Universe On Your Desktop

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday August 12, 2006

David Stonehouse

David Stonehouse blasts off into space and goes blogging for the latest tunes.

SOFTWARE

Take a ride across the galaxy and beyond with the space simulation Celestia (www

.shatters.net/celestia/index.html). The free software for Windows, Linux and

Mac OS X machines is a planetarium program unlike many others in that it doesn't hold you to an Earth-bound view of worlds beyond. It allows you to travel to more than 100,000 stars and to explore beyond the solar system - even the galaxy. It's a great program for the price, but not completely intuitive, so be sure to take a look at the "read me" file and the user's guide. Once you've mastered the ride, there are cool add-ons at the Celestial Motherlode (www.celestiamotherlode.net). Over there are detailed Mars and Earth maps, extra stars and galaxies, orbiting space craft and even some fun with science fiction - Star Wars, Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey props and worlds to add in.

MOBILE

Web powerhouse Google is now offering some services to mobile users in Australia - have a look at www.google.com.au/mobile to learn how to search the mobile web, fetch images and find other parts of cyberspace from your phone. What's even more interesting is where Google is heading in this area, take a peek at its page for American users (www.google.com/mobile): maps, Gmail access, SMS and personalised home pages. Now the question is, how long before these services roll out here?

MUSIC

Surfers who like to try out tunes from new artists will be excited by the Hype Machine (hype.non-standard.net), a hip, free website that trawls cyberspace for blogs that have posted music files. And rather than just list the links to bounce visitors off to the blogosphere, it aggregates the tunes in one list and in one streamable player. Pick and choose from the line-up or shuffle through the entire list. Some popular tracks are cached by the Hype Machine server so they stick around after the blog links break - and so the blogs don't get bogged down from the new traffic.

HANDHELD

For those with PDAs powered by Palm OS 5, there is a potential lifesaver in TealBackup (www.tealpoint.com/softback.htm), a back-up, copy and restore program. Set it to automate back-ups of critical files, copy your HotSync data, copy data from external cards and memory sticks, encrypt and compress files, and more. There's a free, 30-day trial version or buy it for $US20 ($26).

icondownloads@gmail.com

© 2006 Sydney Morning Herald

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