Posted 03/08/10 at 08:40:07 AM by Paul Lilly

Quick question: Is Web access a fundamental right or a privilege? If you think the Internet is a fundamental right, then you're in the clear majority, according to a new global survey conducted for the BBC World Service.

In a poll of 27,000 adults spread out through 26 countries, four out of five respondents described Web access as a right, and that number was even higher in South Korea and China. About 78 percent of respondents said the Internet gave them greater freedom, while half said the Web should never be regulated.

At the same time, some 65 percent of respondents in Japans said they didn't feel safe expressing their opinions online, a sentiment shared by pollsters living in South Korea, France, Germany, and China.

Other areas of concern include fraud, violent and explicit content, and threats to privacy, but none of these diminished the overall feeling.

"Despite worries about privacy and fraud, people around the world see access to the Internet as their fundamental right," said Doug Miller, the chairman of GlobeScan which conducted the survey. "They think the Web is a force for good, and most don't want governments to regulate it."

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Posted 02/24/10 at 10:00:06 AM by David Murphy

Life, it seems, is never fair for any developer. Just ask the gurus behind Valve's Steam service. For the past many years, Steam has existed as the dominant digital-download platform of choice for gamers worldwide. While a few improvements have been built into the actual application one uses to access the Steam service, the program in question has remained relatively unchanged in its design for a good chunk of its recent existence. Which, in itself, is a polite way to say that it's been ages since an actual upgrade brought a new look, feel, and functionality to the Steam client.

As I think of the many different "platforms" on the Internet, I'm reminded of just how closed-off the Steam application is for conventional tweaking. Some of this is mandatory--there's only so much Valve wants you to be able to access for fear of somehow disrupting Steam's security techniques and gaining access to the vault of unlocked, free-to-download titles. Take a moment to wipe the drool off your keyboard; I'll wait.

What's stopping Valve from incorporating other open architectures into its service, however?  What about Web-wide login protocols?  Authentication for third-party services that could offer spin-offs of Steam's built-in stats-tracking?  Heck, what about some customized user interface support? 

Some might say Steam is too big to be able to successfully navigate open-source and open frameworks. To that, I say hogwash: If Facebook can do it, so can Valve!

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Posted 02/22/10 at 04:50:14 PM by David Murphy

Problem: You have a ton of awesome jams on your iTunes / Zune / Windows Media Player / multimedia organizer of choice, but you don't always use the PC that contains your ultimate rock collection.  What do you do?  There are a few answers, but all require some software setup in order for you to be able to access your music from afar.  You could use Hamachi-based networks to access a shared iTunes library; You could also set up your primary machine as a radio server, which you can then use to stream your files via an easy-to-operate, Web-based interface!

Still, that's a lot of work.  There has to be an easier solution, right?  There is.  It's called TunesBag, and it offers the same functionality you'd otherwise get by building your own Internet radio station the hard way.  Although the service is limited to one GB of music for free accounts, that's still a hefty amount of rocking out for your average listener.  And uploading, playing, and categorizing music using TunesBag's Web-based interface couldn't be easier--or faster!

Put on your headphones, click the jump, and get ready to turn the dial up to 11!

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Posted 02/04/10 at 10:00:00 PM by David Murphy

One of Mozilla Firefox's bigger advantages over Google Chrome has just been wiped away and, dare we say, Google Chrome has actually one-upped its rival in terms of overall usability and ease-of-installation. We're referring, of course, to Greasemonkey. You might have heard this name echoed across tech and tweak sites far and wide. As well you should have--the functionality you can achieve by this upgrade to your surfing experience is simply unsurpassed in its depth or scope by any conventional add-on or extension.

It's quite simple, really. You install Greasemonkey to gain access to a gallery of add-ons that benefit your browsing experience just as much as your favorite official "add-ons," if not more. By add-ons, we mean "scripts." In its conventional format, Greasemonkey is a browser add-on that grants you the ability to automatically integrate new Javascript-based modifications to a site whenever you load up the page. You don't have to design these modifications yourself--a huge gallery of scripts (more than 40,000!) have already been written for a wide swath of functions and locations. Consider Greasemonkey scripts to be analogous to extensions for Greasemonkey--itself an extension for your main browser.

Sound good? Because now, Google Chrome users have the ability to tap into Greasemonkey scripts as much as any other browser user. You don't even have to install a separate add-on, since scripts work natively in the browser! 

