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Firefox Add-on of the Week: Tab Sidebar

David Murphy — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:30:08 -0600

Just last week, I showed you a batch of add-ons for, er, a Firefox add-on called Jetpack. With these, you'd be able to tap into the raw power of HTML and CSS-based extensions to add new functionality to your browser without needing a reboot whatsoever--just one of the many features provided by this new class of add-ons.

Well, in case that wasn't for you, I've gone out and searched for a way to duplicate the effects of some of these Jetpack add-ons using normal Firefox extensions. And this is an important point. Although nice to install and configure, many of said Jetpack extensions just felt a touch incomplete, slow, or otherwise non-functioning depending on the circumstances. And that's expected. Jetpack, after all, is a relatively new tool to the Firefox arsenal. Developers surely have a few bugs and eccentricities to work out.

That said, one of the more useful Jetpack applications granted a user the ability to load browser tabs into a live sidebar, giving you the opportunity to see the exact contents of what you wanted to click on prior to doing so. Tab Sidebar is the simple Firefox extension that duplicates this process sans Jetpack, and it's worth your while to install.

Specifically, Tab Sidebar replaces your normal tabbed browsing interface with graphical representations of the screens represented by said tabs. As such, it hides the main tab bar and uses this sidebar interface as a complete navigational replacement. Is it worth it? In a word, yes--consider this extension the Live Thumbnails of your browsing experience. However, when you go to install it, the replacement doesn't happen automatically. Make sure you click on the "view" menu of your browser, then select "Tab Sidebar" under the "Sidebar" menu. After that, be prepared for amazement.

Every Tuesday, Maximum PC picks a new Firefox add-on as its favorite of the week. Have a nifty extension that you can't live without? Twitter David Murphy @acererak with your latest suggestions.

Freeware Files: Widescreen Mania! Make the Most of your Monitor's Real Estate!

David Murphy — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:30:35 -0600

Widescreen monitors are, in a word, awesome, and not just because they offer some kind of enhanced quality over their four-by-three ratio brethren. Depending on what you're using them for, like movie-watching, you'll simply see more of a given scene than you otherwise would on a standard display. The increased screen real estate (on the horizontal plane) also allows you to make more effective use of your desktop... provided you have the right software tools to create this enhanced productivity.

In fact, one of the biggest complaints surrounding the use of widescreen monitors is just that--the elongated desktop space is just too hard to navigate, and applications frequently don't make the best use of this additional room. I can't promise that everything out-of-the-box (or out-of-the-browser window) will look great on your widescreen display. However, what I can do is offer you a suite of tools designed to make your 16-by-9 or 16-by-10 experience as great as it can be. I've been using widescreen monitors for quite some time now. I know how it feels. That extra background space on the sides of every Web page you load? Maddening.

But I digress. Let's take care of that issue, and more, with some awesome widescreen monitor apps.

MiniMIZE

What's so great about MiniMIZE? If you have the extra screen real estate--and you do, if you're using a widescreen monitor--then why bother minimizing your applications to a tiny icon on your taskbar? The heck with that. Take that additional horizontal space on your desktop and pack it with big ol' thumbnails of the very programs you've minimized. It's a prettier treatment for organizing your active windows, although it would be nicer still if the desktop images of your windows were actually live, much like Windows' live taskbar previews.

Since this program is super-old and hasn't been updated since its third beta, you'll want to make sure that you're running it in compatibility mode for Windows XP (Service Pack 2), else you will see no new icons on your desktop whatsoever.

Download it here!

Widescreen Fixer

There are apparently a number of popular games that just don't approach the issue of widescreen displays with much tenacity. And by that, I mean that a batch of titles--including BioShock, the Call of Duty Series, and Wolfenstein--don't properly adjust the field of view when you switch to a widescreen mode. This results in your picture getting cropped, which gives you less visible playing space than a person playing on a 4:3-ratio display. Yuck.

Widescreen Fixer does exactly what its name suggests, correcting the field of view issues for these games (including those with PunkBuster-based multiplayer, which isn't apparently bothered by this utility) and opening up around 20 percent more of the picture than what you'd otherwise see on a 4:3-ratio display. More picture means more killing--or, to put it in friendlier terms, you unlock a greater hunk of the game's scenery to admire while you're dodging bullets from your online adversaries.

As for the picture above, The normal-looking part of the image is a shot of Battlefield 2141 in a typical 16:10 mode. The blue chunk of the shot is what you would see if the game was running in a default 4:3 resolution, and the red chunk of the shot is what Widescreen Fixer unlocks for a 16:10 display.

