ESET Smart Security 7: newcomer brings top-notch protection

Eset Smart Security 7 ($60 for one year of protection on one PC) is relatively new to the U.S. market. This all-in-one security suite includes antitheft protection and a social media scanner. Unfortunately, though Eset offers good protection and a fairly intuitive interface, it puts a lot of stress on your system.

In our real-world (zero-day) tests, which include email and Web threats, Eset protected against 100 percent of attacks, matching the outstanding performance of F-Secure Internet Security 2014, Kaspersky Internet Security 2014, Norton Internet Security 2014, and Trend Micro Titanium Maximum Security 2014. Eset handled known malware well, too, blocking 100 percent of attacks from malware discovered in the month before testing.

Eset didn’t flag any safe websites our usability tests, nor did it try to prevent actions carried out while installing and using legitimate software, or warn users about them, or identify any legitimate programs as dangerous.

Unfortunately, Eset’s suite hobbles system performance. Its score of 8 tied Norton for the highest (and therefore least desirable) in our roundup; you can expect slower start-ups, and longer lags during downloads and installations with this security suite in place. During my test of Eset, my PC’s fan ran on high nonstop until I uninstalled the program.

Eset Smart Security 7's interface is a mixed bag, with both touchscreen-friendly buttons and checkboxes.

Eset’s installation process is a drag, too. You have to click through several screens, some of them separated by long downloads. Eset’s installer recognizes incompatible software (such as other security suites), but it can’t uninstall them directly. Instead, it asks you to go into your Control Panel and manually uninstall each incompatible program. You can skip this step, but doing so could abort Eset’s installation.

Eset’s main interface has a menu on the left for the main feature categories, which include scan, update, setup, tools, training, and help and support. A home screen shows you your protection status (a banner at the top displays “Maximum protection” in green when you’re fully protected) as well as any notifications or alerts.

Though Eset’s left menu is touchscreen-optimized, the setup menu isn’t: Each setting ties to a drop-down menu that lets you disable certain features for a fixed amount of time. A link at the bottom of the setup menu takes you to Eset’s advanced settings, which are even less touchscreen-friendly, with lots of nested menus and tiny checkboxes. The program does a pretty good job of explaining confusing terms and settings in plain English.

Eset has some nice features for newbies. The training link in the left menu takes you to videos, slides, and information about Eset’s security suite and about online security in general.

Eset Smart Security 7 offers very strong protection, and it’s a great choice for beginners—if you can accept the toll it takes on your system’s performance.

Sarah is a freelance writer and editor based in Silicon Valley. She has a love/hate relationship with social media and a bad habit of describing technology as "sexy."
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Canva review: Free tool brings much-needed simplicity to design process

Do you chomp at the bit to use design software? Unless design is your profession or hobby, our guess would be: not often. Those of us who aren't graphically inclined (example: Yaara) shrink from the complications of Photoshop, and even simpler programs take more effort than we're willing to expend. Those of us who design professionally (example: Erez) want powerful tools, but we're not sorry to take shortcuts if the results look right. If you need to make beautiful posters, invitations, cards, website graphics, or even multiple-page presentations, Canva is a design service you're going to want to use.

Still in invitation-only beta, Canva is a design service that takes the friction out of designing. All you have to do is choose one of 11 available templates or start from a custom-sized blank canvas. You then use the Layouts and Background tabs to get a rough idea of what you want to design. These tabs are chock-full of options to choose from, whether you want a complete template or just a nice background to build on.

Choose from the existing layouts, or design your own cavnas from scratch.

Canva revolves entirely around intuitive controls such as drag-and-drop, so adding, removing, and editing elements on your canvas is almost a no-brainer. This also means that if you’re used to design software giving you a hand with page grids and object distribution features, you’re out of luck. Canva does show live orientation guides as you drag objects around, but they are not as sophisticated as those used by online typesetting services such as LucidPress.

Canva's simple layout makes it easy to add and remove elements for the perfect design.

Use the search function to browse an enormous repository of images, and the Text tab to add free text or stylized text with built-in backgrounds. While many Canva elements are completely free to use, most images you’ll see on search results are Premium, and will cost you $1 per image once you download your design. You can, however, easily upload you own photos or graphics, or use ones you have on Facebook, so while Canva's Premium options are certainly tempting, they're not a must.

While working with premium images, Canva shows a pretty obtrusive watermark over photos.

Rather than overwhelm with options, Canva gives you just a handful of picks. This is evident in the built-in color picker as well: You can change the color used for text and some of the built-in glyphs, but you’re first only presented with a limited palette of 5-8 colors that fit your general color scheme. If you know the specific hue you’re after, you can click through for a more standard color picker that also lets you feed in a hex color code.

By default, Canva shows you only the basic features. Dig a bit deeper to find more advanced ones.

Canva is an amazing tool for the clueless, and can come in handy for professionals too. It makes designing uniformly easy for everyone, but it's by no means aimed only at amateurs. The simplicity and richness of the tools will get you coming back for more every day, and according to Canva's developers, the current features are only 1% of what they have in store for us.

As it is now, Canva brings sophisticated design abilities to the masses. We can only hope future features don’t render the service complicated to use. Hurry up and request your beta invite, this is one service you won't want to miss.

