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Get Angry Birds on Your Windows PC

By Matthew Guay on February 22, 2011 in Featured, Techinch

Want to get the most popular mobile game on your PC? Angry Birds has taken the iPhone and Android world by storm, and it was recently released on the new Mac App Store. Windows doesn’t include an App Store by default, so for the most part you have to manually find, purchase, and install new programs you want. That is now changing with Intel’s AppUp Store. The AppUp store is designed to bring new applications to Windows XP and 7 based netbook, but it works fine on normal Windows desktops and laptops as well. Best of all, Angry Birds is now available for $4.99 on the AppUp Store and runs great on any Windows computer.

Angry Birds is now avilable for all Windows Computers directly from Rovio, so you can now get it without the Intel AppUp store. Just go to http://download.angrybirds.com/, and you can download trial and paid versions of all the editions of Angry Birds!

Install the AppUp Store

First, though, you’ll need to install the Intel AppUp application on your PC. Download and install it as normal on your computer. This should only take a few minutes, and once it’s installed, you’ll have quick access to tons of great, new free and premium apps for your Windows PC.

Note: While the AppUp Center works great on both Windows 7 and Windows XP computers, it is not working at all on Windows Vista in our tests. If you try it on Vista and get it to work, please let us know in the comments below!

In the mean time, you’ll need to register for an AppUp account. Head over to the AppUp registration site, and enter your personal and credit card info so you’ll be ready to purchase new apps like Angry Birds.

As soon as the install is finished, the AppUp Center should automatically open. If it doesn’t, you’ll find it in your Start menu or on your desktop. You can now browse the store and see the different games and apps that are included. Apps are organized into categories, with featured apps front and center similar to the way the iOS App Store looks in iTunes. Only difference is, this time, the programs are designed for your PC.

Getting Angry Birds

Ok, enough talk. Let’s get the game everyone wants: Angry Birds. It’s currently a featured app, so you could just click Buy App right from the front page. Alternately, click its link or search for it via the top search bar to see more info. Once you’re sure you want to buy it, click Buy App.

When prompted, sign in with the account you made previously, then confirm that you want to purchase the app. The AppUp Center gives you a 24 hour free trial, so you can return the app within 24 hours if you decide you don’t want it.

Angry Birds will now start downloading, and will automatically install once its downloaded. It still uses a standard Windows Installer, and you may have to click an UAC prompt during the installation, but overall it’s quicker and easier than traditional Windows program installs. It’s not as easy as installing apps from the Mac App Store, but it’s not that bad either. And, if you have multiple PCs, you can install the same app on up to 4 computers with the same account for no additional charge!

Smash Those Pigs!

Once its installed, you can launch the game straight from the AppUp center, or from the Angry Birds link in your Start menu. Seconds later, you’ll be playing the world’s favorite touch screen game … on your PC with a mouse! I’d say it’d be rather fun on an HP Touchsmart or other PC with a touchscreen, though I don’t have a touchscreen PC to try it on. If you’ve got a touchscreen PC, let us know how it works on it!

Angry Birds worked great on my main PC, which is a Windows 7 desktop with an AMD Athlon 64 x2 processor … definitely not a netbook! It also works great on netbooks, of course. The only computer I couldn’t get it to work on was a Vista desktop with an Intel processor; hopefully they’ll support Vista in the near future, but for now, the App Center only runs on Windows 7 and XP.

Angry Birds for PC includes everything you love about Angry Birds, including all of the standard levels. The only problem is, you can’t import your score from your iPhone or Android phone, so you’ll have to go beat all the levels all over again! Or, if you haven’t gotten to experience Angry Birds because you don’t have a modern smartphone, it’ll be all new to you.

Since most PCs don’t have touchscreens, you’ll have to drag the screens with your mouse to pan and see the whole level. Then, just click and drag your bird back, aim, and release your mouse to set your bird sailing through the air to the birds.

Oddly, the only major problem I had with Angry Birds for PC was with taking screenshots. It interferes with almost every screenshot program, so the only way I could get shots is to press Alt-tab and then hover over the Angry Birds icon in my taskbar. Camtasia Studio couldn’t take a video screencast of it, either; it just recorded my desktop with my mouse going back and forth and the Angry Birds sounds in the background. But hey, you don’t usually need to take screenshots while playing a game, so this shouldn’t be a problem!

Returning AppUp Center Apps

Of course, Angry Birds isn’t the only interesting app in the AppUp center, so feel free to check out other apps in the store. There’s plenty of free and for-pay options, and you just might find a fun, new app that you’ve never come across before. Best of all, you can try out any app, even paid ones, for free for 24 hours. If you decide you don’t want the app, just open the AppUp Center and click the My Apps tab on the left. Select Transaction History, then click the Options button on the app you want to return. Click Cancel Purchase before your 24 hour timeframe is up to return it. You’ll be asked to tell why you’re returning the app, and then it will automatically uninstall from your computer. That’s tons easier than most ways of trying out new programs!

Conclusion

It’s exciting as a Windows PC user to see new apps coming out for PCs again. Recently it’s seemed like all the developer focus is on mobile and Mac apps, but Intel’s AppUp Center just might turn things around again. In fact, some developers are finding it easier to get their new apps out for PCs than on Apple’s App Stores. TinyGrab, a great freemium screenshot utility for Macs, Windows, and iOS, has recently found Apple’s restrictions on the App Store too restrictive for their app, while at the same time they’ve found it easy to work with Intel on getting their app on the AppUp Center.

Hopefully Intel will continue to improve the AppUp Center and make it fully supported on computers other than netbooks. And, of course, hopefully Microsoft will make their own App Store for Windows and make it easier to get apps on all modern versions of Windows. For now, though, all the apps I tried work great on Windows 7 and XP. And hey, who would have thought that Angry Birds would finally be available for PCs?

Download Intel AppUp

Angry Birds Info Page on the AppUp Store

The Angry Birds Official Site

New! Download directly from Rovio Without the Intel AppUp Store

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Add Shortcodes to Your Posts with WooThemes the Easy Way

By Matthew Guay on February 3, 2011 in Techinch

Would you like to add more features to your blog posts without having to hand code them in HTML? All WordPress themes from WooThemes include shortcodes to make it easier for you to add quotes, buttons, download links and more to your blog posts. The only problem is, you’ll still have to remember all of the codes to add the shortcode features to your posts.

That’s all now changed as WooThemes has now incorporated a great visual shortcode generator into their theme framework. This was first created as a third party WordPress plugin by developer Rico Gundermann, but now it’s been baked into the latest WooFramework. All you’ll have to do is update your theme and you’ll be ready to start adding features from shortcodes in two clicks. Here’s how to do it.

Add Shortcodes the Easy Way

First, make sure your site is running a WooTheme with the latest version of the WooFramework. You can check this from the Update Framework button under your theme settings in your WordPress dashboard. If it’s out of date, click Update and seconds later, you’ll have the latest features.

Now, head over to your post editor to start writing a new post. You’ll notice a new Woo button on the visual editor toolbar. This opens a menu with options for all the different shortcodes you can use to add buttons, icons, multiple columns in your text, quotes, social media buttons, and more. Select the one you want to get started.

A box will now open with the options for that shortcode. Enter any text that will be included, choose your styles, and preview the whole thing on the right. Click Insert when you’re finished, and you’ll be able to see the actually shortcode used along with any modifications. Even if you prefer to simply enter raw code, this is a great way to discover your theme’s shortcode features.

You’ll likely find features you didn’t know your theme had. Below is a preview of the WooThemes tabbed box with a quote inside, all made with shortcodes on my secondary, WooThemes powered site http://maybring.com/.

Want to try out the Shortcode Generator without having a WooTheme installed on your site? Just head over to the WooThemes Playground where you can try out all of the WooThemes features without having to purchase and install a new theme on your site. Here’s more info about the WooThemes Playground: http://techinch.com/2010/10/08/testdrive-woothemes-for-free/

Conclusion

Shortcodes aren’t unique to WooThemes; in fact, most professional WordPress themes include them nowadays. ElegantThemes have actually included shortcode buttons in the post editor for a while now. The only problem is, they end up making the editor too wide for small screens, and there’s no easy way to remove the buttons from the editor. WooTheme’s integration just works better than any other I’ve tried previously, and having everything in a menu makes it very easy to use. Plus, since the original plugin is opensource, hopefully other developers can use it to add great shortcode integration for their themes as well!

Does your favorite WordPress theme include shortcodes, and do you find yourself using them often?

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Integrate Dropbox with Pages, Keynote, and Numbers on iPad and iPhone

By Matthew Guay on February 2, 2011 in Featured, Techinch

The iWork apps are some of the best apps on iPad, and each show just how powerful a touchscreen device can be with the most basic of computing functions: creating and editing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. They each work quite well with their respective Microsoft Office counterparts also. And, the latest updates turned each of the iWork apps into universal apps, so you can use the full apps on your iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. In fact, there’s not much to dislike about the iWork apps.

Except for one thing: importing and exporting files. You can open documents from email attachments, download them from websites, or import them from other apps like Dropbox. Once you’ve opened your file in Pages, Keynote, or Numbers on iPad, though, you can only send it via email, upload it to a WebDAV server or Apple’s iDisk service, or wait to sync it with iTunes on your computer. Most other iOS office apps don’t offer nearly as many features as the iWork apps, but they do offer deep integration with Dropbox which makes it easy to view and edit your documents no matter where you are. Dropbox is the most popular file sync and sharing solution, and makes it absolutely painless to share folders with anyone around the world and keep your computers in sync. That is, computers and applications that integrate with Dropbox.

However, you don’t need to give up on using Dropbox with iWork apps on iPad. Today we’re going to look at how you can enable WebDAV compatibility on your Dropbox account to let Pages integrate nearly the whole way with Dropbox. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s much better than the default setup. So let’s get started!

This article only shows the iWork apps on the iPad, as iWork wasn’t available for iPhone when the article was originally published. The steps work the same, though, so you can use DropDAV to integrate Dropbox with iWork on your iPhone or iPod Touch, too!

Add WebDAV to Your Dropbox With DropDAV

WebDAV was one of the first standards for file syncing with a server, but it’s not used nearly as much nowadays. Dropbox doesn’t include support for WebDAV syncing, using instead their own syncing system to keep your Dropbox folder synced between the cloud and your computers. Third-party developers have filled in the gaps, and now with several new web services you can add WebDAV support to your Dropbox account.

There are actually two main services that add WebDAV support to your Dropbox account: DropDAV limited, an opensource app powered by Google App Engine, and DropDAV, a premium WebDAV for Dropbox offering. We’re going to use DropDAV in this example, but both services work very similarly. The biggest difference is that the open source DropDAV limited only lets you upload or download files 1Mb in size or smaller, where DropDAV doesn’t have a file size limitation but does cost $5/month.

To get started, just head over to DropDAV’s site and sign in with your Dropbox email and password to add WebDAV to your account. You can get a free 14 day trial by default, but, if you’d like to try it out longer, enter our special coupon code techinch1 to add an extra free month of DropDAV service to your account.

As soon as your account is activated, you’ll be ready to add it to your iWork apps. Alternately, you can login to your account and change your email and password to make it different from your Dropbox account if you wish.

Dropbox, meet iWork

You’re now ready to add your new Dropbox WebDAV account to your favorite iWork apps. Open Pages, Numbers, or Keynote on your iPad, then tap the export button under a document and select Copy to WebDAV.

Enter your DropDAV server address, then enter your Dropbox username and password. In general, your server address will be https://dav.dropdav.com/, then your username is your Dropbox account email address and your password is your Dropbox password or the password you added to your DropDAV account. Once you’ve added an account, you can keep using it from that app unless your password changes, though you will need to add it individually to each iWork app you wish to use with Dropbox.

Uploading Documents to WebDAV from iWork Apps

You’re now ready to start uploading documents or downloading documents from this app. As soon as your account is verified, you’ll be asked to select what format to upload. And, the next time you upload a document via WebDAV, you’ll just see this screen since your WebDAV server has already been added. In each app, you can export files as the default Pages, Keynote, or Numbers format, respectively, in their respective Microsoft Office Formats, or as PDF. If you plan to edit the files on your iPad again or in iWork on a Mac, I’d recommend always saving a copy in the native format, as well as in the format you wish to share. Either which way, you can only export as one format at once.

Now, the app will connect to your Dropbox account. Seconds later, you’ll see all of your folders listed. Browse to the folder you want to save the document in, then tap Copy to upload it.

Your iWork app will then convert your document to the correct format and upload it to the server. It may take a few minutes, depending on your document size and your connection speed. Once it’s uploaded, though, you can access it from your computer, online Dropbox account, or directly from your iWork app.

Download Documents from WebDAV to iWork Apps

Speaking of which, now that you’ve added Dropbox as WebDAV in your iWork app, you’ll be able to open and edit files from your Dropbox that you’ve saved from iWork or any other Office app. From the iWork app home screen, tap the download button and select Copy from WebDAV to get started opening files from Dropbox.

If you’ve already added your Dropbox account, you’ll automatically see all of your folders and files from Dropbox listed. Browse to the file you want to edit, and then tap it to download the file to your device. Here’s the formats that each iWork app supports, from the Apple iWork for iPad support site:

*iWork App*	Importable File Types
Keynote	.key	.ppt	.pptx	.pps	.ppsx	—	—	—
Pages	.pages	.doc	.docx	.dotx	.txt	—	—	—
Numbers	.numbers	.xls	.xlsx	.xlt	.xltx	.xlsm	.xla	.csv

Your file will start downloading, showing at first the file format logo. Again, it may take a while if your file is large, but for most documents and spreadsheets, it only takes a few seconds. Once it’s downloaded, you’ll see a thumbnail of the document in your file list just like you would from any other document.

Most files open great once their imported, though you may see warnings about any parts of the documents that aren’t supported. For example, this document used the Calibri font, so Pages substituted it with Helvetica. You may have to tweak documents a bit to work best across platforms, but for the most part it’s seamless working with documents from any common Office app.

Once you’ve edited a document, you can just repeat the steps above to re-upload it to your Dropbox. It’s still not full Dropbox integration, but it’s way better than the default setup!

Not Just iWork…

Another set of apps that are designed to work with webDAV is the Omni apps, including OmniFocus, OmniOutliner, OmniGraffle, and OmniGraphSketcher. The Omni group consistently creates some of the best Mac and iOS apps, but their iOS apps also do not include Dropbox integration. If you want to upload your files directly to Dropbox, or open your files from Dropbox in them, DropDAV is a great solution for these apps as well.

Removing DropDAV From Your Account

Both DropDAV services use Dropbox’ API to integrate with your account and use SSL connections, so your accounts and personal information should be secure when using them. If you ever want to remove them, however, you can always delete your DropDAV account or deactivate from your Dropbox Apps list in your Dropbox settings. You can also try both out and change to the one that suites your needs best.

Conclusion

This is yet another example of how third party developers and an ecosystem of apps and services can make a product even more useful. With WebDAV access to your Dropbox account, the iWork apps on iPad are much more useful. Now, you can always access all of your Dropbox files and upload files to the folder you want wherever you are.

Links:

Download the iWork Apps for iPad: Pages, Keynote, and Numbers [$9.99 each | iPad only]

Signup for a Free Dropbox Account

Add DropDAV to your Dropbox

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Setup Google Cloud Print on Your PC

By Matthew Guay on January 25, 2011 in Featured, Techinch

If there’s one major problem traditionally with mobile devices, it’s printing. For the most part, you can’t print data from your smartphone without copying it to your computer and then printing it there. iOS 4.2 has made it much simpler with AirPrint, but it still only works with specific printers or special software on your computer. Plus, printing from Gmail or Google Docs on your iPhone will still look odd as the iOS printout will include your mobile web interface.

Today Google launched a new beta service, Cloud Print, that aims to make mobile printing simpler. Once you set it up on your home computer, you can print from Gmail Mobile or Google Docs on your smartphone, tablet, or Chrome OS netbook. Let’s see how to setup Cloud Print so you can print emails and more on the go.

Need Some Chrome?

First, you need to be running the current beta version of Google Chrome for Windows, which should be version 9.0.587 or greater. Cloud Print currently doesn’t work on OS X or Linux, though Google promises support for them in the near future. If you’re using another browser or the current release of Chrome, you’ll need to download and install the beta version which you can get from the Cloud Print site.

Setup will only take a few minutes, and if you were already using the standard version of Chrome, all of your settings, bookmarks, and more will still be there after you upgrade. If you were using Chrome to download the new beta, you’ll need to exit and reopen it before the changes will appear.

Add Cloud Print to Your Google Account

Got the latest beta installed? Now you’re ready to activate Cloud Print. Click the gear button and select Options to enable Cloud Print.

Select the Under the Hood tab, then scroll down to the bottom and click Sign in to Google Cloud Print.

Login with your standard Google account, and make sure to use the one you normally use with Gmail and Google Docs. You’ll only be able to share your printers with one account, so for now you’ll have to choose which account is most important to you if you have multiple accounts. Also, do note that Cloud Print is not yet enabled on Google Apps for Domains accounts.

Seconds later, you should see a Success! message letting you know that your printers have been enabled with Cloud Print. If you’d like to make sure everything works, click Print a test page or browse to the Google Cloud Print test site to test it directly from your PC.

Click the Print a test page button, then select your printer from the list and click print. You should see every printer that’s installed on your computer, including network printers and virtual printers such as the software Fax printer and PDF printers. After a few moments, you should see your document printing out (or the virtual printer dialog opening on your computer if you selected a PDF or other virtual printer).

Amazingly enough, you can even select from a number of printer options in Cloud Print. Select the printer you want to use, the click Advanced options to see all of the extra settings.

If it doesn’t work, or you can’t see your printers listed, wait a few moments to make sure Google’s had time to authenticate your account and display your printers. Otherwise, you may need to add an exception for Chrome to your firewall so it can access your printers; it shouldn’t be necessary, but was the only way I could enable it on one computer. There have been some reports of Cloud Print not working, and it took several minutes to work the first time I tried it. Please share your experiences with Cloud Print in the comments, and hopefully we’ll all be able to help each other get Cloud Printing running smoothly on everyone’s computers.

Printing From Your Mobile Device

Ready to print from Gmail or Google Docs mobile? Just open a message or document on your iPhone, iPod Touch, or Android browser as normal. You can’t print with Cloud Print directly from any apps at the moment, so you’ll have to use the online Gmail interface in your mobile browser. Now tap the arrow at the top to open the menu in Gmail or Docs, then select the new Print option.

If you’re using an iPad or Android tablet, you’ll be able to print from the Gmail touch interface, too. And, if your message includes a .doc or .pdf attachment you’d like to print, you can select and print it as well.

Now just select your printer as you did from your PC with the test page. Seconds later, you’ll see a notification that your print job has been sent to your printer. If your computer is turned off when you print from your mobile device, don’t worry … Google will just cache the print job and automatically print it the next time you turn on your computer.

Checkup on What You’ve Printed

Google keeps a record of your print jobs and printers on your Google account. If you ever want to see what has been printed or documents that are pending to print, you can login to your account at Google.com/cloudprint. If you don’t want to see a printer or completed print job listed, or want to delete a print job before it prints, just over over the entry, click the Actions link, then select Delete.

For now, Cloud Print is only very useful if you find yourself needing to print emails and docs from Gmail and Google Docs often. In the near future, though, Cloud Print will be incorporated deeper with Chrome OS and will likely be made a native part of Android. It’d be very neat if Google opens up an API so developers can add Cloud Print to any app. If and when that happens, well, I guess the “sky’s the limit” for mobile printing, too!

Get stuck and need help with Cloud Print? Check out Google’s Cloud Print Help Site, or leave a question in the comments here!

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Redirect Your WordPress.com Blog to Your Self-hosted Blog Easier Than Ever

By Matthew Guay on January 21, 2011 in Featured, Techinch

WordPress.com is a great place to get started blogging. You can get a free blog with all of WordPress’ great features, themes, and support without having to deal with hosting and the frustrations of keeping your own site secure and updated. However, if your blog grows and you decide to take it to the next level, you’ll likely want to move on to running your own site self-hosted on your own hosting account or servers. If you were blogging at WordPress.com with your own domain (yourname.com), then it’s very easy to move: just import your export file from WordPress.com, redirect your domain, and you’re all set.

However, if you were blogging with a WordPress.com domain (yourname.WordPress.com), it’s a bit trickier to move. You can still just import all of your old posts, but any links to your blog will be dead and you’ll lose much of the traffic you previously had. If you don’t want this to happen, you’ll need to redirect your WordPress.com links to your new blog. Used to, this was very difficult. You had to add your domain to WordPress.com, which itself was a difficult task, then go change your CNAME records back to your new hosting account. With the delays in DNS propagation, it could often mean your site was more or less offline for a full day. That’s no fun!

The New, Easy WordPress.com Redirect

This past year, WordPress.com added a brand new Offsite Redirect upgrade option that makes it much easier than before to redirect all of your old WordPress.com traffic to your new self-hosted blog. Your site won’t be offline at all during any of the process, and it’ll actually take less than 5 minutes to get it redirected. Plus, your old links will be HTTP 301 redirected, which will make search engines pick up on your new links and not keep your old site’s links around.

Ready to get started? To redirect your blog, just login to your WordPress.com dashboard and open the Upgrades page from the left-hand menu.

You’ll find the Site Redirect upgrade option near the bottom of the page. You can read more about the upgrade, or just click Buy Now to get started redirecting your WordPress.com blog to your new domain.

Enter the domain name you want to redirect your site to, then confirm that you entered the site correctly.

Now, just select whether you want to pay directly with your credit card or through your PayPal account.

Enter your payment info or login to your PayPal account, and then authorize and complete the transaction.

As soon as your payment goes through, you’ll see your new domain listed on your Domains page. Unlike the old domain redirect hack, this method will actually show that this domain is for a site redirect. If for some reason you decide to switch to a different domain, you can change the redirect domain from this page as well. You can also enable Auto Renew so you won’t have to remember to authorize the payment again every year.

Now, just try visiting your old WordPress.com domain. It should immediately redirect to the new domain you added. It’s that easy!

Adding the New Redirect After Using the Old Redirect

If you had previously setup your WordPress.com blog to redirect by manually adding your domain and then changing the CNAME records, you could just keep paying for your Domain Mapping upgrade every year, and it’ll continue working the same. However, it’s the same price to redirect, so I decided to switch my site to the new redirect. There’s only one problem: you can’t add a redirect to a domain you already have mapped to your account. If you try to add one, you’ll see an error like the one below.

If your domain mapping is almost ready for renewal, you could go ahead and remove the old mapping, then add the new site redirect. Just scroll down on the Domains page, choose your old yourname.wordpress.com domain as the primary one, then delete your domain mapping. Once this is done, you can add your new Domain Forwarding as above.

Conclusion

WordPress is one of the most versatile blogging and CMS systems, and I’m certain that the free WordPress.com blogs have gotten many people (such as myself!) started using WordPress over other similar tools. Now that it’s so easy to redirect your old blogs, there’s really no major difficulty to moving your blog to a self-hosted setup if you wish. And, hey, if you ever decide that managing your own hosting is too difficult, you could go back to WordPress.com just as easily and add your domain there. The choice is yours, and that’s how it ought to be!

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