Quicktime is of course a core technology on Apple Mac computers, but is an add-on to Windows too. Quicktime player, has many similarities with Windows Media Player and plays a lot of the same media. So why would you bother with Quicktime? My not stick with the native player on Windows.

Well, as a predominantly Mac based writer, I will admit to a little bias, but honestly it doesn’t really matter what you use, WMP, Quicktime, DiVX Player, whatever floats your media. But I have to say that I like the quality and solidity of Quicktime. Okay it doesn’t play Windows files quite so well as WMP, but it does play them. It does however ROCK as the kids would say with QT files. There is actually no reason why you shouldn’t have many different video file players on your machine, Windows or Mac. Most of the cohabit very gracefully on any machine, and I have most of them on my Macs and PCs.

Most importantly, whatever media player you use, make sure you always have the latest versions, and that goes double for Quicktime. Check it out at the source.

If you’ve been having problems with software that claim to help you view and convert graphic files, then you need to try this.

XnView is a group of utilities that features viewing, converting, screen capture, slideshow, and Twain support. These utilities support viewing more than 400 graphic formats and can create about 50.

Some of its nice features include :

• Import about 400 graphic file formats
• Export about 50 graphic file formats
• Multipage TIFF, Animated GIF, Animated ICO support
• Image IPTC, EXIF metadata support
• EXIF auto rotation support
• IPTC editing
• Resize, rotate, crop support
• Lossless rotate & crop (jpeg) support

AND SO MUCH MORE.

XnView has the following other editions available: XnView for Linux, XnView for FreeBSDand XnView for Mac OS X.

Want to try it out? It’s free! CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO AND DOWNLOAD!

If you manage or run a website (or just upload or download a lot of files by FTP) then you’re probably very familiar with FTP (File Transfer Protocol). The method of uploading and downloading files to and from web servers.

But what happens if you find yourself at a computer that hasn’t got your usual FTP program installed? Or maybe you just don’t wanna install another bloated program you’ll only ever use the basic functions of! What happens is you can go to the Web2ftp website and do it all from a webpage! That’s right, any server, anywhere in the world.

You just put in your FTP details such as server, username, and password, and work away as usual with uploading or downloading! You can even select multiple files at the same time by using the shift key. It supports file sizes of up to 50 Mb for download, 50 Mb for binary upload, and an editing function of up to 200 Kb files.

Tip : If while downloading, your browser tries to open a file instead of saving it, just right click and select “Save as”.

Check it out right here.

Deskloops is a program to help you navigate through your open windows easier. It creates a loop of all your windows which you can scroll through by going left or right. Alternatively you can go to the top of the screen and scroll through thumbnails of your windows.

Its much easier to watch it in action than it is to describe it, so check out the first video here entitled “Getting started” and you’ll understand clearer!

It’s a pretty well made program and the navigation system is pretty simple and uncluttered and gets the job done. Although i think nowadays many people will just stick to tabs. But for anyone who doesn’t use tabs, its worth checking out. Also the optional 3D effect feature looks pretty cool, but may get in the way after a while.

I’d recommend checking this out to anyone who finds themselves with a lot of windows open frequently and who doesn’t already use tabs!

You can download it here and read more info and watch some video demos/tutorials. Oh and its free!

If you are in need of a freeware that will help to make file name searches easier and faster, this application is for you.Instant File Name Search is a fast and easy to use search tool. You can instantly search files by name or wildcards on your computer or local network.

This cool tool supports:

• Instant search of files by name or wildcards
• Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT)
• Search in various directories or LAN resources
• Database management (you can create several databases)
• Taskbar icon and hot keys for quick access
• Win95/98/ME or WinNT/2000/XP.

Want to check it out? CLICK HERE!

One of those programs that makes life easier if you have a website or blog is an FTP program. Sure, you can use the command line client, or, worse yet, internet explorer’s built-in FTP functionality, but neither of these solutions is ideal. If you do a lot of FTP transfers, you need a full-featured program dedicated to this purpose. Filezilla is a quick and easy to use FTP program for Windows that you should check out.

