Review: Musique is the simple and beautiful music player you've always dreamed of

When listening to music on your computer, you can go several different ways. The first is to use a huge, well-known music player such as iTunes or Windows Media Player; the second is to opt for streaming using Spotify, Pandora, Last.fm, and others; and the third is to go for a smaller, lesser-known player that suits your exact needs. Musique (€8.99/$12 after 20-day free trial; Linux, Mac, and PC) is just such a player, and one that is definitely worth your attention.

Simple yet eye-catching, Musique is everything you always wanted from iTunes and were afraid to wish for. Interface-wise, it loosely resembles old versions of iTunes without any of the confusing elements. Right from the get-go, using Musique is completely straightforward, with clear buttons and keyboard shortcuts to accomplish any task.

The tiles and playlist make it easy to find and play what you're looking for

The free version of Musique is a demo that lets you add up to 15 tracks at a time, and pops up a nag screen every few songs. It also expires after 20 days, so it's really only a trial version. When you first launch Musique, you'll need to point it to your music folder for a scan. Musique uses Last.fm to catalog your music, bringing up album covers, artist information and photos, etc. Once done, Musique will present your collection in beautiful tiles which you can view by artists, albums, or folders.

Browse by artists, albums or folders to find your music

The right side of the screen is where your playlist goes. Simply start dragging artist tiles, albums tiles, folders or individual songs to this pane to create your playlist. Alternatively, you can hit the play button on the tile itself to automatically start playing everything it contains. You can also use the search function to find specific songs, albums or artists you're looking for. The playlist supports all common functions such as shuffle and repeat, and you can easily control everything from your keyboard or use the buttons and menus. For any song playing, you can also load an info screen full of artist information and photos, album covers and the song's lyrics. The playlist is very easy to follow: even if you add a single song from an album, Musique will automatically give it a separate albums and artist title to make it easy to recognize.

A treasure trove of information can be revealed by clicking the "i" button

Things are also pretty much perfect when it comes to formats. According to its website, Musique takes advantage of VLC on Windows, and thus supports all common audio formats. While at first I had problems playing OGG and FLAC files, the developer promptly fixed these bugs. In general, any format that can play on VLC should also work in Musique. If it doesn't, it's a bug, rather than a design.

One glaring problem with Musique is its inability to open any files aside from the folder you've scanned on startup. There is no File -> Open option, and even if you set it as the default music player on your system, double clicking a file will merely open the program, without actually opening the file you clicked on. If your music is concentrated in one central folder, and you don't mind using a different app to open the odd audio file that's not in that folder, you shouldn't run into problems with Musique. These issues aside, there are more than enough reasons to fall in love with the app, and even pay for it.

Why pay $11.75 when you can get iTunes or VLC for free, you wonder? Musique is a one-man effort, and is a far better one than most big companies have produced. It's well worth your support.

Note: The Download button takes you to to the vendor's website, where you can download the edition of the software appropriate to your system.

Yaara is a foodie, horse-lover, and biologist who enjoys being a geek as a full-time job.
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Review: Microsoft Flight looks beautiful, might as well stay grounded

Microsoft Flight Despite its beautiful looks and impressive lineage, Microsoft Flight fails to offer a truly compelling gameplay experience.

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Microsoft Flight is the current incarnation of a long and illustrious franchise of games, dating back to 1977. Unlike SimCity, you can start playing Microsoft Flight for free: Simply download the game and embark on a series of missions planned to both teach you the basics of flight, and hook you into buying later missions and additional aircraft. Microsoft Flight is the last of its kind: Microsoft permanently stopped work on the game in July 2012, just a few short months after releasing it.

The futuristic Icon A5 Deluxe is not yet in production, but you can fly it in Microsoft Flight.

Microsoft Flight's graphics are gorgeous, and the scenery feels realistic. Hawaii serves as the backdrop for the first introductory missions, in which you get to fly two aircraft bundled with the free download: A thoroughly modern Icon Deluxe light aircraft and a WWII-era Boeing PT-17 Stearman biplane. These missions run you through the rudiments of taking off, controlling the craft in the air, and landing.

Microsoft Flight lets you play several missions in Hawaii for free.

