OMG! When I first came across Pidgin for Windows, I thought it was a nice concept for free styling language usage… but the ability to simultaneously chat with users of other IM networks freely without the seeming limitations in sharing files like pictures, music and videos,was what really got me. That is a whole lot of free-styling.

Pidgin allows you chat with friends on MSN, MyspaceIM, or Gadu-Gadu or even more while sitting at yahoo messenger all at the same time. Giving you the feel that you are all on the same network. That’s so cool.

Pidgin supports many features of the various networks, such as file transfer, away messages, and typing notification. It also goes beyond that and provides many unique features. send a message, play a sound, or run a program when a specific buddy goes away, signs online, or returns from idle; and plugins, consisting of text replacement, extended message notification, spell checking and more. And works well with Windows, UNIX operating systems and Linux.

I could go on and on but I think its best to check it out and see for yourself. Visit http://www.pidgin.im

There are many reasons that people use browsers. They use them to download files, visit websites and generally improve their lives in ways that could not be accomplished online. While the internet is an absolutely fantastic resource, at the same time it can be a dangerous place. Files can contain viruses and cookies can launch programs that can ruin your computer at worst and cause you a lot of headache at best. Because of all of these problems, people have avoided places that are likely candidates for spyware, viruses or other harmful pieces of software, even if those places could have helped them in some way.

Well, one way to get around this is to run your browser in a virtual sandbox and that is exactly what Sandboxie allows you to do. The latest version that was released on July 1, 2008, is actually a version that allows you to do this with any program, not just the browser. You keep everything you do within the virtual sandbox and then when you delete the sandbox, everything you did in the session disappears. This allows you to make sure that changes are safe before you actually make them and the peace of mind that results from that ability is so immeasurable that the fact this piece of software is free is almost unbelievable.

More information is available at http://www.sandboxie.com

Got a large movie collection you want to keep track of ? With Personal Video Database you’ll be able to do that quickly and easily. The well thought-out user interface and assorted database management functions make it simple to make and manage even large movie databases.

It has powerful filtering, grouping and sorting that will assist you in finding your movies in no time. The program is expandable with plugins and there is already a batch of plugins that come with with the program that can help you call up movie info from various Internet movie databases or other database types.

Another noteworthy features is Loan management, handy for keeping track of those movies you loan to friends and sometimes forget about!

All in all, it makes for a powerful and dependable relational database of your movies and the people related with them, such as actors, directors, etc. It seems to be well supported with an active forum, where the developer pays attention to users.

Oh yeah, its free too! You can get it from the homepage here.

The latest version of Gdow has just been released and with it there are a number of interesting new changes. Many of these changes are minor in fashion, but one particular change of note is that the connection problems with Gdow have been fixed. Where some people had slow connections or even timeouts through the use of the software after the changes that were made to gmail at the end of June, now all of those problems have been fixed so that people can once again go ahead with their business.

Gdow acts as a piece of software to notify people when they have new mail in their gmail account. All of the capabilities of a gmail account in terms of notification are given on Gdow so that you can know what goes on with your gmail account within a few moments of it actually happening. To make things even better and sweeten the pot a little bit, Gdow can be used through a one-click graphical user interface or through a right click menu from its location on the system tray.

More information about this excellent piece of freeware is available from the publisher’s homepage at http://dowdow.free.fr/gdow2007.php.

XnView is a piece of software that continues to be mentioned in the highest circles of good online freeware for the simple reason that it continues to amaze. The latest version of XnView was released on July 1 and it contains a number of interesting changes. Perhaps the most important change is the fact that the number of graphics formats that the software contains keeps on growing and in the latest incarnation of the software now standards at over 400. It is very unlikely that there is a graphics format out there that this program does not support and if you find one, be sure to send it to the creator so that he can make it compatible for the next release of XnView.

Why is the support of so many graphics important? It is important because when you find that special image that you want to keep and use, you also want to make sure that you don’t reach a dead end if that image happens to be in a file format that a typical computer program would not be able to read. XnView allows for the changing of file formats as well as their viewing, capturing and editing in terms of the attributes of the electronic file. All of these aspects are important when converting a file from some little used graphical interface to a JPG or GIF and having a high quality program like XnView that is free to download is invaluable in this area.

More information is available at http://www.xnview.com/

Do you have problems backing up your documents and files? Here is something worth checking out. It is called Tame. Tame was designed to perform backup operations on areas you would consider least important, for example your messenger conversation logs,with Tame, are no longer lost when the application is close.