But here's the catch: not all Greasemonkey scripts work perfectly in Google Chrome. The running estimation is that roughly 20 percent of what's out there is currently broken for Google's browser. That's not great news for a person who's easily frustrated by failure. However, here's where Maximum PC comes into the picture. We've run through a large swath of awesome Google Greasemonkey scripts to achieve two key goals: to see what works and to see which scripts, of the 40,000+ available, are awesome tweaks for your browser. Click the jump for a look at some of the top Greasemonkey scripts you could (or should) be slapping into your Google Chrome browser right now.

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Posted 02/03/10 at 04:30:00 PM by David Murphy

Zinnnng!

It's been nearly a week since I last reported about Apple's reluctance to allow its users access to the Flash platform. Apple--and Steve Jobs himself--have reportedly claimed that the instability of Flash was the driving factor behind Apple's ripping of this app straight off of its mobile devices (including the brand-new iPad) in favor of an HTML5-based solution for interactive content.

Although Adobe seemed to be letting Jobs' alleged tirade against Flash earlier this week go unanswered, ‘twas not meant to be. Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch has since responded in the company's official "Executive Perspectives" blog. I'm not much of a betting man (nightmares of CES losses haunt me to this day), but perhaps you are: Just which way do you think Lynch points the finger of blame for Flash's absence on--quote unquote--"a recent magical device."

Here we go again!

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Posted 01/29/10 at 01:00:11 PM by David Murphy

By now, you've surely checked out Mark Soper's excellent guide for creating PDFs by using a multitude of applications, editing steps, and detail settings. If not, you owe it to yourself to give the article a scan so you're as well-versed as he when it comes to transforming ordinary files into these kinds of feature-packed super-documents.

As he correctly puts it, Adobe ain't the only game in town when you're trying to turn the contents of something you're looking at into this trusty, cross-platform format.  Let's go one step further.  Installed programs aren't the only way to create a PDF, period. 

If you're on a new computer (or, for that matter, your boss's computer), you might not want to fire up the ol' Adobe installer just to be able to gain the right to transform your screen into a PDF.  And sure, there are plenty of freeware opportunities out there that will allow you to print to a PDF.  But that's still too many steps in the process.  It's 4:59 on a Friday: You want to make a PDF, hit the power button on your PC, and be able to drink one-third of your "it's the weekend" celebratory iced tea before your monitor goes black.  What are you going to do?

If the answer is "cry," then you have failed this exercise.  But let it not be said that my heart is two sizes too small.  For a little Web app exists--conveniently called PDFmyURL--that does exactly that.  Provided the subject of your affection is a Web page of any size, shape, or extension... you will be able to transform it into a downloadable PDF as fast as you'll be able to finish reading the rest of this sentence.

Explore this Web App after the jump!

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Posted 01/25/10 at 10:45:03 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Google Reader now has the ability to provide custom feeds for the sites that don't have an RSS feed, making it possible to track changes on such pages using any RSS reader. The Google-created feed is composed of snippets of page changes. However, site owners can disable such feeds by opting-out of the service. Feeds can be added by entering the URL of the particular page you wish to follow in the "Add a subscription" field.

Apparently, the feature was not developed by the Google Reader team but another set of Google developers. “At Google we're always looking for ways to take advantage of work being done in other parts of the organization. So when a team approached us with a way to follow changes from websites without feeds, we jumped at the opportunity,”  Google's  Liza Ma wrote on the official Google Reader blog. Though there are other services that offer the same functionality, it is a useful little feature that should please Google Reader users.

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Posted 01/09/10 at 01:46:57 PM by David Murphy

This week's Web App of the Week isn't so much for you, but your friends, family, and users. If you ever tried your hand at Web development--doesn't have to be professional, even amateur Web creation will do--you'll know that the strangest of problems can pop up in the strangest of places. A little CSS misstep here, a little HTML coding boo-boo there, and your perfectly constructed three-column layout has somehow crafted itself into a Tumblr page. And it's blinking. And it's hacking off your grandmother who just wants to see pictures of your recent family vacation.

Of course, you're going to email your somewhat-technological-savvy grandmother and ask her what the problem is. And you're then going to tell her that you don't see the problem on your own Web browser. You're going to ask her what Web browser she's using, and she's going to tell you that she has no idea. And she also won't know her operating system, her current version of Flash, or even the side of her screen. She won't be able to tell you if JavaScript is on or off and she certainly won't know how to find her own IP address no matter how many times you tell her how to work the "ipconfig" console command.

But that's okay. Like that one insurance advertisement featuring the guy with the soothing voice, your grandmother, user, friend, or angry forum commenter will be in good hands with the Web App Support Details.

Click the jump to see what it does!

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