Download it here!

Edgeless

It doesn't get much lazier than this. So, you have this new widescreen monitor, and you've noticed that it takes a lot longer for you to traverse from one end of the rectangular screen to the other. You're tempted to turn up your mouse's sensitivity settings, but you just can't adjust yourself to the new sensation. What do you do? You install Edgeless, a little utility that removes the virtual borders of the left and right sides of your display. Like Columbus, your monitor has now turned from a flat map into a three-dimensional world. Move your mouse off the left-most part of your screen and it'll appear on the right. Move your mouse off the right-most portion of the screen and... can you guess what happens?

Edgeless 2 also allows you to wrap your mouse around your screen vertically. However, users below have noted some potential antivirus issues with said program. We can't determine whether this is a false positive or a warning flag, but if you've already installed this utility, then you'll want to run a quick anti-virus and anti-malware scan on your system just to be safe (in fact, let us know if anything pops up). As for the app, your best bet is to pick up the original, problem-free Edgeless utility. If you're running Windows 7 on a 64-bit operating system, you might need to drop this app into Vista compatibility mood for it to work.

Download it here!

WinSplit Revolution

To truly organize your widescreen desktop, you can always try partitioning it into zones. WinSplit Revolution is a handy little application that allows you to snap windows into preset configurations using a bevy of keyboard hotkeys. But don't think you're stuck to a basic, say, two-by-two grid of windows. You can have windows span multiple "sections" either vertically or horizontally, and if you find you need more room for more windows, you can quickly make space for an additional row or column using the built-in hotkeys. Although this application is really designed for the keyboard fanatic, an experimental "drag'n'go" mode lets you move your window around the screen while the program highlights the different places your window could end up.

Download it here!

Always on Top Maker

The site isn't the prettiest, but don't let that deter you from the simple functionality presented by Always on Top Maker. If you don't want to fiddle with applications that split your screen into sections, or applications that dump your windows into icons on your desktop, or any other software craziness, then Always on Top maker is the no-frills utility for you. After all, the best way to make use of your widescreen desktop is to simply park something on one side while you do something else on the other--like, say, watch YouTube videos while you write freeware roundups. This normally results in your active window taking precedence over your inactive window and makes such a task impossible unless you literally isolate one program to one side, one program to the other.

Always on Top Maker lets you stick a window anywhere you want on your desktop, which will always remain on top of the active window you're working in. You toggle this functionality on and off with a simple keyboard shortcut. That's it. It's simple, it's easy, and it's a great way to multitask on your widescreen display without having to resort to fancier organizational applications.

And, no, this doesn't work to stop Plants vs. Zombies from auto-pausing your game when you switch to a different window. Sigh.

Download it here!

David Murphy (@ Acererak) is a technology journalist and former Maximum PC editor. He writes weekly columns about the wide world of open-source as well as weekly roundups of awesome, freebie software. Befriend him on Twitter, especially if you have an awesome app or game you're dying to recommend!

Cryptic Talks Star Trek Online's Space Combat, Away Missions, and Competing with WoW

Norman Chan — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:00:00 -0600

We chat with Craig Zinkievich, executive producer at Cryptic Studios, about making a game for Trekkers and competing with World of Warcraft

Set 30 years after Star Trek: Nemesis (the last film before the J.J. Abrams reboot), Star Trek Online puts you in the shoes of a captain in a newly sparked war between the goody-two-shoes Federation and savage Klingon empire. The promise of exploring the final frontier, massive space battles, and obscure Star Trek references fills us with geeky glee. We went down to Cryptic Studios’ offices to play the game and quiz Executive Producer Craig Zinkievich to ensure that fans of Star Trek and MMOs are getting the best of both worlds.

Maximum PC: It looks like Star Trek Online is focusing more on action, as opposed to boring bits like interstellar diplomacy.

Craig Zinkievich: The game is set in 2409, about 30 years after the events of the Star Trek: Nemesis movie. A lot of stuff has happened since then. The Borg have returned to the Alpha Quadrant, bent on assimilation. The Romulan Empire still exists, but they have to deal with the fact that they don’t have a home world – so there’s a power vacuum there. The most important aspect is that the Kitomer Accord – the treaty between the Klingon Empire and Federation – has broken down. In STO, you play either as a Captain in Starfleet, the military wing of the Federation, or the Klingon Defense Force.

