How about giving your system a new look and making it easier to use? UIFriend will help you do just that.

UIFriend provides easy and powerful quick resolution changing and intelligent protection of your desktop icon layout that works behind the scenes keeping your icon positions safe. But that’s not all with this useful software you also get improved desktop aesthetics with double buffering and transparent icon text backgrounds.

You will love the display setting management that comes with UIFriend, this is for users who though are sharing a computer, prefer different resolutions.

Other cool features include increased screen saver power with on demand activation, mute and auto-resume.

The latest version, UIFriend 2.1.1 which has just been released has these major changes:

• Support for Windows Vista
• High quality icons and includes performance optimizations
• User interface improvements and Bug fixes

Want to check it out? Go to http://www.intrepix.com/products/uifriend/

If you are a great music fan like I am you are going to love this freeware. Desktop Album Display allows you to place the covers of your favorite music albums on your desktop, but that’s not all with this software you can use the album covers on your desktop to launch your favorite media player providing you cool and easy access to your favorite tunes.

Just yesterday, a new version of this software was released. The new version is Desktop Album Display 1.50. The major changes in this new version include:

• Added support for additional media players
• Large improvement on the rendering of the album covers

This has two effects, improve the quality of the covers to ‘Photoshop’ rendering standards and the decrease in memory usage by 75%

How about that,  having your favorite music albums plastered on your desktop to reflect your taste and to give you easy access to your music.

Want to check it out, go to http://www.jgaudencio.com

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 good tool for organizing and animating your photos. TurboDemo Album is a perfect tool for organizing and animating your photos. It offers animations like balloons, sound and annotations. You can also add comments and background music to your photos. It allows a quick editing of your photos.

What will TurboDemo Album help you achieve?

• Create your very own digital photo albums with TurboDemo Album
• Animate your Photo Album with effects and various objects
• Compose pictures from weddings, vacations, and all your special events
• Add funny effects like text balloons and text notes to your slide show
• Organize and distribute your Albums as you wish.

Want to check it out? Check out the trial version and see if it’s worth your financial investment.

Visit http://www.turboalbum.com/eng/index.htm for more info and download.

Star Quotes is a simple yet powerful program used to make the process of typing up and printing quotes/estimates easy.

With great features that simplify the whole process of creating and printing quotes, you will find this software quite useful. Star Quotes help save all your different customers and items so you don’t have to go through the stress of rekeying these every time, this makes quote creation so much easier.

Some of the cool features you will enjoy in this software include:

• Unlimited Quotation Records
• Unlimited Customers
• Unlimited Items
• Email Quotes
• Print to PDF format
• Print quotes directly to Laser/Injet printers
• Use either Margin percentages or direct price calculations
• Add Customers and Items on the fly

Etc.

Check it out for yourself, Go to http://www.starresoft.com/quotes.html

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.

If you are using YouTube and you’ve been looking for something to help with your video streams then you need to try out SpeedBit Video Accelerator for YouTube.

SpeedBit Video Accelerator for YouTube makes your videos stream faster and play smoother, reducing buffering problems and video “hiccups”. One really cool thing you will really love about this tool is that its unique video search lets you find the latest and hottest videos around the web easily. But that’s not all the “Recently Accelerated” list gives you instant access to the last videos played, so you can have easy and quick access to your favorites.

The new version, SpeedBit Video Accelerator 2.0 Beta, which was released a couple of days ago, now supports more site. So it’s no longer just a YouTube thing.

Here are the latest changes in the new Beta Version:

• Added acceleration for dailymotion.com
• Added acceleration for metacafe.com
• Added acceleration for grouper.com
• Added acceleration for itunes.com
• Search mechanism upgraded to a new Solr based search engine

Want to check it out, it’s freeware!!!! Go to http://www.speedbit.com/video%5FAccelerator/

In need of a cool video software with video surveillance and capture tools? You need to check out Webcam Surveyor

Webcam Surveyor is complete software that combines video surveillance and video capture tools. The good thing about Webcam Surveyor is that you can use it to record all video activity. It can also work as a motion detector. As a motion detector program alerts are triggered by events e.g. an email can be sent or images uploaded to FTP site when motion is detected, making remote observation real easy.

One real cool thing about this software is that the built-in file browser allows to you to easily organize captured images and video clips.

The latest version which was just recently released has these changes:

• Added: Support for DivX® 6.5.1 Codec
• Support for ACDV 2.0.1 Codec
• Optimized- Motion Detection
• Updated- Documentation
• Fixed – Minor Bugs

Want to check it out? Visit http://www.webcamsurveyor.com/

High-flying startup StumbleUpon has been rumored to be in acquisition discussions since at least last November. Recently we’ve heard that talks have heated up again, with Google, AOL and eBay as potential suitors. A source with knowledge of the deal now says the company has signed a term sheet with eBay to be acquired. The price is somewhere between $40 – $45 million.

StumbleUpon lets users rate websites via a browser toolbar. At any time a user can click “Stumble!” and will be taken to a website highly rated by other StumbleUpon users who tend to vote in a similar way as the person “stumbling.” More often than not, it’s something almost serendipitously interesting to the reader. The company expanded into video referrals in late 2006. (more…)