The amazing Mario games

Created in 1983, Mario games started with Mario Bros based on an existing character of the game Donkey Kong. However, it was not until 1985 with the release of Super Mario Bros that this game reached the success that nowadays, still has it. After that, for different consoles have released different sequels that all together make up the universe of Mario games.

Since its release, Super Mario Bros has sold 40 million copies and is responsible for making popular “platforms” video games. Due to its global success, Nintendo has released several sequels that are part of the huge catalogue of Mario games.

The phenomenon of Mario games has revolutionized the world of videogames. TV shows, movies and comics, with varying success. In 2006, Super Mario Bros was listed by Japan´s government as one of the 100 most representative artistic media of this country. In 2010, in an unusual tribute to Mario games, Zaragoza opened an avenue under the name of Super Mario Bros, which also has a statue of the character.

Mario games have gone beyond time. Almost 30 years later still new versions are released that suits the new technologies. A survey made in Japan has shown that Mario game´s fans are expecting that Nintendo will soon release a 3D version of the game. Until this happens, you can enjoy one of the many Mario games: Super Mario Blue Twilight DX.

The squarepants mania: from shirts to SpongeBob games

When we name SpongeBob it is hard to say that someone does not know we are talking about the nice yellow cartoon character. Created a decade ago, the squarepants character rages around the world making huge marketing products from mugs and T-shirts to movies and games like Squarepants Odyssey 2.

One of the highlights of this TV series that shows the adventures of this character in ” Bikini Bottom ” is that its audience is varied. However, beyond this characteristic of the viewers of this TV show, the vast majority of SpongeBob games are aimed to children, such as the game mentioned before, Squarepants Odyssey 2.

Will the future generations be fanatic of SpongeBob and his friend, Star Patrick? It is impossible to know now. What is for sure is that in the minds of today’s children both toys, animated series and SpongeBob Games will remain in their minds.

Speed up your browsing with Google Toolbar

When Internet became massively used, user’s didn´t had many browsers available. As the network grew, these started to grow, too. At the same time, due to the wild competition between them, they are constantly updated. This implies changes in their interface that many times confuse users. A good tip to avoid this problem is to add to your browser Google Toolbar.

Thanks to this bar, we can keep the same interface, while enjoying all the features it offers. What`s more, Google Toolbar allows searching from any site we are, without needing to use the site engine itself. On the other hand, Google Toolbar allows you to search words even within the same site. It also includes a direct link to its translator as well as an application that makes Google bar complete forms for us.

What´s more, Google Toolbar lets you add custom buttons from a gallery so we can visit our favorite sites with just one click. Another thing we can do with just a click is sharing links on social networks.

Without a doubt, Google Toolbar is very convenient, to users, advance or beginners. The many advantages it offers as well as the customization possibilities make of this, a convenient tool to enhance any browser. You can download Google Toolbar from here.

Watch online movies for free thanks to the internet

The solution is to download the movies to our pc, once these are saved on the hard disk, we will be able to watch them without cuts. To do so, we need to find on the web, sites where films are available and use a program such as uTorrent, if this is under P2P protocol, or a download manager like Internet Download Manager or jDownloader, if this is in a “direct download “.

Once we´ve downloaded with the help of some of these applications, we have to play them on our PC. There are many media players, all them quite effective, among the most popular we can mention Windows Media Player, VLC or RealPlayer. However, it is possible that even if we have a good player we cannot watch free movies uncut as we wanted since we do not have the necessary codec’s to do so. Some of the most complete codec packs that will avoid any difficulties are Elisoft Codec Pack or CCCP

This way, by having these tools, we can finally seat comfortably in our couch and watch our favorite movie without cuts.

Use Windows 7´s new bar in your old XP

As a consequence, Seven Transformation Pack has been created, it allows us to emulate Windows 7 environment; this way, we can have Windows 7´s bar: adding the programs and access them directly as previewing applications by just passing the mouse over them (ViGlance).

However, Seven Transformation Pack is not limited to Windows 7´s bar. It also enables to emulate all the aero environment that has this operating system as well as the initial screen.

In short, Seven Transformation Pack makes a total change to our desktop. Adding the new interface to the operating system, particularly its most important aspect as the aero and Windows 7´s bar.

Know the weather anywhere in the world with Weather Watcher

Weather Watcher allows you to display weather based on 3 presentations. You can see the weather based on a projection of hours, days and even future weeks. Setting it up is really simple since by only indicating the city you want to know about, its powerful search engine will show you detailed weather-related data.

At the same time, Weather Watcher can be set up with multiple profiles, in a couple of clicks let you know what the weather is in Madrid, in Chile or wherever you want. In addition to this, we can select the measure unit we want to read the data.

Whether we need to know the weather in your country or any where in the world for business reasons, sightseeing or just curiousity, Weather Watcher is an application you must have on your computer.

How to download movies faster using u Torrent

The first thing you need to do to download movies faster using u Torrent is go to “Preferences”, located in the menu “Options”. There you will find a series of tabs related to configuration. To improve the speed when downloading movies using uTorrent you will need to make some changes in the section “Connection”, “Bandwidth”, “BitTorrent”, “Queuing” and “Scheduler”.

In the “Connection” section, you will need to indicate the port 443 for incoming connections and uncheck all the options except “Enable UPnP port mapping” and “Enable NAT-PMP port mapping”. The next step to improve the speed when downloading movies using u Torrent is to go to the “Bandwidth” section. In this section, to the “Maximum upload rate” assign the value 70, the maximum value is 2329, to the “Maximum number of connected peers per torrent” assign the value 14 and to the “Number of upload slots per torrent”, the value 1890. At the end of this section, select only the option “Use additional upload slots if upload speed is <90%.”