We’ve really tried to make the content in Star Trek Online feel as though you’re in one of the Star Trek shows or movies. You’re never just in one place. You can be on a ship, get a distress call, beam down to a planet, then beam up to a satellite that’s on fire, and finally back to your ship for a climactic space battle. You’re constantly moving between ground and space to really get that cinematic feel.

The biggest challenge in creating STO is that it’s two whole games—you have your ground combat and your space combat. But the game demands it; you have to go back and forth, and I think it’ll be the strongest aspect of the game.

On Space Combat

CZ: Space combat is very much like the shows. It’s not a dogfight—you’re not zipping around. You’re in huge 1,000-meter starships with hundreds of crew onboard. In the shows, it’s all about tactics and positioning. It’s about bolstering a shield that’s taken damage, transferring power from your deflector dish to your weapons or engines at the right time. It’s about knocking your enemy’s shields down with phasers and taking them out with photon torpedoes.

Each ship has four directional shields – though some of the smaller ships only have one shield. All weapons in STO have facing and firing arcs to them. For example, a ship can have forward facing photo torpedoes with a 90 degree arc, and two phaser banks with broad-side arcs. So in battle, you would flank broadside along your enemy to use both phasers to knock down enemy shields and then turn toward the enemy to finish them off.

MPC: Is the point of the battle to destroy the ship?

CZ: Yes, because it’s wartime, the battle does come down to destroying your enemy’s ship. Most of the time, they don’t give up at the end. There are certain instances there the enemy will surrender to move the story along, but most of the time it’s a fight to the death.

MPC: How does respawn work, then, if your ship is destroyed?

CZ: Well, first and foremost, it’s a game. We thought of a whole bunch of different ways to do interesting things for respawn, but it really came down to getting players back into the action. You don’t lose your ship [if it blows up]; you just respawn at the beginning of the map with a little damage done to your systems. But overall, we don’t want you to spend 80 hours getting that Sovereign class vessel, get owned, and then lose that ship.

MPC: How does your crew and shuttles factor into the gameplay?

CZ: Each ship has a crew bar, which affects your hull regeneration rate – how fast you can repair systems that get damaged. There are certain powers that allow you to send boarding parties to other ships with shuttles, which takes crew. You can even send healing parties to repair other vessels during co-op.

The really cool powers come from your bridge officers. Like the shows, it’s all about the people—who’s there on the bridge during a crisis defines how the ship deals with it. You have a roster of bridge officers (starting off with one) that you can upgrade over time. These guys are like MMO pets, but taken to the next level. You name them, customize their look, give them equipment, and level them up with new skills and specializations. And the skills they have really end up defining what role you play in missions.

Some skills include tractor beams, which can hold enemies in place during combat, or high yield torpedoes that deal super damage. Each officer has one ability to begin with, but as you level them up, they get up to four skills. Each officer seat can also be upgraded, too. Officers in Ensign seats can only use one skill, while those in Lieutenant or Commander seats can activate more of their skills at once. With bigger ships, you gain more weapon slots and more bridge officer seats as well. The maximum is six officers with 12 skills total.

MPC: How does ship upgrading work?

CZ: Players start off with a generic Light Cruiser ship. Several hours into the game, you replace that with one of three different classes of ships – Engineering, Science, and Tactical, each with five tiers that you can advance through. Every ship has weapons, deflector shields, impulse engines, and Officer seats, all of which can be upgraded. But when you actually reach a different tier of ship, you get a new ship [of that class] entirely.

MPC: Can you re-spec your ship in the middle of the game?

CZ: You can change ship classes at any time if you want to try a different style of play. You just use your Starfleet “merit” and buy the ship at a Space dock. You don’t lose the previous ships that you had, either. You’ll always have the Light Cruiser, for example, if you wanted to use it for a specific mission. One night you could use a Defiant class ship for a quick space battle, and the next night, you could change to a Science class ship – the healer – to support your guild. You can really change what role you play on the fly.

MPC: So there are 16 different ship types in the game?

CZ: Yes, there are 16 total configurations total, from three ship classes with five ships in each tier, plus the first Light Cruiser. But within each configuration, we want you to be able to customize your ship’s appearance.

MPC: Like designing your character in any other MMO.

CZ: Yes, but still want you to be able to look at somebody’s ship, and know what configuration and class that ship is in.

MPC: Does the game have the “hot rod” style Enterprise from the new Star Trek movie?

CZ: [Laughs] No, we don’t have the new J. J. Abrams “hot rod” ship in the game yet, but we do have access to that in terms of our license. We’re focusing on filling out and rounding out what [the Federation of] 2409 looks like.

