Cell Phone Minute Minder extensions

Cell Phone Minute Minder extensions for FireFox browser

• Cingular Minutes Minder: Currently being reworked what with the Cingular/ATT merger mess. Keep checking the site for updates, though: there’s a lot of interest in this one!

• Verizon Minutes Used: Logs into your wireless accounts to keep you updated on your latest usage data.

• T-Mobile Minutes Used: From the same creator as the Verizon Minutes Used extension.

• Sprint Minutes Used: Keeps you up to date on your latest Sprint usage data
  

SightSpeed

"Version 6.0 further cements SightSpeed's position as the top provider of free Internet video calling. This release features some subtle but noticeable changes to video quality, Windows and Mac compatibility, and a new, streamlined interface. Under the hood, it boasts totally revised code, which is now fully SIP-based. These improvements to SightSpeed's already excellent service are more than enough to garner the app an Editors' Choice."

Read the PC Magazine review of the current version 6.0 here and of the previous version 5.0 here

download the PC version here :

http://images.sightspeed.com/files/SightSpeedInstall.exe

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007

"With Microsoft® Virtual PC 2007, you can create and run one or more virtual machines, each with its own operating system, on a single computer. This provides you with the flexibility to use different operating systems on one physical computer.

For more information about the ways you can use virtual machines, see Virtual PC at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=78095."


PC Magazine review:
"Can't run your legacy apps (or games) under Vista? Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 is the solution. Load an older OS in a virtual machine and run your legacy applications inside it. It's not as fancy as VMware Workstation, but it's free!

PRO's: Free. Lets you run legacy applications under an older operating system executing within Windows XP or Vista.

CON's: Doesn't run under Home versions of Win XP or Vista. No USB device support. No multiple snapshots, just single save/resume."

• NOTE : only runs on Windows Professional Edition OS'...

Visual Subst

Mount any folder as a hard drive with Visual Subst!

Freeware application Visual Subst lets you mount any file on your hard drive as a virtual hard drive.

That means that you've got quick access to your most oft-used folders—no matter where they're located—through a simple virtual drive. The drive shows up in My Computer, or you can navigate to it through the run menu by just typing the letter name (e.g., b:\) and hitting Enter. It's another handy solution in our ongoing quest for quick access to your favorite folders.

Flock web browser

"Flock is an amazing new web browser that makes it easier to share media and connect to other people online. Share photos, automatically stay up-to-date with new content from your favorite sites, and search the Web with the most advanced Search Toolbar available today."

"Based on the open source Mozilla code, but with the capacity to write to the Web."

"Flock's creators call it a 'social browser', due to its ability to interact with popular social networking web services. Such web services include Flickr, Del.icio.us, Technorati, Photobucket, and various popular blogging and news aggregation services."

"Flock is a Mozilla-based web browser that integrates sharing of photos, Favorites, news and blogging into the browser interface. It currently supports Flickr, Photobucket, del.icio.us, Shadows, WordPress, Movable Type, Blogger, LiveJournal and other online services, as well as any RSS feed. You can easily subscribe to any website that offers RSS feeds and read/manage your feeds directly from within Flock. Other features include drag and drop photo sharing and a powerful web search toolbar that searches a variety of online resources simultaneously and returns a quick glance at the most relevant results."

GIMP

GIMP - a free, open source program similar to Photoshop.

"GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages."

Microsoft Process Explorer

try Microsoft Process Explorer, a more in-depth tool than the standard CTRL-ALT-DELETE TaskManager

AVG Anti-Virus

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition is a free anti-virus protection tool developed by GRISOFT for home use. We invite you to join the millions of satisfied customers worldwide who have downloaded the software and now enjoy the benefits of AVG Anti-Virus Free.

WinDirStat Directory Statistics

WinDirStat - Directory Statistics is a small program that "shows where all your disk space has gone and helps you clean it up."

VLC Media Player

VLC Media Player - the cross-platform media player and streaming server. A good alternative to Microsoft's Media Player.

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

Firefox

The award-winning Firefox web browser is better than ever. Faster, safer, and easy to use, Firefox delivers a better Web experience.

Here are some of my favorite extensions - small files that enhance the operation of the browser :

Scrapbook - ScrapBook is a Firefox extension, which helps you to save Web pages and easily manage collections. Key features are lightness, speed, accuracy and multi-language support. Major features are: Save Web page, Save snippet of Web page, Save entire Web site, Organize your collection in the same way as Bookmarks, Full text search and quick filtering search of your collection of pages and Editing of the collected Web pages.

deskCut - This extension adds desktop shortcut creation to the context-menu.

AllPeers - AllPeers is a closed-source, freeware extension for the Firefox 2.0+ browser. The extension allows building a social network and sharing files on a P2P basis using BitTorrent technology. It uses a darknet style of peer-to-peer communication; files and information shared between users are only accessible as long as the users have each other on their respective buddy lists - their 'trusted private network'.

Download Statusbar - View and manage downloads from a tidy statusbar - without the download window getting in the way of your web browsing.

gTranslate - With gTranslate, you can translate any text in a webpage just by selecting and right-clicking over it. The extension uses the Google translation services to translate the text.

Print/Print Preview - Replace the default "Print" button with the Mozilla Suite style "Print/Print Preview" toolbar button/menu. Based on requests, now also includes the "Page Setup" option and addition to the context menu.

Forecastfox - Gets local and/or international weather forecasts from AccuWeather.com, and display it in any toolbar or statusbar with this HIGHLY customizable and unobtrusive extension.

Save Image in Folder - Easily save images in personally customized folders with just a right-click.

SessionSaver - SessionSaver restores your browser -exactly- as you left it, every startup, every time. Not even a crash will phase it. Windows, tabs, even things you were typing - they're all saved.

