As if 2011 wasn’t bad enough, we have either a financial armageddon to look forward to in the coming year or a real one if the Mayans or Roland Emmerich are to be believed.

On the bright side though, if cataclysmic seismic shifts do begin to destroy our planet, someone is bound to create an app for that. At least it’ll be nice and easy to follow our spiral into oblivion.

I wouldn’t have to rack my brains for the 2013 version of these unlikely predictions either.

But without such a ready excuse for this year, here then…after great deliberation and viewing many hours of internet related programming, if ‘Rude Tube’ counts, are my Top 10 Internet Predictions for 2012.

And as in previous years they are presented in absolutely no order of accuracy or probability, so let history prove me right or wrong. If the Mayan prediction is right it won’t matter anyway will it.

1. The fairy-tale Royal Marriage of William and Kate will come to a sad and acrimonious end once she discovers his Google history includes multiple searches for ‘Pippa Middleton’s arse’.
2. Following the film success of ‘The Social Network’, plans are made for a sequel. About how looters used Facebook to co-ordinate the London Riots, this one will be called ‘The Anti-Social Network’.
3. Beleaguered social network site Friends Reunited have a brilliant idea for a new advertising campaign. Unfortunately they can only afford Gunther for it and not Joey, Ross, Rachel, Phoebe, Chandler or Monica.
4. When the new iPad 3 is released, Microsoft will again demonstrate how far behind Apple they are by saying that once you put a mouse and mousepad on it you still can’t see the screen to use it.
5. It won’t matter who wins the Republican nomination for the US Presidential election, they are all so poor that after a YouTube only debate is broadcast, Keyboard Cat will play them out.
6. The term Googlewhack, known previously as a search request producing only one result, will become something far more sinister when Google unveil their new Assassination service.
7. Famous in the US, classified ads site Craigslist will recognise a chance for some free publicity in the UK. When the new Bond film is released it will change its name to DanielCraigsList for a week.
8. For those watching The Olympic 100m final on BBC iPlayer via broadband it will be over in less than 10 seconds. For those on dial up it will last 2 minutes and then freeze just at the end.
9. Britain will realize its obsession with celebrity has finally gone too far when someone tweets a rumour that Z-Lister Rik Waller has hemorrhoids, and even that starts trending.
10. Given that the Mayans have predicted the end of the World on December 21st 2012, Amazon are careful to include a disclaimer that this may effect Christmas delivery times.

So there you have them. And I really, really hope at least one of them does come true.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m just off to my Twitter account. I’m sure that was Rik Waller in Superdrug buying Preperation H.

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It’s the biggest, it’s the best and it’s the most authoritative when it comes to purchasers feedback.  A clutch of positive or negative reviews on there can make or break a product being sold.

But what happens when the whole purpose of a review is not to make or break that product, rather to make you laugh so hard that you break a rib. When a review is so funny that the only thing the buyer should beware is soiling themselves. When the, um, er…oh sod it, I’ve run out of shopping superlatives but you get the idea.

The thing is, there are certain products that are so familiar or so entirely unremarkable that reviews in the normal sense are superfluous anyway, y’know for stuff like Bic pens, T Shirts, milk, and Katie Price and Peter Andre’s album.

Take the humble Bic pen for instance, what could be more ubiquitous or its use so obvious. I mean nobody needs a review of a Bic pen do they.

Except when they’re this inspired…

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And those are just a few appetizers for the feast of funny you’ll find on the real Amazon page, there’s another 234 on there.

Actually you can make that 235 now…

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Well, if you take other peoples reviews, you gotta give one back of your own haven’t ya. And I do love my Bic.

So if you want to read more ribaldrous reviews and comedic critiques, and I really urge you that you should, go to this ready-made list of funny Amazon reviews on the Amazon site itself.

Be warned however, with all those aforementioned Bic reviews and similar hilarity for Paul Ross’s and Hitlers portrait (not together of course), a ‘Jesus – He’s my No. 1′ Mug and some total classics about the Original Three Wolf Moon T-Shirts, you will definitely fall into one of two categories.

Either you will have tears running down your trouser leg, or your colostomy bag will explode.

But you will piss yourself.

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Because apps are everywhere and for just about everything, apps for productivity, apps for the office, apps for games, apps for maps, and probably apps for laps, gaps, raps and naps.

But so far it is Apple who are synonymous with the rise of the planets of the apps and it was only a few weeks ago Apple triumphantly announced its 15th Billion app download.

