Well, we are at it again. This time it is extensions for Firefox 3! You should take a look at this post from Mashable - 30+ Must-Have Extensions For Firefox.

I didn’t know that there are so many add-ons for Firefox. And I am pretty sure that as the latest version of the browser has just been released, more extensions will start to work for Firefox 3! If you don’t know what are add-ons, they are actually some little software which adds functionality to the open source browser. For example, you can add mouse gestures to your browser just like Opera. Of course, by default the Firefox browser doesn’t allow you to do that. I currently only have the Stumbleupon toolbar installed which I often use to stumble websites. You know, sort of like what we do on TV when we channel surf, you can channel surf websites with this toolbar and tell others which you like and which you don’t like.

Anyways, you should go to that site and take a look at the various number of extensions available for Firefox. You will be surprised to see what you can find there which will make your browsing experience a more enjoyable one. I found that Colourful Tabs for Firefox is very cool. It sorts of gives you different colours for each tabs so it won’t get too dull when you are using tabs. Firegestures which I have mentioned easier can also make it more convenient when you browse. Just like what you find in Opera, you can “map” various commands to your mouse gestures (you know, right click + move mouse left and so on). If you are a programmer or a website designer, there are also extensions made especially for you as well.

I kind of like software which allows others to help add more features into it. I think that the developers of the actual software should stick to the basics and concentrate on the core produce, while others with different skillset and experience can then work on the other features. This way, we get the best of both worlds with less compromise on quality and worry less about bloated software and bugs. Well, that’s my opinion and it looks like a lot of developers are starting to realize this. Thus, we see starting to see increasing number of programs which allow add-ons.

Wow, barely over a week since it was officially launched and we are already seeing online guides on how to improve the usage of firefox 3 already. Must be a very popular software for it to garter so much support from netizens. I guess because not everyone likes using Microsoft’s IE7 (the most widely used browser) and due to the fact that it is actually challenging the big corporation, netizens will of course be very supportive of the browser. I have only started really using this browser a few days ago, although I did download it during launch day. Anyways, I am always eager to try out new software and see what new features they have.

In my opinion, I feel that the developers have done a good job on the browser. It feels much refined than before. The best part is that I no longer have the memory leak problem which plagued the previous versions. I often have the Firefox browser running in the background for hours, so this memory leak problem is causing me a lot of headaches. However, with that solved (I hope), I will look forward to using it more. Furthermore rendering speeds has improved quite significantly which makes this browser a joy to use. There are of course a lot of other new features for this browser like the new address bar drop down (or called Smart Location Bar) and better phlishing protection.

Anyways, if you are looking for some tips and tricks to improve your experience with our new Firefox 3, then please take a look here.

Lifehacker has an interesting post on ways for you to recover your deleted files from Windows. I think you guys will find it very useful. Link to the post here. Well, for me, I too often use PC Inspector File Recovery software. Yes, it’s a freeware. I think it’s a quite capable software, considering that it is free and the user interface is very friendly. After using it a few times (keep your finger cross you don’t), you will be able to use it without any problems.

Another good looking software is this Recuva which the article has a link to. This software looks a bit barebone but seriously, most people using this software just wants to recover their files and not to tinkle with the software or tweak this or that. In fact, most people using this kind of software are the desperate ones. For me, I am using this to recover my company’s files which had been accidentially deleted off by our company staff.

However, the truth is, more often than not, people who accidentially delete off their files don’t know it till much later. Or they didn’t bother until they need the file again. So, by the time I go and attempt to recover the files, it might be too late. The longer you wait, the less chance of recovery as deleted files get overwritten over time. Once overwritten, there is very little chance of recovery. I had always told the company staff to inform me as soon as possible and to stop using the computer if they discovered that they have accidentially deleted off some important files. Apparently, it doesn’t sink it that deleted files are actually on their PC, just marked as empty and ready for some other files to be written over them. And then everyone looks at me like I am a kind of moron.

Yes, it has been released. This is definitely a very good thing for all of us AVG users. I am very eager to check out what new features AVG has implemented on their new version. It is just too bad that the AVG Free download takes a while and it is indeed a very big file to download, approximately 45MB. But I guess nowadays everyone has broadband and this will not be a problem.

After you download the latest version, all you have to do is to run the installer. There is no need to uninstall the old version first, just run the installer and let it do all the work for you. Once that is done, you will need to restart your PC and you will see your spanking new antivirus software running happily (we all hope). Anyway, it went great for me without any problems. And after you finish updating the antivirus definitions, you are well-protected from both viruses and spywares. Yes, we do hate those stuff very much, don’t we?

The first change you will realize for this software is that it has a very “aero” look and feel to it. It seems that a lot of software comes with this kind of look nowadays. Well, pretty sure that AVG don’t want to be left out. The interface feels the same as the previous version, which is good for people like me. We just don’t like too much changes. The main user interface is simple, it has all you need to configure your antivirus software there. Basically, you just need the “update now” button. That’s the one I always use. However, I also realized that the user interface seemed to be more sluggish than before. Not sure whether it is because my PC is getting too slow for new software, but it took a few moments for the interface to pop up.