Mozilla Archive Format - Allows complete web pages to be saved into a single MHT archive file. Open the MHT 'container' file inside Internet Explorer.

FoxyTunes - Do you listen to Music while surfing the Web? Now you can control your favorite media player without ever leaving the browser and more... Supports WinAmp, iTunes, Yahoo Music Engine, Pandora, foobar2000, Windows Media Player, Xbox Media Center, Musicmatch, Quintessential, J. River, jetAudio, XMPlay, MediaMonkey, Media Player Classic, Sonique, wxMusik, Real Player, XMMS, Noatun, Juk, Amarok, Music Player Daemon, Rhythmbox and many other players - gust click on the orange note and select the player you'd like to control. Also can install this plugin to Thunderbird email software.

RSS Ticker - RSS Ticker loads your Live Bookmarks and scrolls their entries across your screen while you surf. It's perfect for staying informed without having to actively browse entries in an RSS reader. The ticker can be placed at the bottom of the screen (below the status bar) or at the top of the screen (underneath your bookmarks toolbar). Nearly all aspects of the ticker's display are customizable, including the scroll speed, smoothness, and link width. You can even set a limit for the number of items that appear from each feed. You can decide which of your Live Bookmarks you want scrolled in the ticker by checking or unchecking the box in the bookmark's properties dialog (right-click on the Live Bookmark in the Bookmarks menu and choose Properties), or by managing all of your feeds in the ticker's feed manager (in the RSS Ticker options dialog). You can choose to have RSS Ticker shuffle all of the entries from all of the feeds so that you always have a variety of links showing in the ticker, and since RSS Ticker shows the feed's favicon (favorite's icon) next to each entry, you'll know exactly which feed each entry is from. The ticker and the items in the ticker have a context menu, which allows you to open each item in the current tab, a new tab, or a new window, mark an item as read without opening it, mark an entire feed as read, or mark all feeds as read. You can also open items in tabs in a variety of ways. There is also an option to manually refresh your feeds. The context menu is customizable, so you can choose to hide the options you don't want to see. Note: Since version 1.7, you can mark an item as read by Ctrl-clicking on it. You can move the ticker back and forth manually using the scrollwheel on your mouse, so if you just missed something interesting, you can easily reverse the ticker and get to the link you want. RSS Ticker reads RSS (2.0, 1.0, 0.9x) and Atom feeds, and the ticker can be disabled and hidden when you're not using it, unlike many other ticker extensions. You can also have it hide itself when it's empty, perfect for saving valuable screen space.

IE Tab - This is a great tool for web developers, since you can easily see how your webpage displayed in IE with just one click and then switch back to Firefox. An extension from Taiwan that features: Embedding Internet Explorer in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox. If a page doesn't look quite right rendered in Firefox or the page says its incompatible with Firefox, use this extension to render it INSIDE Firefox using the Internet Explorer rendering engine.

IE View - Lets you load pages into an external Internet Explorer window with a single right-click, or mark certain sites to *always* load in IE. Useful for incompatible pages, or cross-browser testing.

(FLST) Focus Last Selected Tab - Brings focus to the last selected tab when closing the active tab. Or you can click on the active tab to get to the last active (tabflipping).

Yahoo! Widget Engine

Widgets require Yahoo! Widget Engine to run. More widgets can be found here. They are mini, self-contained little programs that just require a double-click to start. Right-click on a particular widget while it's running to change its properties. After you download and want to keep a widget, you should place it in your "My Widgets" directory (look in your "My Documents" folder) for best results.


HANDY TIP: Press the [F8] key at any time, in any application, to bring up the Widget Dock

here are some of my favorite widgets :

• desktop weather here, here and here
• New England Doppler radar
  TV Tracker - Keep track of your favorite shows and channels with this TV listings Widget. Supports US listings only. Also try the WhatsOnTV widget.
• NPR Addict - For you NPR addicts out there, you can use this Widget to select an NPR program by date to stream via Windows Media or RealPlayer on Windows or Mac. There are several other public radio streams and archives that are added over time (e.g., CarTalk, A Prairie Home Companion, and others). Also try the NPR Player and the NPR News Headlines and Radio Player widget.
• BBC Radio Player - All in one BBC Radio Player for 52 BBC local and global stations. See the Widget info page for the full list.
• Ambience - Ambience sets the mood on your computer by altering the wallpaper based on the current weather and time. You can set different images for sunny, cloudy, rainy, foggy, stormy, or snowy weather. All of these conditions can also be altered based on the time."
• LexiPuzzle
• iTunes Popup - This is a simple Widget that stays hidden most of the time. When iTunes starts playing a new song, it pops up on the corner of the screen and announces the track name, artist, album, and shows a thumbnail of the album art.
  
• Yahoo! Notepad widget - Never loose another sticky note! Write your sticky note, then save it to an online folder. Retrieve your sticky note from any computer with an Internet connection.
• Yahoo! PictureFrame - Randomly displays your photos on your desktop. Automatically rotates pictures from Yahoo! Photos, Flickr, or your computer. Drag files into the Picture Frame to quickly upload to Yahoo! Photos or Flickr.
• Desktop Favourites - Use this Widget to create links to your favourite applications, folders and websites in an organised structure on you desktop. Create Favourites to launch applications, folders and websites by dragging them onto the Widget. Create your own Headings and Subheadings to enable you to organise your favourites. Reorder the Headings, Subheadings and Favourites by clicking at the end of their bar and dragging. Minimise and maximise the Headings and Subheadings to save space on your desktop. Personalise the colour scheme.
  