Admittedly most of those have been for iPhones and iPads through the iTunes store, but Apple also launched a very successful dedicated App Store for its Mac computers too.

But if you don’t have a Mac and you ‘just’ own a PC with Microsoft Windows as your operating system, you may have been feeling a bit left out lately, where are all the apps for you?

Well I’ll tell you. They’re all collected on a website called AllMyApps, it’s the closest Windows equivalent of the Apple App Store there is and best of all…practically all of those apps are free.

Now of course as an independent website it isn’t quite as slick as iTunes or the Apple App Store but it’s all set out by category, name and icon and just by hovering over an icon a handy little dialog box pops up to tell you all about that App, along with its star rating. Actually that’s a better feature than what the Apple App Store gives you.

And also conveniently it places the most popular apps in any particular category first and foremost, an endorsement from all those before you that those are the Apps you really ought to consider downloading.

Apps like CCLeaner for instance, in the Utilities category, a brilliant way to regularly clean out the crappy unused files on your PC and generally speed it up.

And in Security, there’s the most popular free anti-virus program around in the form of AVG Anti-Virus. If you don’t have Nortons, Kaspersky, Mcafee or the like on your PC, hurry, download it while you still have a computer to use.

In fact whatever the app, if it’s made for Windows this is the perfect one-stop shop to find it, whether you looking for a specific app like Skype or just browsing for a particular task you need fulfilling and you want to see all the options in one place.

To top it off, AllMyApps is also its own app, which automatically collates all your other Apps or Program on your PC, whether downloaded from AllMyApps or not, will alert you whenever they’re updated, and install that update for you.

For yet more features of everything AllMyApps can do they’ve even created a video about it.

Because if this is the age of the app, this is one place you’re bound to enjoy many appy returns to.
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But these days Angry Birds also equates to something else. Because with 300 million downloads on iPads, iPhones and other clever devices, there are a lot of people very familiar with an entirely different kind of Angry Birds, the game.

Me, I’m certainly well acquainted with it, because I’ve got an iPod Touch and for the 59p that I spent to download Angry Birds it is simultaneously the best value of anything I’ve ever purchased and positively the most costly, time robbing, counter-productive thing I ever, ever did.

The hours I’ve enjoyed/wasted catapulting little birds at green pigs, wooden planks, glass panels and stone slabs I wouldn’t like to calculate but it is the epitome of a ‘one more go game’. Only usually I’m saying those words to myself over and over again and still been bloody playing.

In fact I’ve deliberately allowed my iPod battery to drain down to nothing so I couldn’t have one more go.

Only now I can’t even rely on that fail-safe because they’ve only gone and made a version for the browser as well. And viciously they’ve even made it totally free, the bastards.

That’s right, now anyone has access to Angry Birds, although for this new browser based version they’d like you to think it’s available in only one particular browser, that being Google Chrome. Actually it plays exactly the same in Firefox 4 and above, Safari and IE 9, it just has the Chrome branding all over it still.

Where the Chrome exclusivity does kick however is that you can download it as an Chrome app (the fancy name for add-on these days) and then you can play it offline as well.

You have to hand it to Google, if a multi-million pound promotional campaign isn’t enough for people to adopt Chrome, hooking them in with the gaming equivalent of Crack is a credible Plan B.

Not that they really need it, already embraced by 20% of computer users in the UK, Chrome is an excellent browser, secure, stable, with thousands of cool add-ons but most crucially, it is very fast.

If you don’t have it yet, perhaps you should, you can download Google Chrome here.

But what of Angry Birds itself, and its hours of fun/frustration. Well to play it directly in Google Chrome, or the other browsers I mentioned, all you need to do is to click this link – Angry Birds for Chrome.

You’ll soon get the hang of the controls, zoom in and out with your mouse scroll wheel, or the up and down arrows of your keyboard, and use your cursor to pull back on the catapult. Don’t worry it will all make sense when you’re there.

Oh and look out for the Chrome logo in later levels to aim at and unlock some extra Chrome inspired levels (you can still play them on any browser though). To download the offline app for Chrome, you’ll see the link featured prominently anyway.

Whatever method you choose, if you’ve been curious to play Angry Birds but not had the right gadget before, this is your chance. At least it’s something different to playing Solitaire when you should be working.

But if you do start playing it, may I just say two things.

Enjoy it and I’m very, very sorry.

But finding them and then finding the time to tell you about them are two different things. These days you see I can barely find the time to scratch my arse if it itches…and unfortunately I can’t find the volunteers for that either.

