Recommended Software - Free / Open Source

Keep your favorite web-sites one click away with Bubbles

Steve — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 04:28:18 -0500

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.

Access Your Computer Remotely from Anywhere for Free.

Steve — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 04:18:28 -0500

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.

A Faster PDF Reader

Steve — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 16:31:50 -0500

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.

Want a free CD/DVD image Burner?

Steve — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 04:33:49 -0500

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

Alternative to Windows Media Player

Steve — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 02:48:43 -0500

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.