You can fly Microsoft Flight with nothing but a game controller. There are realistic touches like preflight checklists, but in the early stages, the game runs through them on its own, checking items off as you look on.

The Icon A5 cockpit feels almost like a car's—and the GPS works.

While the introductory missions are interesting and fun to play (especially the landing tutorial) and the graphics were strikingly beautiful, gameplay is marred by having to navigate using landmarks, rather than traditional waypoints. In particular, one of the challenges starts out midflight, and you're supposed to land the plane. The trouble is, it's not clear where the airstrip is. No heading is provided, and there's no clear way to figure out which way to go. The careful narration that leads you through many of the other missions is utterly lacking on this one. Manually switching on the aircraft's GPS map does reveal an airstrip, but after navigating all the way to it and executing a landing, I discovered it wasn't the right airfield and failed the challenge after all.

Another point of frustration is the low number of available missions. Microsoft Flight starts you off with less than ten missions and once you want to make progress, you have to pay up.

Microsoft Flight lets you switch between several cameras to get a better look at the action.

In other words, the game suffers from the same issues plaguing many other "pay to play" titles, and even its fancy graphics were not able to redeem it. It is easy to understand why Microsoft ceased developing the game.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

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Samsung Series 7 All-in-One review: Beautiful design, but average performance

Samsung delivers one of the nicer looking all-in-ones on the market with good overall performance, but weak gaming capabilities.

$1000

Stylish designGood performance with everyday tasks HDMI in and out, plus DisplayPortNo Blu-ray drive Pricey, considering its componentsVery weak gaming performance

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

Samsung Series 7 All-in-One review: Beautiful design, but average performance

Samsung delivers one of the nicer looking all-in-ones on the market with good overall performance, but weak gaming capabilities.

$1000

Stylish designGood performance with everyday tasks HDMI in and out, plus DisplayPortNo Blu-ray drive Pricey, considering its componentsVery weak gaming performance

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Review: Tweeki is a beautiful, mobile-like desktop client for Twitter

Twitter is one of the most popular social networks around, and accordingly, Twitter clients are a dime a dozen. Despite how common these clients are, it's surprisingly hard to find one that works well, is simple and easy to use, and is also nice to look at. Tweeki is trying to be just that: A simple and beautiful Twitter client, with all the basic features needed to manage a Twitter account.

Tweeki is an intriguing combination between Web app and desktop app. It runs on Pokki, a desktop interface and store for web apps.  If you don't already have it, it will automatically install when you download Tweeki. Compared to popular clients such as TweetDeck and MetroTwit, Tweeki is no more than a mini-app, and feels almost like something you would install on your mobile device. The interface is nice and clean, and includes everything you could want from a simple Twitter client.

Tweeki's interface makes it very easy to read your Twitter timeline.

After logging in with a Twitter account, you'll find five tabs you can use to browse your stream: timeline, mentions, direct messages, lists and search. The interface is simply gorgeous. Your timeline is easy to read:  Your own tweets appear against a green background and your mentions are marked in orange. This makes it doubly easy to see what's what in your timeline. Tweeki's color scheme cannot be changed, however, and the available one is not colorblind-friendly.

Each tweet includes the usual options to reply, retweet (both old style and new), send a direct messageand add to favorites. Conversation view is also available, helping you keep track of back and forth tweets.

You can easily browse the people you follow, your followers and your favorites.

You can use Tweeki's interface to find all the lists you're a member of, and to create and subscribe to new lists. You can also perform Twitter searches from within the app—those can be saved for recurring use—and even explore world trends through hashtags.

Through the settings, you can enable or disable your Tweeki notifications; these come as either "badges" or "banners", and can be activated for timeline, mentions and/or DMs. Badges will simply show the number of new tweets in a tiny badge over Tweeki's tray icon, while banners are actual pop ups, and are much more noticeable. You can play with these options to create your personal notification preferences. Take note that if you enable banners and then choose to shut down Tweeki, you will be bombarded with them when you launch it again.

The difference between the "badges" and "banners" notifications.

When it comes to tweeting, things are almost perfect. Writing a tweet is easy enough, as is attaching an image, which is a nice feature.

