Many people absolutely hate the idea of having to use a paper dictionary and thesaurus.  First of all, you’d have to shuffle through both of them separately and that could waste a lot of time, but also flipping through a bunch of pages looking for one specific word is a time consuming process that could make you less productive in the future.

The solution?  Take the dictionary and thesaurus to the electronic realm!  And that’s exactly what’s been done here with TheSage’s English Dictionary and Thesaurus.  It is a multifaceted software program with a complete dictionary and thesaurus of the English language.  What’s even better is that it runs locally on your computer so you don’t even have to be connected to the Internet in order to use it.

You can not only search thousands of different entries with just one convenient search bar, but you can actually use wildcards and anagrams in your search; not to mention that the software itself keeps a history of searches for you to refer back to at a later date. You can even go ahead and customize the look of the dictionary program to make it look exactly how you want.  It’s simply fantastic!
 
More information can be found at http://www.sequencepublishing.com/thesage.html
 

KoolIM is a site that allows you instant access to your instant messengers. There’s no extra software to download or anything, you just go to the KoolIM website. It’s perfect for when you’re at an internet cafe computer that doesn’t have your usual IM client installed, or maybe you’re just a neat freak and you don’t really wanna bother installing several IM clients to clutter up your pc.

You can easily sign on to AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, and ICQ using your existing screen names and passwords. So if you use different computers a lot and just want to use the regular basic features of instant messaging, its worth checking out.

Go here and see for yourself. It even works from behind firewalls or proxy servers!

If you’ve been looking for a great archiver that supports most compressed and encoded files, then this is the way to go. PowerArchiver is a great archive utility for Windows and it provides support for most compressed and encoded files, as well as access to many powerful features and tools. The cool thing about this software is that it does all these through an easy to use interface that seamlessly integrates with Windows Explorer.

Incase you are wondering what kind of stuff this tool supports , here you go; PowerArchiver supports ZIP, 7-ZIP, CAB, LHA (LZH), TAR, TAR.GZ, TAR.BZ2, BH, RAR, ARJ, ARC, ACE, ZOO, GZ, BZIP2, XXE, MIME, UUE and yENC file formats. An internal viewer displays TXT, RTF, and more than 18 image formats.

PowerArchiver creates and works with unlimited size ZIP archives with enhanced ZIP format speed and compression.

That’s not all. You will love the Password Manager that helps store your frequently used passwords. You can also encrypt your archives using 5 different methods including 256-bit AES. What about back ups? This software backs up your work with PowerArchiver’s Auto-Backup tool and FTP support. And so much more

If you are not a native English speaker not to worry other editions of this cool software are available in German and French.

In the latest version, PowerArchiver 2007 10.2 Beta 1 the significant changes include:

• New Ribbon Interface;
• Configuration Screen on startup for selecting classic or Ribbon interface.

For more info and trial download go to http://www.powerarchiver.com/

Need a small but very effective open source editor for plain text? Check out AkelPad! AkelPad is an open source editor for plain text. It is designed to be a mall and fast.

Still not sure this is for you; check out these features that AkelPad has:

• Full support of Unicode strings on Unicode systems (NT/2000/XP/2003);
• Single window mode (SDI), multi window mode (MDI);
• Support of Unicode codepages (UTF-16 little endian, UTF-16 big endian, UTF-8);
• Correct pseudographics displaying;
• Editing of files with “Read Only” attribute;
• Notice when trying to open binary file;
• Multi-level undo;
• Remember last opened files;
• Printing of a document;
• Support of language modules;
• Plugins support (syntax highlighting, auto-completion, scripts execution, keyboard macros and much more).

For more info and download, go to http://akelpad.sourceforge.net/en/index.php

Scribd is a very interesting site for anyone who likes to read a lot! So if you are the type of person who spends a lot of time at the library or reading stuff at magazine racks without actually buying anything, this site is something you’ll love spending time at!

Scribd enables anyone to upload any kind of document for easy online browsing by visitors to the Scribd site. Multiple document formats are supported. There’s a lot of interesting and random documents to be viewed ranging from photos, ebooks, classic books, serious stuff, humorous stuff and random things of almost any subject you can think of. The site also has several different language versions.

The simplest way to describe it is that it’s like the YouTube of documents. Check it out for yourself, but be warned, you could be there for quite a while once you get stuck into something!

Here is a really useful tool for opera users, it’s called oSync.

This cool tool provides a simple and secure way to synchronize Opera bookmarks between computers. You will also love the fact that it can backup your bookmarks or publish them as HTML and clean up bloated bookmark files. And when it comes to the synchronizing, it really delivers in style, it can be completely automated and is aimed to be as transparent as possible for the user.

It is now also available on Opera Mini, meaning you can now use it on your mobile phone since Opera Mini is a free mobile browser.

For free download of o Sync visit http://osync.sourceforge.net/index2.html

“Computerize Your Assets” is home inventory software for making a list of everything you have in your home. Everyone hopes it won’t happen to them, but his could be very useful in an unfortunate event of fire, theft or natural disasters like flooding etc.

It can be useful to show police or insurance companies in such situations, also it’s hard to memorize absolutely everything you own anyway! Especially regarding brand, model, serial number and cost. It has a lot of useful features such as unlimited categories,items and locations, encryption, graphs, picture and video support, and much more than I can list right here.

If this sounds like it could save you from a lot of trouble someday for whatever reasons such as your home location, local water levels or weather patterns , etc, Its definitely worth checking out at the site here for much more info.

The latest updated version of this cool software is out- SIW 1.69 Build 632. If you don’t know about SIW before let me let you in on the gist:

SIW is a Read-Only / Display-Only System Information tool that gathers detailed information about your system properties and settings.

It is a utility that includes detailed specs for Motherboard, BIOS, CPU, Devices, Memory, Video, Drivers, Ports, and Printers. SIW also displays information about Operating System, Installed Programs, Processes, Services, Serial Numbers, Users, Open Files, System uptime, Users, Network, Network Shares, etc.

With this software you also get real-time monitors for CPU, Memory, Page File usage and network traffic. It also displays currently active network connections, Passwords hidden behind asterisks, installed codecs, and more.

Think it’s worth checking out? Well It’s FREEEEE so it won’t cost you anything but rather give you a lot.

Go check it out at http://www.gtopala.com/index.html

Here is a freeware that comes highly recommended, it is called Movable Type. If you want the best of professional grade blogging, you need to check out this software.

Movable Type is the platform that invented professional-grade blogging, powering the biggest and most successful blogs for pro bloggers, publishers, organizations, enterprises and businesses of any size. Of course blogging is fast evolving but so is Movable Type as it leads the way with reliable service, outstanding performance and continuous innovation.

The latest version is Movable Type 4.0; Go check it out at http://www.movabletype.com/

The latest version of Nokia PC Suite is out!

Nokia PC Suite is a package of Windows-based PC applications developed especially for use with Nokia phones. Depending on your phone model, it lets you synchronize, edit, and back up many of your phone’s files on a compatible PC through a wireless or cable connection.

The latest Changes in this latest version includes:

• Enhancements to performance and stability;
• Improved synchronization of files and folders between PC and phone;
• Improved notification system (add-on applicationsNotifies when new add-on applications are available.

Go to http://www.nokia.com/pcsuite for more info and download.

Nokia PC Suite is a free PC software product designed to help you make the most of your Nokia phone. With Nokia PC

Suite, you can connect your phone to a PC and access mobile content as if the phone and the PC were one. Go Check it out at http://www.nokia.com/pcsuite