[Craig then loads up several ships on a computer, including ones based on the Intrepid, Excelsior, Miranda, and even Prometheus classes that will be recognizable to hardcore Star Trek fans.]

Our artists have done a fantastic job designing these ships and the elements that’ll let you customize each configuration.

Away Mission Gameplay

MPC: Let's talk about the ground-based away missions.

CZ: When you go down to a ground mission, you always play in a five-person away team. If you’re playing by yourself, you beam down with four bridge officers. If you’re teaming up with other players, you’re going to all go as captains.

MPC: Sounds like that would be against protocol!

CZ: Yeah, it’s funny. You have protocols like the Prime Directive, but those things never come up in the shows unless they have to break them! So, yes, you’re constantly breaking protocol by beaming down, but it wouldn’t be fun just to sit on your ship.

But this is another one of those places where you can change your style of play depending on which Bridge officers you slot. You can choose to bring medical officers if you’re playing with a Leroy Jenkins-type player one night, or bring a tactical officer if you’re going on the offensive.

MPC: Which player in a party gets to decide who to bring down, if you’re not playing with a full roster?

CZ: The team leader gets to assign which players go in the away team slots, and who has control of extra slots.

MPC: And the biggest group you can play with is five players?

CZ: Exactly, it’s five people per normal instanced team, which is the same for instanced space battles. There are larger persistent areas, like large fleet actions, where you can have dozens of ships. The same goes with large away missions, where you can have several teams [of five players each] on one planet at once.

Bridge officers on the ground are fully-functional MMO pets. They’ll follow you, use their abilities, and go into combat. If you want to, you can micro-manage them. You can tell them to stay in one spot, be aggressive, and even set their targets before combat. You can ask them to use special abilities on the ground, like healing or setting down minefields. Ground combat is fast-paced run-and-gun. It’s about maneuvering around your enemies and flanking them from the side, which does more damage. As a Captain, you can equip yourself with two weapons that you can switch at will, including melee weapons and martial arts skills.

MPC: And what kinds of things are you doing on away missions? Just killing everyone?

CZ: Just think of all the myriad things you’ve seen in an episode of Star Trek. For example, after you dispatch Klingon ships above a planet, you may have to beam down to the planet to save the locals from the Klingon landing party. Some missions ask you to recover artifacts and others have you following people back in time.

MPC: What type of loot will you be able to collect from missions and random exploration?

CZ: With bridge officers, they all have a paper doll that needs to be equipped with armor, personal shields, weapons, and other tools, which you’ll find on your missions. The same goes with your own character avatar. There are plenty of items and loot that you’ll find within the game, which you can sell or trade at spaceports. You can even find potential bridge officers.

MPC: Like an alien that you meet on a random world.

CZ: Yes. Another one of the loot items that is very important on the ground missions is your kit, which is a career-limited loot item. The kit gives you really cool powers on the ground, like Security Escort, which lets you beam in extra NPC characters for this mission.

MPC: A bunch of red shirts?

CZ: Exactly! They should have a much higher aggressiveness factor. These kits end up defining your role. Medical science players can deploy stasis fields with their medical tricorders. And over time, as you level them up, each kit can have up to four powers.

MPC: Will you be allowed to team up with friends who are at a much higher or lower level than your character?

CZ: The missions themselves are set level, and you can bring in a range of levels to play in them. Like City of Heroes, we have a sidekick system that lets your team scale to one level, with the experience rewards scaled along the same line as well.

MPC: What will be the level cap for the game?

CZ: We don’t have levels, per se. We have five ranks in the game, ranging from Lieutenant to Admiral. Each of those has 10 sub-ranks, so that ends up being 50 “levels.” And that’s indicated by the pins on your uniform, just like on the show.

MPC: You mentioned spaceports. Do you mean space stations like Deep Space Nine?

CZ: There are several large social hubs within the game. Earth Space Dock is probably the largest one for the Federation. That’s where you go to repair your ship, visit the auction house, and get access to new ships. There are major ones like Deep Space Nine, and minor ones like Memory Alpha, which have similar amenities.

MPC: Sounds like you’re including a lot of details from the shows.

CZ: In almost all of the content that we’ve made, there are Star Trek references, like a familiar character’s grandson or something that was alluded to once in an episode. We have pretty hardcore writers who end up getting all of those references in.

The Genesis Device

MPC: In terms of art assets and content creation, how much of that is crafted by designers and how much is randomly generated?

