Christian Dunn

Wolfenstein 3D, the game that is widely regarded as the first to define the first-person shooter genre is back, long after it's original 1992 launch.

To celebrate it's 20th birthday this year, Bethesda Softworks, whose parent company bought ID Software (the original Wolfenstein 3D creator) in 2009 has now released a browser based version.

AWESOME!!!!

Check it out here... just as I remember it...

browser-based version of the game

Looking for a PDF creation AND editing tool that doesn't cost an arm and a leg? What about if they decided to make it free on Facebook?

What is it? This is Sonic PDF Creator. This program has every PDF editing and creation feature you'll actually ever use....(if you are like me)

• Create PDFs
• Create Secure PDFs
• Print to PDF
• Split and Merge PDFs
• Add pages, text and images to PDFs
• Rotate Pages
• Add Bookmarks
• Create Booklets, Handouts and Powerpoints from PDFs
• Attach Documents

Ok, so it doesn't have every feature of Adobe Acrobat X, but do you really use them all?
Marketing department, look away... nothing to see here..
If you are like me and all you need to do is merge some documents, add or remove a page here or there and maybe insert a logo or some text then this is perfect for you.
All the stuff you actually use without all the extra features and thingamyjigs that you never know what they actually do.

I have used it for a bit and can't really fault it. Probably not enough time for a good review, but times are tight, $50 is $50 and when that $50 is free on facebook then you have $50 more to spend on saturday night. So for free software this is awesome.

I tried it out (hence the review) but I always worry about offers on facebook, personal data blah blah. All you have to do to claim the offer is 'like' their page to get a code for a software download. 
This means they can only see the public side of my facebook page (not even a friend), so they will probably get my email address but very little else.
Since then I haven't yet had to enter any personal information at any stage.

By now I was already starting to like the software then I found something cool... They also have online PDF convertors on facebook enabling you to convert both to and from PDF to Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Cool huh? Although, are you allowed to use facebook on company time? Why don't you ask your manager for Adobe Acrobat X Pro and when they baulk at the price, tell them if they gave you facebook access you could get free software. You might almost be the most popular person in the office for the time it takes to download and install.

Visit the Investintech Facebook page to claim your copy.

I have just returned from travelling overseas (I landed four hours ago after a 17 hour trip on 3 trains and a plane.. and feeling it) but I wanted to share one application I found invaluable and some tips, from experience.

In this modern age we can get used to the services we have at our fingertips in our community but this can be a lot harder to figure out when travelling.

Heading to Japan I assumed internet would be fairly easy to come by. Interestingly many hotels do not have wireless still. Mobile roaming data is over $20/mb for Australians. Your best bet if you need to use your devices and have truly mobile internet is to walk into a phone store and rent a 3G or 4G dongle (most even have built in wifi) or sign up for an account (this is important).

When you do see free wi-fi, check it really is. Wireless was free on trains and in coffee shops etc but once you connected to the wireless you then needed to login to your provider, otherwise no access. Unlike here where free wireless means internet access. Without an account, and in some cases without a translator, this proved a little difficult.

There is of course always the internet cafe option. Very cheap, cheerful, usually found within a few blocks, often not very nice, unless you are at the airport.

My wife and I had this discussion packing for the trip. We have between us an iPhone, an Android phone, an iPad, a netbook, a kindle and a small android tablet. What do we really need?

The phones were in, as was the kindle (it has it's own 3G which is another story), but do we take the iPad or the netbook? The other android is kindle sized, so we decided it was out immediately. So why do we want it? Well we like to get into the action and explore new cities, so it is always great to book rail tickets, buy tickets for shows, get a map of the area and look up places to see the night before heading out into a new city. This can be painful on a phone. Without wireless I argued we should take the netbook as we can't plug anything else in and use it in the hotel room and we always had free (properly free) LAN internet. If we only had the iPad we could be in trouble.

This turned out to be correct but we don't really like using the netbook as much and unless we needed to book something big we do prefer to use our phones. So what I wanted was a way to make a wireless hotspot in our hotel room taking advantage of the free internet.  I didn't want to fork out for a rental dongle or a plan and all we needed was access at night.

First thing I thought was can I setup an adhoc network. Fired up the netbook, opened the browser, hit OK to connect and then set it up using the Wizard in Windows 7. Only the iPhone worked. Tried Wi-Fi Direct on the Android phone but the laptop was not compatible.

That's when Connectify came in (see my review here). Connectify is an application for Windows that creates a proper wireless hotspot from your laptop (not an ad-hoc one) and it just works. In each hotel I simply plugged my laptop in, resumed it from standby the night before, saw connectify start, opened the browser and walked away. I could leave it there my whole stay and every time we walked into our room we had wireless internet on all of our devices. I can't praise this more highly.

Lastly, the Kindle.  The Kindle Keyboard may look old fashioned but GET IT WITH 3G if you travel!! With this model 3G is free if you purchase the device with it built in and hidden in the experimental settings is a browser. While my wife loves to use it to read books at night, I should caveat, it is hers... I found it invaluable on our trip as I could steal it on long train rides to catch up on the news websites, we could do a quick search for maps, travel timetables or location suggestions as we travelled all for FREE on 3G.  Yes it is painfully slow at times and the browser doesn't work with lots of stuff but on a 2 hour train trip, I could afford to wait. I am packing it next time.

Happy travels.

This script checks the DNS settings of your computer to identify whether you are potentially infected with DNSChanger. DNSChanger is a serious malware infection that can change your DNS servers. A temporary global fix has been put in place until July 9 2012. At this time this fix will no longer work and infected machines may not be able to access the internet. For more information from the DNS Changer Working Group see http://dcwg.org/index.html