Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and other major browsers have something that users like and do not like. For example, users like IE because of its adaptability to practically every website created; Firefox is probably the fastest of the major browsers and; Opera features skin which customizes the look of the browser.

What if all these features could be found in one browser? That is practically the aim of a relatively unknown browser called Acoo. Although the name of the browser may not ring any bells for most users, it’s gaining in popularity everyday because of its features. Acoo is based on IE but doesn’t have the clutter like the popular browser. The browser’s skin could also be customized like Opera and its lightweight (even lighter) compared to Firefox.

But aside from collecting the good things from major browsers, it has developed features that makes it unique compared to other browsers. There are two impressive features of the browser: first, it has the ability to completely wipe out the browsing history. Although other browsers could also clean their records, they are not as easy as Acoo. The second unique feature is the mouse-enabled commands. Instead of clicking, you can command your browser through mouse movements.

Unfortunately, the popularity of the website has not reached to a point wherein different websites could be launched in this browser. Some websites (especially the security-enabled) will require major browsers to be read. Still, this is a great alternative if you’re looking for a lightweight browser that you can use for regular browsing.

Check it out at http://www.acoobrowser.com/

PixPlant 2 utility boasts of user-friendly features that support you in creating impressive 3D textures. With the 3D texturing tool, the formation of high quality specular maps and other variety of textures using the plain images, get quite easier. The application is capable of adding various image based objects to your project. Process of texture creation is even simpler, which helps in deriving high quality output. The PixPlant program supports getting rid of the repetitive tasks like creating of textures, backgrounds, etc over and over again. It allows you to instantly transform your images into employable 3D textures, thus adding value, variety, and realism to your projects.

The PixPlant 2 opens with a soothing interface with display area and features placed neatly on it. For creating the all new textures and backgrounds etc, just begin with the selection of seed image files from your system. The selected images are placed with Seed image box at right. Below the Seed Image area are presented the options for modifying different texture and background attributes. The option-set includes Equalize Seed for choosing Light and Color, Straighten Seed to edit the image alignment, and Seed Pattern to alter the pattern for the new texture. Adding to these are Seed Scale for setting the pattern size, and Extra Seed Symmetry that let you choose the horizontal, vertical or 180° pattern. Altering these as per requirement, you can set the Tiling to be applied in horizontal, vertical or both styles. Now press ‘Generate’ and the program forms and shows the texture formed according to the specifications. There’s other tab named ‘3D Material’, where the seed file can be viewed and stored in Normals, Displacement, Specular, and Diffuse forms. In addition, even you can alter the Common Surface Settings for all forms.

Along with these functions, the PixPlant 2 also sports different supporting features and program configurations for deriving the desired output.

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Ka Firetask is a software package that is best described as being something that is for intermediate to advanced users of their computers. People that are within these two categories tend to have different tasks that they try to complete on a daily basis and the main thing about these particular tasks is that they can be repetitive and annoying, such as moving different files around.

This freeware package allows you to install different hotkeys or regular procedures on the computer and define them through scripting. The scripting will then take care of the tasks for you once it has been defined, leaving you free to devote your time to other tasks on your computer.

Many computer users will not have need of such a tool, but if you are a reader of this particular blog, chances are that you have tasks that if automated would save you a lot of time. This software package can help you get that done and the fact that it is available as freeware makes it that much more valuable to the people that have need of its services.

More information about this particular piece of software is available through the publisher’s website at http://www.konradp.com/products/firetask/.

Areca is a program written in the language of java and for that reason it is universally compatible with Windows systems just so long as you have the latest runtime environments installed. It is extraordinarily user-friendly as a result of this and for that reason many people have already downloaded it since its release on March 22, 2009.

The latest version of the program is the best one yet and has many different features to assist you with your file backup processes. For starters, you can not only backup the data on your drive, you can also compress that data and encrypt it in order to ensure that the data takes up less space and is harder to access for people that do not have the decryption protocols.

Very few software programs have the power to make guarantees, but Areca Backup is one of them because of the inclusion of mechanisms of transaction that check integrity at every step of the compression and encryption processes. If you have worries about how good they work, you can test them out before actually using them in the backup simulator that comes with the software package.

More information about Areca Backup 7.0.8 can be found through the publisher’s website at http://areca.sourceforge.net/

Creating a JPEG image file is a relatively simple process, but something that is not often that simple is finding a way to change the orientation of the image without losing a large amount of information in the process. The main reason for this has to do with how image editors work. The majority of them will work on the process of decoding the image from JPEG to bitmap, rotating the bitmap and then recoding it for JPEG format. While there is nothing inherently wrong with this process, the double conversions from and to JPEG both carry with them minor calculation errors that when combined result in the loss of a little bit of image quality.

What makes the JPEG Lossless Rotator 6.3 so good as an image editing program is the fact that it does not utilize the conventional method for changing JPEG orientations. Instead, it applies a shell integration transformation to the entire image and as a result does nothing except change the orientation. This keeps the image quality the same and since the program itself is downloadable for free, anyone that wants to maintain the best quality JPEGs possible should certainly grab the latest version of this program which was released on March 22, 2009.

Features:

• Shell integration (this allows you to rotate your JPEG photos by a right-click on the file)
• Command line
• Automatic rotation
• Batch rotation
• EXIF-data display
• Multilingual interface: Catalan, Chinese (simpl), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish and Swedish.