Nevertheless I remain as committed as ever to bringing these great websites to you, even if I can’t always tell you about them in my own inimitable fashion. Namely long-windedly and with a few bad jokes.

And so it is with pleasure that I present a ready formed run-down of some of the websites that I’ve been wanting to to tell you about, plus a few extra for gravy, in a new list from MakeUseOf called The 107 Best Websites on the Web.

Now why they chose the 107 best websites on the web when it’s such an arbitrary number I cannot say. Or indeed how they can claim it’s a definitive list of the best websites when [spoiler alert] this one isn’t on it.

But that obvious quibble aside, it is a list to include many other great websites broken down into 20 bite-size categories like Entertainment, Productivity, Software Downloads and Security/Privacy so there’s bound to be something of interest to everybody, whatever you’re looking for.

Although I think the best discoveries from lists like this are the ones you didn’t know you were looking for.

There is one which should appeal to everybody however and that’s Groupon in the Local Category. Which given it’s a discount shopping portal may make it a strange candidate for a Local section. But it’s a discount site with a twist because the deals come to you, they are all for your local town and when they’re usually at least 60% off, it doesn’t matter where they put it, you should look at it and sign up for it. Their link takes you to the American site though, use this one for Groupon UK.

So there we are, that’s the 107 best websites on the web for you according to MakeUseOf. Funnily enough they include themselves on their own list but I don’t blame them because it really is a great resource for everything web related. They certainly have plenty of free how-to guides on subjects like Facebook and Twitter and all sorts of other computer stuff which are available here.

I can’t say that ALL the other websites would be on my list though, I mean Wikileaks is on there. Wikileaks! Surely the best websites are the ones that are the most useful to the most amount of people. How is that Wikileaks?

Its readership has gone down by at least one in Pakistan recently as well.

And we’ve certainly had that with Spotify when it comes to listening and building up a collection of free streaming music via the web.

It’s been great and still is. But now they’ve realised that building our music libraries while they lose millions every month is not the best business model, things have changed a bit. Because now with their free accounts limited to just 10 hours a month and only 5 plays of a track before being locked forever, the Spotify music gravytrain may not have come of the rails completely but we’ve definitely lost a few carriages over the side.

So in that case, what else can we hitch our musical caboose to?

Well, there’s always We7, the subject of my second ever post on here. Not the service it used to be with free unlimited requests for artists and songs (although you can still have 50 specific requests a month after you register) it’s since changed to a ‘Radio’ based format. And while I think it’s actually still the best at that type of service, alas it does also spoil itself with just a few too many adverts.

And then there’s Grooveshark, the biggest free streaming music player available from the States. This one is all request based, there are lots tracks and features although again with the inevitable ads, but they do allow you to remove a big featured advert and then for something American it’s pretty restrained ad wise.

But if you prefer your free music players to be just about playing the free music without the intrusive images, I have another option for you.

It’s called Prostopleer, it’s Russian and apart from Roman Abramovich’s millions if you’re a Chelsea fan like me, it might just be the best Russian export since Vodka.

Because what you get is a very cool, very minimal but very slick streaming music service that makes it a doddle to search for your favorite songs. And should you take the few seconds necessary to register with Prostopleer you can then drag and drop them into any number of playlists you create. The quality of the music is great and while not everything is on there, I’ve found plenty of tracks that Spotify and We7 don’t have.

Mind you, that might have something to do with the way Prostopleer gets its music, since it allows its users to upload new tracks to it and for that matter download those songs as well….for free.

Now whether you do that is up to you, I’m just saying that it’s a feature over and above its entirely safe music streaming. But I did my due diligence before writing this, ok I Googled for half an hour, and I found no bad reviews for it at all, reviews I could read in English anyway. Look, I’m just trying to cover my arse here.

I will categorically tell you though that I’m using Prostopleer a lot. If you’re a frustrated Spotify user it’s a great alternative even if Prostopleers own free account does have its own restriction, only 15 tracks streamed a day…or downloaded.

Regardless of that, for a free music resource that sounds like a cure for male prostate problems, I promise you this one is definitely worth delving into.

Go on, examine it yourself at the Prostopleer website.

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Not in life, if you’re the messy sort in real life there’s not much I can do to help, you filthy degenerate. No, I mean your computer life, are you the tidy or messy sort on the Desktop of your PC!