Continuing with these steps to improve the downloading speed using u Torrent, go to the “BitTorrent” section. There, tick all the options except “Enable Local Peer Discovery” and select “Enable” from the “Outgoing” option.

To finish with this process, got to “Queuing” and assign values 60 and 63 to “Maximum number of active torrents” and “Maximum number of active downloads”, respectively. As for the “minimum ratio” assign 100 and to the option “seeding time” assign the value 0. The last step is to disable the “scheduler” from this section.

By making these small changes in the configuration of our P2P client we can improve the speed in a short time so that we can download movies faster using u Torrent.

Three options to optimize communication via web

The web communication area is without a doubt, one of the most powerful of all areas; that has advanced lot in short time, thanks to the technology advances and the complex convergence that characterizes the Internet. We can say that there are many ways to communicate as platforms, but only few of them provide accurate solutions. Here are three of the most popular and used: ooVoo, TweetDeck and Windows Live Messenger 2011.

ooVoo is an application that was thought for VoIP clients, being its main competitor Skype. One of the main advantages that ooVoo has is the possibility of having video conference for up to 6 simultaneous users. It also offers the possibility of creating chat channels between ooVoo users and add them to a website. What´s more, with ooVoo you can record and send video messages up to 5 MB. One disadvantage we might find is regarding audio and video quality which depends on the Internet connection the user has, although this is surprisingly good.

To sump up, ooVoo has a nice interface design in 3D format that together with its technical functionality, offers an intuitive user-friendly platform to the user.

On the other hand, TweetDeck, is an application that allows the integration of social networks such as: Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Google Buzz and MySpace, among others. Its creation answered the aim of Twitter users that wanted to read and post tweets in a personalized interface, and even split the screen into as many columns as categories they want. Another feature that stands out in TweetDeck is to shorten the URLs from its interface, with just one click on the link (very useful when tweeting only 140 characters.)

Even thought TweetDeck and ooVoo are two applications for online communications that successfully meet the expectations of their users, without a doubt, Windows Live Messenger 2011, the new version of the popular Microsoft´s messaging client, is the most popular one and stands out for its new functionality. Among them we can find the possibility that users of the new Windows Live Messenger 2011 can synchronize their accounts with social networks (Facebook, MySpace, etc.).

In addition to this, another improvement they have made regarding its interface is that the conversations are no longer in different windows but now the main window includes them, assigning an individual tab for each one. This gives a better control of the conversation organizing them. Another feature we cannot left mentioning is that they added something new to the new format of Windows Live Messenger 2011, the file transfer has come out on top in this new development, as well as the ability to post status updates in different social networks from the same interface.

As we saw before, the options are many and good, but your choice will depend on which is the primary concern you have when communicating over the web, there you will have to choose between: ooVoo, TweetDeck or Windows Live Messenger 2011

Windows Live Messenger 2011: New and improved

The convergence of different technological platforms for communication between network´s users is improving day after day. An example of this is the latest development that this new version of Windows Live Messenger 2011 brings, that as main new feature, offers the possibility of integrating and synchronizing Facebook and Windows Live Messenger 2011 accounts.

The developers of this new version of Windows Live Messenger 2011 have made a total hit in the subject, both esthetic and as in the functionality of this new version. As regards the development of the interface, Windows Live Messenger 2011 definitively changed the old design this classic application has, even changing the aspects of the emoticons, now much modern.

Another change regarding the esthetic aspect is that the chatting window is no longer showed in separate windows, but integrated into different tabs. This allows users to scroll through Windows Live Messenger 2011 conversations in a simple way.

While this esthetic change is important, certainly the most important innovation Windows Live Messenger 2011 brings is the convergence with Facebook. This integration allows user to know in detail and right away the updates of their contacts in Windows Live Messenger 2011 or their friends in Facebook. It also allows us to share data with our contacts or post them on Facebook in a friendly way.

This new functionality of Windows Live Messenger 2011, allows, either, send messages to users who are online in one site or another. Also, this platforms convergence makes easier to interact with users through mobile phone, either in Windows Live Messenger 2011 or in Facebook.

The best extensions created for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox

The year 2010 was a year in which many extensions for Mozilla Firefox and Google  Chrome browsers were created, making them winning a special place among the preferred by Internet users. Although the developers of these extensions have preferred to make them unique to one or another browser, others have chosen to exploit the growing market presence of Chrome and Firefox and develop extensions for both. Below we have a list of some add-ons for these browsers:

WOT (Web Of Trust): This add-on shows the user the security level of the webs he has searched. This extension was thought to ensure the user if the site he visits is safe or not

Tab Cloud: This extension allows synchronizing in the cloud the tags already opened in either browser, without having to remember the open sites.

SiteLauncher: This is a really useful extension when launching sites, enabling them to create keyboard shortcuts or hotkeys through a custom shortcuts panel where the user can include favorite pages simple and organized. Ideal for a quick access to the sites the user visit frequently when using Firefox or Chrome.

Rapportive: This add-on set us free of Gmail ads and replaces it showing extended information about the e-mail´s senders, with their latest tweets, information on their Google´s profile, Facebook or Linkedin for example. Without a doubt this add-on is the one all Chrome and Firefox users should use.