You can now marvel at the World's greatest art galleries without leaving your seat, thanks to the new Google Art Project. The new site is kind of a Street View for museums, allowing you to explore more than 1,000 classic pieces of art in very fine detail.

Google has teamed up with 17 different esteemed art museums around the World, sending its cameras into their galleries to capture the works on display. Galleries include the National Gallery in London, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid. The site utilizes an indoor version of the Street View technology, like the kind we covered a year ago, to deliver rich, 360 degree tours of the galleries.

Google Art Project features 17 ultra high definition, gigapixel images of the best works from each of the museums. This is something of a dream come true for art enthusiasts and students, giving them the chance to get extremely close up to some of the best pictures ever painted. Check out the visitor guide below for more about this awesome project.

Finally, there's a genuinely scary horror game for the iOS platform. Dead Space has brought something completely new to Apple handsets: a fear factor comparable to watching Saw II and The Ring back-to-back in an empty house in the middle of a blackout.

Playing Dead Space on iOS, especially the HD version on the iPad, is a genuinely terrifying experience. Its combination of stunning 3D graphics, horrific sound effects, rumbling cinematic soundtrack, and tense storyline that always has you on edge, give Dead Space the feel of a classic console horror title like Resident Evil or Silent Hill (or indeed, the original Dead Space). As you can read in my full review the only thing that lets Dead Space down slightly is its rather choppy controls. It’s still well worth the money though.

I’ve yet to encounter anything for iOS that gives you the heebie-jeebies like Dead Space does. There are a few I can think of that have their moments, but nothing that has you crying out for mummy throughout the whole game. Here are the scariest I can think of to-date, but feel free to let me know if I’ve missed any out.

Soul

Artistically beautiful, Soul sees you attempt to deliver a dead guy’s soul to heaven though a series of sinister mazes. Although the accelerometer-based controls are a bit clumsy, there are a few moments where you’ll jump out of your skin – watch out for the picture of the girl... Price: 99 cents

Aftermath

The closest thing you’ll find to Left 4 Dead on the iPhone, Aftermath is a stylish zombie game that looks great and plays out like a beautiful nightmare. The atmosphere generated by the artistic graphics and 3D audio is very impressive, as you patrol the streets after dark, with only your flashlight to guide the way. Price: 99 cents

Mystique 2

Ghostly children, abandoned hospitals and mutilated bodies always combine well if you’re looking to scare someone. At so it proves, in Mystique 2, Chapter 2: The Child. Although the graphics aren’t a patch on Dead Space, the mood created by the game is chilling enough to make you keep the lights on when playing. Price: 99 cents

Resident Evil 4

The king of scary games comes to iPhone in the shape of this lavish mobile recreation of the fourth console version of Resident Evil. There’s lots of tension as you walk around wondering when and where you will get attacked next, and the range of ghastly monsters in the game is very impressive. Price: $4.99

Fallen EP-1

Dubbed the “first 2.5D Survival Horror game” for iOS when it came out, Fallen EP-1 is still one of the most spine-tingling games on the platform. Your mission is to escape from a haunted prison, as you creep your way through a series of dark, bloody environments, picking up clues that could lead to your escape from this living hell. Price: Free

Rage

One of the most graphically elaborate games you’ll see on iPhone/iPad/iPod, Rage pits you against hoards of flesh eating beasts in a sick and twisted reality TV show gone wrong. Although it’s spectacularly scary, Rage doesn’t quite match up to Dead Space in terms of gameplay, which is let down by its rail-based approach. Price: 99 cents

Are you constantly stuck for ideas for what to do at mealtimes? Do you always forget the excellent recipes that you've used over the years? Never have the right ingredients to make something nice? Then say hello to Say Mmm.

This easy-to-use online service allows you to organize and prepare all of your meals in advance so you don't arrive home from work to face an empty pantry and a lack of culinary imagination. Say Mmm boasts a number of tools for planning meals, adding recipes, creating shopping lists, and discovering new dishes.

Plan

Say Mmm lets you enter meal ideas into daily and weekly calendars, earmarking certain days to eat out if you wish. You can add notes and even photos to your meal ideas, and add any necessary ingredients to the shopping list section.

Those long cross-country road trips can get very boring, but thanks to MegaReader you can now drive and read at the same time! The iPhone app lets you ‘see through’ books by overlaying text onto a live camera image, known as a Heads Up Display.

We’re guessing that this promotional video for MegaReader was produced as a prank, as no right-minded software developer would want to be responsible for condoning behavior that might lead to a fatal road traffic accident. However, the Heads Up Display feature could prove very useful for anyone who likes to read while they’re walking along.

Gimmicks aside, MegaReader is actually a very decent iOS ebook reader. It offers a selection of a whopping 1.8 million free books, has all sorts of customization options, and can be used to read in either portrait or landscape mode. For more information about MegaReader, check out my full review.

Users of Blogger can now get more creative with their writing, following the addition of 35 new fonts to Google’s popular blog creation tool.