• VIBE.FM christmas music - It's that time of the year once again. It's Christmastime on VIBE.FM! As every year VIBE transforms into the Christmas station during the week of November the 1st till the first week of January. Christmas songs non-stop, commercial free, 24 hours a day!
• Wikipedia - Wiktionary - This is a Widget to search the free Encyclopedia Wikipedia,Dictionary Wiktionary, Wikinews, Wikisource and Wikibooks. This is possible in English, German, Spanish, French, Netherlands, Polski, Svenska,Italiano and Portuguese!
• Vonageer - Access your Vonage account online to retrieve a list of received and dialed calls as well as voicemail. Vonage is an alternative to home telephone service from Cox or Verizon - it uses your high speed internet connection along with an ATA to place and receive calls.
• Portland/Oregon traffic - View cameras from all over Portland and the state of Oregon with this Widget. Here's what you get: 369 Traffic Cameras, 26 Scenery Cameras and 3 Airport Cameras
• RioCams - Based on the original Widget SwissCity by Francillon Cristoph, with this Widget you can choose between more than 70 webcams in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil).
• Notebook Status - Displays what notebook users most want to know: battery level/status and wireless status/strength!
• Yahoo! News Slideshow - Stay up-to-date with current events with this Widget that displays Yahoo! News photos as a slideshow on your desktop. Choose from three different sizes and two layouts.
• SATellite images - Allows the user to view many different satellite weather maps of USA including 10 day forecast. Also does Sea Surface temperatures, Earthquakes, Oceans, Solar Activity, and almost the entire world of Geology, including all 50 states and 76 cities.
• TicketGadget - TicketGadget Widget tracks ticket availability to concerts, theater, events and sports such as baseball, basketball, NFL and hockey. Just set your city and the type of event you are interested in. Updates regularly so you won't miss another show.
• Mahjongg - an awesome tile game
  
• eBay widget
• NY Times reader - RSS feed reader for the New York Times website. Comes in both white and black. Also try this NY Times reader.
• Wickr - To search for photos, enter in tags. Each tag should be seperated by a blank space. Tags with multiple words should be in quotes, or joined together into one word. For example, the tag new york should be "new york" or newyork. A blank search will give the most recent photos uploaded to Flickr. To view photos from a user, just enter the username or email. You can also view a user's photostream, favorites, contacts, groups and photosets by clicking on the user's buddy icon.
  
• Flickr Watchr - Flickr Watchr brings new photos from your favorite Flickr contact or group right to your desktop! Leave Watchr running, and it will "watch" those contacts for you and automatically display any new photos from them as they become available. When you move over a specific photo, it displays a larger image for more detail. Clicking on the photo will open that photo's Flickr page.
• SA.FM streamer - SAFM is a South African Radio Station based in Cape Town and Durban, however it broadcasts all over South Africa
• 702 talk radio - This Widget will simply and elegantly play (stream) the 702 talk radio live stream directly from South Africa. 702 Talk Radio is based in Joburg South Africa
• 94.7 radio - This simple Widget plays one of South Africa's hottest radio stations, based in Joburg; 94.7 Highveld Stereo.
• 5FM radio - 5FM Stream Player will simply play the 5FM Live stream. 5FM is a very well known and popular South African radio station based in Johannesburg. It plays all sorts of music, especially the Top 100's sort of music.
• South African Radio Streamer - South African Radio Streamer will simply play a selected live radio stream. This Widget allows you to choose from a variety of South African radio stations, the list includes 5FM, 94.7, 702, Metro FM, Radio Algoa, and many more!
  
• 95.5fm WBRU Providence streaming widget
  
• 94.5fm Boston WJMN - This is a Widget that allows you to listen to Jamn 94.5 boston from your desktop. Jamn 94.5 is Bostons official #1 for blazin' hip-hop and R&B. Also try 107.9fm KISS-FM Boston and its HD2 station, 107.3fm WAAF Boston, 850am WEEI Sports Talk Radio Boston and WBZ 1030am Talk Radio Boston.
  
• Multiple City Traffic widget. Also try the Boston traffic widget.
  
• Boston Traffic Camviewer and Connecticut Traffic Cams widget. Also try CT Traffic Cams widget.
  
• FileAway - The Widget has three drop windows representing three directories which user can set up. Dropping files onto each button moves the files to that directory. Clicking on each button will open up the directory in the Windows Explorer or Mac Finder, depending on platform. Based on the Sort It Later Widget.
  
• Monitor Off - Monitor Off puts your monitor on standby with a click. A simple move of the mouse or keyboard press will wake up the computer in a few seconds. Click on the icon to put your monitor to sleep. Hold down CTRL key to move the Widget around. A typical 17" CRT monitor consumes 80 watts electricity; putting it on on standby reduces it to about 0-15 watts. Setting computer monitors to Power Save Mode saves money, electricity and reduces carbon dioxide emissions. After all, money isn't all you're saving.
  
• Scientific Calculator - This two-line scientific calculator provides the look and feel of a real calculator. With a dedicated line for the equation and another for the result, complex equations can be written with ease. Numbers and simple functions can be input via the keyboard, while more advanced functions are available using the normal calculator buttons. Also try Calculator, miniCalc, Kalculator and Koncalculator.
  
• Sys Monitor - Shows you all the local system information you need. Fully configurable for displaying system uptime, CPU load, memory, battery, wireless, storage volumes (drives), network cards (LAN) and remote IP address.
  
• FareCompare Tracker - This new version includes the ability to track airfare to international destinations as well as USA and Canada.
  
• WiFi Meter, CPU Meter and Memory Meter widgets by Martin Cannings
  
• Universal Shipment Tracker - The Universal Shipment Tracker will track all of your FedEx, UPS, DHL, Purolator, and USPS packages and display their current status and location (for some carriers). You can choose to hide shipments from carriers you do not use. The Widget checks for updates automatically at user-definable intervals. Also try FedEx package tracking , UPS package tracking and DHL package tracking widgets.

more Yahoo! Widgets...