Because if you have let your Desktop get out of control, if it does look like someone picked up your monitor, shook it like a Flatscreen Maraca and now all of your assorted crap is scattered in no discernible order whatsoever, I have just the little application for you.

It’s called Fences and it’s the perfect way to stop being at least a Desktop filthy degenerate.

For just by downloading this ever so useful little utility it can organise your Desktop into nicely styled little boxed areas of folders, of programs, files, and shortcuts and correctly label them as well, automatically!

(And you needn’t worry if this new found order only confuses you. Because before doing anything Fences will take a snapshot of your Desktop in its original messed up state so with a click of a button you can watch as it reverts every icon back to its previous place in your organised chaos.)

You have manual control too, you can hold right-click to ‘draw’ your own Fences, move them around, change their colour, change their label, resize them, drag icons in and out of them, just about everything you’d want to keep pleasingly customisable order on your desktop.

And for the ultimate cleanaway, with a double-click Fences will also hide every icon on your desktop. So you’ll now be able to view your desktop wallpaper of the Windows logo, abstract lines, sand dunes, poppy fields or even Justin Bieber in all its unobscured glory before another double-click on the desktop brings everything back again.

I won’t pretend Fences is a life changer, it doesn’t pretend that itself. But it is something that serves a very useful purpose in a very efficient manner and it’s a wonder Microsoft don’t build the same sort of thing into Windows from the start.

Because even from just a normal couple of columns of icons on your Desktop, Fences will still arrange things more tidily, make icons easier to find and in a way that will prompt you to keep it like that.

I know, because I am a reformed Desktop filthy degenerate.

And I haven’t mentioned yet that you can get it absolutely FREE, you can download Fences here. (There is a paid version available as well)

So then, to sum up this great little organsiser in one fittingly succinct sentence.

Fences, it’s neat.

For those it does however, this may be the most important post I will ever write.

Because this one is written in the fond hope you found me by Googling something like the title above. This one is because I desperately did the very same thing and eventually found the priceless information I’m going to share. And this one is because like me you love watching ‘The Daily Show with Jon Stewart’ and can’t anymore because More4 have f***ing cancelled it!

God knows it was bad enough when FX cancelled ‘The Colbert Report’, but this, this was like getting shot in the face by Dick Cheney.

Now it wouldn’t matter so much if you could just watch them on Comedy Central’s own websites, but if you’ve ended up here you’ll already know all of the lovely video gets blocked once they detect that you’re not visiting from the U.S.

Well it is…unless of course you make them think that you are visiting from the U.S.

And it turns out that you don’t need expensive kit or some dodgy download, you just need to use Firefox as your browser (and you ought to anyway, it’s waaaay better than Internet Explorer, click here to get it), install a single legitimate Firefox add-on and follow these simple instructions that even most Republicans could manage.

1. So assuming you already have Firefox and have it open, go to http://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/967 and install an add-on called Modify Headers.
2. Firefox will now ask to restart, let it and once it has, look to the top menu bar and go to Tools -> Web Developer -> Modify Headers.(OR, if you’re on a PC and running the newer Firefox that doesn’t show the menu bar by default, go to the orange Firefox tab on the top left -> Web Developer -> Modify Headers)
3. Either way, a separate smaller window will open and you’ll see towards the upper left a ‘Select Action’ dropdown box, click it and choose ‘Add’.
4. You’ll also see 3 input boxes, in the first after ‘Add’ enter “X-Forwarded-For” without the quotation marks.
5. In the second box enter “12.13.14.15″ without the quotation marks. No spaces and no full stop after the 15.
6. Leave the third box empty and click the other button with ‘Add’ to the right of it.
7. Ok, so now you have created the clever little filter you need, confirmed in the space below along with a green circle, all that’s left to do is to click the tab with the funny looking smiley face that says ‘Start’.
8. And that’s it, you are all done, give yourself an Emmy.
9. Next for the best bit, head directly to The Daily Show or ColbertNation websites, giggle with happiness and emit shouts of whooooooo like you’re in the audience when the videos come on.

So if this works for you, and it really should, you’ll now share my overwhelming sense of relief, but it can’t end there.

Nation, we have to rally to restore the sanity for every hero. Go forth and spread the word about this on Facebook, Twitter, forum websites or on toilet walls even. Or just leave a simple grateful comment on here confirming that it works.

And let it be a moment of zen to those assholes at More4 who made us do this.

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(I really have to give a tip of my hat to someone called Saiftk on Reddit Canada. His is the original information I’ve adapted and while those details are a bit out of date now, it is the means that has made me and hopefully many others very happy.)

