Have you ever been on vacation and trying your best to take a good photo of/with a monument or tourist attraction? But people keep getting in the way of the shot or walking or standing in the way? You could wait, but if its a busy area, you might be waiting a long time!

Now there’s an alternative! Simply take multiple photos, ideally with a tripod or very steady hand.

When you get home, simply go on over to this website to use “Tourist Remover”! How it works is, it stitches the tourist-free areas of your multiple shots together to form one “tourist-free” photo, free of unwanted people in the frame.

No one will ever know that your shot used a little technological help, and you won’t even have to hire any crowd control!

Check it out here.

Wouldn’t it be good if you could have one program that would do several useful things for your computer? Things such as optimizing it, cleaning it, and improving speed, reliability, privacy and security?

If this sounds good to you, then you might wanna take Glary Utilities for a test drive. While the name may not sound too exciting, it seems to be a very good, well programmed, well thought out, and most importantly of all, useful piece of software.

Its an all in one utilities suite that has some very useful things that most computer users are sure to find useful at some stage. This includes a disk cleaner for scanning for and removing junk temp files from your computer to free up valuable space. It also has a registry cleaner which so far seems pretty good compared to most ones i’ve tried out, just be careful and try not to delete anything you’re not absolutely sure about. If in doubt, you can make a backup first. Other features enable you to delete empty folders and dead shortcuts. (more…)

Comodo Firewall pro is a totally free, award-winning firewall.

I first tried out this program after i realized that the recent versions of ZoneAlarm were slowing up my computer a little too much. While ZoneAlarm is a great program, the version I was using was a little too much of a resource hog on my particular system.

So, in my quest to find a replacement I finally settled on Comodo Firewall as it runs smoothly, easily and doesn’t take up much resources.

The latest version is even better, as it contains “Defense +” an advanced Host Intrusion Prevention System (HIPS) that monitors and protects important system resources and guards against unauthorized system changes such as rootkit installations, memory injections, keyloggers and more. So rather than having 2 separate programs; a firewall and HIPS program. You get both in one!

Apparently, according to some tests conducted, it even surpasses the capabilities of similar paid-for software. Not bad for a freebie huh?

Basically, this is a very good Firewall/Intrusion Prevension System that’s both easy enough for beginners to use and also has plenty of things for the more advanced computer geek types to sink their teeth into if they so choose. It does what it sets out to do and does it well!

Wanna see for yourself? Head on over to the homepage here where theres more details and the free download.

As you probably know by now (hopefully), its essential these days to have an anti-malware/spyware/adware scanner. Along with the mandatory protection of an antivirus program of course.

A-Squared Free is ,as the name implies, a free scanner for scanning your computer for nasties that may have crept on behind the scenes. It contains a massive database that is very regularly added to, just be sure to update it each time before you run it. I advise doing a full system scan the first time you use it, but you can also use it by right clicking on a folder and choosing it from the context menu to scan that folder. Its extensive and growing database of Trojans, Spyware, Adware, Worms, Keyloggers, Rootkits, Dialers and other such unwelcome guests on your computer makes this another powerful tool in the ongoing job of keeping your computer secure and private.

Its interface is neat, easy on the eyes and simple to use. It currently has over 4 million users, so they must be doing something right!

You can find out more info and download it by clicking right here.

GNU Solfege is a very comprehensive ear training program.

The interface is a little rough and ready, but gets the job done. While it may not be the prettiest piece of software out there, it certainly is thorough at doing what it sets out to do.

It helps you improve your musical ability with an impressively detailed amount of “musical ear” training such as recognizing and identifying chord progressions, intervals, rhythms and scales. It’s sure to be of use to anyone studying music or musical theory. It also has statistics, so you can track your progress, and tests are included so you can see just exactly how much its helping you to improve your musical proficiency and understanding.

It’s a free and open-source program available for Windows and also comes in a Linux version. Go to the website here for more information and the free download.

Got a favorite website but you hate the look of it? Now you can make it how you want it to be!

Stylish is a Firefox extension that enables you to change the look of websites. For example you could change the default text and background colors to be light colored text on a dark background. You can do this either on a site by site basis or globally effecting all websites you visit.

If you visit http://userstyles.org/stylish/ there is a selection of user made styles for global use or for specific popular sites such as Youtube and Wikipedia. These are easily imported into the extension and can be easily enabled, disabled, or removed according to your own taste.

As well as working with Firefox it also works with Thunderbird, Flock, SeaMonkey, Mozilla Suite, and Songbird and can also change the look of all these programs.

I find this very useful if you spend a lot of time on sites such as Wikipedia and don’t like reading on a glaring white screen. Now you can change to a darker background and your eyes will thank you!

More info and download here.

If you’ve been a Windows user for any length of time it’s probably come to your attention that its not exactly a perfect system. One issue with Windows is that when you uninstall a program, it leaves behind a lot of leftovers in the registry, which can cause problems in time, like slowing up your computer.

Smarty Uninstaller is a utility for fully uninstalling programs without leaving any traces behind.

As an extra precautionary measure safety features such as registry backup and restore are also available and the ability to protect important system files so they can’t get accidentally deleted while using this program.

This is a useful utility to have for anyone who finds themselves installing and uninstalling programs on a regular basis. As with any programs like this which delete or clean up things, its wise to be careful and I recommend making a system restore point before use.

For further details of features and to download a trial, Click here.

This week sees a new addition to GMails ever growing bag of tricks, AIM compatibility! AIM, AOL’s popular instant-messaging service has been intergrated into Gmails Web-based e-mail client. This integration was possible due to the Open AIM SDK Library. So now when you open up your GMail you’ll be able to sign into your AIM Account by clicking Settings-Chat. Your AIM buddies will appear on the contact list in most frequent order and then you can hover over and get some basic buddy info.

So basically, now when people are using Gmail, they can see if the people they’re sending e-mail to are available for live chat on AIM (now possible directly in the Gmail interface) instead. A useful feature that’s sure to make a difference in many peoples lives if they frequently use both GMail and AOL Instant Messenger.

More info available here.

StuffPlug is a free add-on that adds some extra features to Windows Live Messenger (MSN Messenger).

Some of these additional features are the ability to boost the character limit. This allows you to send as many as 5,000 characters per message in a conversation, very useful if you have to copy and paste something long to someone.

You can also have a small customizable time zone clock under the user picture of the person you’re currently talking with,useful for those of us with friends in other timezones. Another feature is the ability to flash an LED light such as caps or number lock if you recieve a message while you’re in a full screen application or game.

It includes many more features, with varying degrees of usefulness,but you only have to select the ones you like. For the full details of all features, check out the homepage here where you can read more info and download it.

Lanvisor is a program which lets you view the desktops of others computers connected to your local area network. This could prove useful in certain circumstances such as to monitor employee activity in an office situation therefore insuring better productivity or to make sure children aren’t being exposed to inappropriate internet sites in a home situation.

You can customize the features of the screenshots it shows such as screenshot size and display order, even showing them as a slideshow or as several smaller images when used on multiple computers. The program runs invisible to the users. It’ll also let you view some system performance information on remote computers. Another neat feature is the ability to send text messages to the remote user.

Version 1.7 allows to add clients by the name of the remote computer.

Check out the homepage here for further information.