Live365 Now Playing - The Live365 Now Playing Widget will show the songs currently playing on any radio stream at live365.com. After entering your Live365 account name and password, any of your station presets can be selected. The Widget will show from the last one to ten songs played, can be resized and has multiple color themes available.

SHOUTcast Monitor - Feed this Widget with the URLs of your favorite SHOUTcast stations and keep an eye on what is playing!

Barcode - Generate barcodes with this Widget. Enter the barcode digits and an (optional) description label. Click on the generated barcode to open it in a browser window to save or print.

SuperFileAway - This Widget is an expansion and polishing of the Fileaway Widget in both function and interface. It has five drop windows that you set and one that when dropped to will allow you to select the folder the file is going to. Holding the Control key as you drag and drop will copy the file instead of moving. Clicking on each button will open up that specific folder.

Sort It! - Clean up your desktop with Sort it!. Sort it! is a simple and easy way to keep yourself organized.

Quick Dock - QuickDock is a Quick Launch Toolbar replacement for Windows systems only. It grabs all your links and shortcuts in your Quick Launch directory and makes the available via an expandable fish-eye floating Widget. It also allows you to make an alternate directory for shortcuts anywhere on your system.

Simple Date and Time - A simple Widget that shows the date and time on one single line. The date and time format can be customized and three different skins are available.

Wage Widget - Keeps a running total of the amount of money you've earned. Input your hourly wage and watch how the moolah adds up while you surf the Internet, go to the bathroom, yap with your co-workers and occasionally work.

Fresh Art Daily - The Fresh Art Daily Widget features original oil and watercolor landscape and still life paintings by two contemporary American artists, John Hulsey and Ann Trusty.

stcVolume - Allows to set the volume of the system with a hotkey (by default ctrl+arrow up and ctrl+arrow down) or using the mouse. Volume can be changed using mouse, double click to mute/unmute and wheel now turns if volume is changed by another application.

All Audio Recorder

~ DOES NOT WORK WITH WINDOWS VISTA ~

All Audio Recorder is a powerful real-time sound recorder software.It enables you to record from any resource such as MIDI, MP3, WAV, WMA, RAM, OGG, VQF, CD, DVD, MPEG, AVI, MOV, GAME, FLASH, Streaming Audio on Internet... even from all peripheral equipment such as microphone, cassette tape, TV, radio, electronic organ, video tape, CD Player, DVD Player...

Democracy Player

"Want to see the future of Net video? Download the open source Democracy Player" -Wired Magazine

It's pretty simple. You get a better internet video experience with Democracy Player because you can do more and you can do it more easily. Some people call it a 'TiVo for the internet' or a 'Firefox for videos'.

Democracy Player is free, open source, and built by a non-profit organization. Our goal isn't to make money off of you. Our goal is to give you the best possible video experience.

Democracy Player is a powerful TV viewer that downloads, manages and plays the latest videos on your computer. There's no need to squint-- the Democracy Player can play the highest quality videos in full-screen, and will play them one after the other, just lean back and enjoy.

Once Democracy Player downloads to your computer, install it and start it up. You will see the channels that come pre-subscribed with the player, and you can subscribe to new channels in the Guide. Hit play on New Videos and any new videos will play one after the other. Democracy Player can be as simple to use as turning on your TV.

Search for videos from YouTube, Google Video, Revver, and more. Better yet, turn a keyword search into a channel with the "Add This Search as a Channel" button. Democracy will automatically watch for new videos tagged with your keyword -- when new material is found, it'll be downloaded and waiting for you. You can also easily find videos inside your collection and channels with the search field at the top of the screen.

You can add channels manually with "Channels > Add Channel" (Ctrl+N). Just paste in the URL from webpages with video or RSS video feeds and Democracy Player will handle the rest. If you want to unsubscribe from a channel, just right-click on the channel's name and select "remove" (you can re-subscribe anytime).

The "New Videos" channel makes Democracy Player into a simple TV-viewing application. Whenever a new video is downloaded to your computer, it is added to this list. You can browse and manually pick certain videos to watch from the list. Click the video at the top and all new videos will play in order, one after the other. When you're done watching your new videos, you can choose to save them by clicking on the "Save" button to the right of the video description. If you don't do anything, the videos will automatically expire after a set time (6 days by default) freeing up space for fresh videos. You can always re-download videos that expire.

Auto-downloading makes using Democracy Player really simple. When enabled, the Democracy Player will grab new videos from a channel as soon as they're available. You can turn auto-download on for any channel by checking the box off at the top of the channel view. As soon as you know you like a channel, there is no need to think about it again; let Democracy Player handle the downloading.

Creating playlists of your favorite videos is simple. Just drag any video you've downloaded onto a playlist in the sidebar. You can rearrange the order of videos inside a playlist by dragging them up and down. To create a new playlist, choose Playlists > New Playlist (apple+P).

Telling friends about videos and channels you like is easy in Democracy Player. When you click on the envelope button for a given video or channel, Democracy Player opens up Video Bomb's share page. Also, you can "star" videos you like and Video Bomb will automatically create your own personal feed of favorites. Pass your Video Bomb channel around -- you are a filter for your friends' media.

Audacity

Audacity is a fast multi-track audio editor and recorder for Linux, BSD, Mac OS, and Windows. Supports WAV, AIFF, Ogg, and MP3 formats. Features include envelope editing, mixing, built-in effects and plug-ins, all with unlimited undo.

