While the work on the next version of Firefox, Firefox 3.5 is still going on, some developers are already showing some features of the following version, Firefox 3.6 codenamed “Namoroka”. You can download the nightly build at Mozilla’s website, but please be reminded that it’s a pre-alpha version and should be used only for testing purposes:

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-mozilla-central/

Major new features:

• Support for private browsing (Firefox won’t store any information like history, cache, cookies, … on your computer when private browsing is enabled)
• Better browser cleaning (e.g. for cookies or history, you can now select time intervals)
• Tab previews when moving tabs inside the tab bar or from one Firefox window  to another
• Changing tabs with CTRL + TAB will create a half-transparent window showing previews of all tabs and allows the user to search the tabs

Do you know TinyURL? It is a service that allows you to create a short URL from a long one, when somebody accesses the short one, it will redirect him to the original website.

Well, okay, that may be quite useful, e.g. for Twitter where your message size is restricted to 140 characters. Still, there are times when making things convenient for people just won’t do. In those cases, you need to make the URL bigger, whether for a light jab in the ribs, or a test of how dedicated someone is to checking out your link, even if it means re-pasting truncated email text by hand. If someone complains about having to copy and paste such a huge URL, you really can’t expect them to be the kind of team player who logs the necessary hours for the next big thing, right?

In this case FreakingHugeURL will do the job for you.

This freaking website made the nice, short URL of my blog to a monster with 1475 characters!

On April 1st, YouTube decided to flip their complete website including videos, text and icons and to name it the “new layout for better watching experience”.

A click on “tips for viewing the new layout” revealed that

“modern computer monitors give a higher quality picture when flipped upside down—kind of like how it’s best to rotate your mattress every six months. You might find that YouTube videos look better this way.”

They also offer other helpful tips like turning your head to the side or moving to Australia.

Anyway, if you want to see the flipped design still after the April joke was over, you can just add “&flip=1″ as parameter to your video URL, meaning:

Original Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuRiW6iGgu4

Flipped Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuRiW6iGgu4&flip=1

Now you will be able to see the whole website upside down! Have fun turning your head!

EDIT: New version 1.1 available!

Airship Assault is the first game that uses my MultiInput library in order to support many players playing the same game on one computer with multiple mice connected to the computer.

Airship Assault is a Moorhuhn-like (in English “Crazy Chicken”) shoot ‘em up multiplayer game for up to 6 players. But there is one special feature that makes this game different from all the others out there in the world: All players can play at the same time using only one single computer! Airship Assault can handle up to 6 mice connected using USB or PS2 to the computer and distinguish between the players.

Each crosshair in the game is controlled by one player. The goal is to shoot all incoming airships before they can leave the screen again. If a an airship manages to cross the screen, the players will lose one of their initially 20 lifes. After 20 seconds all players will level up; higher levels will cause more airships to spawn and they will fly faster.

One magazine can hold 10 shots, after a player fired them all he will have to reload by clicking the right mouse button. Killing an airship will give around 25 points depending on the speed of the airship, reloading will cost 100 points.

When all lifes are lost, the game is over. A new screen will show up showing statistics for every single player: Kills, Points and Accuracy.

Download Airship Assault here!

Screenshots

If you have any comments, bugs to report or features to request, feel free to comment either here or on the official Airship Assault website!

Google is currently working at a newer version of Google Chrome. Chrome 2.0 is still in the pre-beta phase, but you can already download and try it.

There are some major changes that make it worth to be used instead of the old version:

• Form autocomplete
• Full page zoom (press CTRL and scroll the mouse wheel)
• Autoscrolling by middleclicking the mouse
• Use different profiles (e.g. one for work and for for home with different bookmarks, …)
• Use Greasemonkey scripts (by adding “-enable-user-scripts” to the launch parameters)
• WebKit and JavaScript V8 engine updated

How to get the latest version:

• Download and install the old version of Google Chrome (if you don’t have it already)
• Download and run the Google Chrome Channel Changer
• Select “Dev” mode
  
• In Chrome, open the “About Google Chrome” dialog and click “Update Now”
• Restart Google Chrome

Now you have the latest version of Google Chrome installed! Have fun!

I created a C# class that allows you to use more than one mouse in your XNA game. Of course this is also working with normal Windows applications, but I specially prepared it to work with XNA. This gives you new possibilities for multiplayer games on a single computer! Currently, it’s only working for mice, but I will add keyboard support soon.

Download MultiInput.dll Version 0.1

I also created a game demonstrating how to use this class and what multiple mice can be used for. I think there are many games that could make use of more than one mouse to enable a cool multiplayer mode. Currently the game is in Alpha stage and doesn’t have many features. It supports up to 6 players (if that many mice are plugged in) who have to stop zeppelins from reaching the other side of the screen by shooting them down. Although there isn’t much to do except shooting the zeppelins, it’s quite funny already.