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29/11/11 – THE DON’T WORRY, EVERYTHING IS ALRIGHT UPDATE.

Confused? Frightened? Got Modify Headers already but the videos on The Daily Show website aren’t coming on anymore?

Well, you’re not alone, we’ve all been seized by that sense of dread when it happened to us. But fear not, it’s not Comedy Central that’s changed, it’s Modify Headers. There’s been an update to it that turned M.H. off by default but thankfully all you need to do is to start it up again.

So look down to the Comments dated 29th November 2011, look for the very easy fix I’ve added and I promise you’ll be laughing at Fox News bias again in no time.

And if you are new here and to Modify Headers, don’t concern yourself, you need never know what all the panic has been about.

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Actually I don’t feel qualified to talk much about 2010 as I spent way too much of it on my Xbox 360 when in previous years I would have been writing on here. In my defense though, there were some terrific games released.

Still with a resolution for somewhat more insightful journalism over this 12 months, what better way to start than with another round of predictions that proved so accurate in 2010. Well I assume they were, who knows, I’ve been too busy playing on my Xbox.

Anyway, without further ado, and in absolutely no order of probability I present my Top 10 Internet Predictions for 2011.

1. With the BBC blowing all of its money on the Royal Wedding, the Queens usual Christmas Day broadcast has to be released on Twitter instead.
2. The porn industry adapts 3D technology to the internet. When male porn stars turn around people will be seen to duck.
3. Hostilities between North and South Korea reach crisis point when the South Korean P.M. de-friends Kim Jon-il on Facebook.
4. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange miscalculates badly by creating a sister site called Wookieleaks aimed at Star Wars. All the computer geeks who supported him previously now crash his servers.
5. When the E.U Monetary System threatens to collapse only Google has the money for a bailout. Not ones to miss a trick they place Adwords on Euro banknotes.
6. ‘Black Monday’, the busiest online shopping day before Christmas will be attacked by the PC brigade for perceived racist overtones.  Is renamed to the more appropriate (In the) ‘Red Monday’.
7. You think Apple place their computers in lots of TV programs now, once product placement laws in the UK are relaxed on Feb 28th they’ll show up in a badgers holt in Springwatch.
8. The price comparison site war turns dirty as thousands of specially trained ‘attack’ Meerkats are released in the Go Compare offices.
9. As .com addresses become exhausted new top level domain names are tested for specific markets. Cricket teams get .ball, printer firms get .matrix, EastEnder fan sites get .cotton and morse code sites get .dotdot
10. The term ‘cloud computing’ will become the internet buzz phrase in 2011 and still nobody, absolutely nobody, will know what it means.

Oh yeah, that last one, that one will happen.

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And I am talking about yet another browser add-on but handily this one comes not just for Firefox but several other popular browser flavours as well, so even all you stubborn Internet Explorer diehards are in luck this time.

Of course, luck like that is similar to only winning a tenner on the lottery compared to the veritable jackpot of add-ons if you are an enlightened Firefox convert.

Anyway leaving all that aside for now, time to get back to the subject at hand, in this instance an Invisible Hand, the name of this terrific little money saving extra.

A curious name admittedly but I guess it’s because it acts as your unseen scout scouring most of the very biggest shopping sites comparing prices, then either confirming the site you’re on has the cheapest deal or pointing you towards the one that does.

So granted, at heart it’s a just a price comparison tool but what sets Invisible Hand apart is its ease and convenience, all YOU need to do is shop normally.

I’ll give you a scenario, say you’re on Amazon looking at the page of the latest shoot ‘em up game for your XBox 360

Well, after a few seconds of contemplation, Invisible Hand will smoothly slide in from the top of your browser and tell you whether Amazon does indeed boast the best price for death and destruction on an apocalyptic scale, OR whether any of the other UK retailers it monitors has a better deal.

It will specify exactly how much the saving is and just for swank even provide a link directly to your item on that cheaper site. Now you’ll never pay more than necessary to blow shit up again!

Honestly, while Invisible Hand doesn’t cover all categories of items yet, getting it is a no-brainer. If you shop online at all you’d be mad to miss the potential savings for electronics, software, games, music, books and even girlie stuff like cosmetics from companies such as Boots, Asda, John Lewis, Argos, PC World, HMV and of course Amazon.

So I urge you, if you know what’s good for you, go to the Invisible Hand website now to download it.

It may be called Invisible Hand but for online shopping the savings it provides are obvious.