     * portable (self-contained) version HERE

Picasa

Picasa is a powerful, yet easy to use and attractive tools suite to manage and organize your digital images and photos. It offers one simple place to organize, enjoy, and share your pictures. After installing, the software can automatically scan your drive(s) for images and intelligently sort them into photo albums, ready for you to customize and organize. It offers different interface layouts and ways to view your pictures, including slideshow and a unique timeline feature. Picasa supports import from twain devices, including digital cameras, photo emailing, printing and much more. A great, all-around imaging tool! Now with Picasa Web Albums, this allows you to upload free image galleries, hosted by Google.


Find the pictures you forgot you had
Picasa instantly locates and organizes all the pictures on your computer. Picasa organizes your entire collection while you watch, scanning the images on your computer and automatically sorting them by date.

Move and re-name pictures from inside Picasa
Want to clean up messy folders and move pictures around on your computer’s hard drive? Simply drag and drop pictures from one folder in Picasa to another. Picasa will make the change permanent after double-checking with you. Want to change a picture’s filename from 671056398a.jpg to Lisa.jpg? In Picasa, it only takes seconds to re-name one picture or a group of pictures.

Make an album
Use the "Albums" collection to tag your photos into quick groupings inside Picasa. Viewing and sharing the pictures you grouped under an album is easy – they make great slideshows and movies or you can email them to friends.

Add a star rating
Give a gold star to any photo you love: it turns your favorites into visual standouts at a glance. Picasa even has a star search that reduces your entire photo collection to the best of the best in less than a second.

Keep one picture in multiple albums
Picasa creates a new “instance” of each photo you label without taking up more space on your computer, so you can put the same picture into multiple albums.

Basic Fixes are back – and better
Picasa's Basic Fixes are buttons that make it fast and easy to crop, remove red eye, fix the contrast and color, and enhance your digital pictures.

Amazing effects turn so-so pictures into works of art
You can see how much Picasa's 12 new visual effects can improve your photos – and in seconds, not hours. Go sepia. Warmify. Make pictures pop with color or try austere black-and-white. Try easy one-clicks or the more finely tuned sliders for better control where you want it. And of course, you can undo your changes at any step along the way.

Write captions that stay with the picture
Picasa makes captions the way journalists do – using the IPTC standard. That means your captions are saved within their pictures and stay with them, whether you export as a web page or make a CD presentation. Picasa captions are fully editable and searchable, and you choose whether to display them or not.

Zoom. Pan. Tilt. Get the angle you intended
So you did not get the shot? With Picasa, that is not the end of the story. Go in closer and move the focus slightly to the left. Your camera was slightly crooked? So what? Your picture is perfect anyway.

Know how to use a camera in manual mode?
Photography aficionados can now fine-tune their photos with Picasa's EXIF display. This window shows you all the camera data that is stored in a picture's original file - such as camera model, date the photo was taken, even if a flash was used. The EXIF display also has a RGB histogram, a real-time graph that shows the intensity of colors in your picture and how they change when you make edits in Picasa.

Send photos via email that are a joy to receive
The hardest part of sharing your pictures is choosing your favorites. Take the guesswork out of sending photos. Picasa automatically resizes and attaches pictures to email messages at sizes your friends will be able to open. Works with most email programs, including Google's Gmail.

Put pictures on your own site, for free
Picasa Web Albums is the fast and easy way to put your photos on the web. Just select the photos in Picasa that you want to share and click to publish. In seconds, those photos are on your own web page, ready to share with the people you know. Check out a few things you can do with Picasa Web Albums. If you're looking to post multiple photos onto your blog, Picasa's "BlogThis!" button does the hard work for you by automatically transferring selected photos directly to Blogger.

Make beautiful slide shows
With Picasa, you can turn a group of photos into a presentation with one click of the "Slideshow" button.

Move to any device or folder
You can take your photos with you no matter how you like to carry them. Picasa works with all the newest compact flash devices.

Custom and standard sizes are now fit to print at home
Print beautiful pictures at home with more custom sizes or order prints, gifts and books from your favorite online companies. Picasa automatically fits your pictures perfectly onto the expensive paper used by your home printer. It’s finally easy to print wallets, 4×6, 5×7, full pages, more sizes and even (hallelujah!) more than one picture on a page.

Export pictures to popular photo processing websites
You can pick photos straight out of Picasa and upload them directly to your favorite photo finishers to order prints and other products.

Burn to CD or DVD for archive purposes
Don't lose your digital memories. Safely back up your photos with Picasa. Picasa makes it easy to protect your pictures by archiving them on a CD or DVD. Picasa even displays the pictures that haven't been backed up yet to make absolutely sure you don't make mistakes with images that matter.

Give gift CDs with slide shows
Effortlessly create slide show CDs for friends and family.

Create a network backup of your pictures
Save to a folder on your computer, plus any device that is an external drive or disk. Moving edited pictures out of Picasa has always been as easy as clicking the Export button. Now you can also control the quality and sizes of your exported pictures. Picasa even will save photos back to any drive, including the newest flash memory cards and sticks.

Turn your photos into a movie
Enjoy your pictures in fun, creative ways – it’s what photography’s all about! It’s so easy to play filmmaker with your pictures. Select your best shots, then adjust the delay time, dimensions, and video compression settings. That’s it – Picasa will render a movie, complete with title graphics, that you can play and share.

Make a personalized desktop picture or screensaver
Your best pictures are now on display. Pick a favorite photo as your desktop picture or add several into your screensaver rotation. What better way to enjoy your photographic genius at your desk?

Create a poster
Picasa can tile any picture you select, allowing you to print each part and reassemble them at poster size – up to 1,000% larger than the original.

