 Euro fine or send the megalomaniac pirate to prison for two years.

As it turns out, though, the law has a loophole: streaming services and file-storage sites like Rapidshare. While BitTorrent's share of the piracy dropped from 17.1% to 14.6% between September and December 2009, total piracy rose by 3%. Shut down or outlaw one service and its users flee to another -- where have I seen this before? Oh, right, Napster, Kazaa, Suprnova... zZzzZzz...

Instead of outlawing pirates, why not take a leaf out of the Netherlands' lawmaking books and make stuff easy to obtain? Piracy exists because there is demand. We don't pillage food trucks on the way to supermarkets because there is no need. Why, after more than 15 years of broadband Internet connections, do we still have to pirate things? It's almost as if government agencies and assorted associations want us to continue breaking the law.

"As you show no sign of relenting from your nefarious, terrorist-funding ways, you leave us no choice but to remove your, your son's, and your son's son's access TO THE INTERNETS!!"

New legislation to prevent piracy in France fails dismally; piracy continues to rise originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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France - BitTorrent - Napster - Download Squad - Law

Google Wave Extension Gallery goes live, still very wet around the ears

Sebastian Anthony — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:45:00 EST

Filed under: Internet, Google, web 2.0

Showing off the truly omnivorous and omnipotent nature of Wave, there is now an internal Extension Gallery. All you have to do is hit the 'Extensions' button on Wave's Navigation menu and voila!

Until now, it's always been a bit tricky to find 'proper' extensions for Wave. There have been a few lists, but gadgets are often plagued with stability issues (or they don't work at all), and robots are prone to go offline without warning. With this official Gallery, and the necessity for all submitted extensions to be reviewed by the Wave team, the quality of extensions will surely improve.

In other news, there's also a new Robot API, if you're a developer -- it's been awfully quiet on the Wave front, but I have a feeling there's still quite a lot going on behind the scenes.

Anyway, if one of the 18 currently-available extensions (yes, there aren't many yet -- no doubt they're being reviewed as we speak) aren't what you're looking for, don't forget to check Download Squad's ultimate list of Wave robots, or alternatively our gadgets list.

Google Wave Extension Gallery goes live, still very wet around the ears originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google - GoogleWave - Download Squad - Application programming interface - Searching

Download Squad at SXSW Interactive

Victor Agreda, Jr. — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:00:00 EST

Filed under: Features, sxsw

The Interactive portion of SXSW is March 12-16, and Download Squad will be covering the event a little differently this year. We'll still have videos from developers, designers and business leaders, but in addition, we'll be harnessing the power of the crowd via Seed to cover the core takeaway from as many panels and conversations as possible.

If you're interested in covering SXSW Interactive for Download Squad, you too can join the fun. Just head over to Seed and set up an account. Then email us at sxsw (make the at sign here) downloadsquad dawt com to let us know who you are and what panels you'd like to cover. We'll be meeting and greeting Download Squad fans and Seed writers at the Seed booth right there in the Austin Convention Center, so don't be a stranger.

Also, you can jump straight into the action by giving us a short, punchy "takeaway" from any panels that you attend (or conversations both in and out of the convention center). Once you have a Seed account, you can accept this assignment here. If we publish your work, you get paid!

Starting tomorrow, I'll check in with daily updates and I'll be appropriating our Twitter feed with regular happenings. I'll use the #sxsw hashtag, of course. Meanwhile, keep an eye on our special hub page for SXSW as we build out coverage through next week.

Download Squad at SXSW Interactive originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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SXSW Interactive - Twitter - Download Squad - Business - Austin Convention Center

Mozilla begins testing Account Manager for Firefox to simplify web logins

Lee Mathews — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:06:00 EST

Filed under: Mozilla, Beta, Browsers

Mozilla's developers are busily crafting all kinds of features for future versions of Firefox -- Jetpack's no-restart add-on functionality,out of process plugins, a bigger, badder JavaScript engine. They're also taking a look at how we log in and out of websites and trying to standardize that process.

To that end, Mozilla has put together a draft spec (which you can view at Google Docs) which would add new extensions to the HTTP client/server communication process for authentication. They've also released an experimental add-on for Firefox called Account Manager which you can use to demo proposed system on a handful of sites. Right now, Facebook, Google, Yahoo! and three Mozilla sites (Addons, Personas, and Bugzilla) should work -- Mozilla has hard-coded support for them into the addon itself.

Facebook worked nicely. After logging in, the key icon in my toolbar illuminated and clicking it revealed that, yes, I was logged in to Facebook as myself. I didn't have the same luck with Google, but that's to be expected at this point.

Anyone who wants to code in support for the spec on his can check out the draft doc and implement support on their sites and the code for the Account Manager addon is available as well.

Mozilla begins testing Account Manager for Firefox to simplify web logins originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Firefox - Add-on - Google Docs - Mozilla Firefox - Mozilla Foundation

Location Battle, Round 2: Foursquare and Gowalla both update iPhone apps!

Jay Hathaway — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: Features, Web services, Social Software, iPhone

In this corner, with a big head start, a huge userbase, and tons of features, it's ... Foursquare! In this corner, with millions of dollars in funding and a great-looking new design ... Gowalla!

By now, most people know that Gowalla and Foursquare have been going blow-for-blow in the location-based social gaming fight. Despite entries from Google, Yelp, and (soon) Facebook, these two services have the strongest iPhone apps out there right now. But if you're only going to sign up for one, which one should you pick?

Both Gowalla and Foursquare have their plusses and minuses, so read on for a comparison of their new iPhone apps (which both updated on Tuesday ... ooh, drama!) and decide for yourself.

Location Battle, Round 2: Foursquare and Gowalla both update iPhone apps! originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Facebook - Gowalla - Foursquare - Download Squad - Google