There are now a total of 77 fonts to use on Blogger blogs, after the inclusion of the new Web Fonts. The fonts are designed to help users add more personality to their blogs, and include fonts for non-Latin alphabets, such as Greek, Cyrillic and Khmer. Go check out the full array of fonts you can now use in Blogger, at the Google Font Directory.

Making an app for an Android phone is much, much easier than you’d think it would be. Thanks to Google’s user friendly, App Inventor, it’s possible to build Android software with little or no previous programming experience.

The App Inventor adopts a visual approach to development, and no coding is required in order to create with it. A basic understand of computer programming is recommended though, as you will encounter the world of logic, variables and definitions. You can survive without this, however, by following the various tutorials and reference material on Google’s App Inventor site.

How does App Inventor work?

The app development system is divided into three key areas. First, you have the Designer, a browser-based tool where you design how you want the app to look, and add all the physical elements. Then there’s the Blocks Editor, which is used to define the behavior of the application and set its various functions.

You’ll also need Android device, which you’ll connect to your computer in order to test the app as you go. Don’t worry too much if you don’t have an Android phone, because it’s possible to use an emulator for testing. I would strongly recommend trying out the App Inventor tutorials to get you started. But here is a quick overview of how the whole thing works:

Choose the components of your app using the Designer

Once you’ve downloaded and installed the setup package, you’re ready to start development of your program on the App Inventor web site. Creating a new project will open the Designer, where you need to select the various components that will make up your app.

Components can include anything from buttons and images to video, speech recognition and motion sensors. All the components are divided into categories, to make them easier to find. To add a component to your app, you simply drag it into the Viewer, which represents a rough preview of how the app will look.

You can rename components in the Components section to make them easier to manage, add images and video using the Media section, and adjust the various attributes of each component in the Properties section.

When Opera 11 was released last month, the browser added support for extensions for the first time. At the time of launch there were only around 200 add-ons available. Now that figure has almost doubled, as developers clamor to produce plug-ins for the excellent new browser. Here is a selection of the 10 that we consider to be the most useful:

FastestTube

Want to download a video from YouTube? Thanks to FastestTube you can do so directly from Opera 11 while browsing YouTube.

Download Helper

If you download stuff from file dump sites such as MegaUpload, Mediafire or 4Shared, then you’ll find this add-on very handy. Download Helper allows you to save time when using these sites, by automatically starting the download after the waiting time ends.

Translate

One of the great features of Google Chrome is now available for Opera: the ability to automatically translate web pages that are in a different language.

Weather Forecast

Install Weather Forecast in Opera 11 and you’ll be able to stay on top of what’s happening in the skies at all times. The Yahoo! Weather Channel-powered extension displays temperature wind, pressure, humidity and more.

Facebook Chat

Now you can keep chatting to people on Facebook without actually being on the site itself. The Facebook Chat extension for Opera is accessible from a button on the toolbar, loading the chat feature in a floating window.

Panic Button

If you’ve ever been in a situation where you’ve been caught looking at something online that you shouldn’t be, install Panic Button to prevent it happening again. The extension allows you to hide all your tabs at once with a single click, then restore them later.

Gmail Checker

Gmail users shouldn’t be without this Opera 11 extension. Gmail Checker displays the number of unread messages in your inbox, and allows you to go to your mail account with a single click. You can even enable sound notifications for when a new email comes in.

BugMeNot

Don’t you just hate it when web sites make you register in order to access them? With this extension installed you just hit a button and BugMeNot automatically fills in free login details for the site, saving you lots of time.

YoutubeSoundRipper

Like the sound of a song you’re listening to on YouTube? With this app installed, you just need to hit a button and the audio will be directly downloaded to your PC as an MP3 file.

AdSweep

Ad-blocking extensions are always among the most popular, and AdSweep is arguably the pick of the bunch for Opera 11. The small add-on hides elements of a page that show advertisements.

Calculator

If you want to perform a quick calculation while browsing the web, this extension is ideal. Simply click the button in your toolbar and you've got instant access to a calculator in Opera 11!

Via OnSoftware España

The music discovery app Shazam will soon allow you to listen to the songs you find directly on Spotify. Thanks to a new partnership between Shazam and Spotify, a ‘Play in Spotify’ feature will be added to the full range of Shazam’s free and premium apps for Android and iOS devices.

‘Play in Spotify’ is a welcome addition to Shazam, an app which we felt was in need of an injection of more functionality. In a recent post, we concluded that Shazam has now been surpassed by rival app Soundhound in terms of speed, accuracy and search capabilities. However, with Spotify now on board, Shazam could now recapture the imagination of music lovers. As Daniel Ek, CEO, Spotify points out:

Now if you hear a great new track you can identify it, listen to it instantly in its entirety and easily add it to your music collection. That's pretty powerful stuff.

The ‘Play in Spotify’ feature is available as of now to users of premium app, Shazam Encore. The feature will also be included in the free version of the app later in Q1.

