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For some of us, being forced to sit in front of a computer at work is the ultimate drag. It’s not the hardware that bums us out. It’s the outright refusal of our boss and IT department to let us install the games we love on our office rig for a little bit of pew-pew at break time. Sure, you could bring along a netbook or laptop with you everyday to solve the problem, but that extra weight’s not the sort of thing that’s welcome on anyone’s daily commute. Instead, we recommend that you scratch your gaming itch by indulging in Lord of Ultima, our Chrome Web App of the Week.
Lord of Ultima is a browser-based Massive Multiplayer Online Real Time Strategy game from Electronic Arts. While the game has precious little to do with the venerable Ultima franchise of role-playing games, it’s still worth your attention.
Lord of Ultima sees players start off with a single city that they must carefully nurture into a well-protected center of civilian and military productivity. Over time, your city will become the jumping off point for the invasion of other player created kingdoms, trade and dungeon raiding. Offering surprisingly deep strategic options, 30 buildings, close to 20 combat unit types and a number of magical, civilian and military perks to keep things interesting, this is one freemium game that we’ve no doubt you’ll enjoy to sinking your teeth into no matter where you are.
Yo, dawg! We heard that you liked operating systems and internet browsers, so Jolicloud’s letting you have an operating system and a browser with another operating system inside of that browser! It’s a cloud computing solution so slick that we’ve made it our Chrome Web App of the Week.
Unlike other Chrome web applications that only let you perform a given set of mission-specific functions inside of your browser window, Jolicloud offers an entire cloud-based operating system for users to interact with. Boasting impressive customization features, a wide variety of applications to choose from and integration with well known services such as Spotify, Google Docs and Dropbox, Jolicloud is a great solution for individuals who find themselves working on multiple computers during the course of their day. Instead of installing or configuring multiple applications or workspaces, simply navigate to your Jolicloud account and get down to business. Users are invited to customize their Jolicloud desktop by changing its theme and layout, choosing from over 1000 preloaded applications and can even create their own cloud-based apps to utilize.
When you’re finished with Jolicloud, simply log out or close the web app’s tab. When it’s time to get down to business again, log back into Jolicloud from any computer rocking Chrome and you’ll find your cloud-based desktop as you left it. That’s a lot of mobile-computing power for the low, low cost of absolutely free.
Angry Birds is out for Chrome, and it is indeed glorious, but doesn’t playing it with a mouse feel just a little unnatural? We think so. Fortunately, there are a lot of great ways to whittle your productivity down to a splinter. Might we recommend SteamBirds Survival? It’s free, fun and just happens to be our Chrome Web App of the Week.
SteamBirds Survival is a turn-based dogfighting game that puts you in the pilot’s seat of a World War II fighter plane fighting against all odds to protect England during the Battle of Britain. Outnumbered one thousand to one, you’re not expected to live through the war. Rather, it’s your responsibility to stall the Luftwaffe long enough for England’s citizens to get to safety before the inevitable bombings begin.
Gloomy? You betcha.
Fun? Absolutely!
The more planes you down, the more copper you’ll receive--money that can be used towards the purchase of new, more powerful aircraft with unique abilities. You’ll also find that many of the fighters you eighty-six will provide you with power-ups such as additional health, bombs and homing missiles. With varying levels of difficulty, unique play mechanics and enough ways to kill your foes to keep you entertained for hours, SteamBirds Survival is one game that’ll keep you coming back time and time again.
With so many ways of spending our hard earned dough, it can be difficult to keep tabs on where our cash goes. For small business owners whose work expenses often overlap the cost of day-to day living, things can get even more complicated. If you’re serious about getting your financial life straight and keeping it there, Wave Accounting is the right tool for the job. Free, easy to use and insanely powerful, Wave is our Chrome Web App of the Week.
Wave draws power and simplicity of use from the fact that the application is designed to interface with your existing online banking and credit card accounts, making manual entry of expenses and income a thing of the past. Users can choose from a wide variety of banks and credit card vendors, enter their online banking password information and import all of their income and expenses in under five minutes. Once the import is completed, you’ll be asked to categorize your expenses using an extensive, but easy to navigate checklist.