CZ: If you’re going to make a Star Trek MMO, you’ve to let players boldly go where no one has gone before, right? So we needed to make hundreds and thousands of planetary systems that you could explore. We did that by creating a Genesis game engine that could procedurally generate maps and systems.

Not all of the content is automatically generated. A good deal is first procedurally generated, and then given to our artists to hand-craft to coincide with story-driven missions. The pure procedurally generated content is more for exploration, when you want to make contact with someone who’s never heard of the Federation before. Genesis has been a really powerful toolset that allows us to create the foundation for our artists and designers to add the really cool content, as opposed to spending their time on the more boring tasks.

MPC: Do players then experience the same content or see different worlds when completing mission on their own?

CZ: The main episodic story content will be the same for all players. There are also Patrol missions, which will also be the same for everyone. But the exploration content, when you go to star cluster, for example, will be different for each player. There may be some similarities, but you’ll end up seeing different stuff.

MPC: How much of the Star Trek universe can you explore?

CZ: The game is split into four hubs – Federation/Klingon (where you start), Romulan, Cardassian, and finally Borg at the end. We liken each of these hubs to a season of Star Trek, each season with a set number of episode missions based there. Each will have major and minor story arcs, as well as one-off episodes. There’s an overarching story arc for the whole game, so that always shows up in each hub, story-wise.

Each hub is split in sectors, where are high-level maps that you’ll use to fly between planets and spaceports. This is one of the persistent areas where you’ll see hundreds of ships flying around, in addition to the large fleet action zones.

Making the Game Appealing to Star Trek Fans

MPC: What kinds of compromises did you have to make for this to appeal to both MMO players and Star Trek fans who might never have played an MMO?

CZ: There are some compromises we’ve had to make, license-wise, like adding many phaser weapons variations [in addition to the two main types in Star Trek canon]. In terms of gameplay, our goal is to make a really deep MMO that doesn’t scare away someone who has never played an MMO before. For example, the power-level interface has a complex mode where you can move individual power bars, but there’s also a mode where you can use preset power levels for offensive or defensive stances.

MPC: Do you base the content on materials like the Star Trek technical manuals and the Klingon language?

CZ: We definitely use the technical manuals to get the scale right. We don’t have plans to translate the game into Klingon, but who knows, maybe we’ll figure out a way to get the community to localize it for us.

MPC: What about playing as the Klingons

CZ: We’re not ready to reveal too much, but the Klingon gameplay will be drastically different from the Federation. It’ll open up a couple of hours into the game, and will be more PVP focused.

MPC: Is there going to be a lot of interaction between the two factions?

CZ: Yes, through the PVP and the indirect PVP gameplay throughout the Neutral Zone. But the storyline on the Klingon side is not the same as the one on the Federation side.

The 800-Pound MMO in the Room

MPC: When you’re designing a new MMO, how do you design it to compete with World of Warcraft?

CZ: I don’t know if there will ever be another World of Warcraft [-sized game]. The fact that WoW has so many subscribers is awesome, because it’s exposed so many people to MMOs. Whether or not there will be another game that gets millions upon millions of subscribers isn’t really [our concern]—we didn’t sit down and ask ourselves how we could steal WoW subscribers.

We first asked ourselves how we could make a decent MMO, how we could develop a reasonable business model, and have reasonable expectations. And then, we tried to make it the MMO that the Star Trek universe deserves.

MPC: And what business models work, if you don’t want to compete with WoW?

CZ: You can look at games like Warhammer and Conan, which launched with a few hundred thousand purchases. You can have a pretty nice business with a few hundred thousand users, or even fewer. So, I don’t think many people going into the MMO market sanely think they need 10 million subscribers to make money.

MPC: Is it a chicken-and-egg scenario where you need to have enough subscriber revenue to make new content to attract new subscribers?

CZ: Definitely. There’s a barrier. From our experience, if you don’t break 100,000 subscribers at any point in time, your game tends to just go away. Most games that don’t break that 100,000-subscriber mark tend to just be flashes in the pan. But once you do, you tend to get a really solid fan base with enough revenue to keep adding to the game, and things go pretty well.

MPC: What do you think about different business models, like opting for micro-transactions instead of subscriptions?

CZ: We like the subscription model, and will probably be using that in the near term. We are looking at micro-transactions and how that would work – Star Trek will have micro-transactions, but most of those will be cosmetic things. Some will augment gameplay, but won’t replace any gameplay.

MPC: Is there a risk in Cryptic having multiple MMOs in the market at the same time?

