Open Source

For those of you who uses GMail or Yahoo Mail, you probably wish there is an easier way to check your mail numerous times a day without having to open a browser each time to do that. It would be nice if you can just click once and you are in the favorite web-based email program. Well, there is a solution for you. Bubbles to the rescue.

Remote Access software has certainly come quite a way compared to a few years ago. I still remember using remote access software like PCAnywhere, and thought it was neat even then to be able to control another computer remotely as if you are there. One drawback of most of these software was that you had to install software on both ends. The problem with such approach is that often the computer you are using to access the remote computer does not even belong to you sometimes. You borrow it for a quick access to your remote computer. And this limitation of needing to install the client version of the software in order to access the remote host computer, makes it an inconvenient way to access your computer remotely.

PDF (Portable Document Format) file has pretty much become the de facto standard for printable documents. It is highly likely that at some point you would have installed a PDF reader because of the fact that more and more people and businesses are sharing documents using PDF files.

PDF standard was created by Adobe Systems. And they offer a free download for a PDF reader called the Adobe Reader. At the same time, there are other free third party PDF reader that one can use. Most websites provide a link to the Adobe Reader download whenever they make available PDF documents. The Adobe Reader works fine for most people. But for the impatients, like myself, I just don't quite like the fact how slow it takes to load up Adobe Reader whenever you want to read a PDF file. That is because Adobe Reader takes a longer time to start, being a bigger program.

Are you looking for a program that burns disc image to a CD/DVD that doesn't cost much or anything at all? If so, you might want to check out ImgBurn , a lightweight CD / DVD / HD DVD / Blu-ray burning application that everyone should have in their toolkit.

In brief, ImgBurn is able to do the following tasks:

• Read - Read a disc to an image file
• Build - Create an image file from files on your computer or network - or you can write the files directly to a disc
• Write - Write an image file to a disc
• Verify - Check a disc is 100% readable. Optionally, you can also have ImgBurn compare it against a given image file to ensure the actual data is correct
• Discovery - Put your drive / media to the test! Used in combination with DVDInfoPro, you can check the quality of the burns your drive is producing

If you are a regular user of Windows Media Player, and are satisfied with it for your needs, then stick with it. The important thing is that you are happy using what you have. But if Windows Media Player doesn't quite meet your needs, for example, couldn't play many of the unusual media formats you threw at it, then I would suggest that you check out the VLC Media Player.

There are some utility programs that are necessary to have on your computer. A file archiver is one of such programs. It is necessary to have around not so much for archiving/compressing your own files but more for unarchiving/decompressing files that other people may send to you. What is a file archiver anyway? It is a program that compresses/decompresses and stores (archives) one or more files into a single file, for one or both of the following reasons - to make it a smaller size file for faster transmission, eg over the Internet, and/or to 'archive' a number of files together in one file for better organization, especially useful for keeping a bunch of files together when transmitting a group of files to someone else.

If you had the time to read my article on Spyware-Adware, you might recall how spyware has become a common threat nowadays to your privacy and computing security. Having a program that will detect and clean spyware is a must.

Spybot - Search & Destroy is one such program that detects and removes spyware that silently tracks your surfing behaviour to create a marketing profile of you which is then transmitted without your knowledge to the creator of that program and sold to advertising companies. For more information on Spyware, please read this article.

If you are looking for a good image viewer program, then you should check out one called Irfanview, simple enough for beginners and powerful enough for professionals. IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative freeware (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista. Let's look at what Irfanview can do. The program lets you edit images of multiple media formats. You can do the usual editing such as cut and crop images, add, sharpen, or blur effects, create panoramas, and change color modes easily. Here are a list of its main features :

• View images of different file formats
• Convert between file formats
• Optimized your image file
• Scan and print images
• Create slideshows
• Batch processing
• Play movies and sounds
• Multiple language support
• Screen Capture feature

A few years ago I discovered a nifty little mail notifier program called PopTray. And I have been using it every since. What does the PopTray mail notifier do? Basically it checks your pop mailbox for new mail and notifies you when there are new ones received. More than that, it is a full featured and customizable program . Let's look at some of its main features:

• Unlimited number of Accounts
• Show number of messages directly on the TrayIcon (rotating by account)
• Quickly preview a message
• Delete messages from the server without downloading them
• Rules that identify a message according to your criteria, then does one of these actions:
  * Play different notification sound
  * Delete from the server
  * Run any EXE file

Everyone bookmarks their favorite websites. I have a hard time remembering my favorite ones, and especially the new ones that I have just discovered. So I can't do without my bookmarks, and that isn't much of a problem since every browser has bookmarking features. That is if I only work on one computer. Now reality is I use more than one computers, two at home and two in the office. Now that's where my problem starts, how to keep my bookmarks in sync in all those computers, especially when I constantly add new bookmarks, almost daily. That's where del.icio.us comes to the rescue. Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website that store your bookmarks online, which allows you to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere, too.