Make picture collages
Select a group of pictures, choose one of the beautiful templates, and Picasa will create a collage that expands your creative horizons. Picture pile it. Make a multi-exposure image. Create a contact sheet. Done? Simply save your collage to a folder, as a new desktop background or as a screensaver.

View pictures on your TV with TiVo®
Picasa’s automatic photo organizer exports your pictures to any TiVo® Series2™ DVR connected to a home network.

Bubbles

Bubbles allow you to shrink any web-site into your system tray, keeping it handy and accesible at any time. When the bubble comes up, it gives you the pure web-page, and nothing else.

• Bubbles keeps your favorite web-sites a click away, on the system-tray.
• Enjoy new features in existing web-sites with Smart-Bubbles.
• Enhance your browsing experience with notifications, drag & drop and shortcut menus
• Avoid the clutter of the browser, focus on your web-sites.

Version 1.13 allows .bblbox files (Bubble files, these describe what a bubble shows/how it interacts/etc) to contain JavaScript code that is invoked on a per-page basis. This allows rewriting of links, turning alerts into Bubbles - and basically anything you can come up with.

When we showed Vadim this feature, the first thing he did was write a .bblbox file that converts Google-Calendar alerts (e.g 'dinner begins in 5 minutes') into Bubble Balloons, meaning you can minimize your Google-Calendar to the tray and continue receiving your calendar-alerts, GREAT!

We've just added a new IE Tool Bar Icon that allows you to create a bubble from the current url being viewed. This should make creating bubbles easier and swifter for many users who preffer this method of creating new bubbles.

Folder Marker

How many folders do you have on your computer? Scores of them? Hundreds? Thousands? Are all of them are alike: yellow folder, yellow folder, yellow folder, yellow folder... It's so easy to be confused with such a routine!

Folder Marker is your small assistant, an ardent fighter for your convenience and comfort in any kind of computer work. Use Folder Marker to mark your folders. One mouse-click and it becomes clear at once, which documents have a high priority, and which of them have normal or low priority. Which operations are finished completely, which are half-done and which haven't started yet.

Do you fear that someone might unintentionally delete information necessary to you? Mark a folder, and other users will notice at once that that folder contains important information for you.

Changing folder icons, Folder Marker will help you to cope with the standard yellowness. Folder Marker adds an item "Mark Folder" in the folder popup menu. Changing a folder icon is now a piece of cake.

Folder Marker is for anyone who wants to make his work with a computer more convenient. Folder Marker is for you. Download Folder Marker now!

Key features:

• Folder Marker can change a folder icon with one mouse click
• Folder Marker can mark folders by priority (high, normal, low), by degree of work completeness (done, half-done, planned) and by the form of the information contained in a folder (work files, important files, temp files, private files).
• Folder Marker can change a folder's color
• Folder Marker changes folder icons from a popup menu of the folders. To mark a folder, you don't even need to run the program!
• Folder Marker's menu can contain convenient category submenus.
• Folder Marker contains a User's Icons tab. Add up to 10 of your favorite icons and mark folders with them. It's easy!
• Folder Marker can work with several folders at once
• Folder Marker can assign an icon to a folder from: ICO, ICL, EXE, DLL, CPL or BMP file
• Folder Marker supports 32-bits icons
• Folder Marker can change the icons of ALL folders in your system. This is the favorite feature of customization lovers. Get rid of monotony! Make your folders your own!

And what's more - Folder Marker is FREE!

Microsoft Image Resizer

Image Resizer enables you to resize one or many image files VERY QUICKLY with a right-click. VERY sleek and efficient program from Microsoft...

! Does NOT work in Windows Vista !

Opera

Opera is the most full-featured and flexible web browser on the market. It has a pop-up blocker, multiple-window navigation, mouse gestures, keyboard shortcuts, an e-mail client with a spam filter, and integrated search for user security and speed. The cross-platform browser includes IRC-compatible chat, support for RSS newsfeeds, a password manager, and one-click customization and privacy-protection settings. Mouse gestures and keyboard shortcuts allow for accelerated web navigation while the Fast Forward and Rewind buttons easy browsing. Users can run multiple windows as well as personalize the user interface with one-click skins. The browser also contains special elements for users with disabilities, drag-and-drop support, a notes function, user profiles, and a host of other features. Opera supports the latest in security and provides password and cookie managers.

Hello

UPDATE: Unfortunately, Google shut down the Hello service in June 2008.

How does Hello work?
Hello is a new program that lets you connect directly with your friends to share your digital pictures - or any other file. If you’ve used an instant messenger program before, you’ve already got the idea—Hello is special because it lets you share your pictures along with your messages.

With Hello, you just pick what pictures you want to show off, and click “Send.” That’s it. Hello takes care of all the hard work. And you and your friends can download full resolution, print-quality pictures from each other, while you’re doing more important things, like talking about your pictures.

I can already send pictures with email. Why do I need Hello?
Hello is designed to let you send high-quality pictures instantly and securely over any speed connection, even dialup. With Hello, you can send hundreds of high quality pictures to your friends in just seconds—you can’t do that with email.

When you share pictures with Hello, you get feedback from your friends right away. Also, Hello automatically encrypts all your pictures and chat before sending, so it’s safer and more secure than email.

How is Hello different from a website?
Websites are great when you want to show your pictures to the whole world. But it can take hours to put a new gallery online; after you pick your favorites, edit, resize, and upload them, you still have to sit around and wait for someone to come and see them. And how would you know if anyone did?

When you use Hello to share pictures, they arrive on your friend’s screen immediately, without the hassle of uploading them to a public website. Your friends can download print quality copies of their favorite pictures to print right at home, which most “picture sharing” websites won’t let you do.

With Hello’s file sharing technology, they only have to download high quality versions of the ones they really like. Everything else comes in at a smaller size, optimized for viewing on-screen.

