And it even works with that keychain random-number-generator thingy they make you carry around. Too bad they can’t just let you use your iPhone. Or maybe they can.

Get the Shrew Soft IPsec VPN Client

Netbooks get some love from Moblin (for you) and Sugar on a Stick (for the kiddies). Does it get any better? One tip: don’t buy Acer (I have no idea how they are beating Dell in sales).

Windows Fans

XP and Vista are obsolete. No more excuses. What you need to do, my friend, is upgrade to Windows 7.

Once you have that taken care of, banish IE to the far corners of the earth and install Google Chrome. It simply looks and feels like it was made for Windows 7. Simple. Elegant. Fast. And it even does that Aero glass thing.

Next, throw away your buggy, slow Windows anti-virus software. If this prevents you from sleeping at night, and/or you frequently browse, uh, questionable websites, Microsoft has some love for you. Or you could just stop going to those websites.

Once you’ve taken care of that nasty business, please end on a high note with some cool apps and gadgets, and a beautiful twitter client. And don’t forget the games.

Mac Fans

You should try dual-booting or virtualizing Windows 7. Really, it’s not evil. And it lets you play more games (for the 5-10 minutes a day when you aren’t on your iPhone). Of course, there’s still some cross-platform indie love out there. You do like robots, don’t you? I thought so.

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The Wolfire image converter gives you a simple way to convert among about a dozen different common image formats, including some specific to application and game programming. Check it out. It’s pure awesome.

Now that I think about it, I suppose this is the same reason I’d rather boot to Linux when I’m on the bus than Windows.  That way when strangers all around me take a glance at my screen, they see something wholly foreign to them and think, “Huh, that righteous dude must know what he’s doing.”

If, on the other hand, I boot my laptop to Windows without having somehow put my stamp on the boot and/or login process, I’m just like everybody else.

Lame.

That’s where tools like LogonStudio from Stardock save the day.  Instead of the bland, everybody-has-seen-them-before login screens of the various editions of Windows out in the wild today, I can slap pretty much whichever picture I want up on that there login screen.  It’s pretty groovy.

There are separate versions of LogonStudio for XP and Vista.  The Vista version doesn’t quite work perfectly on Windows 7, but I can be patient.

So there you have it.  Show off your prowess with LogonStudio and never be ashamed to boot Windows on the bus again!

-ANSI

P.S. If you really want to disguise what OS is booting, fire up msconfig and mess around with options on the “Boot” tab.  Most people have never seen Windows boot in text mode before.

And now, after all these years, we are finally getting a chance to play it again. And on the iPhone, no less! React Games is making it all possible.

Get Archon Classic now from the App Store or Beta Test Version 1.2

If you would like a feel for the original gameplay and you have access to a Linux box (or Mac running X11), try out XArchon, a free version of Archon for *nix systems.

Now, I just hope they make a port for the Wii…

Indie game developers take note: there is a huge business opportunity in reinventing old, almost-forgotten classics.

Now, I see that mad look in your eye, and I know what you’re thinking… I can haz FTP? Sorry… you can haz not. FTP is a pain to setup and use (especially for non-technical folks), and is a notoriously unreliable protocol. Not to mention the constant user account juggling and security concerns (you l337 hacker, you). And then if you get that all sorted out, putting that one big file on your awesome $5.99/mo web server is probably going to take down your entire site and put you over your storage limit. Phew. No thanks.

What we need is a simple software-as-a-service that act’s like a FedEx for big files. Gets it there right away, with no hassle. Free is even better (we’ve got to cut costs, people!) And here it is:

TransferBigFiles.com

They do this for up to 1 GB. Not perfect, but darn close. Check it out.

1. Secure ripping with error correction.  As good as, or better than, EAC. Plus, dBpoweramp supports specific optimizations when using higher-end optical drives, such as the excellent Plextor models.
2. “PerfectMeta™ using 4 providers: AMG, GD3, MusicBrainz and freedb simultaneously, including high resolution Album Art”. This meta-data lookup service is the best I’ve every used. Better than iTunes, Windows Media Player, or Zune. This saves you hours and hours of time.
3. Right-click tag editing.
4. Superb batch conversions. You can rip everything to FLAC and then easily make another copy for portable music players or networked media devices.
5. Tons of codec support (e.g., AAC, MP3, WMA, FLAC, FLAC, WAV, etc.), and lots of helpful information about each audio format supported. The default options for each codec are quite well thought-out (quality/disk-space wise).

dBpoweramp is useful, modestly-priced at $36, and well worth the money. Here are a couple of gotchas to watch out for, though:

1. The default folder layout structure is pretty lame. I would recommend changing it to something like “[album artist]\[album]\[track]. [title]“
2. When ripping classical music or compilations, PerfectMeta™ doesn’t always set the album artist. Be sure to check that, and put in “Various Artists” or something similar. If you don’t, many media players won’t group the songs together correctly.
3. After purchasing, don’t forget to activate PerfectMeta at the bottom of the download page – otherwise you will get warnings about your AMG subscription having expired:

Super Star Soldier combines a great power-up system, a hard-driving sound track, awesome graphics and perfect pacing. In my opinion, it is the best of the Star Soldier series. In fact, I would say it is even better than some much more modern 2D shooters, such as Protöthea (also available on the Wii).

The problem with games such as Protöthea is that they get the pacing all wrong. 2D shooters need a fast pace with plenty of action (both onscreen and in the soundtrack). You simply can’t beat massive, earth-shattering weapons, vaporizing screenfuls of enemies as you rocket through space. If there are only a couple things to shoot, and you are sort of puttering along at Mach -2, the game is just boring.

Super Star Soldier, on the other hand, is not boring. Go check it out. You won’t be disappointed.

Convert just about anything to anything else.

This site has something for everyone. One of my personal favorites is the Unix Times Conversion that turns Unix time stamps into something normal humans can read. The ASCII Engine code lookup tool is another fun one. Or, maybe you don’t (yet) dream in octal? You might want to check out the magical CHMOD Calculator.

So go on and give it a try. You know you want to.

Digsby is cross-platform (Mac, Windows, Linux), lets you chat on verious IM networks using multiple accounts, and provides social network feeds and new email alerts.

And it works with Google Apps! Using your own domain for Gmail? No problem-o. I also love the multiple monitor support for choosing where alerts appear.

@app = "Digsby"
useit() if (app != :pants)

For the curious, Digsby makes heavy use of Python, wxPython, and wxWebKit to make itself cross-platform.