As with other accounting software, the more information you provide to Wave, the deeper and more accurate a picture it can paint for you of your financial situation. Data is presented as a bar graph or pie chart, detailing income and expenditures on a month-by-month basis. Additionally, Wave allows users to keep track of invoices, vendors and customers, so you always know who you owe, who owes you, and what the cash coming into or leaving your wallet is for. After using Wave for a month, you’ll wonder how you ever got along without it.
There’s never been a better time in the history of geekdom to give your cable or satellite television the slip. Over the past few years, consumers been spoiled for choice, with just about everything we once turned to our televisions for now available online. Add to this the countless steaming video sites that pumping out fresh content to the interwebz on a daily basis, and you’ve got the makings of a viewing solution that has cable companies and satellite providers running scared. To keep track of it all, many resort to software solutions like XBMC, MediaPortal or Windows Media Center. If you’re a Chrome user, you’ve also got the option of rocking Clicker.TV, our Chrome web App of the Week.
Clicker.TV is a media center solution that resides in your browser window. Users of the web app are able to view content from a wide variety of streaming services such as Hulu, as well as videos from Amazon VOD and iTunes to enjoy high quality, on demand content from the comfort of their computer desk or camped out in front of their PC or Mac connected television. According to the folks at Clicker, 40 thousand movies, 90,000 music videos and over one million episodes from 12 thousands different television shows are available for streaming, via Clicker.TV’s user-friendly interface.
Add to this the ability to stream content from other awesome portals like Funny or Die, The Onion or even your Netflix On Demand account, and you’ll see why we’re excited about what Clicker.TV has to offer.
If you listen to the pundits, there’s little doubt that iTunes users will be getting word that their Apple powered ditties will be making their way to the clouds by the end of the day. That might be great news for anyone rocking Cupertino’s resource hogging, behemoth of a music player or an iOS device, but what about the rest of us? If you signed up for a free or paid Amazon Cloud Player account, chances are that over the course of the past few months, you’ve had a chance to upload all of the audio files in your music library that your Cloud Drive can handle. Too bad Amazon’s browser-based music player is, shall we say… clunky? Fortunately, Amazon Cloud Player, our Chrome Web App of the Week, brings a modicum of style to Amazon’s streaming music service.
Dropped into the Chrome Web Store by Will McSweeney (who MMO fans will know for his excellent Wowhead Utility), Amazon Cloud Player for Chrome is a fan-built labor of love. Once installed, the app, allows Amazon Cloud users to enjoy their streaming tunes from a dedicated window that foregoes everything but what you need to get your groove on.
No search field, no tabbed browsing, no bookmarks--just you and your music. After one use, we’re sure you’ll agree that McSweeney’s app elegantly simple app fills a void that Amazon has left empty for too long.
Even the most spontaneous of souls, needs to have the facts of a situation laid out for them now and again. No matter whether you’re noodling out your annual road trip with the family or preparing a massive presentation of proposed personnel shuffle at the office, you’ll want to have the right tools on hand to get the job done as quickly and easily as possible. Thanks to LucidChart, Chrome users can have access to a powerful set of free diagramming tools anywhere with an internet connection.
LucidChart offers users an easy to use drag-and-drop diagramming interface, well suited to designing even the most byzantine of organizational charts, mind maps or chapter breakouts. Design elements are easily created moved, resized and connected, mimicking many of the UI touches offered by high priced desktop applications such as Microsoft Visio or The Omni Group’s Omnigraffle. Speaking of Visio, LucidChart allows for the import of your desktop-side created diagrams, allowing you to take your organizational show on the road.
Don’t like an of the elements offered by the app? No problem--LucidChart provides the ability to work with user uploaded images, making it possible to create the custom look you’re going for. For those that can’t bear the thought of being along, the program also offers the ability to collaborate on a diagramming project with other users. With such a wealth of on screen functionality, off site saves, printing, download and upload capabilities and even HTML 5 support (with a number of features for the iPad and other tablets coming soon) LucidChart is a must-use web app for anyone that takes their diagramming duties seriously.
