So you want your images to look the best they can, but you don’t have money to spend on professional software…Check out FastStone Image Viewer. It does the basics but it does them well!

This freeware program supports all major image formats, such as BMP, GIF, ICO, JPEG, JPEG2000, PCX, PNG, PSD, TAF, TIF, and WMF. It also includes EXIF metadata support. You can crop, resize, flip, rotate, and adjust colors on your images and compare them side by side.

It also lets you convert from one format to another; you can even convert or resize your photos in batches. For a closer look, use the Full Screen image viewer to zoom in and size things up with the clear magnifier. If you wanna liven things up you can apply over 150 transitional effects in a slideshow.

If you don’t yet have a program for fast image viewing and basic editing, or if you’re not completely satisfied with the one you currently use, FastStone Image Viewer is one you should try. It’s free.

More info and download

Here is a cool photo editor worth checking out. It’s called Amazing Photo Editor. It is a powerful, easy to use image processing software used for image processing, viewing and converting. Just like the name suggest amazing effects are available for use in this software!

With Amazing Photo Editor you can enjoy virtually unlimited editing. You will really love the effect this software can produce as Amazing Photo Editor has 33 effect filters (Bleed, Blur, Bump, Curl etc), 10 effects (Noise, Balance etc), and 4 photo Full Size optimization (Auto Smooth, Gussian etc.) that make photos pretty and suitable.

This software is so feature rich that you will have to CLICK HERE to really see what it can do.

CLICK HERE for more info and trial download!

Spacetime is a program that presents Web pages and search results as floating slabs that can be flipped through, organized, and navigated in 3-D.

SpaceTime users can “fly” through search results such as Web pages, pictures, and eBay auction items. By turning your view to the left, right, up, or down, you can see all the Web pages you’ve previously called up and zoom in on the one you want.

When you launch SpaceTime, you’ll see a Web page address bar at the top of the screen as well as a bar for entering search terms. As with Firefox and Internet Explorer 7, a user can select different search engines; SpaceTime’s search bar includes Yahoo and Google (and their respective image-search functions), Flickr, and eBay. Web pages and search results are shown in the center of the screen and float against a light-blue background with clouds. At the bottom of the SpaceTime screen, there is also a two-dimensional timeline that shows a thumbnail view of each search you’ve made or page you’ve called up.

The lasting value of programs like this is usually questionable,as the novelty value soon wears off,. But I guess maybe in the future as computers continue to become more powerful, we might be seeing more things like this.

Check it out here to download it or see the demo presentation.

Post2blog is a WSIWYG (what you see is what you get) blog editing and publishing program that includes some advanced features such as a full featured word-processor-style editor, advanced image and table handling options, with live spelling checker and thesaurus. It supports WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, Movable Type, and LiveJournal and more.

Here are just a few of the features that Post2Blog offers:

• Advanced WSIWYG editing: the full featured editor includes comprehensive editing options as well as support for tables and emoticons. All its functions are hotkeyed for easy access. Edit offline and post whenever you are ready;
• Advanced image support: upload and format images (including creating thumbnails to custom resolution, adding captions, resizing the image itself, and adding shadows). Also supports uploads into Flickr and other online image resources (imageshack.us, picturelli.com, as well as FTP).

All this and its freeware too! So check it out if blogging is your thing.

Drivermax is a program that can backup and re-install your system’s drivers on Windows Vista and Windows XP.

Whenever you need to re-install your operating system,it can get awkward to find and reinstall all your systems drivers..but drivermax claims to turn this potentially time consuming and problematic step into a 5-10 minute job that only requires one restart. It can easily backup all of your systems drivers then simply use it to collectively reinstall these if you should ever need to do so.

The user interface is entirely wizard based; any chosen task is conveniently broken down into 2 or 3 simple screens.
It can also generate a report that lists all installed drivers and includes information such as the version numbers and dates.
This program is registerware (yours to keep for free when you register).

Check it out for more info and the download.

Two ‘extremely critical’ vulnerabilities have been discovered in Yahoo Messenger that could be exploited by malicious users to compromise a system.