UPDATE: NEW VERSION AVAILABLE: Download Airship Assault here!

Download MultiInput Sample Game Alpha Version 0.1

Download and install the necessary XNA Framework 3.0 here

Each crosshair can be controlled by one mouse/player. The number in brackets on the bottom is the amout of shots you’ve left in your magazine. Leftclick to shoot, rightclick to reload. When a zeppelin reaches the other side, you will lose a life.

I tested the game only with USB mice, they’re working fine, but it should also work with PS2 mice. If you encounter any errors, please tell me!

Continue reading…

GMail Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual filesystem around your Google Mail account, allowing you to use Gmail as a storage medium. This can be very useful to store important files somewhere where you can access them whenever you want (just login into GMail and download). Since Google offers as much as 7GB (and the storage volume is increasing every day), it should be enough to save your presentation or holiday pictures.

Warning: This shell extension works fine with Windows XP but  can cause some problems when running Windows Vista or Windows 7. Please contact the creator at bjarke@viksoe.dk if you experience any problems!

Download GMail Drive Shell Extension (this server)

Download GMail Drive Shell Extension (mirror)

GMail Drive stores the files you upload as mails, containing the path, filename and other information such as file size in the subject, and the data itself as an attachment. For each new file, you will have a mail in your inbox, spamming it quite a lot if you upload many files. Thus you should create a filter similar to the one I created:

This will order and archive all the files from GMail Drive.

In the last week, I created WortopiaBot which is a hack or cheat for all kind of multiplayer boggle games like Wortopia or WEBoggle. You can just start the program and wait a few seconds, then it will have solved the game and submit all possible words to the respective game server. Using the right word database, the accuracy can be up to 100%.

Download WortopiaBot 1.0 Perfect Edition

Download WortopiaBot 1.0 Perfect Edition source code

There are 2 versions of this bot, one is called “Perfect Edition” because it always reaches 100% if the program can access the right database. Before I found out that the original Wortopia database is available under open-source license, I used other databases that reached only around 80%. Thus I also created a “Learning Edition” that checks the words from last round and adds them to the database, in addition to the removal of wrong words. If the Learning Edition plays enough games, it should optimize its database  to the same accuracy of the Perfect Edition.

The Learning Edition will be available for download from SourceForge soon.

Continue reading…

Are you annoyed of refreshing your game slots all the time when hosting a game in Warcraft 3? Then  you can use one of these awesome Auto Refresh tools who do the stuff for you! I know there are many tools like that out there in the Internet , but I had problems finding a good one, so I will upload it here.

Download Warcraft III Auto Refresh

Download Warcraft III Auto Refresh sourcecode for Visual Studio 2005

Download Warcraft III Auto Refresh sourcecode for Visual Studio 2008

How to use

Host a game in Battle.Net and start Autorefresh. Make sure you set it to the right port, usually 6112, but when you changed it ingame (like I did), you will also have to change it in the application. Inside the game, all slots will be filled by a player called “Autorefresh” every 15 seconds and thus refreshing the ports.

Thanks to Jason Ureta for creating this awesome application and even sharing the source code with us!

Do you have many Instant Messengers like MSN, ICQ, Google Talk, Skype, Xfire and so on and are annoyed of starting each one manually? Then I show you a trick to start them all with just one click. This will of course work for every bunch of programs you like!

Follow the instructions to create a small batch script that starts all your programs automatically:

• Go to any folder you don’t access that often like “C:\” or “C:\Documents and Settings”, right-click and select New -> Text Document.
• Make sure your Explorer doesn’t hide file extensions and rename the text file you created to “messengerstart.cmd” or something with “.cmd” in the end.
• Right-click the file and select “Edit”. This will open the file in Notepad.
• For each program you want to start, add this line to the document:
  start “” “<path to your program executable>”
  and replace the <path…> stuff with the actual path. You can get this path either by right-clicking the shortcut of the application, selecting “Properties” and copying the text in the “Target” field or by searching the application. Usually it is in “C:\Program Files\<Application name>\<Application name>.exe”
  
• When all the applications are there, save the file. Now it is working already, but we want to have it in our quicklaunch bar.
• Right-click  the file and select “Create Shortcut”. Rename this shortcut to something like “Start all messengers” and drag it to your quicklaunch bar.
• If you don’t like the ugly logo, right-click the shortcut, select “Properties” and click the “Change Icon…” button at the bottom. In the window popping up you can either select one of the default Windows icons or browse to an application and use this icon.
• Now you may delete all the shortcuts you replaced with the new one in your quicklaunch bar.

If nothing went wrong, you will have a  shortcut like this now that starts all your applications with one click: