2.0

Although Smart Converter promises better and faster results than most of its competitors, it fails to achieve this goal. Its simple, intuitive user interface is excellent, providing a great user experience; beginner-level converters will appreciate it. The results aren't as stellar as expected, especially the audio, but the movie conversion is worth the additional minutes spent waiting.

Smart Converter could easily become one of the most convenient beginner-level converter tools, because users will love being able to just drag and drop their movie or audio files and choose an output format from the available list -- which is kind … Read more

While Blood & Glory: Legend resembles Infinity Blade in some respects, its well-designed user interface and great graphics and storyline enhance the overall user experience. Given the fact that it is free, anyone who liked the app's predecessor, Blood & Glory, will surely enjoy the enhanced game. Still, we found that the game doesn't quite differ enough from the previous version.

We like games that have a story, and the developers of Legend have given users a reason to kill all those monster competitors besides staying alive. The game has a central figure, Crimson, who has to pass … Read more

Viber gives Skpe a run for its money, and we think it comes out ahead. It ships with a good-looking interface dominated by the color purple that will have you placing VoIP calls in no time.

The app integrates with iOS perfectly and, fortunately, doesn't require a username and password to register. Instead, it uses your phone number as your ID. Once you have allowed the app to scan your address book, the contacts registered in the Viber network will appear, and you can start calling them, even if they're based internationally.

We were pleasantly surprised by the … Read more

Although Macs come with some decent audio software such as GarageBand, Audacity goes beyond the Apple-designed app in many ways. The one area it isn't so successful in is its user interface, which can be overwhelming.

As you launch Audacity, you'll be greeted by a pop-up window that leads you to multiple Help files. You'll need these files if you want to use all the great features that the small application has in it. You'll likely be overwhelmed by the number of tools that are available, but you'll get used to them as soon as … Read more

The Device Doctor is a software application used to scan devices on your computer for driver updates. Once the scan is finished, this application also offers a way to download the missing updates to improve the speed and quality of your device.

Once you bring Device Doctor up on your desktop, the steps are very simple. It says to plug in any external devices and then to press Begin Scan. After a short wait, you will be given a list of devices that require driver updates. The first time we did the scan, it came up with 20 devices that … Read more

The AoA Video Downloader is an application for downloading videos from the Internet from Web sites that are supported by the application. It's a great way to keep your favorite videos in video or audio format on your computer to view whenever you want without going online.

This application is very simple, both in appearance and instructions. All you need to do is enter a URL and click the Download Now button. Common video-viewing Web sites like YouTube, Google, and Dailymotion are among the many places you can use this application. Unfortunately, this application did not work for us. … Read more

With so many free firewalls to choose from, products need to stand out in some way. TinyWall emphasizes simplicity, flexibility, and unobtrusiveness. This free firewall is designed to harden and add more control to the existing firewall in Windows 7 and Vista. Instead of constantly hitting you with pop-ups asking you to allow or deny access to a program or Internet address, TinyWall lets you quickly add allowed sites to your white list in several ways. For example, you can use a hot key and click any open window to add that app to your white list, or you can … Read more

OAuth 2.0 promised to improve authentication on the Net, but its author has resigned from the project after concluding the standard "is a bad protocol."

"When compared with OAuth 1.0, the 2.0 specification is more complex, less interoperable, less useful, more incomplete, and most importantly, less secure," Eran Hammer-Lahav said in a blog post yesterday. "I resigned my role as lead author and editor, [withdrew] my name from the specification, and left the working group...Deciding to move on from an effort I have led for over five years was agonizing." … Read more