With brands like Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombies available in multiple formats on just about every piece of hardware imaginable, it’s never been easier for casual gamers to get their goof on anywhere they go. Sadly, those who prefer a bit of blood with their gaming have far fewer outlets available to them, especially when not in front of their home rig, console or handheld. What’s an office drone feeling a bit of bloodlust while trapped in his cubicle on a Monday afternoon to do? Might we recommend embarking on a zombie killing rampage with Dead Frontier? As you may have guessed, it’s our Chrome Web App of the Week.
Dead Frontier is a free-to-play massive multiplayer third-person isometric survivalist shooter designed to run in your Chrome browser. After a brief sign up and tutorial process, gamers are dropped in the middle of the sort of zombie apocalypse that we’ve all come to know and love.
Equipped with a meager set of weapons and limited ammunition, you are sent out into the dark to explore, loot and kill the undead in the name all in the name of survival. Should you survive long enough, your character will gain the experience and cash needed to become the zombie slaying machine you always knew he could be. Offering an addictive mix of tension, action and familiar game mechanics, for a browser-based game, Dead Frontier offers Chrome users a surprisingly deep experience that’ll keep you coming back for more.
The internet has spoiled us rotten. Connected as we are through pictures, words and images, those of us lucky enough to be alive today have unprecedented access to everything that the world has to offer with easy and ability that would leave past generations gobsmacked. And what, for the most part, do we usually end up doing with that access? Chase down memes, and tweet and flash videos of trashy pop tunes, of course. Isn’t about time we classed our PCs up a bit with a little culture. If you’re nodding your head as you read this, then you’d do well to download Google’s Art Project, our Chrome Web App of the Week.
Thanks to a cadre of art-loving Mountain View engineers, Art Project provides an all access viewing to a stunning collection of some of the world’s greatest museums and art treasures. By leveraging technology similar to that used with Google Street View, users are able to stroll through museums such as the National Gallery, The State Hermitage Museum and MoMA, drinking in the massive collection of artwork they have to offer. Turning to individual works, Art Project users can view a single painting in its entirety, or zoom in painfully close and take advantage of a high resolution view of the work that’s sharp enough to reveal individual brush strokes.
Not sure where to start? No problem. Art Project offers an informative video to give you the low down on the best ways to rock the application, as well as another that provides some insight into the passion that drove its developers to bring it to life in the first place. There are hours of exploring and wonder to be had with this one folks and with Art Project gaining more access to additional collections, galleries and museums on a regular basis, you’ll never be left wanting for a little beauty in your life.
There's no shame in not understanding how a computer does what it does. Then again, folks shouldn't feel too good about it either. As desktops, tablets, and laptops become more and more complex, it's not always easy to understand exactly what does what under the hood. The same goes for the internet: Cookies? Malware? Phishing? While the comprehension of topics like these might be second nature to many Maximum PC readers, the same can't always be said for our partners, acquaintances, or family. The next time one of your technologically-impaired inner circle asks you a question about the internet or online security, consider directing them 20 Things I Learned About Browsers & The Web, our Chrome Web App of the Week.
Developed by Google and designed to read like a story book, 20 Things I Learned About Browsers & The Web explains a wide variety of internet and browser-related topics in plain English, making concepts such as HTML, online identities and cloud computing less intimidating. The text is broken down into 20 chapters, each covering a unique topic. The book can be read from end to end, or consumed in smaller sips of specific information as needed.
To make sure that 20 Things I Learned About Browsers & The Web reaches its intended audience, Google was thoughtful enough to include a number of sharing options including links for Facebook, Twitter as well as--and this is kicking it old school--print it out. If your parents still haven't figured out how to program their DVD player's clock or even worse, still call you for advice on how to work their VCR, this app is gonna be your BFF from the get-go.
Summer, with its seemingly endless hours of daylight and fun to be had, can be a great time for young children. No matter how someone might love their child, however, sooner or later, summer becomes a lousy time to be a parent. When your kid has no one to play with, you’ve taken the last day trip to the petting zoo that your budget can afford, and nothing you suggest turns their crank, the insanity begins. When thrown a little bit of boredom, those you once thought of as your little darlings can quickly become a rambunctious pack of hell spawn, gleefully dancing on your last nerve in an effort to entertain themselves. Fortunately, back-up has arrived in the form of our Chrome App of the Week.