There is one very interesting new feature which I would like to comment on. It is called Safe Search. Basically it is like a anti-phishing script which helps to check whether a link is pointing to a potentially dangerous site or not. However, this is only for search results on search engines like Google. Take a look at the ticks they show.

Well, I agree with AVG. They are very suitable and those big green ticks gives me all the confidence I need to visit these sites without fear of being flooded with spywares and other evils!

Take a look here. That’s 10 free CD/DVD burning software for you to try out! Sure, all of us have used Nero before and found that it works well. And we get so used to using Nero that we don’t really want to try out other software. Well, I think we should. Nero is a paid software and the next DVD burner your purchase may not come with Nero. This will certainly cause a lot of problems if you aren’t used to the new interface. Plus, Nero is very much a bloatware. It takes up a lot of space and have tons of useless features and may be sluggish on low end PCs. I am sure that those 10 free CD/DVD burning software would not be as resource hungry as Nero. I always like lean software which doesn’t tax the resources too much.

Basically, what a CD/DVD burning software should have is data burning, CD/DVD duplication, audio CD/DVD creation and video (VCD/DVD Video) conversion. The others are just extras to most people and most people seldom use them at all. In fact, most people use their burners to make backups of your CDs/DVDs.

My favourite is InfraRecorder, as it is completely open source and has a good number of features to boot. However, I found that it has some problems with certain drives, especially when doing DVD burning. But with the latest version, I think quite a lot of bugs have been patched and it should be quite stable. From what I know, it doesn’t support Blu-Ray or HD DVD either. Too bad. However, from the list, there are a few free software which can support Blu-Ray and HD DVD like StarBurn & BurnAware. Now, that’s impressive for free software. We usually think of such free software as perhaps something with less features than a commercial one, but that’s not always true. Sometimes, free software can even have more features than their commercial counterparts.

I think I will be doing some testing on these software in the near future. They do look very good as alternatives to Nero. Not to say that Nero is a bad software, but it is always good to have alternatives and I am a sucker for testing out new software. I like to try new things! Especially those that are free. If you know any other free CD/DVD burning software, please give me a hoot and I will put them down on my list to test out.

 

Would you believe this? The Film Machine is actually the name of a software! I bet you were thinking that this is the name of some site that sells videos or DVDs, right? Nope, this is the name of a software which helps you to convert video files into DVDs. So, let’s say you have some video files which you have downloaded from the Internet like those high resolution trailers and you would like to view them on your very expensive Plasma TV but you can’t, since the player only reads DVDs. So you can make use of this software to convert that video file into a format that your DVD player can read. It’s called MPEG 2. You can also convert to VCD format (MPEG 1) or SVCD format if you so wish.

However, The Film Machine needs an encoder installed like Cinema Craft Encoder or Sonic Foundry Soft Encode to do the actual MPEG 2 conversion. Of course, you can use the freeware HC Encoder as well. But that software takes slightly longer to do your conversion than the other commercially available software. If you don’t mind the time (I don’t as I usually do the conversion at night and set it to auto-shutdown when done), then HC Encoder is your best bet. The prices of the other encoders can be heart stopping to say the least!

The Film Machine has a ton of features which makes this software a must have if you do a lot of video conversion to DVD. It comes with a easy to use wizard, just choose the video file you want to convert, choose your encoder (for both video and audio) and you are done! The Film Machine supports avi, mov, mp4, mkv and rmvb files. It also supports NTSC to PAL conversion and vice versa. For the video and audio bitrates, you can easily modify and configure them as well. Furthermore, if you like to add a menu to your DVD, this software supports it! They can create a BIN/CUE image file for you if you need to burn the image into the DVD/VCD later, or just let the software burn the DVD/VCD for you automatically. Amazing software and simple to use. Not much fuss.

This software is available for Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista 23 bit.

I bet a lot of us make use of our emails to send important attachments to our friends, relatives and especially to our bosses, right? Well, if you DO send such emails, you will realize that there is a very serious flaw in this - the attachment size. Yes, how many times have you send a huge file across but only to have it rejected by the other side? Just imagine the time wasted when you send the file and the time wasted again when you need to figure out how to solve it. Don’t you just hate it when there are problems with your email? However, it’s not the fault of the ISPs or your email host. Why? Because the design of email in the beginning. Email was designed to send text messages across the network and it is just not meant to be send and receive huge files.