What makes Hello so secure?
Hello protects your images with 128-bit AES encryption. Hello also works like a built-in firewall, so no one can access the files on your hard drive.

How much does this cost?
Hello is free.

Audio Streamer

AudioStreamer is the Internet radio receiver and recorder that lets you enjoy the thousands of radio stations available on the Internet.

While listening to your favorite radio station, you can record any radio station you want, anytime! Browse through the radio stations, selecting a genre and the preferred bandwidth, and enjoy Internet radio!

This Internet radio receiver also lets you search for stations by keywords, like 'top 40'! All radio recordings can be saved as individual tracks, and AudioStreamer automatically adds the correct MP3 tag to the recording.

AudioStreamer records music or talk from the internet to your hard drive as individual high-quality MP3 files and automatically adds key information, including artist and title, so you can easily manage your music. Keep the songs you like, arranged just the way you like them. Edit the file information and organize your collection into playlists to suit your own preferences. Soon you’re ready to enjoy your new collection at home or on the go!

Once you've used the Internet radio recorder to create a new MP3 library, you’ll want to listen on your player or in your car. With AudioStreamer it’s so easy…just click on the menu and you’ll be burning CDs — in just the format you need — in no time at all. Or load the songs onto your MP3 player and you’re ready to roll!

You can also add your favorite station to the Favorites list, or add a new station you found on the Internet!

OpenOffice

OpenOffice is a free office suite application available for many different operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Linux, Solaris and Mac OS X. It is intended to be a compatible alternative to Microsoft Office.

What’s in OpenOffice.org?

• WRITER is OpenOffice.org’s word processor: use it for anything from writing a quick letter to producing an entire book with embedded illustrations, cross-references, tables of contents, indexes, bibliographies... Auto-complete, auto-format, and real-time spelling check make light work of the hardest task. Writer is powerful enough to tackle desktop publishing tasks such as creating multi-column newsletters, brochures – the only limit is your imagination.

• Use CALC to bring your numbers under control. This powerful spreadsheet has all the tools you need to calculate, analyse, summarise, and present your data in numerical reports or sizzling graphics. A fully-integrated help system makes entering complex formulas a breeze. Sophisticated decision-making tools are just a few mouse clicks away. Pull in external data using the Data Pilot, and sort it, filter it, and produce subtotals and statistical analyses. Use previews to select from thirteen categories of 2-D and 3-D charts including line, area, column, pie, XY, stock and net with dozens of variants.

• IMPRESS is the fastest, most powerful way to create effective multimedia presentations. Your presentations will truly stand out with special effects, animation and high-impact drawing tools.

• DRAW will produce everything from simple diagrams to dynamic 3D illustrations and special effects.

Hamachi

Hamachi is a zero-configuration virtual private networking (VPN) application.

In other words Hamachi is a program that allows you to arrange multiple computers into their own secure network just as if they were connected by a physical network cable.

Hamachi is fast, secure and simple. Its core version is also free.

What's in it for me?
Hamachi gives you LAN over the Internet.

Virtually any application that works over local/home networks can also be used over Hamachi networks.

Think - Windows File Sharing, iTunes, Remote Desktop, Remote Assistance or even gaming - all fully encrypted, authenticated and peer-to-peer.

Technology
Hamachi is a zero-configuration virtual private networking application with an open security architecture and NAT-to-NAT traversal capabilities.

Hamachi is the first application to mix seemingly unrelated networking technologies in one powerful package to deliver an unprecedented level of direct peer-to-peer connectivity. More ...

Security
Hamachi is secure. All Hamachi communications are encrypted and authenticated with industry-standard algorithms and protocols. Nobody will be able to see what two Hamachi peers are talking about. Not even us.

However what is equally important - Hamachi security architecture is completely open meaning that its detailed description is available to anyone interested for review and validation. More ...

Ease of Use
Great effort went into designing and polishing the Hamachi user interface. The result is sleek, simple and intuitive; yet still very functional. Everything you need, nothing you don't.

Hamachi software contains no spyware, bannerware or any other -ware unrelated to its purpose. And it never will.

Thunderbird

Thunderbird is a full featured email program with built-in junk mail controls, message filters, address book, news groups and more. It offers a clean and easy to use (customizable) interface. Thunderbird also offers security features such as S/MIME, digital signing, message encryption, support for certificates and security devices. Other features include IMAP/POP compatibility, support for HTML mail, labels, quick search, return receipts, LDAP address completion, import tools and more.


Thunderbird, like the Firefox web browser, supports small add-ons called Extensions. Some of my favorite extensions are:

• Auto Zip Attachments for Thunderbird - Auto Zip Attachments allows you to easily compress (zip) attachments. A new button named "AutoZip" is added to the compose toolbar. Upon pressing the button all the attachments would be compressed into a single file. Then the attachments are replaced with the zipped file. Options enables: Select the zipped file name. Prevent zipping of custom extensions (zip,rar, etc). AutoZip: When enabled, zipping will occur after pressing the send button.
• Clippings - Saves and manages frequently-entered text for pasting later. Text can be pasted from Clippings into forms and input fields without the hassle of retyping or repetitive copying and pasting. Perfect for forms, web mail, blog entries, wiki editing and forum posts.
• withAttach - This extension adds a menu option (and a toolbar button) to compose an email "with attachments". Also adds context menu options and toolbar buttons to "reply with attachment" and "reply all with attachment". If you try to send the email without attachments, you are warned about it and asked to confirm your action.
  
