Firefox, a free alternative browser, enjoys a roughly 9% overall market share on the net.  But here on WinCustomize.com, it has grown to over 25% of users now using it and rising.

So why is Firefox so popular here on WinCustomize.com?  Of the 22 million visitors last month, that means over 5 million of them were using Firefox.  Of course on the down-side, it's murdering our Alexa ranking (Alexa currently requires Internet Explorer). But that's a different story.

When you install software that has EULAs, do you read them? Probaby not. But you might be surprised what you are agreeing to when you install a program.  But who has time? A new program called EULAyzer will scan your EULAs for you and highlight key words to look for.

EULAlyzer can analyze license agreements in seconds, and provide a detailed listing of potentially interesting words and phrases. Discover if the software you're about to install displays pop-up ads, transmits personally identifiable information, uses unique identifiers to track you, or much much more.

The Benefits

• Discover potentially hidden behavior about the software you're going to install
• Pick up on things you missed when reading license agreements
• Keep a saved database of the license agreements you view
• Instant results - super-fast analysis in just a second

And with additional features like the EULA Research Center, which optionally allows users to anonymously submit license agreements they scan to help us to further improve the program, everyone can be a part of the effort to make something that used to be so tedious, so easy.

FastKake is a handy little freeware program not so much designed for power users but for casual users.  Upon being run, it automatically generates a bunch of shortcuts that go into a folder on the desktop. These short-cuts include almost everything that a casual user would want to do.  For anyone who has a parent or uncle who is calling you for computer help on a regular basis, FastKake can make things a bit easier for you -- by giving it to them.

 

 

Betanews is reporting that a class-action lawsuit against Apple over the recently reported scratches to their new portable media player device, the iPod Nano.  Consumers have been reporting that the screens on the new iPod scratch very very easily.  Apple has insisted that the Nano uses the same material as previous iPods.

However, the lawsuit claims that Apple used a thinner layer of the resin the protects the screen and as a result is more prone to scratches.  Some users have reported that the carrying case for the iPod Nano is enough to scratch the display.  Once the display becomes scratched enough, it's largely unusable.  However, some users (as reported on PowerUser.tv) have found cleaning substances that eliminate the results of light scratching.

 

Spent a lot of time this weekend working on the game. There's just so much to do.

Maintainence costs of planetary improvements weren't implemented which messed up the economic balancing.

The cost of production wasn't being correctly calculated.  Right now, there's still an issue with production bonuses which I'll hae to work on.

The AI is building fleets. Not well. But I had to turn it off because it's made the game very unstable. We'll have to fix that this week.

The AI now designs ships MUCH more effectively. Very pleased with that result.  That required a lot of bug hunting and a different way of designing the ships which I think makes the game better.  Now, AI ships are named like "Frigate M5".  So players will bea ble to just glance at a ship name and see how good it is.

The AI is starting to get smarter about researching.  GalCiv II's tech tree has category tags which allow it to have a good idea of what it should be going for. I may add more AI tags to make that even easier and allow for more user-modding.

The planet labels need work.  I would like to see a planet label that gives more information.  A planet label should (in a visually interesting way) display:

The planet name (of course).

The population of the planet as an integer in millions (like 15) (for 15.1 million)

Whether it has a starport or not and whether that starport is building something or not.

What the social status is (are there unused tiles with nothing being built? Are social projects being built?)

I think this could be done as a label with a nice block background or something with a couple of symbols:

[10]Earth[*/$]

Beta 4 is due this Thursday but it may slip to Friday based on how rough things are.

This is a test. If this works, that means my messing with the DB fixed the problem.

Sid Meier, possibly the greatest game designer in history, has a really interesting interview over at Slashdot on Civilization IV, the game industry, and a number of other topics.

allSnap is a small system tray app that makes all top level windows automatically align like they do in programs such as Winamp or Photoshop.

It's quite cool and it's free!

WinCustomize subscribers will shortly be getting a new premium skin just in time for Halloween.  This skin will take advantage of WindowBlinds 5 features if you're running it.  This is the first of many skins and themes that will be released in the coming year that will be available only for WinCustomize.com subscribers.

This week's PowerUser.TV spends a good chunk of the episode targeting self-proclaimed crusader against violent video games, Jack Thompson.  Thompson, an attorney, claimed he would donate $10,000 to charity if someone made a video game that allowed players to kill game designers. Needless to say, the poweruser.tv team was not amused.