Author Archive

10 MORE outstanding Firefox extensions
Friday, May 14th, 2010 | Author: admin

The list of handy browser extensions just keeps growing. Here are a few good choices, including several of the new collections.

It’s been a while since we last took a look at worthwhile Firefox extensions. Well, it’s time again. But now, Firefox has added collections to the mix. Extension collections are exactly what they sound like — collections of related extensions. In this list, we have a few worthwhile collections (since they’re new, there aren’t many) as well as some stand-alone extensions.

Collections

1: Reference Desk

Reference Desk is good for students or anyone who needs to research information. It installs: DeeperWeb (navigate through Google search results using tag-cloud technique), SimilarWeb (find related sites), Converter (unit, time zone, and currency converter), Merriam-Webster (dictionary), Wired-Marker (highlighter), ScrapBook (save and organize sites), Reframe It (connect and share your thoughts online), and Read It Later (save sites for later reading).

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Category: PC Tips  | Tags:  | 7 Comments
Best Free Music Creation Software
Monday, May 10th, 2010 | Author: admin
Introduction
Hello and welcome to Best Free Music Creation Software. First off, I’m not a tech wizard, I’m just a musician who loves music, guitars and cool technology. I could not tell you what a LumiBatch Object is, nor could I tell you what ST transform and Quantile normalization means, but I can tell you about good freeware to make music with and hey, that’s what matters right? Anyway, what I’m going to do is tell you about three applications that I’ve found and tested and I’m going to review them in terms of: Ease of use, Functionality and Overall Performance, and I will do it in plain English. Each application in this section must be “pick up and playable”  without the user needing to install third party hardware drivers or use extra external hardware. These apps (except Jackbeat) do provide a full MIDI working environment, but that’s a different topic.

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Category: Top Software  | Tags: , , , ,  | 10 Comments
Best Free Software for Linux
Monday, May 10th, 2010 | Author: admin
Introduction

LinuxLinux, occasionally referred to as GNU/Linux, is an open source and free operating system predominantly known for its use in servers, but has increasingly become commonplace in the desktop, notebook and netbook computers in recent years after newer and enhanced versions of Linux distributions, Ubuntu for example, are developed and offered free to users.

While you can get the Linux system and use it for free, you can also run on the system a wide range of free applications such as well-known and commonly-used software including Firefox web browser and the OpenOffice application suite.

Among various free applications, here you might find the best free software for Linux, including those products reviewed and recommended by our editors in the various sections.

Other programs that work as potential alternatives to Windows applications or even perform better than them are also listed here for the benefits of users who migrate from Windows to Linux or run dual systems on their computers.
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Category: Top Software  | Tags: ,  | 44 Comments
Best Free Windows Driver Backup
Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 | Author: admin
Introduction
Whether or not you do a full system backup, it’s a good idea to backup your windows drivers. It provides an easy way to protect you when testing new drivers and recovering if a driver is mistakenly deleted or corrupted.You can also improve performance by removing outdated or conflicting drivers and you can restore them if it turns out they were needed. It is suggested that before backing up it’s a good idea to use Windows Device Manager to check that all your drivers are working properly.
Discussion
DriverMaxThere are a number of free solutions. My favorite is DriverMax. It has a nice clear GUI, lets you backup, restore, generate reports that include if there is a newer version available and even gives you the option of storing your backup in a zip file.

Recently updated to support Vista, they are working on updates that will allow you to quickly find updates for your drivers.  Note it does require free registration to get full access to all of its features.

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Category: Software Review, Top Software  | Tags: , , ,  | Leave a Comment
Top Digital Photo Software
Tuesday, April 27th, 2010 | Author: admin
Digital photo software is designed for people who want to organize and share personal and family photos, but don’t want to spend a lot of time editing them. In addition to helping you browse and sort through your image collection, they also allow you to catalog your media with keywords, descriptions and categories. These tools usually do not offer pixel-level editing capabilities, but they do provide easy, one-click corrections plus printing and photo sharing features.

