I just had the chance to install and play with Nasa World Wind. It proves to be quite an alternative to the famous Google Earth in some ways. This is a program that will allow you to zoom in on any place you want on Earth, but also Venus, Mars, Jupiter…even the Moon.

You can select from various types of satellite map images, this would be very useful for anyone who’s into geology, geography etc. But you can also do much more, such as downloading live weather maps, which would be interesting for anyone into meteorology. It uses Shuttle Radar Topography Mission elevation data and high resolution LandSat imagery. Yes…this is a little more technical than Google Earth!

It has a similiar interface as Google Earth in some ways, such as being able to click and drag to spin the globe to the desired position. You can zoom in and out with the mousewheel,or by double clicking. You can select the map type you’d like to see from a menu on the top. Hint: The landsat one is the one to choose if you wanna zoom in on photo’s of streets, etc.

On many levels, World Wind is good for scientific, educational and research purposes. For driving directions, local information, exploring and other recreational activities, Google Earth might be a better options, as this program might be a little too scientific for most people.

You can check out much more info and download it completely free from the NASA site here.

I miss BASIC. I used to code all the time when all computers had BASIC built in, now I hardly ever even think about it let alone write a line of code. But recently I’ve been getting the urge and I just noticed that the Visual Studio series has Express versions, like Visual Basic.

You can easily design great-looking applications using the simple drag-and-drop interface designer. ANd using themes you can make apps that have that XP look. To help you debug your code, there is Code colorization, syntax checking, and what it calls “IntelliSense” which provides an kind of interactive suggestions and code snippets, I think. That’s not something I’ve tried yet. But AutoCorrect is very cool. It’s like the spell checker in Word and can suggest corrections apparently for over 230 common programming mistakes.

To learn more about getting back into code, go see Visual Basic Express on the Microsoft web.

Most people I know these days use Firefox. It’s a fast, secure tabbed browser that isn’t made by Microsoft, so scores big with all my PC and Mac friends. But Opera has been around longer and has some cool features too. I’m currently road testing the new version to see if I’ll migrate, and not sure at the moment.

It has advanced fraud protection which protects you against sites that try to steal your personal information. It speaks BitTorrent so you can (cough) download files. You can add your favorite search engines to it easily and quickly, although most people I know only use the one, maybe two. There’s a bunch of other features like widgets, content and pop-up blockers. It’s all very good. Good enough to win me away from Firefox? Hmm, the jury is still out on that one.
For more info and a download go to the Opera Web.

Why buy a screensaver when you can make your own? Here is a really great software, Easy ScreenSaver Station. It allows you make your own screensaver easily.

With this software, you get to create screensavers that are just the way you want them. Images, Flash movies and background music can be included into your creations easily. Want to use photos from your digital camera or scanner directly? No problem. Easy Screensaver Station allows you to do this with ease.

After some easy steps, you can save your creation as a single standard ScreenSaver (.SCR) or a self-installing ScreenSaver (.EXE) for distribution. More features such as image editing, transition settings, password protection, copyright settings, preview, email sending and so on are included. No programming skills or royalties required.

A new updated version of this great software is out with these updates:

• Product renamed to !Easy ScreenSaver Station (Original name is !Easy ScreenSaver Studio)
• Set License Agreement for your ScreenSaver
• Remembered the last position and size of the main window
• Optimized the operation to set delay time for the objects

Are you ready for some screensaving creating fun? Check it out here!

Videozilla is a video conversion tool for converting video files from and to a variety of different file types really easily. Supporting AVI, MPEG, RM, MOV, ASF, WMV, SWF, FLV, MP4, M4V, 3GP, 3G2 all the hard work is done with a simple a right-click on the video files. You can also do rudimentary editing, setting your own start and end points in a video. You can also change width and height, video and audio quality etc, all on the fly.

You can also do audio extraction from video and save as audio as an industry standard MP3 or WAV. A fabulous add on to any Windows machine. Once you have it you’ll wonder how you got along without it. Shareware product so be prepared to shell out the cash because this one is real good.

http://www.videozilla.net/index.html

If you value your privacy online and you are in need of a software that will help achieve privacy protection with ease, you should try Track Eraser Pro. Tracks Eraser Pro will protect you by cleaning up all the tracks of Internet activities on your computer.

What I really appreciate about Track Eraser Pro is that it’s an easy to use software. Only one click is enough to erase the cache, cookies, history, typed URLs, autocomplete memory, index.dat from your browser, and temp folder, run history, search history, open/save history, recent documents, etc.

Its free plugins gives you the opportunity to erase the tracks of up to 50 popular applications, such as playlist of Realplayer, Mediaplayer, QuickTime, recent files of Office, Acrobat, Winzip, etc easily.

