Adobe has released preview versions of After Effects CS3 and Premiere Pro CS3. So now we have something to play until the final release in middle of summer.

The Premiere Pro preview is available for Intel Macs and XP/Vista platforms. There’s no license restriction on this preview so anyone can give it a try (but Mac users (Mac OS 10.4.9) won’t be able to use DV Capture). The other catch with this one – this is a preview version so if you get yourself into troubles with it there won’t be any tech support available.

You will need to provide your AE7, Production Studio or Bundle serial number in order to get an After Effects CS3 preview serial number. If you don’t own any of the required products, you can keep the software for 2 days before it self destructs.

RocketDock is a Mac-inspired dock for Windows users. For those that don’t know, a dock is fancy toolbar with some effects and added functionality thrown in and is a standard feature on Mac computers. It comes from the same people who made UberIcon, which i recently reviewed and if you also use that, Rocketdock also includes a function to use the same effects as you have chosen in UberIcon.

Some of its features include the ability to minimize windows to the dock and real-time window previews in Vista, ObjectDock Docklet support,compatible with MobyDock, ObjectDock, RK Launcher, and Y’z Dock skins, you can use icon sets you find online, and apparently it runs great on slower computers too!

Check the site for the full list of features.

Maybe you are a Mac user and want to have similar functionality on your Windows machine, or even if you just want to liven up your Windows desktop a little, it’s worth checking out this very smooth and very customizable and also very free program. Click here for more info and to download it.

TrueCrypt is an amazing free disk encryption program.

There are a couple of different ways in which you can use TrueCrypt. First, you can encrypt an entire partition on your drive (but not an existing partition). Or, you can create a file on your system that will act as a virtual partition. I like to do the latter because it allows me to backup the partition to DVD or even carry it around with me by putting it on a USB drive, like my iPod. This is handy if you like to carry sensitive information with you wherever you go.

The following main features are some of what make TrueCrypt simply the best disk encryption software around:

• TrueCrypt partitions look and work just like any other drive. Once you mount a TrueCrypt volume–by entering the volume’s password–it gets assigned a drive letter. So you can deal with the files just as you would if it were a secondary hard drive (copy, paste, delete, etc.)
• TrueCrypt is both free of charge and it’s open-source; which means you can trust it to do what it claims.
• TrueCrypt doesn’t use the Windows registry. Instead, it uses an XML file. This makes it portable and version compatible. Not only can you use TrueCrypt on XP, 2000, Windows Server 2003 and Vista, but you can use it on Linux and OS X (and it will probably be ported to even more operating systems than that.)
• TrueCrypt volumes can exist on CD’s, DVD’s, USB drives and so on (as long as you make sure to use UDF or FAT32 file systems).
• TrueCrypt affords you plausible deniability. What this means is that if, for whatever reason, some adversary tries to get at your files, they not only wouldn’t be able to hack your encryption. They wouldn’t even know that you encrypted anything in the first place! There’s simply no way to prove you’re using encryption. TrueCrypt makes your encrypted volumes undetectable as being encrypted. Instead, they just look like some random garbage file. Also, TrueCrypt allows for nested encrypted volumes. This means you could throw some junk files in the first layer–then tell someone the password for that–and they would only see that junk and assume you cooperated with them, since you gave them your password. However, the real data that you wanted encrypted would actually be contained within that as a second layer, invisible to the adversary.

Of course, to really convince them, those “junk” files should look like something worthy of being encrypted or they might assume you’re trying to trick them.

• TrueCrypt is superior to Windows XP’s built-in hard drive encryption because it’s open-source, portable across multiple Operating Systems and comes with plausible deniability. XP’s encryption doesn’t have plausible deniability because it uses certificates that anyone can view from the windows directory–which means they can know that you’re hiding something.
• TrueCrypt lets you choose from of the best algorithms in existence and you can even layer multiple algorithms on top of eachother for added security; though doing so is really overkill. Unless you really know what you’re doing, just use the default AES encryption. Furthermore, TrueCrypt doesn’t even know which algorithm you’re using. It tries your password against them all, until one works. This feature is needed for plausible deniability.

There are some other things to note: Currently, when you install TrueCrypt it will come with pretty good documentation in PDF form, so don’t worry about finding documentation online. Also, if you lose your password/key you won’t ever be able to access your TrueCrypt volume(s)! There’s no way you can hack your password back; this is truly strong security. So make sure you don’t lose your password. An additional precaution you can take is to back up the header file that TrueCrypt uses. What this allows you to do is change your password and the original key will still work as the master key.

So, I hope I’ve sold you on this program. Many–if not all–of the top security gurus out there use TrueCrypt. But don’t let its sophistication intimidate you. To the user, TrueCrypt is very easy to set up and use; the program will walk you through it very nicely. It’s extremely stable and is even something you could teach your family to use. In fact, another cool use for TrueCrypt is to create an encrypted volume, store some private files in it, and then share that volume–and its password–with trusted persons only. Such as: family, friends or coworkers.

SightSpeed is a free video and voice call program that allows you to make free pc to pc voice and video calls over your broadband Internet connection.

It also allows you to make calls to regular landline phones and cell phones (similar to what you can already do in programs like Skype). Those calls do cost you money, but the costs are still lower than from a regular home phone. You can buy “phone out” credits quickly by credit card. These credits are prepaid, so you need to purchase them in advance if you plan to use SightSpeed to make calls to regular phones.