Yaara is a foodie, horse-lover, and biologist who enjoys being a geek as a full-time job.
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Endlessly tweaking his workflow for comfort and efficiency, Erez is a freelance writer on a mission to discover the simplest, coolest, and most effective software and websites to make tomorrow happen today.
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Review: Tweeki 2 brings the best of Twitter to Pokki

Tweeki 2 Tweeki is one of the best Twitter clients around, offering for free what many others want you to pay for.

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I'm always on the hunt for truly great Twitter clients for the PC desktop, and one of my finds from last year was Tweeki. Despite some drawbacks, I was impressed with Tweeki's mobile-like interface, and deemed it an excellent client for anyone with one Twitter user. Shortly after, Tweeki, which ran on the Pokki platform, shut down due to Twitter API changes, and has re-emerged as Tweeki 2, a whole new iteration of the Pokki Twitter app.

Tweeki shows one column at a time on a simple mobile-like interface.

The change becomes apparent before you even log in. Tweeki 2 is based on a new partnership with Intel, which means you must create an Intel Services Identity before you can start using Tweeki. Once you do, you can use this single log in to bring up all your Twitter users on any PC, including unread counts for timeline, mentions, and DMs. This feature works surprisingly well, but it's important to note than when logged in on two PCs at once, actions you perform on one PC, such as switching between users, will also affect Tweeki on the other PC.

Once logged in, you'll become acquainted with the new Tweeki interface. In a strictly sized window (you cannot change the size), you'll find six different columns: timeline, mentions, DMs, lists, profile, and search. In addition, a compose button opens up a compose bar which you can hide when not using it, and another button on the left opens up the users and settings menu. For here you can add users, switch between users, sign out of the current user, and access the notification settings.

Just like the old version of Tweeki, here too you can choose between badge and banner notifications, but Tweeki 2 makes them available for lists as well. Speaking of notifications, these will only pop up or show for the user you're currently on, which makes it much easier to manage multiple accounts than the older version. General unread counts for all your accounts are available on the profile menu as well.

View images and watch videos inside Tweeki while reading your feed.

Things have changed in the reading front too. Whereas before your own tweets and mentions were marked in green and orange on your timeline, these are now highlighted by a color bar to the left of the tweet, and while they're somewhat less obvious, they're definitely colorblind friendly.  Your own username, when mentioned, appears in a different color too. Images and videos are now available to view inline, providing a self contained and enjoyable reading environment.

The new compose window is much less obtrusive, and includes a spell checker to avoid those embarrassing typos. The first iteration of Tweeki had some problems with link shortening, and I'm sad to say that the situation is now worse. There is no built-in way to shorten links in Tweeki, and any links used stay in their long form, using up most of your character allowance. If you have an easily available way to shorten links this won't be a problem, but if you don't, this could turn the Tweeki experience into a pretty uncomfortable one.

Tweeki 2 can perform almost any Twitter action you can think of. This includes browsing profiles, following and unfollowing, creating, editing and deleting lists, and performing various searches. The Live Stream search option lets you view search results as they're published without lifting a finger. It's easy to save searches to reuse later, as well as to browse some world trends.

Profile view is a great addition, and the only place where links get (unnecessarily) shortened.

The old Tweeki had some connection problems—as many Twitter clients do—and this one suffers the same problems. From time to time I had to sit and stare at revolving circles while my tweets were trying to load, but most of the time things worked beautifully. All in all, Tweeki 2 is a great addition to the Pokki family, a platform which many use as a Start-menu replacement for Windows 8, and will appeal to anyone on the hunt for a simple, beautiful and free Twitter client.

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Review: SyndiFeed brings a personal touch to RSS reading, but needs more features

SyndiFeed If you like simplicity in your RSS and have the patience to wait for more features, give SyndiFeed a try.

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Almost everyone was sad to hear of Google Reader's demise. Free, easy to use, and relatively simple, Google Reader brought RSS to the public awareness almost single handedly. Alternatives such as Feedly, Pulse, and various browser add-ons have always existed, but received a significant boost since Google Reader's fate became known. SyndiFeed is a standalone RSS Web app (with mobile apps coming soon) that doesn't really offer anything its competitors don't, but does offer a personal touch for those burned by Google's indifference.

You can view your SyndiFeed feeds in grid or list form, the former providing an image and an excerpt of the article.

Unlike Google Reader, SyndiFeed is a one-man development project, and is also fairly new. Accordingly, it's still pretty basic when it comes to the features it offers. This is refreshing at times—basic is not always bad, after all—but makes the app almost inconvenient to use at others.

Like any RSS reader, SyndiFeed revolves around feeds, which you can either add manually by entering the feed's URL, or by importing them from Google Reader. Feed groups also exist, but there is no way to add existing feeds to them, meaning, when importing your Google Reader feeds, they're going to be jumbled around groupless, and short of adding them all again manually to groups, there's nothing you can do about this. There's also no way to edit feeds once added.

Individual articles are very readable, with large inline images but no navigation options to other articles.

When it comes to reading, SyndiFeed doesn't get much better, unfortunately. While the interface is far better-looking than Google Reader's, usability is SyndiFeed's current downfall. Each of your feeds is arranged in a magazine-like grid or a list, but there's no easy way to move between articles or feeds.