1. Picasa (Windows, Mac and Linux)

Picasa
Picasa is a flashy and functional digital photo organizer and editor which has improved considerably since its first release. Picasa is excellent for beginners and casual digital shooters who want to find all their pictures, sort them into albums, do quick edits, and share with friends and family. I especially like the Picasa Web Albums integration which gives you 1024 MB of free space to post your photos online. Best of all, Picasa is free!
Category: Graphics Software, Top Software  | Tags: ,  | 36 Comments
Top 10 tech skills for 2010
Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 | Author: admin

What areas should you focus on over the next year? This survey-based list highlights the 10 most sought-after IT skills.
At the end of last year, the Global Knowledge/TechRepublic 2010 Salary Survey asked, “What skill set will your company be looking to add in 2010?” The skills listed by respondents include a mix of perennial favorites and cutting edge technologies. Here’s the complete list.
1: Project management

As we emerge from the recession, organizations aren’t likely to go back to the go-go days of throwing money at IT initiatives or taking risks and deploying without careful thought and planning. Organizations are putting pressure on IT to implement only projects that can show real return on investment. The first step to achieving a good ROI is professional project planning and implementation.

Project management skills often appear in top 10 skills lists, perhaps because some organizations got their fingers burned in the 1990s through the poor implementation of IT projects such as enterprise resource planning initiatives. But even though the profession is mature (in IT terms), project managers still have work to do to advance their status within organizations. According to an article on the Project Management Institute Web site, project managers still have to develop their people skills, organizational leadership, and individual professionalism.

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Category: IT management  | Tags: , , ,  | 15 Comments
Best Free Firewall
Wednesday, April 14th, 2010 | Author: admin

No other freeware product causes as much angst to users, whether in installation or day-to-day use, as a firewall. To find a stable and high quality firewall for windows often involves a process of trial and error. Firewalls should protect while not being too intrusive or too complicated to handle. This article gives you a selection of the best free software firewalls available.

If you want to learn more about firewalls, visit these excellent sites: How Firewalls Work and Microsoft Security Firewalls FAQ. If you don’t decide to use one of the firewall products in the article, at least remember to turn on the Windows firewall. Be sure to use only one software firewall at a time. But feel free to combine a hardware and a software firewall to improve protection. Additionally, most products highly recommend uninstalling other third-party software firewalls before installation (and disabling the Windows firewall if they don’t).

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Category: Antivirus & Security, Top Software  | Tags: , , ,  | 13 Comments
Best Free File Rename Utility
Wednesday, April 07th, 2010 | Author: admin
Introduction
In these days of MP3 libraries and vast collections of digital images, many of us have faced the necessity of renaming our files for organizational purposes. If you’ve come here looking for a solution we have some good news. There are great (and free!) programs to suit your needs.

There are many different methods to achieve the desired result, from laboriously renaming files one at a time using Windows Explorer, to bulk renaming utilities that can pull out metadata or execute powerful Perl based regular expressions. Some programs focus on simplicity and others are designed for power users. Most of the renamers support a basic set of features such as crop, insert, remove, replace, case changes, and auto number. And some renamers have more powerful features that others don’t.

Because the programs reviewed here are designed for different purposes, there isn’t a renamer that is vastly better overall but there is a renamer that is best for certain situations. These differences make it easy to find which file rename utility is right for you.

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Category: Top Software  | Tags: , , , , ,  | 3 Comments
250+ Places for Free Books Online
Friday, March 26th, 2010 | Author: admin

This is a listing of 260 sites that legally offer free books (eBooks) for download or for online viewing.

Alphabetical Listing

1RomanceEBooks offers 27 free books from their romance collection for download in a variety of formats.  These are not public domain offerings, but some of their usual offerings made available for free.

2020k Large collection, divided into categories and sub-categories for download in a variety of formats.  Note: Many of the links to the Internet Archive from this site are not working.

AdaIC.org has several free books on Ada as well as textbooks and tutorials on Ada.

Alive and Free – Links to free ebooks of living authors

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Category: PC Tips  | Tags: , , , , ,  | 10 Comments
Best Free All-In-One Design Tools
Monday, March 22nd, 2010 | Author: admin
Introduction
There are a lot of design programs out there that specialize on one individual feature. For most of us though, we just need a single program that can cover most (if not all) of our needs.

This section covers these programs. With any of these free applications, you get a tool covering a wide range of features (from screen capture, color picker to an image editor among other things). As most features are covered under one roof, you won’t need to install and run too many programs (for every different tool that you need). It’s simply up to you to decide which of these applications have the right combination of features for your needs.

As with most all-in-one applications though, the following are designed to meet the needs of most average users who prefer one program that can cover as many basic functions as possible.

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Category: Graphics Software, Top Software  | Tags: , , , ,  | 2 Comments
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