Trouble starts when trying to attach a link. The program's settings include the option to shorten links automatically, but unfortunately, this doesn't always work. Not only does the automation fail, but they sometimes remain long even after shortening manually by clicking and choosing "Shorten link." Even when a link does take its short form, the character count for the tweet doesn't always update, which is quite confusing. Another sorely missed feature is a spell checker.

Set your favorite notification preferences through the settings.

Tweeki includes the option to manage more than one Twitter account. You can add more users by clicking the small arrow next to your profile image at the bottom of the window. Once you add several accounts, you can easily switch between them through the same arrow. Switching accounts takes several seconds, and notifications are not labeled in any way to indicate which account they belong to. This turns multiple-account management in Tweeki into quite a confusing experience.

In the first ten minutes I used Tweeki, it lost connection to Twitter for quite a long time,  and it wasn't entirely reliable when it came to showing every single tweet. This problem solved itself within approximately 30 minutes. Since it's part of Pokki, there's no visible way to close Tweeki. You can sign out from your Twitter account, but you might have to enter your username and password all over again next time you want to log in.

Tweeki is a simple client with a stunning interface, and as long as you don't need to manage more than one account, it's an excellent free option. Tiny and sweet, it turns keeping up with Twitter into a joyous task, despite the occasional reliability issue, which is present in almost every client. If you need to manage several accounts, and want to spend some money, you might have better luck with MetroTwit. In all other scenarios, give Tweeki a spin.

Note: The "Try it for free" button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

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Immerse Yourself In the Beautiful, Quirky World of Botanicula With This Windows 7 Theme

If you're new to the indie game Botanicula, then this free Windows 7 themepack will serve as a visually splendid introduction to it. And if you've already played it…well, is that any reason to deprive yourself of the delightful visuals and quirky sounds that are such a big part of the game's charm? PCWorld has put together the Botanicula Windows 7 Theme to bring the distinctive feel of Botanicula to your desktop.

In a subaquatic realm, the friends come across a giant crab.Botanicula comes to you from Amanita Design, the same folks who created Machinarium--although there's little family resemblance. This game is set in a colorful world of nature rather than a brown and beige steampunk universe. The story involves a team of five insectoid friends who travel through the branches of a tree--their homeland--to save it from energy-sucking parasitic enemies.

The wallpapers in this themepack give you a good feel for the game's eclectic spaces and inhabitants, from the ethereally beautiful domains of the enemy, to escapades on the moon and on glowing pastel branches, to encounters with giant tortoises and crabs, and worms hidden in vibrant green sprouts.

Fans will also appreciate the funny, original sound-scheme, which is a mélange of real voices saying "aaah," "hmmm," "heeheee," "hurrah"” and "mweemwawawawa" (whatever that one translates to).

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Sony PlayStation Vita Review: A Big, Beautiful Gaming Machine

When the Sony PlayStation Vita arrives in North America on February 22nd, it'll face stiff competition. Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets have become powerful, cheap and ubiquitous. And with great, inexpensive games readily available on a device that you're already carrying every day, is there any reason to spend upwards of $250 on a piece of dedicated gaming hardware like the PlayStation Vita?

I didn’t think so, until I spent some quality time with the PlayStation Vita. Let me tell you why it changed my mind.

Superb Design

At just over 7-inches wide and 3-inches tall, it’s impossible for anyone to mistake the PlayStation Vita for anything other than a handheld gaming machine. Despite its size the device is actually surprisingly light, thanks to a reinforced plastic chassis that’s difficult to bend or flex. It feels solid, and is comfortable to hold for extended play sessions. Our 3G-capable Vita ($300 at time of review) clocked in at just under 10 ounces, making it comfortable for daily carry.The $250 Wi-Fi-only model is lighter still, at 9 oz.

Despite its sleek profile and light weight you’ll likely want to avoid slipping the Vita into your pocket, thanks to the twin analog thumbsticks flanking the 5-inch OLED screen. They jut out about half an inch from the front of the device. Having access to two thumbsticks for analog control (as opposed to the squat Nintendo 3DS Circle Pad, or the flat analog nub on the Sony PSP) makes it possible for Vita developers to publish 3D games with complex controls. But the hardware itself is unwieldy. Unless you purchase a protective sleeve for the Vita (sold separately) you’ll want to carry the device in a purse or satchel to avoid potential damage to the thumbsticks.