CZ: I don’t think there’s a risk as long as long as the products are different. If we were making fantasy MMO after fantasy MMO and competing with ourselves, we’d eventually run into problems. I also don’t think that we’re banking of people to play our games based on our name, either. We just want to make games that we want to play, and hope that other people will want to play as well.

MPC: How do you determine the long-term plans for an MMO, given the uncertainty of success?

CZ: We don’t have life spans on our games, and we go into the first year with an expansion and update plan. That being said, though, from our experience, the longer you plan ahead, the more likely the plan is useless, because the subscribers will tell you what they like and dislike, and what they want to see more of. So, even though we put a plan out there, we have to be flexible and listen to our captive audience. Which is kind of the cool part about making MMOs. [Once it’s released], it’s not just us making the game—everyone contributes.

Cryptic has also provided five keys to the Star Trek Online closed-beta going on right now. Post a comment on our Facebook page, under the Star Trek Online post, to get your name in the random drawing. We'll pick five readers to receive beta keys on Monday, November 23rd, at noon PST.

Web App of the Week: ScreenToaster

David Murphy — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:10:45 -0600

Ever have one of those moments? You know the one: When it's so difficult to teach someone how to accomplish an everyday task in a particular application that you up and grab the keyboard and mouse yourself and just get 'er done, as it were. Isn't that frustrating? Doesn't your passionate rage for simplifying the art of attaching files to email terrify your coworkers, friends, and loved ones? Wouldn't you like a better way to show someone how to accomplish desktop tasks, one that doesn't actually require you to get up from your chair or, better yet, even pick up a phone?

In a move that's sure to sooth the savage beast that's been identified as a computer expert by his or her flock of advice-seeking peers, the Web app ScreenToaster is a perfectly packaged solution for showing people how to get stuff done on a PC. It does this by taking a live video (complete with audio, if you so choose) of whatever it is you're doing on your desktop, straight out of your Web browser--no additional software installation is necessary, save for a requisite click on the "accept" button for a piece of Java.

But surely the app can't be just that easy? There has to be another catch! Only, there isn't. You don't have to sign up for the Web app in order to use its recording functionality, which is ideal for those that want to give things a test run before spending time crafting the perfect how-to video. You can even select what portions of your desktop you actually want to record--ideal if you don't want your coworkers to see you surfing Maximum PC in a side window. When you're finished with your masterwork, merely create an free account on ScreenToaster to unlock the service's distribution features.

With but a click of the mouse and a few extra keystrokes, you can save a Flash-based version of your video on either ScreenToaster's site or YouTube. You can also download your movie as a .mov or .swf file, which is especially useful for those who want to keep an offline archive of their video advice for future use.

Every Thursday, Maximum PC picks a new Web App as its favorite of the week. Have a Web App that you can't live without? Twitter David Murphy @acererak with your latest suggestions.

Download of the Week: Kindle for PC

David Murphy — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:30:12 -0600

It's a pretty slick deal of Amazon to open up its Kindle library to devices beyond those of the company's handheld book readers. But just because the Kindle software has gone multi-platform doesn't mean that it's a sure winner. No, it's the ease-of-use and almost iTunes-like functionality of this simple e-book reader that makes it a great piece of software for your desktop or laptop PC.

You can't do very much with Kindle for PC aside from read books purchased through Amazon's extensive library--which, in itself, makes sense. You wouldn't really want another piece of software to read PDFs, right? Joking aside, the one thing this software does, it does well. Grabbing new book titles from Amazon is as easy as logging into the Web site, hitting download, and waiting for the book to quickly refresh itself in your Kindle for PC home screen. Your collection of digital novels appears as the front covers of each title, and you can sort this list by the order in which you downloaded the e-books, their names, or the author's name.

The actual book-reading process in Kindle for PC is as simple as the physical process of flipping pages. Use your mouse to scroll up and down throughout your text, and add bookmarks to passages you find particularly interesting by clicking in the upper-right corner of the page (sure beats folding the corner down the ol'-fashioned way). You can change the font size on a whim and even select just how many words you want to appear on each line--the thickness of the e-book, as it were. Amazon is looking into allowing you to create customized notes in future versions of Kindle for PC, one of the few features missing from this simple piece of software.

Every Wednesday, Maximum PC picks a new free or shareware download as its favorite of the week. Have a nifty application that you can't live without? Twitter David Murphy @acererak with your latest suggestions.

Murphy's Law: No BitTorrent Tracker? No Problem!

