I Fell from the Moon

Originally posted by My Opera Community:

It's time to recognize the true stars of the My Opera community: You! As we approach our millionth member , we wanted to recognize all the people who make My Opera as cool as it is.

I've chosen to nominate people in the blog and awesomeness categories. Prepare yourselves for some treats.

Category: Blog

Best blog by a male: Random Accesses
Random Accesses has to be the best tech blog in My Opera Community. Mr. Chilton doesn't stray one bit away from the blog topic, tech. This blog is updated almost every day with a interesting tech related post.

Best blog by a female: Desert Dreams
Zenya always has something interesting to share in Desert Dreams. There's often a new post with music, song texts, art or something else.

Best group: CSS for Dummies
Are you a Dummy? Wether you are or not doesn't matter because learning CSS will be easy anyway with this group. Learn the basics of CSS and you'll soon be able to give your blog a personal touch.

Best photographer: K. Naughton
K. Naughton takes great photos. Stunning, amazing, interesting, cute. K. Naughton must be my favorite My Opera Community photographer.

Category: Awesomeness

Most awesome profile picture: Espen André Øverdahl
Espen wins this one, hands down. It's hard to take a better profile photo than this.

Most awesome comment: This comment
You have to start a few comments up to understand this one. This one cracked me up.

Most awesome picture in a photo album: This bird
Stunning, amazing, cute. K. Naughton really got a scoop here.

Most awesome blog theme: This blog theme
There are too many great blog themes out there. But I think this one has to be the best one at the moment. This theme is modern, trendy, simple and beautiful. Ace!

Credits

Image: The My Opera Awards

I love software. And of course I have lots of it installed. So I thought I'd tell you about my favorite software. And these are programs you don't have to pay a dime for.

The programs

Opera
I suppose Opera Community members know Opera. But my other readers might not. Allow me to clarify this. Opera is a web browser from the Norwegian company Opera Software ASA. Opera have been free and without ads since version 8.5 thanks to a search field from Google. Opera and Google share the revenue from searches done with this search field. When I'm writing this, Opera is in version 9.1.

Opera aims to be an Internet Suite with lots of functions while still being fast. Opera is faster, safer and arguably the best browser. Among the newer features are fraud protection, BitTorrent downloading, custom search engine, and content blocker, preferences for individual sites, Widgets and vast amounts of other features. But you should really make your own choice when it comes to your browser. You might want to try Firefox too.Download...

Picasa2
Picasa was acquired by Google in 2004 and released for free. Picasa can be used to organize and edit your photos and images. You can also import photos from cameras and memory cards.

Once installed, you can set Picasa to scan your computer for photos and videos and they'll show up in Picasa. Then you'll be able to search for your photos and videos and view or edit them in a matter of seconds.

Picasa is powerful yet simple. The main features are organization, editing, sharing, printing, backing up photos, and creation of fun stuff with your photos. All made simple and lightning fast. Picasa really is picture simplicity.

Picasa is available free for users of Windows and GNU/Linux. Google are interested in providing a Mac version but there's none available at this moment. Download...

CitrixWire
Whaaat? Is that a typo? No it's not. Basically CitrixWire is a barely changed version of LimeWire Pro with a green skin for free. I suspect that it's a hacked version of LimeWire. There's also an open version of LimeWire called FrostWire.

So what is Lime/Frost/CitrixWire? It's a Gnutella file sharing program for multiple platforms. It's easy and fast to search for and download all kinds of multimedia and share your files with this program. And unlike a lot of other file sharing programs, this one doesn't install any additional software on your system without your consent. Download...

µTorrent
µTorrent is also a file sharing program. But unlike CitrixWire, this one is for downloading using BitTorrent. Unlike gnutella, you use your web browser to download torrent files and open them in a BitTorrent program. Then this program downloads the file and shares it with others at the same time.