For a disturbing vision of what could happen when the world runs out of energy sources, check out Armor Mayhem. In a future where Earth is devoid of natural resources, companies search the universe for new energy. Eventually, they land on Planet 01856, where they discover an infinite source of energy. Here begins a battle to claim ownership of this precious material.

Armor Mayhem is a fun side-scrolling, laser shooting game in which the object is to drop onto the planet and help your team take out enemy men by blasting them with an array of different weapons. The WASD and mouse control system is very comfortable to use, making Armor Mayhem a really enjoyable Space adventure. Oh, and if you're into techno music you'll love the soundtrack!

The VLC Media Player iPhone app has been removed from the App Store. The popular video player was pulled due to conflicts between the terms of the Gnu Public License under which the program was developed and Apple’s App Store terms and conditions.

The conflict arose because the Gnu Public License of the open source VLC app states that software cannot have its usage restricted in any way, whereas Apple’s own terms and conditions apply certain limitations through its App Store that contravene these liberties. VLC’s developer Rémi Denis-Courmont says that he still doesn’t know exactly why Apple removed VLC and admitted that he will probably never will.

Luckily, if you already have VLC Media Player installed on your iOS device it should still work. However, you’ll probably find compatibility issues arise when updating the operating system in future.

Facebook has updated its iOS app, making some interface improvements and correcting some annoying problems with the previous release.

Version 3.3.3 of the popular official Facebook app makes enhancements to the look and feel of the Notifications section of the application. It also addresses the issue of walls you cannot post on, showing the text field at the top. Other improvements include memory usage plugs, the ability to post as a page that you are admin of, and various changes to the Places tool.

Get the new version of Facebook from the App Store.

Yesterday, I told you about Apple’s generous 12 Days of Christmas app, which will let you get loads of free goodies for your iPhone this Christmas.

Today, EA has out-gifted Apple, by slashing the prices of lots of its premium iPhone and iPad apps. There are more than 70 games included in the sale, with prices dropping to just 99 cents for top titles such as FIFA 11, Monopoly, Madden NFL 11, The Sims 3, Scrabble and Tetris.

Visit this page on iTunes to see the full selection of discounted games. Be careful you don’t end up buying them all - very tempting when you get there!

I’m still not really sure to make of Infinity Blade. I’ve been playing Epic’s new game on my iPad for the last few hours and finding it simply breathtaking.  Happily clubbing ruthless ogres, slicing up warlocks, and generally defending my bloodline - all in high definition cinematic amazingness - I was convinced Infinity Blade was my new favorite iOS game of the year.

However, now my adrenaline levels have returned to their usual level and my senses have returned I’m not so sure it is the best game of 2010, the accolade bestowed on Infinity Blade by IGN. After all, I remember thinking exactly the same when I first installed Rage – a game which disappeared off my radar about a day after I installed it, never to be played again.

Like Rage before it, Infinity Blade was always going to be a crowd-pleaser. The Unreal 3 game engine delivers a graphical and sonic experience that makes you feel like you’re in a film. And the touch gesture-based fighting system in Infinity Blade is so refined that you actually feel like you’ve done a round with Tyson when you finish each bout.

For a mobile phone game to make you feel like you’re in a film and also make you feel like you’re actually fighting a mean old boxer, it must be pretty good, right? Well yes, but Infinity Blade also manages to disappoint.

Its rail system approach means that there is no open world element to the game. You walk to one monster, beat him up, walk to the next monster, beat him up, walk to the next monster, beat him up, etc. until you eventually get to the God King. Then you beat him up too and it’s all over. It would’ve been much more interesting if you could actually walk around exploring and fight people at random.

So, unless multiplayer is added to Infinity Blade within the next couple of weeks, my vote for iOS game of the year will go elsewhere. But where? Probably the most deserving game is one that has kept me entertained on multiple bus, plane and train journeys throughout the weeks and months.

MTV has unveiled an interesting looking new online music discovery service called Music Meter. The service trawls social media web sites for emerging bands and musicians.

Music Meter tracks social media sites, looking at increasing numbers of comments written about individual artists to see who is growing in popularity. Users can checked out music videos and 30-second song samples of artists on the Music Meter site. A Rhapsody tie-in allows people to subscribe to listen to unlimited, unrestricted tracks. Android and iOS versions of Music Meter are on their way in January.

Once upon a time, MTV was a great champion for upcoming artists, before its programming schedule got crammed full of reality shows and celebrity spin-offs. So it’s refreshing to see the corporation investing in a new service like this.

Apple is playing Santa Claus again this year, issuing a series of free festive gifts via its 12 Days of Christmas app for iPhone – but only in Europe.

The app allows users to download a different free digital treat every day from 26 December – 6 January, directly from their iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. Like all good Christmas presents, the gifts will be a surprise until the day they are released. According to Apple, the goodies will include music, TV shows, ebooks, apps and even a free movie.

Apple seems to be saying “Humbug” to US iPhone owners, unfortunately. Just as it was last year, it looks like the 12 Days of Christmas app will only be available in a selection of European iTunes App Stores, including the UK, Ireland, and Spain.