After reading an article, which opens in a separate lightbox, you need to click "Close" and click on the next article in order to move on. The reading experience is nonetheless good, making articles from any source readable with images and links that stand out, and no unnecessary page elements. While reading an article, it's also easy to share it through Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.

SyndiFeed is not only about reading right now, however, making it super-easy to save articles for later reading. To do this, you can either connect SyndiFeed with your Instapaper account, or use the built-in Read Later feature to add articles to your Saved tab. There's also a SyndiFeed bookmarklet for saving items from any website to your SyndiFeed Saved tab. The Saved tab is not completely thought-out yet, but you can add several folders to it, arranging your saved items as you please.

While the option to edit feeds and groups does exist, it only lets you add and delete feeds.

I love that SyndiFeed is made by one person, and I adore its interface and simplicity. As it stands, however, it will not become my go-to RSS reader; there are just too many important features missing. The developer assures me that all these features are in the works, so if you like the look of it, it's well worth it to keep an eye on SyndiFeed and see how it develops. Every app has to start somewhere, and although it's not done yet, SyndiFeed is off to a promising start.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can use this Web-based software.

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Review: Nextly brings together the best of RSS, social networks, and Web browsing

Nextly Nextly is a refreshing way to browse your favorite feeds and social networks.

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Google Reader is dead. It changed forever the way we read our news, and it's gone for good, leaving the arena open for other players to attempt the same feats. Nextly, an innovative reading app based on streams, takes regular RSS feeds, strips them of everything that's annoying about the format, and provides a new reading experience that combines RSS with regular website browsing and social-network surfing.

Nextly turns any webpage or feed into a stream you can easily browse through.

To personalize the experience further, sign into Nextly using Facebook or Twitter. This will give you access to the My Collection and Favorites features, but will also enable Nextly's social Web browsing. Let's say you connected Nextly with your Twitter account; you can now use Nextly's stream to browse your Twitter feed and lists, automatically accessing all tweeted links as full articles. In other words, your Twitter (or Facebook) feed will be miraculously transformed into an easy-to-browse stream, complete with reply, retweet, and other sharing options.

This is all great, you might be thinking, but browsing single feeds doesn't sound too exciting in a post-Google-Reader, Feedly-inspired world. This is where Favorites come in. Once signed in, you can add any stream (or website) to your favorites, which then acts as a regular RSS reader for all intents and purposes.

Bookmark any webpage to your collection, or share it using a unique link.

All your favorite websites are listed under the Favorites tab, and while you can't sort these into folders like you can in other readers, Nextly makes up for it with full articles—no "read more" links—and a built-in social browser. Although Nextly displays full webpages in its streams, these are all pre-loaded, so you never have to wait for them to load while you browse.

Nextly also includes a built bookmarking feature called My Collection, to which you can add articles, tag them, and put them aside for later reading. You can also use the My Collection feature to save important articles for quick reference, and browse it at any time just like any other Nextly stream.

With Nextly, your Twitter feed turns into an RSS feed, with full webpages for each link.

Nextly is still in beta, but you won't notice this most of the time. The only bug I encountered, and this too was rare, was Web elements that failed to load correctly, mostly special ones like an iOS 7 live demo I was trying to check out. There's also no way that I could find to add streams manually if you can't find them in the Explore tab or by using the nextly.com/websitename method. While I was able to browse the vast majority of websites I tried using one of these two methods, I could not browse the ones I failed to find. With that said, if you're tired of truncated RSS feeds and traditional RSS readers, Nextly is sure to brighten your day.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can use this Web-based software.

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Review: Wizardry Online brings 1981 dungeon crawling into the MMO era

Wizardry I, on the Apple II, consumed a significant portion of my freshman year in college. Each game in the series has been painfully addictive, deep, and compelling. The earliest games had a well-deserved reputation for sadistic brutality towards players, with it being quite easy to lose weeks of work and start over, not due to bugs or crashes, but due to deliberately limited save features. If you died in the dungeon, you couldn't load a saved game. You had to begin anew.

Wizardry Online resurrects this concept, attempting to implement a feature considered to be suicide in a mass market produce: permadeath. Under some circumstances, if your Wizardry Online character dies, they are gone for good. To lessen the blow slightly, all of your characters share a "soul," which measures the player's total progress in the game, and the loss of a character doesn't reduce your "soul rank," which is one of the most important factors in determining the ability to equip weapons or access some game features.

Sadly, there is no 'kill 10 spamming gold sellers' quest yet in Wizardry Online. And you'll wish there were. Furthermore, all of your characters have access to a Cloak Room (what most MMOs call a 'shared bank') where items can be stored. And most important,Wizardry Online isn't "one strike and you're out." Multiple factors determine your chance of successful resurrection, and you can increase the odds with items purchased from the game's cash store. You can even conveniently buy such items right at the point where you see your odds of successfully being raised. There are few better inducements to shell out real-world cash than the prospect of losing a character you've invested weeks or months in.

Compounding this is the fact Wizardry Online is an open PVP game. You can be attacked anywhere, by anyone. Attacking someone who is not a criminal will flag you as a criminal, and you can then be attacked with impunity. (Or with a sword, if no one is wielding any impunity.) Healing criminals is also a crime, as is stealing from anyone.