At this time you can only make video calls to other SightSpeed users, pc to pc (also supports Mac).

Its a useful tool for anyone who needs to videochat with colleagues or friends and the set up is easy, but they even have video tutorials in case you need them. Check it out at the website here, for the download and more details.

Here is a useful tool that comes highly recommended, it is called XAMPP. It is an easy-to-install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. It is really very easy to install and to use: just download, extract and start. This tool is really easy to use.

Compared to many other software in its category like Apache2Triad, XAMPP is so much better as it is easier to use, has more features, and also allows you to switch between PHP versions in seconds. It is a complete web, database and FTP server package that’s so easy to install and use. Where does the name XAMPP come from? XAMPP’s name is an acronym for X (any of four different operating systems), Apache, MySQL, PHP and Perl.

One other great thing about this program is that no matter what your system runs on, Windows, Linux or Mac OS X, there is a version available for you.

If you are really serious about improving your web development productivity level, this cool tool is for you. Check it out HERE!

If you have an email address (and who doesn’t these days?), sooner or later you might end up entering it in a guestbook or forum, or even having it on your own website so that people can contact you. The problem with this is that programs spammers set loose on the Internet called spambots, will find your email address sooner or later and this will lead to you receiving spam emails.

Enter the Enkoder! This is a small online tool (or downloadable if you are a Mac user) which converts your email address into special code that those pesky spambots can’t read as being an email address.

The spambots won’t detect your email address, so will completely ignore it. Meanwhile your email address still appears the same as before, but won’t end up in the hands of the spammers. Check it out.

Songbird is a media player, but not all media players are quoted as promising “to be the Firefox of media players”.

Apparently the user interface is very similar to iTunes, but the main thing I noticed about this media player is its ability to list all the sound or video files on a page, almost as if they were local files.

You see how this thing operates, is you surf to sites such as mp3 blogs etc, by using the built-in browser, and all the media on the page will be listed. You can then choose if you would like to save or play any of these songs/videos locally to your collection. Of course you can also play and organize playlists etc, with your current mp3 or video collection that resides on your computer.

It is pretty cool to be able to instantly play media without having to open it in a separate program.

This might be useful software for anyone who routinely browses for music or videos online. You can find out more details and download it by clicking here!

7-Zip is an open-source file archiver with high compression ratio. It can compress your files using a variety of methods, such as 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR. It can also extract RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, Z, CPIO and NSIS archives.

Like other file archives you may be used to, 7-zip can integrate into the windows shell and it also has a command-line version. 7-ZIP also offers some advantages over other windows based archive programs such as winzip and winrar:
Open-source – You can read and modify the program source code.

• Cross-platform – You can run 7-zip on any modern operating system (Windows, Linux, OS X, and so on)
• No registration – There are no annoying splash screens or nagging registration pop-ups
• Provides a compression ratio that is 2-10% better than PKZIP and WINZIP provide for ZIP and GZIP archives.

Note that you can register 7-zip if you want to support it by clicking Help->About 7-Zip->register in the 7-Zip File manager but it’s not a requirement and it will never bug you to.

There are two basic ways you can associate certain file types with 7-zip. The easiest way is to open up the 7-zip file manager and choose Tools->Options and in the System tab choose the file extensions you want to associate with 7-zip. This will make it so files ending in those extensions are automatically opened in the 7-Zip file manager for extraction. If you choose to add the associations manually by the standard MS Windows way of right-clicking on a file, choosing “open with”, selecting the “always open files of this type with this program” and then browse for the 7-zip program then make sure you select C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7zFM.exe. There are two other binaries in the 7-Zip installation folder that could confuse you and they are called 7z.exe and 7zG.exe; so make sure to use 7zFM.exe (FM means File Manager)

It is possible that 7-Zip can handle all your file archiving needs but you may run into some files that were compressed using Winzip and they won’t always be compatible with 7-Zip. I personally haven’t came across this issue but just be aware of it.

To extract all the files of an archive first click Edit->Select All and then click the ‘Extract’ Button (As shown in the included screenshot)

Social music site Last.fm has recently updated their OS X client to the new version (1.1.0). Well, it’s not that BIG but still interesting to try out.

As for the new features… Well, official site is short on details, but users already found out what’s it all about. There are some UI changes that include new icons, font changes and button sizes, new version is only compatible with Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger). Also it lacks the ability to play multiple tags at the same time.

Test-drive it on your Mac!

If you are someone who uses Geographic Information System (GIS) files then this might interest you. ArcExplorer lets you display and otherwise probe a variety of standard geographical data sources. As a stand-alone desktop application, you can look at ESRI shapefiles, ArcInfo files, various sorts of image files, even Spatial Database Engine layers, and a bit more.

You can pan and zoom through map layers and interact with all the attribute information. You can also colour up map features based on data in the files, and present the data in a variety of other ways too. The really cool part is of course as the software is free you can re-distribute the ArcExplorer software and your data to your users, who can then install ArcExplorer on their machines and view your data as easily and effectively as you did.

There are editions of the software for Java (which basically offers cross-platform support for Windows, UNIX, and Linux), a Java Edition for Education (primarily for the Macintosh OS X platform, but also Windows) and then there’s ArcExplorer Web which you can use directly from your Web browser.

Follow this link to download ArcExplorer for free.