Here is how it works, Tame creates a full conversation folder and saves all your conversations therein. The folder is then saved in a customizable folder (my documents or my computer).Backups can also be set to run at specific system times,(i.e Tame doesn’t have to backup everything you are working on, like those documents you are sure you don’t need) while running silently in the background. Each backup that is made is time and date stamped so that you are fully aware of when each backup was made.

Each backup that is performed is controlled from its own window, which can be easily customised on the main window if you do not wish to see them running. Advanced options are also available to start each backup section on start-up and to start TAME when the Windows session is started. All of these features are available in an easy to understand environment that blends easily with Windows 2000/XP/2003/VISTA.

You can check it out at http://www.troupware.com/software/main/tame.htm

When it comes to computer glitches, assuming the software you’re running is not the cause, there can be other things at fault. It can sometimes be hardware related. One such element to consider is the computers RAM.

Memtest is a small utility (filesize is a mere 15k!) for testing your computers RAM. A computer that fails these tests, perhaps because of old,poorly set-up,or damaged hardware, will be more likely to crash or become unstable.

By running this program, you can check that your computer’s RAM is working correctly. It’s a good idea to try this when you purchase a new computer, install new RAM, or alter the configuration of your machine (for example, overclocking it, if you’re the kind of person who likes to push the performance of your computer to the edge) Blindly trusting that your machine will still start after your recent BIOS changes or RAM upgrades is a risky way to find out the safety of your new settings.

It’s worth taking this program for a test run if you’ve recently upgraded your RAM or are thinking about changing your RAM configuration or simply just wish to find out your current RAM is running error free.

See the homepage for the download and further info.

While watching videos uploaded on sites like YouTube, Google, Tagged, etc, you might have seen the preloaders before the video is played. The preloaders essentially show some fraction of the flash animation or videos loaded so far. It ensures that the users wait for the animation to load as they get an estimate of the time left. Now if you were looking for a similar feature for your animations, try using the FlashKicker Flash Preloader Software 1.0 which takes you through the sequential process for adding preloaders to your flash animations or videos.

FlashKicker Flash Preloader Software 1.0 comes loaded with a set of features that allows a user to utilize a step by step process to add the preloader to the flash files. The first step, ‘Source SWF’, is for selecting the source SWF file to add the preloader to. The ‘Preview’ is shown on the right side area of the screen that helps in confirmation that you selected the right file. The details of the SWF file are shown on the screen of the program. Move to the ‘Next’ step and ‘Select a Preloader Design’ from the provided drop down menu. You can customize the preloader by making changes to the Properties, Background and Options. Change the Color of the Background, Progress Text, and other items. You can even change the dimensions of the background image and animation as required. For further customization you can switch on/off the Border, Progress Display, change the position of Preloader and Loading Text Message. Take a look at the preview and click on Next. Enter the Text that you want to be displayed while the video is being loaded. Customize the text, set the position and alignment for it. You can embed the text in SWF and with the next step you can easily ‘Publish’ the Movie on web.

FlashKicker Flash Preloader Software 1.0 helps you to set the preloader with the movie, showing the time left for the movie to load completely.

{More Info and Download}

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.

While creating a website, web developers need to put lot of efforts on website navigation to make it easy for the users to surf through. The navigation menus of the websites are often made in manner to make visitors browse website content. These days highly customized flash menus are often preferred by website owners. If you are also looking for some assistance to create eye-catching and attractive flash menus, then you can try using SWFMenu 3.5. It helps in the creation of menus with different size, customized with animations effects, icons and text. It provides a series of templates that you can utilize to generate menus after suitable customization.

SWFMenu 3.5 is an easy to use utility to generate flash menus for your website without facing any hassles. To start with the program you are required to choose one of the templates from the provided list. When you have selected one then you need to make the modifications to the items of the menu so that they become suitable for your website. Finally you need to save and upload the menu on the website. Coming to the customization part where you would decide the appearance of the website menus. Concerning the text on the menu buttons you can change the text, font size, color and style. For the Buttons you can change the background color, select an image for it, customize the sound, border style, pop-up effects, etc and even decide whether you want the menu to be expanding or collapsing. You can even change spacing setting for the menu and different other properties. Finally publish the menu with .SWF or HTML format.

To use the SWFMenu 3.5 you would not need any advanced technical skill to generate captivating menu that would ease users to search and even persuade them to surf through other pages.

{More Info and Download}