However, unlike Darkfall or EVE Online, the primary gameplay model in Wizardry Online is not PVP. The bulk of the mechanics, game areas, etc., are classic dungeons, where you are expected to do the usual round of FedEx quests, genocidal assaults, and clicking on mounds of rotting sewage in the hopes of finding a key. So you have a game built primarily around "form a party and kill some monsters," with the added feature of "Oh, and by the way, the people in your party might be sociopaths who will gut you and take your stuff...and when they do, you might be dead forever. Have fun!"

You will die from traps. You will die from exploding chests. You will even die from dying, in an odd way...

Wizardry Online is not an open world game, which also sets it apart from its rivals in the PVP niche. You unlock dungeons by doing quests, then talk to an NPC who teleports you to the dungeon of your choice. Once there, you kill monsters, die, look for traps, die, find hidden areas and solve puzzles, die, try to complete quests, die, talk to NPCs to gain more quests or hints, and die.

You will die from traps. You will die from exploding chests. You will even die from dying, in an odd way, as, when you are dead, your ghost is chased by dark spirits who try to keep you from reaching the scattered shrines which can (sometimes) resurrect you, and will send you back to your corpse (as well as lowering your chances of resurrection).

Unlike most MMOs, you don't get an instant auto-map of the dungeon. You have to find map fragments scattered here and there to get pieces of each map. This contributes to the puzzle-solving, and also to the dying.

All of the above is great. This is precisely what Wizardry Online advertises, this is the niche it has staked out for itself, and it delivers what it promises in that regard. The issues I have with Wizardry Online have nothing to do with the degree of difficulty, the risks of death, or the insane amount the blacksmith charges to repair my armor. I'm clearly putting his kids through Adventurer School.

Yet there are drawbacks to Wizardry Online. First, the interface is somewhat unintuitive, combining odd movement, tiny and indistinct inventory icons, and controls that do different things depending on if your weapon is drawn or not. Some conversations are painfully slow to display, but they convey vital information and can't be skipped. Preferences selected are sometimes not saved. These are all relatively minor, as you can get used to any interface in time, but given the plethora of MMOs on the market, many gamers won't take the time. If their first hour isn't fun, they have a hundred other games vying for their attention.

Sony could gut [gold spammers'] business by simply setting a flag so that items purchased from the store can't be sold or traded...Why don't they?

Second, it suffers from poor translation from the Japanese. Quests often contradict themselves, as different descriptive elements were clearly written by different people without coordination. (For example, in one quest, part of the text claims you're looking for a doll for an NPC's daughter; in other parts, it's the NPC's doll.) Generic text, such as "You hand over the important item," is very common. Placeholder text, use of incorrect synonyms, default strings, and so on are scattered throughout.

Third, it is seriously overrun with gold spammers and other repugnant creatures. Since there's a single town and the spammers are all standing there in plain sight, it ought to be trivial for an employee to simply delete their accounts permanently as soon as one pops up, but, they don't. There's not even a click-to-report mechanism.

Due to a really poor design decision, items bought from the item shop can be sold to other players. The subhuman sleazes who run gold-selling businesses a) Buy such items, mostly using stolen credit cards, b) Offer such items for sale for in-game gold, and, c) Sell in-game gold players then use to buy the items. So long as what the spammers sell gold for allows players to buy the items for less than the cost of buying them on the item store, the criminals profit.

This wouldn't work if they had to legitimately buy the store items, of course, but since they are criminals who are using stolen money and then laundering it via this process, it works just great for them. Sony could gut their business by simply setting a flag so that items purchased from the store can't be sold or traded, but are bound to the purchasing account. Why don't they?

Wizardry Online is gritty, difficult, and brutally unforgiving.

Fourth, there are still significant balance, design, and polish issues to resolve. Many of the game's mechanics, such as disarming chests, or carefully edging around traps, encourage careful movement or take time— but the respawn rates on monsters are so high that you literally cannot stand still in many places without being swamped. Often, monsters spawn faster than you can kill them. (Fortunately, they tend not to chase you far.) Quests are sometimes unclear as to what you're supposed to kill. Sometimes, searching will produce an item which is purposeless until you get the quest (this is good, you don't have to then go back and search the same spot), but, sometimes, searching will not produce an item unless you have the quest, so you never know if a place you searched had nothing because there was nothing, or if it had nothing because you didn't have the quest that made it active. The aforementioned map fragments try to look hand-drawn,, but this makes them somewhat difficult to use. I love the fact you have to earn your maps; I dislike that, once earned, they're less helpful than they could be.

Bottom line: This game is not for people with a low tolerance for frustration, or who expect glowing neon arrows leading them from quest to quest, or who want a lot of bright colors and shiny effects. Wizardry Online is gritty, difficult, and brutally unforgiving. The history of MMORPGs strongly hints it will become much less so over time, so, if you want bragging rights of having played when it was tough, start now.

Of course, Wizardry Online might buck historical trends and get harder over time, not easier. But I wouldn't bet on it.

Note: The Download 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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Review: Age Of Fear 2 brings back classic turn-based strategy gaming

Age of Fear 2: The Chaos Lord is a turn-based fantasy strategy game, though it likes to push the "fantasy" boundaries a bit; one scenario features modern soldiers vs. zombies. It deliberately and unapologetically invokes the spirit of early 90s strategy games, before real-time strategy became the fashion and reflexes became more important than tactics. I reviewed the PC version, but it's available for Linux and Mac as well.