The boundary errors have been confirmed in version 8.1.0.249 of the messaging software, but other versions may also be affected.

Both flaws are based around the Yahoo Webcam facilities within the software. The problems occur in the ‘ywcupl.dll’ file that deals with the Webcam Upload, and the ‘ywcvwr.dll’ file which handles the Webcam Viewer.

Both ActiveX controls can be exploited to cause a stack-based buffer overflow by assigning an overly long string to the Server property and then using the ‘Send()’ or ‘Receive()’ actions.

A successful execution of the exploits could allow arbitrary code to be run on the affected machine.

Security firm Secunia rated the flaws at its highest ‘extremely critical’ level, and said that the problems can be blocked by changing the kill-bit settings for the affected ActiveX controls. (more…)

Do you have an ever growing collection of files, data, mp3s etc that you have stored on discs and find it hard to keep track of? If your answer is yes, then CD Storage Master may be useful for you. It allows you to keep a searchable database of all your cd/dvd data.

You can track or search by many parameters such as file name, size, time created, modified,etc and also the metadata of files (like MP3 ID3 Tags, image info, Audio CD internet CDDB information, and more). In addition it can read these details from inside compressed archives.

It also has ‘Active Storage Monitor’…a neat feature to notify you if you insert a disc that isn’t already in its database.

So if you have a big collection of data on discs this might be real useful to catalogue and search them.

Check it out here for more info and a full list of features and filetypes it supports.

Need good emulation software to copy discs? Check out Alcohol 52%.

Alcohol 52% is CD/DVD emulation software that allows users to copy discs. With this cool software, you can store your most used or important CDs as images on your computer and run them at 200x speed from up to 31 virtual CD or DVD drives.

The good thing about Alcohol is its compatibility with most drives available. It supports the latest image file types including – MDS, CCD, BIN, CUE, ISO, CDI, BWT, BWI, BWS, BWA and many more.

This software works well with all Windows OS except Windows 98.

Check out the trial version and see if it’s what you need at http://www.alcohol-soft.com/ 

Here is a cool emulator worth checking out.

iDeaS is a Nintendo DS emulator that can run NDS games on Windows PC with OpenGL. So far, it has emulated the ARM7 GBA processor at 100%, but the ARM9 dual screen processor at 90%.

The plugin system came originally from UltraHLE N64 emulator so that further support can achieved without looking at the source code of the emulator.

The latest version, iDeaS 1.0.1.5 which has just been released has these changes:

• Added LDRD and STRD opcodes;
• Added HuffUnComp BIOS function;
• Added Square Root BIOS function;
• Added command line options;
• Added zipped rom support (the emulator slows down);
• Added basic frameskip;
• Added support for M3, Supercard CF and Supercard One files;
  Added Run to Cursor(F6) and Step Over(F8) in debugger;
• Added support for Shadow Polygons;
• Added support for .ds.gba and .sc.nds files;
• Added Rotation feature;
• Added Save/Load game capability;
• Fixed unaligned memory access on LDRH opcode;
• Fixed a bug in textures management;
• Fixed a bug in 3D matrices management;
• Fixed a bug in LIGHT_VECTOR register;
• Fixed a bug in NORMAL register;
• Fixed a bug in GXSTAT register;
• Fixed a bug in Extended Draw Mode management;
• Fixed a bug in microphone support

It’s Free! Go to http://spazioinwind.libero.it/linoma/ideas.html to check it out!

Think digital presentation – think Chimpfolio. Chimpfolio is basically an artist’s portfolio generator for the discerning artist who needs to make the transition to digital slides without knowing anything about computers. It is a program that generates cross-browser compatible web pages with valid xHTML and CSS. Web pages generated by Chimpfolio have a standard set of Introduction, Bio, Statement and Contact pages along with an indexed portfolio page that has individual pages for each image. Each individual page can have additional optional information like title, size, medium and date of creation of image. It can have a separate section for any other additional information.

This is one of those rare tools which make you feel that computing can be natural rather than robotic. A must –have program for image-portfolio generation.

(more Info and Download)