More information is available at Annystudio.

Q-Dir is a bit of an oddity when it comes to freeware because of the fact that it is not really something new. The functions of Q-Dir to a large extent are already available in Windows, but the program makes those functions a lot easier to apply and in doing so increase the level of convenience that the average user can experience.

For example, Q-Dir has pioneered a concept known as Quadro-View which allows you to actually utilize quadrants of the screen in order to organize your files into different folders and categories. You can bring up favorites in different parts of the view and of course you can drag and drop from one view to another in order to move different files around. With many different functions in addition to these basic ones, the most recent version of Q-Dir released on March 22, 2009 is definitely loaded for bear.

You could certainly accomplish the functions of Q-Dir with four different explorer Windows, but anyone that has tried to use even two different Windows at the same time knows how difficult and inconvenient it can be. With Q-Dir however, those problems are solved.

More information is available from http://www.softwareok.com/.

If you are a wrestling fan and love to number crunch and go through a number of what if scenarios in your head, you are absolutely going to love this extraordinary piece of freeware available online. Pro Wrestling Nexus: Complete was released as an update to the previous version of the game with the same name and now includes an interface that allows you to simulate wrestling matches between many different wrestlers from across the ages. Support for 350 different wrestlers exists within this game, allowing you to pick people that might never have fought in real life and go through the ultimate what if scenarios in order to see who the best wrestler of all time actually is.

You can create different championships with this game and even get the wrestlers that win those championships to defend their titles time and time again. You can even create new wrestlers of your own and match them against the best the world has ever seen. With extensive statistical tracking, you can even know exactly what is going on with each wrestler at any given time.

More information about this simulator can be found at http://geocities.com/exeventgames/index.html

Time To Leave is a perfect solution for increasing disk space that never seems to be enough. It acts as a file and folder registry, remembers what file must be erased, or just may be erased if free disk space level falls too low. The program knows exactly what files or folders can be cleaned up when you need critical disk space.

Features: Using an intuitive interface and working in the context menu of each file and folder, Time To Leave never annoys you with its presence. It works in the background until you are going to set file or folder lifetimes. Because of its silent nature and optional Windows NT service, this program perfectly suits not only Windows 98 workstations, but also huge Windows Server 2003 based file or web servers. It can

• Erase files or move them to recycle bin;
• Erase securely or compress to save more space;
• Archives may be password protected;
• Set the lifetime of files and folders etc.

Overall: There are many sweepers, cleaners and evidence eliminators on the market, all of them can clean some garbage, but it never helps. When you have no space on your 60Gb hard drive, one or ten megabytes cannot help you. You have temporary folders (usually called TEMP), you may have download (“download”, “incoming”) folders, where you collect files, and forget about them. You can set options for folders, for example, to remove old files from such folders, to recycle bin, and leave only fresh files alive. Once you make your decision, you will never need to run sweepers or cleaning tools on that folder.

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Internet Download Manager not only accelerates downloads by up to 5 times, it can also schedule downloads and recover and resume broken downloads. It reuses available connections without additional ones and their time consuming login stages to improve download performance. There is a scheduling feature which allows you to connect to the Internet at a set time, download the files you want, then disconnect or even shut down your computer when completed.

Features: Internet Download Manager supports firewalls, proxy and mirror servers, FTP, HTTP and HTTPS protocols, redirects, cookies, download queues, directories with authorization, MP3 audio and MPEG video content processing, and a large number of different server platforms. IDM integrates seamlessly into all browsers automatically (IE, FireFox, Opera etc). It can be also integrated into any other Internet applications that use FTP, or HTTP protocols. It also

• Supports proxy servers, ftp and http protocols, firewalls, redirects, cookies, authorization, MP3 audio and MPEG video content processing
• IDM integrates seamlessly into Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape, MSN Explorer, AOL, Opera, Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Firebird, Avant Browser, MyIE2
• Can drag and drop files

Overall: The program features an adaptive download accelerator, dynamic file segmentation, high speed settings technology, and multipart downloading technology to accelerate the download process. It also sports some new features such as a multi-language GUI, a free tool for capturing your desktop to any format video, multilingual support, zip preview, download categories, scheduler pro, sounds on different events, HTTPS support, queue processor, html help and tutorial, enhanced virus protection on download completion, progressive downloading with quotas, built-in download accelerator, and many others.

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Easy2Sync is a unique software developed for those who have two or more computers at home. This type of application lets users sync files in different devices for easier access of users. Although this practice sounds redundant since the same files will be available in different computers, this is a highly recommended practice to ensure that the files will be available in case one of the computers doesn’t work as expected or the hard disk in a device is destroyed.

The difficulty of syncing files in different devices is usually on the initial set-up. But Easy2Sync deals with the problem by automatically searching for devices it can sync with. A LAN or even a WLAN should be more than enough to get you started in automatic syncing. The application also supports FTP (File Transfer Protocols) in case one of your computer functions as the server.

But even with heavy task in syncing two devices with gigabytes of files, Easy2Sync will not drag the computer to a halt. The application will just work in the background without using most of your computer’s resources. The time of syncing could also be configured depending on your preferences.

The best feature of the application is its start-up wizard. If you are not familiar with the application or even in syncing, this tool should be give you a mini-crash course and guide on how to use the application. This application is highly recommended for home and educational use since it could help preserve the most important files no matter what happens.

Check it out at http://www.easy2sync.de