David Murphy — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:00:00 -0600

Half the internet says The Pirate Bay is dead; The other half says the first half has no idea what it's talking about. Popular BitTorrent index The Pirate Bay is never without controversy, it seems. But is the site's latest move to kill its BitTorrent tracker for good really that much of a white flag? I don't think so, because decentralized BitTorrent tracking has already been here for quite some time now. If anything, The Pirate Bay is just trying to cover its poop deck from additional legal threats.

Here's the deal. For the last many years, anyone could head on over to The Pirate Bay site, do a quick search for a piece of content, download the associated .torrent file, and connect up to The Pirate Bay's tracker. The tracker would, in turn, find you a number of peers to connect to and your BitTorrent client of choice would commence the download of bits and pieces of your file from these multiple sources. Easy.

When a tracker fails to work--or gets forcibly removed from the Internet--you can keep on transferring bits and pieces of a file to those you're already connected to. If you want to start a new download, however, you'll be unable to find any peers seeding the file for you. The same holds true in reverse: Without a tracker, others on the Internet won't be able to connect to you either.

To solve these problems, BitTorrent has embraced two technologies that, together, transform the art of downloading files into a truly peer-to-peer solution: DHT and magnet links. DHT, or distributed hash tables, are a method of decentralizing BitTorrent exchanges by using the power of the group to conduct the peer discovery process. Instead of downloading a .torrent file and connecting to a tracker to bootstrap your way into the network of your peers, your BitTorrent client automatically goes out and locates the files you want in the cloud, bypassing the tracker entirely. In fact, you'll often find more available peers for downloading snippets of your files through the use of DHT than trackers themselves.

Magnet links are a similar concept, different execution. Instead of hosting .torrent files for download, a site need only create a special hyperlink that contains a hash--or small representation--of the file in question. When pulled up in a supported BitTorrent client, the hash of the magnet link becomes the basis for the DHT-based acquisition of new peers and file snippets to download.

What's the benefit to you, good consumer-turned-legal-BitTorrenter? For starters, this decentralization allows you to bypass the frustrations of missing trackers for torrents and simultaneously open up your downloading world to even more connections than what you would otherwise find from a conventional tracker. Magnet links might not seem like the biggest improvement in the world, but they carry on this theme of decentralization and remove the necessity of index sites from the equation entirely. After all, a magnet link is essentially a URL for your BitTorrent client--one that can be shared in a Web forum, pasted into an IM conversation, or attached to the bottom of a weekly open-source column.

For a site like The Pirate Bay, however, these not-really-new technological advancements could be seen as more of a legal salvation than anything else. It's no secret that the site's biggest argument against its illegality is that it merely provides users the location for downloading copyright material through .torrent links--analogous to a Web site that would host the instructions on how to make an explosive device. It's not the site's fault for how what its users do after-the-fact. Although, for what it's worth, the issue that The Pirate Bay hosted its own tracker for allowing users access into the BitTorrent process does lend The Pirate Bay a bit more culpability in these matters.

Nevertheless, the Promised Land for BitTorrent decentralization isn't quite here yet. In a perfect world, one would be able to use the Cloud as a search engine for more than just these unique file hashes. Not only would that render sites like The Pirate Bay relatively useless--ignoring, of course, the more "elite" communities of BitTorrent users on the Web--but it would allow users a one-stop shop for acquiring new files directly through their client of choice. Gnutella tried this to poor results, as its built-in search functionality never quite grew as a result of the service's bandwidth costs for doing so--hence the introduction of DHT.

Still, there is a certain sense of martyrdom in The Pirate Bay's decision to kill its tracker. In some strange way, The Pirate Bay has euthanized itself to further the propagation of a decentralized BitTorrent services for all. Maybe they really do care more about principle than piracy after all...

Firefox Add-on of the Week: Configuration Mania

David Murphy — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:30:18 -0600

I don't know about you, but the last thing I enjoy doing in Mozilla Firefox is surfing through about:config. While can't complain about the various performance boosts and other clever tweaks that this massive configuration database can provide, trying to make any sense of the about:config screen sans helpful guide is, in a word, impossible. If you're trying to stumble in there blindly, you're in for a world of confusion--and, depending on how much you fiddle with the settings, one broken browsing experience.

Thankfully, a clever developer has finally translated the arcane about:config language into real-world speech. And by that, I mean that an awesome add-on now exists that lets you edit about:config settings while being told exactly what it is that you're doing to your browser. In a sense, Configuration Mania is like one big guide to about:config that's built directly into Firefox. Tell the add-on what it is you want to do to enhance or otherwise alter your browsing experience, and the add-on will automatically configure the associated about:config string without forcing you to deal with confusing preferences or values.