• Track Package - Track Packages from the right-click menu. This extension makes it easier to track a package when the web page or email does not provide you with a link to the shipping company's tracking page. Simply highlight the tracking number, right click, and click "Track Package". It will automatically determine which company's tracking page to go to. Currently supports: UPS, FedEx, DHL USPS Canada Post TNT and Purolator.
• PackageMapping.com extension - Track and Map packages from the right-click menu. The purpose of this extension is to extend the features of the www.PackageMapping.com website. This extension makes it easy to get tracking information for a package and display the tracking progress on Google Maps. Simply highlight the tracking number, right click, and select "Track and Map Package". It will try to automatically determine the shipping company for the selected tracking number. If successful, it will display the shipping company's name in the right-click menu (ex. "Track and Map UPS Package '1Z12345E1512345676' "). Once you click the menu item, you will be taken to the PackageMapping.com web site where you will have access to RSS feeds and E-mail tracking updates and delivery notification.
  Currently supports: UPS, U.S.P.S., FedEx and DHL. Please see the options/preferences dialog which allows you to choose between using Tabs or New Windows and whether or not to display the right-click menu item unless some text is actually selected.
• SmtpSelect - A toolbar button providing easy access to setting the default SMTP server in Thunderbird. The button must be added manually to the toolbar through "Customize..." (right-click on the toolbar) - and is available for the main mail window as well as for the compose mail window. Please note, in order for SmtpSelect to be any useful, you must choose "Use Default Server" as "Outgoing Server (SMTP)" for each email account that should be used with this extension.
• Identity Select - This extension allows you to choose the identity of your new email from a popup menu directly from the Write button. This feature behaves in a similar manner as the Get Mail pulldown menu. In addition, the default behavior of the Write button is now context sensitive! The new message will automatically assume the default identity of the account that owns the currently selected folder. Please note that the global Inbox is not owned by any account and the default behavior of the Write button is unaffected when any subfolder of the global Inbox is selected.
  
• ConnSets - ConnSets is a 'Connection/Configuration Settings Selector' for people who often have to use different Settings for Proxies, Mail Servers or even any other aspects. Probably most interresting for Laptop Users or others who connect to the Internet via different networks... Store your different Network Connection Settings of your Mozilla Applications under different names and restore them quickly using a Selector Menu. Per default this Extension is prepared for Connection Settings only - but you can define yourself which Settings have to be stored an restored later - Even settings of other Extensions can be changed... The User Interface has no new Dialogs (the built-in ones are used for the settings). For switching the settings you just have one Menu - and for storing them some prompt's.
• No New Window on Double Click - This extension prevents Thunderbird from opening a new main window. When you double click on a folder in the folder pane, the folder will expand or collapse if it has subfolders. Also, when a program tries to run Thunderbird while it is already running, the new window is closed and the first main window will be brought to focus. New mail windows can still be opened when right-clicking on a folder and selecting Open in New Mail Window.
• NestedQuote Remover - Remove nested quotes when replying to a mail. Some of my email contacts forward everything to everyone, with the result that some messages have many layers deep of forwarding information. It is great to be able to remove it with a click of a button when forwarding it myself.
• Options Menu - An extension that provides quick access to the options dialogs of installed extensions. Access is via an 'Extension Options' cascade menu on the Tools menu or by a Toolbar icon.
• Contacts Sidebar - This extension displays the address books in a sidebar in the 3-pane-window and can be toggled with the F4 key or a toolbar button.
• mailTagger - An image browser used to insert images inside a mail in a quick and organized way.
• Easy Get Mail Button - Makes the 'Get new messages' button context-sensitive. Select an account root folder to get messages for that account, any other folder to get messages for all accounts.
• Signature Switch - Switch the signature on/off or choose a new one from your predefined set.
  Additional features include the support of fortune-cookie-files and automatic switching based on recipients.
• MinimizeToTray - Minimizes Mozilla windows into the system tray. Also includes a right clickable tray icon menu to further load only the windows you want visible.
  MinimizeToTray's extension options allow you to configure your desired behavior. The three options are: Always minimize to the tray instead of to the taskbar, minimize to tray on close or require a double click to restore from the tray.
• Mail Redirect - Allow to redirect (a.k.a. "bounce") mail messages to other recipients
• Attachment Sizes - Ability to see attachment sizes either in the attachment box on messages or in the attachment box on composes.
• Slideshow - Displays a slideshow of picture attachments. When email has attached pictures, it displays "View as Slideshow" button next to the attachment. Button click pops a slideshow window with all the images, allowing you to zoom in/out, save. A lot nicer than viewing the images embedded in the email.
• SendTools - Add SendAt option to the compose window to allow sending a message on a particular date and time
• XNote - Persistent sticky notes for Thunderbird associated to mails. It allows you to create a note for each mail. Thus, you can add for example the phone number of that contact or when you have to contact the sender back. Features : Add notes to messages, highlight messages with notes and resizable notes
  
  

Also worth mentioning is the webmail extension for Thunderbird which allows you to use web-based email providers like Yahoo, gMail, Hotmail, Lycos, Mail.com-based accounts and the ubiquitous AOL mail to send and receive messages without logging into the provider's webpage. In practice, they behave like regular POP3 email accounts you'd get from your Internet Service Provider.


Thunderbird also supports themes, letting you completely customize the look of the program. Some of my favorite themes are:

• Tiger Mail
• Redmond Revisited - the familiar Outlook Express theme for Thunderbird
• Outlook 2003 BlueTB, Outlook 2003 SilverTB and Outlook 2003 Green TB
  
• Noia 2.0 eXtreme
• Whitehart TB
• Mostly Crystal
• CrossOver
• Phoenity Thunderbird
• Walnut
• Aquabird
• WinMailBlue
• Doodle Plastik for Thunderbird
  
• glowywine series themes - the actual different-colored themes are on the [addons] menu to the left