That’s not all, a new version has just been recently released with these changes:

• Internet Explorer 7 fully supported
• Added support for Opera 9
• Added a Stop button
• Added Recycle Bin right click menu
• GUI optimized, Clean Hard Disk Free Space moved to Settings page main screen
• Minor bugs fixed

The only thing you might have an issue with like I did, is the price. It costs about $29.95. When I consider the fact that there certain freeware that does what it does, you may be tempted to ignore it. But it works very well and it has some extra features that is lacking in most other applications. Go check it out first! If you like it , go for it , if not don’t go past the trial version.

Are you ready to give it a try? CLICK HERE!

It’s not always easy to find a freeware that works perfectly doing what it is supposed to do not to talk of finding one that beat some shareware in its category hands down. But CCleaner is a really perfect system optimization tool that I will recommend to anybody any day. Started using it not too long ago and I have no regrets, instead it’s been good news galore. As it really helps me free up valuable disk space for things I need to get done and for my system to run faster.

CCleaner (Crap Cleaner) is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool. It removes unused files from your system – allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history.

A new updated version, 1.36.430, is out now with these changes:

• Fixed bug with Hotfix and logfile cleaning
• Added Office 2007 cleaning
• Minor tweaks and optimizations

This freeware really gets the crap out of your system. Check It Out HERE!

Everybody’s heard of shareware and freeware, right? What about donationware or postcardware? There are lots of different kinds of wares out there. What we’re talking about here is the agreement or understanding about the use of the software between the developer or publisher and the purchaser or user of the software. There may be some confusion, though, as to what each of these terms exactly means.

The concept of freeware is easy to understand. This usually means that the software is yours to use however you wish, free of charge. Sometimes certain types of uses are restricted, however. Some developers or publishers will allow the software to be used for free for personal use only, and not for commercial use or for making a profit. Other times, they may require that the software not be used for any government or military purpose. It depends on the personal values and beliefs of the creators of the software.

Shareware is pretty straightforward, too. The developer or publisher is sharing this software with you so that you may try it out to see if you’d like to purchase it. Sometimes shareware isn’t fully functional software (some call it ‘crippleware’), in order to persuade you to buy the full version. This was pretty common at one time and still is common with gaming software, but lately lots of shareware is offered as fully functional so that users can get a better idea of all of the features. Developers also may limit the length of time that the software will be fully functional or that it will work at all. This type of software is often called a demo. The demo software may become locked after a certain trial period and then can only become functional again after a registration code is purchased and entered into the program.

So, what about donationware or postcardware? These types of software aren’t seen quite as often, but are most similar to freeware. Essentially, they are free, but the developer usually asks that if you like the software or find it useful you make a donation so that development costs can be recapped and/or that further development can take place. Often, a small number of donors out of a larger user community can keep development alive. Postcardware, on the other hand, is just a request from the developer that you send them a postcard to let them know you like their software. It’s more of a feel-good gesture than anything else, but a small price to pay for the privilege of using good software.

There are other types of wares that can be found on the Internet, but most will fall under the types outlined above. The bottom line is that the developer or publisher can decide however they would like the software to be used, but it’s up to the users to honor that request.

Foobar2000 is another music player program. It’s got a pretty basic interface, so its not exactly for someone who who expect tons of skins, or who likes looks rather than sound and functionality, but its still a perfectly simple and efficient player. It supports a lot of audio formats, WAV, AIFF, VOC, AU, SND, Ogg Vorbis, MPC, MP2, MP3, MPEG-4 AAC and more can be added through official add-ons.

Even if it doesn’t support skins, you can customize the way this player displays the main window as much as you want. Fonts, background colors and text formatting can be changed using scripting.It also supports keyboard shortcuts.Media management is another strong point that can be found in foobar. Users with huge playlists will be happy with this.

Finally, advanced audio features! It can prevent clipping, control the preamp level and there are some sound processing modules available. While it looks very basic, it’s actually very customizable, maybe a little too customizable for beginners, so i guess it can be either way, simple or advanced depending on what you want from it.

It’s free and you can check it out here.

Hotkeys is a free and open source keyboard productivity environment. It’s loosely based upon the idea of the windows hot key, that little windows logo key on your keyboard that pops up the start menu when you hit it.

If you usually find key combinations hard to remember, this will make things much easier. You simply hold down the windows key for three seconds or hit Win+Z (while hotkeys is running) and it pops up a keyboard layout on-screen with icons on the keys that are configured.The keyboard is highly configurable. You can change the color and layout to make it match your actual, physical keyboard. Besides support for more than 100 international keyboards layouts, hotkeys also supports Dvorak layout.You can drag the icons to different keys or drag new ones on to have it exactly the way you want it to be.

This is a pretty cool program for anyone who uses keyboard shortcuts a lot and needs a good way of remembering, changing, or organizing them.

You can download it here and read more info.