With more than 25 different categories of options to choose from, Configuration Mania is the ultimate tool for lessening your confusion while simultaneously maximizing and customizing Firefox to your exact specifications. Since the entire configuration listing is searchable as well, this add-on puts you but a few keystrokes away from ultimate browser power.

Every Wednesday, Maximum PC picks a new Firefox add-on as its favorite of the week. Have a nifty extension that you can't live without? Twitter David Murphy @acererak with your latest suggestions.

Freeware Files: Five Mozilla Jetpack Add-ons to Fuel Your Firefox

David Murphy — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:30:00 -0600

What, you ask, is Jetpack?

Right now, it's just an add-on for Mozilla Firefox. But it could also represent the future of browser-based extensions as we know it, depending on how much developers can twist and craft this new open framework to their advantage. Unlike normal Firefox add-ons, which require a decently skilled knowledge of Javascript and XUL, Jetpack add-ons use a combination of HTML, CSS, and Javascript to deliver new features and functionality directly through the browser. According to Mozilla, one could theoretically write an easy-to-use Jetpack add-on in "under a dozen lines of code." And the benefit for the casual Web browser? Jetpack add-ons promise universal compatibility with different versions of Firefox and, the kicker, require no browser restart to function.

Mozilla just launched the official gallery for this new framework last week. As you might expect, there aren't a ton of browser add-ons to play with. However, I'm going to take a look at five of the more innovative, interesting, and downright install-worthy of the Jetpack add-ons that are currently available in this week's freeware roundup. And remember--you can install and uninstall these add-ons without mucking up your browser session whatsoever, so feel free to be a Firefox Rocketeer and grab as many as you want to try out!

Thumbtabs

One of the fussier points of Firefox is that you can't natively get a thumbnail view of a site when you hover your mouse over its tab in your browser. Thumbtabs adds this functionality into your Web surfing experience by building a little, clickable arrow on the left-hand side of your tab toolbar. When you jam it with your mouse, a sidebar pops open to show you exactly what the pages represented by your various tabs look like. It's not quite as slick as, say, a mouseover window popping up, but Thumbtabs certainly gets the job done.

Download it here!

JetWave

If you're one of the many who use some variant of the Firefox Gmail Manager add-on to show you when you have new messages in your Inbox, you'll love JetWave. In short, it borrows the same functionality from Gmail Manager and pops a little Google Wave icon in the lower-right corner of your browser. When someone adds a message to one of your Google Waves, a little window pops up and lets you know. Clicking on the icon itself will take you right to the Google Wave home page, giving you a quick, easy way to add a reply. You can also access individual waves via a handy little sidebar on the left side of your screen.

Download it here!

Jetstatus

That didn't take long. Of course, Jetstatus is the Twitter tie-in of Jetpack add-ons. Just like JetWave, little pop-up windows appear in the lower-right hand corner of your browser whenever one of your Twitter followers posts a link. If you're popular like Associate Editor Nathan Edwards, then your browser should be a flurry of activity each time you open the window. Although you can't reply or otherwise engage your "Tweeps" via these Jetstatus pop-ups, you can at least use the add-on's built-in sidebar window to jump to the homepage of any of your followers, as well as any links they've posted in their Tweets.

Download it here!

ClicktoFlash

Are you ever bothered by Web sites that just bombard you with Flash content when all you really want to do is navigate a page? Yeah. ClicktoFlash is perhaps the world's easiest method for turning Flash on and off at your leisure. When you toggle the little button on the lower-right corner of your Firefox window to "off," or the big "F" with a circle and a line through it, then no Flash content will load on any page you surf to. If you change your mind and really want to see what a site looks like with the Flash content going crazy, then just click on the "Flash" button that now appears where Flash content used to be. Presto--up it loads!

Download it here!

Image Editor

This add-on is, in a word, crazy. All it really does is add a little menu option, "Edit Image," to the right-click context menu whenever you click an image on a Web page. From there, Image Editor loads said picture into a Lightbox of Pixlr. It's no Adobe Photoshop, but Pixlr is nevertheless a great way to accomplish a number of editing tasks--from drawing, to resizing, to screwing-up-with-lots-of-filters--straight out of your browser window. When you're done playing around, you can save the image directly out of Pixlr to your desktop just as if you were doing it in a standard, installed program. Awesome.

Download it here!