µTorrent aims to be a full-featured BitTorrent client while still being small and fast. The code is fast and portable. Basically it's platform independent. Using it in Wine for Linux should be no problem. In my opinion, it's the best BitTorrent client in existence. µTorrent was acquired by BitTorrent Inc. in 2006. BitTorrent Inc hopes to bring µTorrent to embedded systems like TV-s and cell phones too.Download...

MyPhoneExplorer
This program for Sony Ericsson phones come from an independent developer. The core features are actually coded by only one person. I'm amazed that one person can make such an advanced program.

Yeah yeah, but what is it? I'll tell you. You can use a lot of your phone's features with MyPhoneExplorer. It's a desktop interface for the phone's built-in organizer. And it's easier to use than Outlook. It's a contact manager for your phone, call manager, sms program, file explorer and you can monitor your phone status with it. You can also search an Internet phone book for numbers and names. The program is translated to lots of languages thanks to the efforts of many people from all around the world. Download...

Content used in this post

The Opera logo and screenshot are from their press images.
opera.com/press/images

The Picasa logo is a screenshot of the program icon. The screenshot is from their features page.
picasa.google.com/features

The CitrixWire logo is a screenshot of the program icon. The image is from LimeWire's skin collection.
limewire.com/english/content/skins.shtml

The µTorrent logo is from the "µ-remade" program icon in the µTorrent skins.
utorrent.com/skins.php
The screenshot is from the µTorrent front page.
utorrent.com

I bought this gamepad after deciding that I need some gaming equipment. Now I didn't want to empty my wallet completely, and I wanted a gamepad that's good enough. So after browsing komplett.no I chose this gamepad. This one is very cheap. It's so cheap that I couldn't believe it. It costs 149 Norwegian Kroners. Or 22.42 US dollars acording to Google.




Overview:
PC and PS2 compatible.
Allmost the same buttons as on a PS2 controller.
XBox like trigger buttons for driving games and first person shooters.
Very good analog sticks.
Button remapping.
Turbo function.

I went to pick up the package a few days later and opened the package. I did allready have some NES, SNES, GBA and N64 games ready on my PC (tsk, tsk). I'm not going to rate any emulators, but I wish that atleast nemu were a bit more compatible with the controller, or vice versa. I'm not good on configuring nemu but nemu should have been better on utillitizing all the axises and the POV hat/D-pad.

The controller had a good amount of buttons. The layout is very close to that on a DualShock PlayStation 2 controller. And it can be used both for the PC and the PlayStation 1 and 2. I give the controller plus for those two extra trigger buttons. To bad they serve the same function as the right analog sticks UP/DOWN axis.

The controller is allmost as comfortable as the DualShock but it has a hard edge where I put my ring finger. Depending on how I use the controller, I have to shift my grip to get the control I want. Some people might get cramps faster than they do with the standard PS2 controller. But if you get a cramp, it's because you play to much.

I love the resposiveness of this controller. The analog sticks are comfortably loose. They give you as much controll over your games as many other controllers. The thumb controlled buttons on your right hand are close to perfection. The triggers on this controller are as comfortably loose as the analog sticks. But the D-pad/POV hat is a bit worse in some cases and some people have problems moving it diagonally. The shoulder buttons are not as comfortable as on the DualShock. The lower shoulder buttons are too small. And I repeat that you have to hold it in a certain way to avoid cramping.

Now I haven't explored all the functions yet but still I feel like this is an awesome controller. You can remap buttons (maybe this will make nemu easier to use for me). And there's a turbo function. It has a lot of buttons. I don't miss anything on this controller. Cheers to thrustmaster for making such a good controller. I wish it was a bit more comfortable though.

[Edited in:]
I got the chance to play SSX On Tour on PlayStation 2 with this controller lately. Somehow it feels a little slower than the original controller. But it's allmost as good as the PS2 controller if you get used to it.



Game control: 4/6
Functions: 5/6
Response: 4/6
Comfort: 3/6
Worth your money: 6/6
Overall impression: 5/6