The Vita sports plenty of other input options, including a directional pad, four face buttons, Start and Select buttons, and a PlayStation button that you can tap at any time to jump back to the Vita Home screen. Inside the Vita are a triple-axis accelerometer and gyroscope and a triple-axis electronic compass, along with a GPS radio (in 3G-enabled Vita units only). Along the top of the chassis you’ll find left and right trigger buttons flanking volume controls on the right and the power button on the left, as well as two flimsy plastic covers in the middle that conceal a slot for your Vita cards (more on those later) and a mysterious “Accessories Terminal” for connecting peripheral devices, none of which were announced at time of publication. In addition, 3G Vita owners will find their SIM card slot nestled on the left side of the unit beneath a black plastic cover.

Rounding out the unit are a headphone/microphone jack, a “multiuse connector” port and memory card slot along the bottom of the chassis. The multiuse connector port resembles nothing so much as a malformed USB jack, and as of publication it’s only use was as a port for plugging in the PlayStation Vita proprietary charger. The charger itself comes in three parts: a generic North American 2-pin power cord, a Playstation-branded USB cable with a proprietary pin configuration that matches the Vita’s multiuse connector port, and an AC adapter with a USB port to unite the two. It’s a bit much to carry just to keep your Vita charged, but you can use the Vita-to-USB cable to connect the device directly to your PC. From there you can transfer photos, movies, music and applications between the Vita and your PC via the PlayStation Content Manager Assistant application (more on that later) or trickle charge the Vita’s battery via USB (as long as the Vita is not in active use).

But enough about ports, let’s talk about the screen. The capacitive 5-inch OLED touchscreen that dominates the Vita is big, beautiful and multitouch-capable. It’s bright enough that most games and movies are playable even in direct sunlight. The excellent viewing angle makes it easy to see what’s going on even at extreme angles, and the glossy finish doesn’t pick up fingerprints or smudge easily. With a resolution of 960-by-544 pixels it’s not quite as sharp as an iPhone 4S display, but it’s the best screen we’ve ever seen in a dedicated gaming handheld (trumping both the Nintendo 3DS and the PSP) and colorful games like Lumines and WipeOut 2048 look fantastic.

The WipeOut 2048 LiveArea looks fantastic on the Vita's 5-inch OLED screen.
Mirroring the multitouch-capable touchscreen is a similarly-sized glossy touchpad on the back of the device. This is the first time we’ve seen a mobile device with a rear touchpad since the Motorola Backflip, and learning to hold the Vita comfortably without accidentally tapping the rear touchpad takes some time. Thankfully it’s simple enough to feel where the Vita chassis ends and the touchscreen begins via a texture change between the rough plastic of the chassis and the smooth, glossy touchpad. How well the complimentary front and rear touch interfaces function depends on which game you’re playing; as an example, while playing the twin-stick shooter Super StarDust Delta you can tap and drag your finger along the rear touchpad to place gravity wells, or tap the front touchscreen to target your missiles. If you don’t like the touchscreen controls, you can always use physical buttons instead.

Obtuse Interface

When you turn on your Vita for the first time you’ll need to log into the system with your Sony Entertainment Network account, or create one if this is your first Sony device. Choose carefully, because you can’t switch between multiple SEN accounts without formatting the Vita’s onboard memory.

The touch-based Vita OS requires you to "peel back" the lock screen (seen here with a WipeOut 2048 wallpaper) to access the Home screen.

Once you’ve configured your system language and time zone you’re presented with the lock screen, a ticking clock atop what appears to be wallpaper; tap and peel the lock screen away to access the Vita home screen. The Vita dispenses with the venerable Sony XrossMediaBar (XMB) interface that graces the PS3, PSP and select Sony HDTVs in favor of a new touch-based interface. It pins up to ten application icons to a series of pages that you can scroll between by swiping your finger up or down the screen. Tapping an icon will open that application’s LiveArea, a sort of middle ground between the Vita home screen and the actual application where you can accomplish application-related tasks like adjusting settings, reading the digital manual or checking for software updates. You can have up to six LiveAreas running simultaneously, though Sony may increase that limit in a future firmware update.