After a few turns of experimentation and getting comfortable with the interface, gameplay becomes fairly intuitive. You click a unit on your side and select an action, usually "attack," "cast spell," or "skedaddle the heck away" That last one, more formally just "move," is vitally important in Age of Fear 2. Running away is nothing to be ashamed of, and even the AI is smart enough to get fragile units off the front lines.

Actually, the AI is quite smart. It will target weakened enemies, gang up on strong foes, and charge past some targets to get a shot at your archers or mages. If you expect the enemy to march one-by-one into the jaws of death, expect again. Further, many scenarios begin with your army outnumbered and surrounded; getting everyone into position for maximum effectiveness before the enemy closes on you is a learned skill. For example, many of your casters will begin the fight with no mana; they can't do anything for two or three rounds, during which time, you need to keep them safe.

Every turn in Age of Fear 2 requires balancing risks and managing resources.

Movement in Age of Fear 2 takes a little getting used to, and it's the game's most unique feature. Rather than hexes or free-form movement, each unit has a region it can move in, determined by its native speed and what's blocking it. If you select a unit and it can't move where you like, you might want to move another unit out of its way, first.

You can also see the possible movement range of the enemy. This is vital, as many units have only one hit point, so landing the first blow is crucial. Of course, trying to get to striking distance of the foe's ranged attackers means exposing yourself, but the other option is to be picked off. Every turn in Age of Fear 2 requires balancing risks and managing resources. It's not just enough to win a battle; in a campaign, you need to keep units alive to gain XP and "evolve" to more powerful units in order to win later fights.

Demons and succubi and beholders, oh my. With its smart AI, Age of Fear 2's army battles can be challenging.

Units have a variety of powers, combat skills, and special abilities. Most units in Age of Fear 2 do single point of damage with each attack, so something like fire bats, which do 2 if they hit, are very powerful -- but they're also very vulnerable, with only one hit point. Spells have short ranges, even "long" ranged ones, relative to the battlefield, but moving in a turn means you can't cast a spell... so if you move into position to reach an enemy, you could be swarmed by the next turn.

The two campaigns included in Age of Fear 2 provide a good amount of gameplay, with some branching options. The demo has only the first few battles of each, enough to get a feel for if the game style is to your taste.

For the negatives, Age of Fear 2 needs some polish. I experienced two crashes, though the autosaves meant I didn't lose much progress. The effects of terrain on movement or combat are minimal. At times, the interface is oddly unresponsive, not registering clicks or targeting. The game text is in slightly-fractured English. While I do appreciate the tactical challenge posed by fragile units, the fact so many die in a single hit means there is a fairly strong element of pure luck. Also, while it may seem a minor point, the succubus's breathless reactions to orders caused my wife to wonder aloud when I'd gone from reviewing games to reviewing porn.

Ultimately, Age of Fear 2: The Chaos Lord is a decent entry in a very underserved genre. It's not perfect, but it is fun, playable, and challenging, and it shows every sign of rapidly improving itself.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software appropriate to your system.

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Review: Wunderlist for Pokki brings the to-do list (not the bloat) to your PC

Renowned to-do list application Wunderlist is available for multiple platforms, including both Web and mobile. While you can get Wunderlist for Windows, the installation file alone is over 20MB, and this is before you even begin the installation. With Wunderlist for Pokki, there is no installation—once you have app platform (and excellent Windows 8 launcher) Pokki installed, you can start using Wunderlist less than a minute after deciding you want to.

Wunderlist fans will recognize the elegant simplicity of the Pokki edition.

If you're a Wunderlist user, the Pokki version of the app will look very familiar, with every feature you've come to expect from other versions of Wunderlist. After logging into your account, you can start adding scheduled tasks and to-do items, with or without a date, placing them in your own custom lists. Wunderlist for Pokki comes with several useful keyboard shortcuts for easy browsing which you can easily learn by pressing "H." In fact, not only can you access your slick to-do list with one mouse click, you can easily access most of its features without having to click that mouse again.

As with other Pokki apps, Wunderlist comes with tray badge notifications for overdue tasks, which will keep reminding you of the things you haven't done. With its customizable backgrounds, super-easy browsing and automatic mobile syncing, Wunderlist will make you want to get things done.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page will download the software 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: Pulse app for Pokki brings the news to your desktop

News junkies, Pokki has you covered with its very own desktop version of Pulse. Pulse for Pokki is a mirror image of the Web app, with one significant difference: There's no need to launch your browser. Once you sign in with your Pulse account, the app immediately syncs your sources and feeds. If you don't have an account yet, you can easily create one from within the app or log in using Facebook.

With its beautiful simplicity, Pulse for Pokki makes it easy to stay in touch with all your favorite topics.

To start, add some favorite sources using the "Add Content" button. These can be easily divided into categories of your choosing or added to one big collection. When viewing your feeds, you get to choose from three different layout options, all containing both titles and images in different sizes. Unlike Pulse for Android and iOS, Pulse for Pokki shows one source at a time, letting you switch sources using the left menu. While reading an article, you can share it on Facebook or Twitter, play with different font sizes and styles, and choose between a light or dark theme.

