Fleace is a Flickr-based wallpaper switcher for people who’d like to change their desktop wallpaper on startup, but who dislike letting wallpaper changers linger around in their system tray consuming resources. The stand-alone app may be launched or given a shortcut, which lets the user preview a background before applying it to the desktop and closing Fleace down.

Alternately, you are able to add Fleace as a run-once app to your startup procedure, It works by pulling images from Fickr based on tags you define.

This little program is a good solution if you are sick of the same old boring background on your desktop and is also ideal for low-memory systems.

Fleace is Freeware. For more information and download check out the homepage.

IdentityPal Lost & Found is a free service to help reunite lost USB pen drives with their owners.

No installation is necessary. Just download the ZIP file,and copy the files to the root directory of your USB drive, and thats it! When it’s inserted into a computer, it will then display a main screen containing an address of the IdentityPal Service, ready for printing out. Whoever found your USB pen drive can then return it to you for free via IdentityPal’s Postage-Paid Return Mailing Service.

This service ships a lost USB drive back to its registered owner while keeping their personal information totally private.

Once your tracking ID is confirmed,your drive will be shipped back to you at no charge. This is worth trying out if you worry about losing your USB drive and its totally free.

Check it out and download here.

Totally Free Burner is a CD/DVD burner with a pleasant, minimalistic user interface and a great array of features.This simply named burning application provides a range of features that will handle most people’s CD/DVD burning needs. It also provides a slick design with a good look-and-feel as a further bonus.

Features include:

• “Screenshot2Bootable”: can produce bootable CDs and DVDs
• An effective array of configurations are supported; all current hardware interfaces (IDE/SCSI/USB/1394/SATA).
• Multi-Session or Disc-at-Once mode for all formats; any combination of UDF/ISO9660/Joliet bridged file systems, and UNICODE support.
• Burns Audio CDs: supports mp3, wav, ogg and wma file formats.

One drawback is it doesn’t rip audio CDs, but there are many other utilities that can do this.

It can burn from local DVD files or ISO. There is also support for using UDF format, for compatibility with hardware DVD players. Latest version has Drag and drop support for files and folders for further ease of use.

This is an all round good burning application for anyone who’s looking for a free burner program and is well worth checking out. You can get it here at the homepage.

Smart Shutdown is a tidy and easy to use scheduling tool.

It has right click operation from system tray menu to execute system operations such as shut down, log off, reboot, lock, turn off, hibernate, disconnect from the Internet or network, enter standby mode in Windows, and shut down and reboot computers in your network – all both manually and automatically, as well as if you’re away from the computer for a certain amount of time. It has the power to schedule to nearly any time.

I have tried a few other similar shut down programs, but some of them failed to completely shut down resulting in me waking to find my computer still on all night as it waited for some never to be completed shut down step to happen. Apparently the creators have given a 99.8% guarantee that this will shutdown your computer each time! Gotta be a good sign!

This small program does exactly what I need – to shut down my computer automatically when i’m not around to do it manually! Let’s not ignore that it also has style and groovy animations to add that edge, in addition to inbuilt transparency as well. When you’re in a hurry to shut down or want to do so automatically when you’re away, you’ll be glad you installed this neat program.

Its freeware, so check out the homepage.

This is one good IM. I never thought I could design my images, pictures and graphics and communicate with those on IMs. It’s just easy to use.

The widow doesn’t command so much in terms of beauty, just like Microsoft paint. But it works well for me and it’s quite reliable.

I should give the company thumbs-up for this ingenious creation. Its properties are also one to get acquainted with. It is also Multi-lingual and internationalized. I like it and I am sure you will.

Look it up yourself at http://coccinella.im

WinFF is a graphical user interface for the popular command line video converter FFmpeg.

This effectively is just a front-end interface to make working with FFmpeg for converting video formats a lot easier than typing in a bunch of command line information. It runs FFmpeg for you. So, you just select your files, and, it takes care of the rest.

WinFF doesn’t actually convert any video files. It just runs FFmpeg. So this means that it will convert any video file that FFmpeg is able to convert. Therefore, if FFmpeg won’t convert the file, then WinFF won’t either. But its likely that you’ll be able to convert your format with these tools unless its a rare format.

You simply choose your file and select the settings you want it to be converted into such as file format, bitrate, framerate etc. No external codecs are needed and it comes with a variety of presets to make things even easier. It even supports multithreading for dual processors.

A nice feature is the ability to work with multiple files, for example, to convert multiple files of various formats into the same format, all at once.

So if you need a free way to convert video files this is well worth checking out! Homepage here.

Screamer Radio is a Windows application that allows you listen to online radio stations right from your desktop. You’ll be able to listen to stations ranging from talk and comedy to various music genres. Its got has more than 4000 radio stations included in its radio directory so you’re sure to find something you like.

A cool feature is that it doesn’t just let you listen to radio, as additionally, it gives you the option of recording what you’re listening to.

Screamer Radio has support for the following radio streams:

• Shoutcast and Icecast MP3 Streaming
• Icecast OGG Vorbis Streaming
• WMA Streaming
• AAC Streaming

The Recording features are:

• Recording buffer: For example: begin recording in the middle of a song and you can still save the whole song!
• Direct MP3 Audio stream saving, without loss of quality!
• Direct OGG Vorbis stream saving, without loss of quality!
• Or encode OGG Vorbis as MP3 using Lame
• Encode WMA or AAC to MP3 using Lame

When you record a stream using Screamer Radio it’s able to name the files after the song that’s played, however this does require the radio station to transmit this sort of information.

There’s also a portable version available

Full details and download from the homepage.

fSekrit is a really useful utility for those of us who value our privacy yet like to keep things as simple as possible. It enables you to read and edit encrypted text files that are totally self contained and requires no installation.

This makes it perfect for using on a thumbdrive to keep sensitive information private. For example you could have a text file with passwords or contact’s information, any kind of text information at all that you want to keep private. Should your thumbdrive be lost or stolen, your information will be safely password protected.

It uses strong encryption (256-bit AES/Rijndael in CBC mode) and the data is never transfered to the computers hard disk, making it very secure for those of us who are a tad paranoid especially when using public computers.

It’s free and you can get it from the fSekrit homepage here.

Revo Uninstaller is a freeware utility to help uninstall your unneeded software properly.

The problem with conventional uninstallers that come with most programs, is that they sometimes do a sloppy job of uninstalling. They’re known to often leave remnants behind, such as files and registry entries that are no longer needed. This can lead to your system becoming cluttered with these unnecessary leftovers which may even slow it down after a while.

It works by first calling up a programs regular uninstaller, and then after that, it cleans up what may be left behind. It also includes additional functionality such as an auto start manager, junk files cleaner, browser history cleaner, secure file deletion etc.

Its interface is very intuitive and for a free program, this does a thorough job at what it claims to do and does it as good if not better than similar paid programs. Definitely worth checking out if you’ve been in search of such a utility. You won’t beat the price on this one either!

Click here to get it and further info, it’s free!

DesktopCoral is small, unusual program. Its purpose is to shield a designated portion of your screen from maximised applications and other windows.

This is useful if you have an application such as a system monitor, sidebar, instant messenger window, etc. which you would like to keep in constant view. In fact, this little program is a perfect companion to Samurize, a free desktop system monitor which I previously reviewed. The reserved area can be as high or wide as you choose, and included is an easy option to run DesktopCoral at startup, so you can “set it and forget it”. So if you happen to work with a screen area or window you don’t want being covered up by other windows, try out this simple yet useful little program.

More details and download it from the homepage here.