I may have the solution for you, it’s called Civil Netizen. It’s like those file sharing software or maybe like MSN’s file sharing feature. The difference is that it can send and receive huge files (that’s up to 4GB!), unlike most other software. You can transfer a large number of files with just a few clicks. They have something called a “parcel” and all the files are contained inside these parcels. It also allows you to preserve the file structure of your folders. The most important of all is that it is very secure. And you do it privately. You can share those company files with your co-worker in another laptop using Civil Netizens and find very secure. And transferring files is as easy as clicking a few links. If you are worried about transferring of huge files, you needn’t be. This software allows you to resume interrupted transfers like those FTP Clients. It will keep on trying till your files are delivered. Oh, did I mention it is free?

Civil Netizen feels a lot like those P2P software like those P2P software you see on the Internet. However, this is not a P2P software. It is meant for people to transfer files securely.

I have started using AVG Free for a few weeks already and I find it very good. I mean, if you are a cheapskate like me who is not willing to pay several dollars for a good antivirus software, then AVG Free is for you. First of all, it doesn’t take up a lot of resources. My system is an old Pentium IV 2.53 and it runs fine with both AVG and Avira together. I don’t get slowdowns at all. The great thing about AVG compared to Avira, you can download the anti-virus definitions much faster. I don’t know why but Avira servers seemed to be always overloading and sometimes, you can’t even update the definitions at all. Or perhaps they are doing it on purpose to force their free users to buy the full edition. Not problems whatsoever for AVG. And since we all know that viruses spread like wildfire these days, it always good to get up-to-date virus definitions.

For the free version of AVG, you get only basic virus scanning and protection, while for the Internet Security edition, you get the full shebang, that is anti-spyware, anti-virus, anti-spam plus firewall protection. However, it does scan incoming emails for virus which a plus. The user interface is quite easy to use. You won’t get confused by options after options in many other software. It comes with a control center which you can administrate how your anti-virus software runs and setup your scheduled updates. Oh, you can also download their anti-spyware software for free. But as always, the free software is limited and doesn’t have any real-time protection. If you need that, go and get the Pro version of their anti-spyware software. Hey, what do you expect? Everyone needs to eat right?

If you don’t have a anti-virus software, what are you waiting for? You want to get infected by viruses? Go and download and get at least some protection for your PC for god’s sake. Oh, this only applies if the system in question is not a commercial one. If you are a business entity, then get the full version, you real cheapskate!

Introducing to you yet another very cool tool - Wink. It is actually a screen capture tool and flash converter rolled into all. This presentation software allows you to easily create basic presentation slides, but it is designed especially for software usage tutorials. You know, sometimes when you visit a website for help, it will provide you with a tutorial on how to do something on your PC and it comes to you in Flash? Well, this software can help create that flash file for you. Certainly very useful for people like me who has to spend hours and hours in explaining to users on how to use a certain software. For example, where to click for which function and so on. This software can help me create a presentation video and help guide the users with detailed instructions. A great time saver.

It can record (using screen shots) mouse movements and it allows you to add captions and explanations to it. The callouts and shapes for the text explanations can also be easily customized. Furthermore, it allows you to add images or photos to the file. You can also add audio to your presentation as well, making it a more complete tool. I find it a very easy to use software. Although I won’t say it is a complete presentation tool, it’s free and it works well. If you don’t need the more flashy and much more complicated tools, then Wink is for you. All you have to do is to record what you are doing, add in the audio (if you so desired), key in all the notes and explanations and then export to flash or even an exe file. You can even export it to PDF as well. Wink produces pretty good quality recordings however, if you need a smaller file, you can always reduce the resolution or quality. They support different languages like French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and even Chinese.

The latest version is out for download now. Please check it out. You can download it from their website however the latest version is only for Windows. If you are using Linux, then you may have to wait for version 2 to come out. Or you could just use version 1.5.

This is yet another one of those registry cleaner software. As you guys know, the Windows operating system is full of crap, and what makes it even worse is crap in it’s registry. What’s a Windows Registry? It’s like a list of information about your software, link libraries and whole lot of stuff to run your Windows. However, it is also very prone to getting corrupted or getting invalid or obsolete links. Like when you install and then uninstall some software, registry entries are still left behind by the installer. All these registry entries take up resources because the registry is loaded up everytime your Windows start up. Just think, if you have been using your Windows Operating System for years, how much crap has it accumulated already.

What you need is a Registry Cleaner. So, I introduce to you Glarysoft Registry Repair. As usual, this software is free and you can download it from their website. It claims to be the safest registry cleaner out there. Anyway, I am using it and there doesn’t seem to be any problems with using it. And the interface is easy to use. Just click on Scan Registry for problems and after it finish scanning, click on repair. And if you have problems with your Operating System after that, you can always restore your configurations back.

It helps you clean up your registry by searching and removing invalid paths, invalid file types, invalid file associations, dead file associations, adwares and spywares in the registry, invalid fonts, invalid shared programs, invalid startup programs among others. So why not give it a try. Just remember, you can always restore back your old configuration if you face any problem. And it works for Windows Vista as well!