There are a few downsides. The share-by-email option, marked by an envelope button, causes the app to freeze repeatedly. There's no way to add an article to favorites in the Pokki version, although you can browse your favorites from the app—but if you have none, the app will direct you to add some using the nonexistent star icon. There's also no convenient way to refresh the app. Despite these issues, Pulse for Pokki is a convenient and speedy way to stay in touch with your favorite blogs and online publications, thus staying connected at all times.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page will download the software 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: Gmail Lite brings Gmail to your desktop via Pokki

Gmail client Gmail Lite takes email out of your browser and brings it, with a twist, to your desktop. This Pokki-based app is incredibly lightweight.

Gmail Lite's clean interface makes it easy to use Gmail on your desktop, provided all the Gmail features you need at the moment are supported.

The best part of having Gmail on your desktop is the real-time notifications; these come in pop-up banners as well as little tray badges, and ensure no email goes unnoticed. Gmail Lite sits in your Windows tray, and with one click, gives you access to all your emails, including labels, starred and sent emails. You can easily perform various Gmail actions such as assigning labels, starring and unstarring, archiving, and, of course, reading and writing emails.

Gmail Lite is almost perfect, but it is missing several crucial features: You cannot attach files; there is no in-email spellchecking; you cannot choose which email address to send from in case you own several, and (the most painful) the search feature doesn't work. Nevertheless, Gmail Lite is an excellent client for most Gmail features, and its multiple-user support really seals the deal.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page will download the software to your system.

Yaara is a foodie, horse-lover, and biologist who enjoys being a geek as a full-time job.
More by Yaara Lancet

From PC World. Shop computer and accessories from Amazon here

Review: Age Of Fear 2 brings back classic turn-based strategy gaming

Age of Fear 2: The Chaos Lord is a turn-based fantasy strategy game, though it likes to push the "fantasy" boundaries a bit; one scenario features modern soldiers vs. zombies. It deliberately and unapologetically invokes the spirit of early 90s strategy games, before real-time strategy became the fashion and reflexes became more important than tactics. I reviewed the PC version, but it's available for Linux and Mac as well.

After a few turns of experimentation and getting comfortable with the interface, gameplay becomes fairly intuitive. You click a unit on your side and select an action, usually "attack," "cast spell," or "skedaddle the heck away" That last one, more formally just "move," is vitally important in Age of Fear 2. Running away is nothing to be ashamed of, and even the AI is smart enough to get fragile units off the front lines.

Actually, the AI is quite smart. It will target weakened enemies, gang up on strong foes, and charge past some targets to get a shot at your archers or mages. If you expect the enemy to march one-by-one into the jaws of death, expect again. Further, many scenarios begin with your army outnumbered and surrounded; getting everyone into position for maximum effectiveness before the enemy closes on you is a learned skill. For example, many of your casters will begin the fight with no mana; they can't do anything for two or three rounds, during which time, you need to keep them safe.

Every turn in Age of Fear 2 requires balancing risks and managing resources.

Movement in Age of Fear 2 takes a little getting used to, and it's the game's most unique feature. Rather than hexes or free-form movement, each unit has a region it can move in, determined by its native speed and what's blocking it. If you select a unit and it can't move where you like, you might want to move another unit out of its way, first.

You can also see the possible movement range of the enemy. This is vital, as many units have only one hit point, so landing the first blow is crucial. Of course, trying to get to striking distance of the foe's ranged attackers means exposing yourself, but the other option is to be picked off. Every turn in Age of Fear 2 requires balancing risks and managing resources. It's not just enough to win a battle; in a campaign, you need to keep units alive to gain XP and "evolve" to more powerful units in order to win later fights.

Demons and succubi and beholders, oh my. With its smart AI, Age of Fear 2's army battles can be challenging.

Units have a variety of powers, combat skills, and special abilities. Most units in Age of Fear 2 do single point of damage with each attack, so something like fire bats, which do 2 if they hit, are very powerful -- but they're also very vulnerable, with only one hit point. Spells have short ranges, even "long" ranged ones, relative to the battlefield, but moving in a turn means you can't cast a spell... so if you move into position to reach an enemy, you could be swarmed by the next turn.

The two campaigns included in Age of Fear 2 provide a good amount of gameplay, with some branching options. The demo has only the first few battles of each, enough to get a feel for if the game style is to your taste.

For the negatives, Age of Fear 2 needs some polish. I experienced two crashes, though the autosaves meant I didn't lose much progress. The effects of terrain on movement or combat are minimal. At times, the interface is oddly unresponsive, not registering clicks or targeting. The game text is in slightly-fractured English. While I do appreciate the tactical challenge posed by fragile units, the fact so many die in a single hit means there is a fairly strong element of pure luck. Also, while it may seem a minor point, the succubus's breathless reactions to orders caused my wife to wonder aloud when I'd gone from reviewing games to reviewing porn.

Ultimately, Age of Fear 2: The Chaos Lord is a decent entry in a very underserved genre. It's not perfect, but it is fun, playable, and challenging, and it shows every sign of rapidly improving itself.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software appropriate to your system.