While you’re likely to spend the lion’s share of your time with the Vita playing games (which can be either downloaded from the PlayStation Network Store or installed directly from a Vita cart) the device also offers a robust suite of applications. For the full rundown of system software check out our guide to what you need to know about the PlayStation Vita. In brief, there are built-in apps for sharing game activity or chatting with friends, watching movies, playing music and viewing photos, as well as a Content Manager application for transferring files back and forth between the Vita and your PC.

To transfer files you’ll need to install the Content Manager Assistant software on your PC. It seems a little silly to require Vita owners to use proprietary content management software instead of just treating the Vita as an external USB drive, but the Content Manager Assistant software is simple to use and may help stem Vita software piracy.

Of course to actually store media on your Vita (which only has 512 MB of onboard RAM for running system software) you’ll need to invest in a proprietary PlayStation Vita memory card, which (at the time of this review) are ridiculously expensive. Our Vita review unit came with a 16 GB memory card, which currently retails for $59.99. If you’re strapped for cash you could pay as little as $20 for a 4 GB Vita memory card, but if you want enough space to store more than a few songs or saved games (some Vita game cards allow you to save data directly to the card, but not all) you could spend as much as $100 for a 32 GB Vita memory card.

These prices are tantamount to highway robbery, especially given that a standard 32 GB SanDisk SDHC memory card costs roughly $30. Sony’s decision to design the Vita to use a proprietary format of external memory and then charge inflated prices for Vita memory cards is a blatant bit of profiteering that directly harms the consumer, besmirching an otherwise laudable piece of gaming hardware.

There’s also a built-in web browser that functions reasonably well. It utilizes touch for navigation and onscreen keyboards for text entry, and resembles an oversized Android browser. The Vita browser supports neither HTML5 nor Flash as of this review.

Terrible Cameras

Color/contrast shot taken with the Vita's rear-facing 0.3 MP VGA camera.

The PlayStation Vita has a pair of front and rear-facing 0.3 MP VGA cameras, and they’re both terrible. During testing the Vita regularly captured photos that appeared blurry and dim with poor contrast between light and dark areas. The Vita 1.6 firmware update added a video recording feature to the Camera app, but the quality of video captured using the Vita’s cameras is equitably poor. These cameras work well enough for playing the occasional augmented-reality game, but for snapping photographs suitable for sharing you’re better off using a dedicated camera, or your smartphone.

Color/contrast shot taken with the Vita's off-center front-facing 0.3 MP VGA camera. Gross.

Fantastic Performance

The PlayStation Vita packs a quad-core PowerVR Series 5XT SGX543MP4+ GPU that’s similar (though superior) to the dual-core SGX543MP2 GPU which powers the Apple iPhone 4S and iPad 2. The Vita’s GPU does a fantastic job of rendering movies and games without a hitch; during testing we played several graphically-demanding Vita games (including Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Lumines: Electronic Symphony, Super StarDust Delta and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3) and they all looked fantastic, with nary a dropped frame or graphical glitch to speak of.

The Vita also boasts respectable battery life, and during testing we were able to eke out just under five hours of fun playing games, watching movies and listening to music at maximum brightness and maximum volume before our Vita review unit ran out of juice. Thankfully it only takes about an hour and a half to completely charge the battery via the AC adapter.

While our Vita review unit included a 3G radio, we were unable to assess the performance of the AT&T 3G on Vita units at the time of review without a compatible 3G SIM card. Once we have thoroughly tested the 3G functionality of the Vita we will update the review accordingly.

All told, the PlayStation Vita is an excellent handheld gaming console that’s worth paying for if you demand more from your mobile gaming experience than smartphone or tablet games can provide. You’ll have to make some sacrifices in order to play with this kind of power, but if you’re willing to accommodate the Vita’s size and Sony’s draconian memory card pricing scheme, you’ll be rewarded with one of the most powerful handheld gaming devices ever made.

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