Audacity is a free audio editor which offers multi-tracking recording, mixing and applying of effects. It’s interface is very intuitive to use. It supports import/export of file formats like Aiff, Ogg Vorbis, wav, Mp3, Midi and other sound formats but it doesn’t support WMA format and uses the third party Lame encoder for MP3 conversion because of copyright issues. (more…)

If you’ve ever wanted an aquarium but don’t have the space or patience, then here’s the perfect screensaver for you. Welcome to your first 3D aquarium. (more…)

Ever wanted to call a friend but they live too far away or something and you don’t wanna pay for long distance? Then you’ll like this! Skype is a popular program for voice chatting over your PC. All you need is a microphone and a friend to chat with. (more…)

Iconoid is a neat little freeware program that runs on startup in the taskbar and can be set to keep the desktop icons hidden until you click on the desktop. It means your can see your wallpaper without messy icons in the way, as well as keeping your desktop looking a lot tidier.

One tip: set it so it keeps your icons hidden until you actually click on the desktop, and also so it hides itself on startup. All in all it’s a very customizable small program that can help your desktop look more neat and tidy.

Highly recommended for any neat freaks or wallpaper fans who want things to look a little tidier.

Second Life is a very impressive “life simulation” game, you sign up (free), download the software and then you create your character which can be very detailed. You can change every aspect of their appearance which is fun in itself. Then comes more fun, walking around the game world, and after you get used to it its pretty cool as you can build a house, get a job, make friends, do just about anything that you could do in real life, and i do mean anything!

When i first saw this i thought it would be just another “sims” type game that would lose its appeal pretty fast, but, man, i was wrong! As i ended up staying in my “second life” that entire first day! The only downside is that if you have an internet connection that slows down at times, the game can slow down a lot. (more…)

This is the 30 day trial version of the Paint Shop Pro software, but in a special edition which specializes in photo treatment. No, it’s not a Photo Paint Shop, that’s too close to home, but it does feature a number of ways to make your scanned or digital photos look nicer. There are overall tools which adjust the contrast and coloration all over the picture with very little real control, but also fine-tuning controls which give you very precise creative control over your images.

A lot of the filters are automatic pushbutton affairs, meaning that very little tuition is necessary. Although just to make sure Corel have included an extensive Learning Center which runs you through the basics to get you quickly acquainted with the new features. 

Find out more and download Paint Shop Pro Photo you can here.

This demoware of the newest version of Nero Ultra is a kind of CD burning Swiss Army knife. The download is pretty big and as such takes awhile to install and get set up, and you hear about it being a bit of a memory hog, although there is no evidence to back this up.

Legacy Nero users will recognize the StartSmart GUI, handy for beginners and advanced users serving up access to ways of burning photos, data, music, or video. But in addition, you can erase discs, convert audio files, capture video, edit photos, make back-ups, as well as check your hardware specs, create slide shows, custom audio mixes, and even disc covers. If that wasn’t enough, you can also watch and record TV programs, (with appropriate hardware of course) as well use the program as a media manager. Wow. That’s a wad of features.

Rather than a 30-day version you have until the end of the month you install it in. A bit annoying but all you have to do is save it till the 1st of next month before installing and you have a clear month to test it. You will probably buy it at the end, though, because it’s very good.

One of the very best free downloads on the Internet has to be Google Earth. The application and its underlying API (which you can use to make your own apps using the Google Earth technology) is one of the most stunning things to play with, a virtual planet Earth you can play with, but also one of the most serious apps ever made too.

Using the maps you can fly around the world seeing sights, zooming down to almost ground level in most populated areas, and generally spinning the Earth around like a school room globe. It’s an almost Godlike experience, and one which is free. If you haven’t yet experienced Google Earth (and if so where have you been?) it’s now available for both Mac and PC and you should really go and download it now.

Using the maps you can fly around the world seeing sights, zooming down to almost ground level in most populated areas, and generally spinning the Earth around like a school room globe. It’s an almost Godlike experience, and one which is free. If you haven’t yet experienced Google Earth (and if so where have you been?) it’s now available for both Mac and PC and you should really go and download it now.For the best download ever go to http://earth.google.com/

If you are a 3D fan you must be shocked by the price of proper 3D software in the current market. DAZ|Studio has a price that is right; it’s free to download. It’s a full featured 3D program that specializes in the same kind of 3D human figure rendering that you can find in Poser, and to a very high standard. So what’s the catch?

There isn’t one really. The software is free but you have to pay for most of the models. That being said the quality of the models is very high and they are not highly priced, so you can get yourself some very cool models once you get used to the software using the models which come with it. There are also lots of very cheap or even free models, plus the software can load Poser models, of which there are thousands on the Internet.

The quality of the rendering from the software is very high, and if you light the models correctly and use the amazingly realistic hair you can download, the results will be almost indistinguishable from reality.

Find out more from http://www.daz3d.com/

If you’re tired of having to download your podcasts through iTunes, you might like to try Juice. Formerly known as iPodder (and falling foul of Apple’s jealous protection of its trademarks), the newly renamed Juice is a podcast collector. Like iTunes it is free, but unlike iTunes it supports more than 15 languages, supports multiple media players, and even has  has a built-in directory with thousands of listed podcast feeds.

One of the main benefits it has over iTunes is that it doesn’t have a huge window which takes over your entire desktop. It’s hard to run iTunes in anything less than 80% of your available screen area. Juice is small and neat and looks and feels a lot more like some kind of Bittorrent client. In fact that’s very similar to the way it works too, downloading the RSS feeds as though they were files.

If your iTunes directory is taking over your PC, or indeed your Mac, and you are looking for something a little different, with a smaller footprint and great no nonsense functionality, then Juice is your man.

For more information go to http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/