From PC World. Shop computer and accessories from Amazon here

Review: Wunderlist for Pokki brings the to-do list (not the bloat) to your PC

Renowned to-do list application Wunderlist is available for multiple platforms, including both Web and mobile. While you can get Wunderlist for Windows, the installation file alone is over 20MB, and this is before you even begin the installation. With Wunderlist for Pokki, there is no installation—once you have app platform (and excellent Windows 8 launcher) Pokki installed, you can start using Wunderlist less than a minute after deciding you want to.

Wunderlist fans will recognize the elegant simplicity of the Pokki edition.

If you're a Wunderlist user, the Pokki version of the app will look very familiar, with every feature you've come to expect from other versions of Wunderlist. After logging into your account, you can start adding scheduled tasks and to-do items, with or without a date, placing them in your own custom lists. Wunderlist for Pokki comes with several useful keyboard shortcuts for easy browsing which you can easily learn by pressing "H." In fact, not only can you access your slick to-do list with one mouse click, you can easily access most of its features without having to click that mouse again.

As with other Pokki apps, Wunderlist comes with tray badge notifications for overdue tasks, which will keep reminding you of the things you haven't done. With its customizable backgrounds, super-easy browsing and automatic mobile syncing, Wunderlist will make you want to get things done.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page will download the software to your system.

Yaara is a foodie, horse-lover, and biologist who enjoys being a geek as a full-time job.
More by Yaara Lancet

From PC World. Shop computer and accessories from Amazon here

Review: Pulse app for Pokki brings the news to your desktop

News junkies, Pokki has you covered with its very own desktop version of Pulse. Pulse for Pokki is a mirror image of the Web app, with one significant difference: There's no need to launch your browser. Once you sign in with your Pulse account, the app immediately syncs your sources and feeds. If you don't have an account yet, you can easily create one from within the app or log in using Facebook.

With its beautiful simplicity, Pulse for Pokki makes it easy to stay in touch with all your favorite topics.

To start, add some favorite sources using the "Add Content" button. These can be easily divided into categories of your choosing or added to one big collection. When viewing your feeds, you get to choose from three different layout options, all containing both titles and images in different sizes. Unlike Pulse for Android and iOS, Pulse for Pokki shows one source at a time, letting you switch sources using the left menu. While reading an article, you can share it on Facebook or Twitter, play with different font sizes and styles, and choose between a light or dark theme.

There are a few downsides. The share-by-email option, marked by an envelope button, causes the app to freeze repeatedly. There's no way to add an article to favorites in the Pokki version, although you can browse your favorites from the app—but if you have none, the app will direct you to add some using the nonexistent star icon. There's also no convenient way to refresh the app. Despite these issues, Pulse for Pokki is a convenient and speedy way to stay in touch with your favorite blogs and online publications, thus staying connected at all times.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page will download the software to your system.

Yaara is a foodie, horse-lover, and biologist who enjoys being a geek as a full-time job.
More by Yaara Lancet

From PC World. Shop computer and accessories from Amazon here

Review: Gmail Lite brings Gmail to your desktop via Pokki

Gmail client Gmail Lite takes email out of your browser and brings it, with a twist, to your desktop. This Pokki-based app is incredibly lightweight.

Gmail Lite's clean interface makes it easy to use Gmail on your desktop, provided all the Gmail features you need at the moment are supported.

The best part of having Gmail on your desktop is the real-time notifications; these come in pop-up banners as well as little tray badges, and ensure no email goes unnoticed. Gmail Lite sits in your Windows tray, and with one click, gives you access to all your emails, including labels, starred and sent emails. You can easily perform various Gmail actions such as assigning labels, starring and unstarring, archiving, and, of course, reading and writing emails.

Gmail Lite is almost perfect, but it is missing several crucial features: You cannot attach files; there is no in-email spellchecking; you cannot choose which email address to send from in case you own several, and (the most painful) the search feature doesn't work. Nevertheless, Gmail Lite is an excellent client for most Gmail features, and its multiple-user support really seals the deal.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page will download the software to your system.

Yaara is a foodie, horse-lover, and biologist who enjoys being a geek as a full-time job.
More by Yaara Lancet

From PC World. Shop computer and accessories from Amazon here

Review: Age Of Fear 2 brings back classic turn-based strategy gaming

Age of Fear 2: The Chaos Lord is a turn-based fantasy strategy game, though it likes to push the "fantasy" boundaries a bit; one scenario features modern soldiers vs. zombies. It deliberately and unapologetically invokes the spirit of early 90s strategy games, before real-time strategy became the fashion and reflexes became more important than tactics. I reviewed the PC version, but it's available for Linux and Mac as well.

After a few turns of experimentation and getting comfortable with the interface, gameplay becomes fairly intuitive. You click a unit on your side and select an action, usually "attack," "cast spell," or "skedaddle the heck away" That last one, more formally just "move," is vitally important in Age of Fear 2. Running away is nothing to be ashamed of, and even the AI is smart enough to get fragile units off the front lines.

Actually, the AI is quite smart. It will target weakened enemies, gang up on strong foes, and charge past some targets to get a shot at your archers or mages. If you expect the enemy to march one-by-one into the jaws of death, expect again. Further, many scenarios begin with your army outnumbered and surrounded; getting everyone into position for maximum effectiveness before the enemy closes on you is a learned skill. For example, many of your casters will begin the fight with no mana; they can't do anything for two or three rounds, during which time, you need to keep them safe.

