Here is a tool that all guitar lovers will find useful. Guitar Solo Toolbar is a free add-in for the Internet Explorer browser. The toolbar helps you to quickly find guitar information and equipment from any web page on www.MyGuitarSolo.com as well as on the major search engines: Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

This tool can help you to easily find and download guitar midi files and tabs to hundreds of popular songs. The toolbar also includes unique links and features for beginning as well as intermediate guitar players, such as a guitar tuner, various guitar scales, recommended modes, notations and tabs, and more.

It’s a guitar and music lover’s delight.

Visit http://www.myguitarsolo.com/toolbar/index.html for more info and download.

Skype 1.4 Alpha for Linux has been released, with quality improvements:

• Audio quality improvements, on par with Windows 3.2 and Mac 2.6;
• More reliable code, thanks to a major rewrite building on Trolltech’s Qt 4.2;
• Better device detection;
• ALSA plugins support;
• UI improvements for file transfer and general layout.

Also there’re still some problems with this Alpha release:

• There are no contact list groups;
• You can’t create new accounts;
• There’s no alert message if your chat message is undelivered.

 So you can try it here, but if you to use Skype on Linux without any problems get the October 2006 gold build. (more…)

MySpace is acquiring Photobucket for $250 million in cash. TechCrunch is reporting that there is also an earn-out for up to an additional $50 million.

Photobucket has been looking for a buyer since March, when they hired Lehman Brothers to help sell the company. They were looking for $300 million or more, but may have had few bidders other than MySpace.

The companies have been in serious acquisition discussions for the last couple of weeks – A dispute that involved Photobucket videos being blocked on MySpace led to acquisition discussions, and the block was removed.

Photobucket generated $6.3 million in revenue last year and planned on hitting $25 million or more this year. They have 40 million registered users and add another 85,000 per day. (more…)

If you visit a lot of websites regularly like news sites, forums or whatever, then you will enjoy the services of this software, it is called ServiceHolder.

ServiceHolder helps to keep your sites grouped and tabbed easily in just one window. Each site which you add to ServiceHolder has its own unique settings (popup killer, script killer, etc.). So each site is like a whole new browser installation.

What are the main features that ServiceHolder supports? To mention but a few:

• Multiple websites in one window!
• Kills banner popups!
• Access and manage IE favorites
• Live update from internet
• Minimize to tray
• 70,380 mood colors
• Auto refresh on timer
• No installation or extra DLLs
• 100% Banner free.

If you think the software can meet your needs why don’t you just check it out. It’s free.

Go to http://www.serviceholder.com/

One thing is worthy of note though: According to the publisher:

“The auto update server is currently down. This will not affect your application; the error you get in the startup is just for the auto update services.”

Here is a really cool tool worth checking out. Meetro is radius and proximity based software. Getting rid of the jargons this means this software finds like-minded people around you.

Meetro is the first the world’s first location-aware IM client and real-time social network — which means Meetro allows you to meet real people in your neighborhood. One of the cool things about Meetro is that it has multiple IM network support so you don’t lose contact with your old friends on other networks.

One thing you will definitely love about this software is the fact that it generates buddy lists based on proximity so when you enter the program you get two buddy lists: Your normal one, i.e. AOL, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ list and an additional one based on who is nearby.

Check out http://www.meetro.com/ for more info.

Oh! Less I Forget, Meetro will cost you nada, nothing, $0, IT’S Free !!! Go Check it out. http://www.meetro.com/
 

Need a free tool for your mp3 conversions? This one, Free WMA to MP3 Converter, should come in handy.

Free WMA to MP3 Converter converts Windows Media files to MP3 files which can be played in MP3 Players easily. So you can have your favorite songs on your MP3 player or your mobile phones after the conversion and enjoy your favorite tracks anywhere you are.

The fact that MP3 files are usually smaller than the normal media format files will give you the opportunity to have more songs using the same space on your system or phone. All Windows Media formats (*.wma, *.wmv, *.asf) are supported.

Check it out http://www.wma-mp3.org/ at it’s free!!!!

Yahoo Inc. is shutting down Yahoo Photos, its first-generation photo storage site, and asking users to move instead to Yahoo’s Web 2.0 photo sharing site, Flickr, a Yahoo official said on Thursday.

In June, tens of millions of registered users of Yahoo Photos will be notified of various options including upgrading to Yahoo’s Flickr service or various outside-photo storage sites, according to Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield.

Yahoo also will offer consumers the option of loading their photos on competing sites when users are notified next month.

These include PhotoBucket — the most popular online photo sharing service among users of social network sites like News Corp.’s MySpace — or more conventional photo printing and storage site such as Kodak Gallery, Shutterfly Inc. or Snapfish, he said. (more…)

If you’ve been trying different antispyware to give your PC a solid defense but nothing worthwhile has been forthcoming, then you need to check out this freeware, Arovax AntiSpyware.

Arovax AntiSpyware is an innovative, powerful, speedy and extremely easy to use Anti-Spyware scanner and remover. Designed to become a solid defense for PC systems by giving a fight back to the most dangerous online threats of the new century, this software really does its job. It’s powerful but very easy to use as it as a cool interface.

One thing is worthy of note though as with all free applications, you need to have a realistic expectation, it can’t detect and remove everything but believe me, it really does a great job.

Don’t take my word for it, Check It Out For Yourself at http://www.arovaxantispyware.com

Here is a really useful tool that should come in handy for your conversion needs, HandBrake.

Handbrake is a utility that can convert standard DVDs into a compressed format of your choice; mp4 with AAC audio or AVC with h264 video and AAC audio. HandBrake also gives you the freedom to crop the image to get rid of the black bars to bring down the size even more and lets you choose options as to how you want it encoded. HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 converter, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.

The latest version, HandBrake0.8.5 Beta 1 has this major change:

• Encompasses everything that was in MediaFork 0.8.0b1 and much more

One of the things you will enjoy about this software is that it’s easier to use than others in its category and very intuitive.

Want to give it a try? Go to http://handbrake.m0k.org/?page_id=2

As I said it’s open source so it won’t cost you anything.

Here is a tool that comes highly recommended, Omziff.

Omziff is a straightforward encryption utility that uses various cryptographic algorithms to encrypt and decrypt textual files. What kind of algorithms does Omziff use? Here are just some of them: Blowfish, Cast128, Gost, IDEA, Misty1, Rijndael, and Twofish.

But that’s not all there is to this cool tool; Omziff also generates random passwords, and offers simple file shredding.

The good thing about Omziff is that it is freeware, so it doesn’t cost a dime. You will also appreciate the fact this straightforward encryption utility comes in a standalone executable file with no dependencies. It is a USB application

Want to give it a shot? Go to http://www.xtort.net/xtort-software/omziff.