KIDO’Z TV is a free Chrome app that offers up child-friendly video content via an easy to navigate pictorial interface which requires no reading skills to use. For kids that are still too young to read, but old enough to feel empowered by being able to choose what they want to watch, it’s a perfect storm of awesome.
To use KIDO’Z TV, parents are required to sign up, providing an email address, password and a bit of information on their child. KIDO’Z TV uses this information to provide your child with age and gender appropriate content. The web app makes it easy for parents to monitor and control their children’s viewing habits, thanks to a simple to use suite of parental controls.
Updating the look of a single room or your entire home can be an exciting and stressful affair. Exciting because taking the time and spending the coin to pick out new furniture, paint or otherwise tinker with your home can breathe new life into a stale living space. Stressful because, let’s face it, sometimes the vision of how a room should look that we see in our head just doesn’t work out the way we planned when we get down to putting it all together in the real world. Fortunately, Autodesk Homestyler is here to help you iron the kinks out of your home styling faux pas.
Autodesk Homestyler allows users to create, decorate and redefine their apartment, house, or any other space with drag and drop simplicity. Room sizes, wall lengths and angles can all be tweaked with nothing more than a few clicks of a mouse. Once the size and shape of your space is up to snuff, Homestyler makes it easy to try out decorating options, furniture arrangements, and various floor and wall palettes. Once you have your space’s colors and layout down pat, the web app allows you to kick your design into 3D to give you a bit of perspective of how your creation will look should you ever decide to bring it into meatspace.
If you happen to create a design that you’d like to follow through on, it can be saved for later (saving requires you sign up for a free user account), printed, exported as an image file or sent to a number of social networks.
Moving, we’re certain you’ll agree, sucks. Packing, organizing the logistics, paying a security deposit on your new digs, cleaning your old pad from top to bottom after you move out and--worst of all--unpacking, has been rated as one of the most stressful gauntlets of experience that life has to offer. For those of us who have moving to a new apartment in their cards, PadMapper, Our Chrome Web App of the Week, does what it can to make the whole process just a little less painful.
Using Google Maps to illustrate the locations of rental listings from popular services such as Apartments.com, Rent.com and Craigslist, PadMapper makes finding a new place to live almost bearable. In order to get started with the web app, users are invited to click on one of the hundreds of North American cities currently supported by PadMapper. Doing so zooms into a map of your selected location, detailing the rental properties currently available. Through the use of easy-to-apply filters such as minimum/maximum rent cost, number of bedrooms and whether or not the property is pet-friendly, the application makes it possible to quickly whittle your rental options down to a manageable level.
With select cities, PadMapper also provides users with the ability to overlay crime statistics, locate nearby mass transit routes and even factor in their potential work commute time as variables for selecting a new home.
Do you remember rock n’ roll radio? If not, we won’t take it personally. After all, with services like Spotify, Rdio, Slacker and Turntable.fm to choose our tunes from, computer and smartphone users have never been more spoiled for choice when it comes to music. Commercial-free music is available to anyone that wants it, provided they’re willing to do the work of setting up an account and picking the tunes they want to listen to. For those of us that prefer to sit back and let someone else do the aural heavy lifting for us, and consider radio to still be an important part of our daily lives, there’s Radio, our Chrome Web App of the Week.
Users of DoubleTime’s Radio Chrome web app, may not be able to pick each and every song they listen to, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have any musical options available to them. The application offers up some of the most popular radio stations in the world, with new channels being added on a regular basis. For individuals traveling or working abroad, Radio is a dream come true: expatriates can listen to streaming news, music, and sports coverage from a wide variety of countries around the world in multiple languages, making it a great way to stay up to date with happens at home.
Best of all, if your favorite radio station isn’t currently featured in the application, Radio’s developers are open to request--just like a DJ.
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reutnes
August 11, 2011 at 6:20pm
That GovDeals website sells firetrucks. I think I'm going to have to delay my next gaming rig a little longer...