Every turn in Age of Fear 2 requires balancing risks and managing resources.

Movement in Age of Fear 2 takes a little getting used to, and it's the game's most unique feature. Rather than hexes or free-form movement, each unit has a region it can move in, determined by its native speed and what's blocking it. If you select a unit and it can't move where you like, you might want to move another unit out of its way, first.

You can also see the possible movement range of the enemy. This is vital, as many units have only one hit point, so landing the first blow is crucial. Of course, trying to get to striking distance of the foe's ranged attackers means exposing yourself, but the other option is to be picked off. Every turn in Age of Fear 2 requires balancing risks and managing resources. It's not just enough to win a battle; in a campaign, you need to keep units alive to gain XP and "evolve" to more powerful units in order to win later fights.

Demons and succubi and beholders, oh my. With its smart AI, Age of Fear 2's army battles can be challenging.

Units have a variety of powers, combat skills, and special abilities. Most units in Age of Fear 2 do single point of damage with each attack, so something like fire bats, which do 2 if they hit, are very powerful -- but they're also very vulnerable, with only one hit point. Spells have short ranges, even "long" ranged ones, relative to the battlefield, but moving in a turn means you can't cast a spell... so if you move into position to reach an enemy, you could be swarmed by the next turn.

The two campaigns included in Age of Fear 2 provide a good amount of gameplay, with some branching options. The demo has only the first few battles of each, enough to get a feel for if the game style is to your taste.

For the negatives, Age of Fear 2 needs some polish. I experienced two crashes, though the autosaves meant I didn't lose much progress. The effects of terrain on movement or combat are minimal. At times, the interface is oddly unresponsive, not registering clicks or targeting. The game text is in slightly-fractured English. While I do appreciate the tactical challenge posed by fragile units, the fact so many die in a single hit means there is a fairly strong element of pure luck. Also, while it may seem a minor point, the succubus's breathless reactions to orders caused my wife to wonder aloud when I'd gone from reviewing games to reviewing porn.

Ultimately, Age of Fear 2: The Chaos Lord is a decent entry in a very underserved genre. It's not perfect, but it is fun, playable, and challenging, and it shows every sign of rapidly improving itself.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software appropriate to your system.

From PCWorld. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center here

Review: Pulse app for Pokki brings the news to your desktop

News junkies, Pokki has you covered with its very own desktop version of Pulse. Pulse for Pokki is a mirror image of the Web app, with one significant difference: There's no need to launch your browser. Once you sign in with your Pulse account, the app immediately syncs your sources and feeds. If you don't have an account yet, you can easily create one from within the app or log in using Facebook.

With its beautiful simplicity, Pulse for Pokki makes it easy to stay in touch with all your favorite topics.

To start, add some favorite sources using the "Add Content" button. These can be easily divided into categories of your choosing or added to one big collection. When viewing your feeds, you get to choose from three different layout options, all containing both titles and images in different sizes. Unlike Pulse for Android and iOS, Pulse for Pokki shows one source at a time, letting you switch sources using the left menu. While reading an article, you can share it on Facebook or Twitter, play with different font sizes and styles, and choose between a light or dark theme.

There are a few downsides. The share-by-email option, marked by an envelope button, causes the app to freeze repeatedly. There's no way to add an article to favorites in the Pokki version, although you can browse your favorites from the app—but if you have none, the app will direct you to add some using the nonexistent star icon. There's also no convenient way to refresh the app. Despite these issues, Pulse for Pokki is a convenient and speedy way to stay in touch with your favorite blogs and online publications, thus staying connected at all times.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page will download the software to your system.

Yaara is a foodie, horse-lover, and biologist who enjoys being a geek as a full-time job.
More by Yaara Lancet

From PCWorld. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center here

Review: Wunderlist for Pokki brings the to-do list (not the bloat) to your PC

Renowned to-do list application Wunderlist is available for multiple platforms, including both Web and mobile. While you can get Wunderlist for Windows, the installation file alone is over 20MB, and this is before you even begin the installation. With Wunderlist for Pokki, there is no installation—once you have app platform (and excellent Windows 8 launcher) Pokki installed, you can start using Wunderlist less than a minute after deciding you want to.

Wunderlist fans will recognize the elegant simplicity of the Pokki edition.

If you're a Wunderlist user, the Pokki version of the app will look very familiar, with every feature you've come to expect from other versions of Wunderlist. After logging into your account, you can start adding scheduled tasks and to-do items, with or without a date, placing them in your own custom lists. Wunderlist for Pokki comes with several useful keyboard shortcuts for easy browsing which you can easily learn by pressing "H." In fact, not only can you access your slick to-do list with one mouse click, you can easily access most of its features without having to click that mouse again.

As with other Pokki apps, Wunderlist comes with tray badge notifications for overdue tasks, which will keep reminding you of the things you haven't done. With its customizable backgrounds, super-easy browsing and automatic mobile syncing, Wunderlist will make you want to get things done.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page will download the software to your system.

Yaara is a foodie, horse-lover, and biologist who enjoys being a geek as a full-time job.
More by Yaara Lancet

From PCWorld. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center here