The install is simple and takes less than a minute after downloading the installation file. After installing, start the program and you’ll find an interface with several window frames as well as some boxes at the top to input the address of the ftp server and your username and password. Connecting is as simple as filling in these boxes and hitting Enter.

It’s easy to drag and drop files from the Remote Site frame at the right into the frame at the bottom to download files. One thing you’ll have to remember is that you have to click the ‘Q’ (Queue) button on the toolbar at the top of the window, though. This is actually a great feature because it allows you to correct your mistakes before you make them. No transfers are completed until you are ready.

Another cool feature is that when you navigate through the menus, a brief help message appears on the status bar at the bottom of the screen to explain the command option. This also works with the toolbar at the top of the screen. I expected to see tooltips pop up when hovering over the buttons, but this works just as well and it appears instantly instead of after the pause that you have to wait through with tooltips.

Filezilla is freeware and actively maintained, so you can expect to see it updated regularly with lots of useful features.

If you need to back up your DVDs but you can’t afford the ridiculous prices most software go for; you’ll definitely love this. Have you heard of RipIt4Me, this is a freeware that beats most shareware in its class hands down.

RipIt4Me is a freeware utility that helps you backup your copy protected DVDs. Yeah “copy protected”. A lot of DVD’s, these days, are equipped with stronger copy protections – such as ARccOS and RipGuard DVD. A lot of programs even expensive sharewares cannot handle these types of discs. Ripping this files using RipIt4Me is an easy thing.

The beautiful thing about RipIt4Me is that it is fully automated, the wizard will guide you through all the necessary steps involved. And you even have an alternative of using a “1-Click” mode that will perform all the involved steps automatically for you.

A new updated version has just been released. This version, RipIt4Me 1.6.0.0 has these latest changes:

• This version works on Linux under Wine
• Better handling of multiple sets of buttons in a menu.
• Fixed a problem with DVDs that have a very large number of buttons. The cleanup no longer fails, but might take a bit longer
• Improved the analysis to handle DVDs that have large numbers of menus (Ice Age 2 for example)
• The “Next” button in Step 1 no longer can be pressed if a valid DVD isn’t present in the selected drive
• Now checks for CeEKey.exe on startup, and offers to kill the process. CeEKey.exe has been found to potentially create problems when the PSL file is imported

etc.

CLICK HERE FOR FREE DOWNLOAD AND MORE INFO!

Money Manager Ex is a free open-source money managing and budgeting program.
Usually you gotta pay for decent personal finance software, so if you’re tryin’ to manage your money, you’ll appreciate that this ones free.

But how good is it? Pretty good! – You can manage multiple accounts and checking, savings, credit card, or loan accounts. You can even create your own categories and easily organise where your money goes into these. You can also track your bills and deposits and be reminded of upcoming bills and deposits so you won’t forget and lose track of them.You can import files from excel, microsoft money, and quicken, and also export to excel format. It also supports printing with inbuilt print preview.

Other useful features include viewing spending by category over a date range or by single category over time and viewing income versus expenses and how you’re doing on a budget.

Overall this is definitely worth checking out for anyone trying to budget and manage their finances better, its even free, which helps!

You can get more info and download it by clicking the homepage here.

No longer is it just talk-talk-talk! The first phase of the release of Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 has just been implemented. At an event held on Thursday, Microsoft’s Steve Balmer announced the business availability of Windows Vista, Microsoft 2007 and over 30 other applications that are targeted for the business world.

The event was held at the NASDAQ Marketsite in New York City. 11 years ago Microsoft pulled this kind of double release stunt [Windows 95 and Office 95] and had a record breaking success. Will history repeat itself for Vista and Office 2007? Let’s wait and see.

Microsoft said it plans to spend “hundreds of millions” of dollars to market the Windows upgrade. The marketing budget will eclipse the $500 million Microsoft spent to market Windows XP, the predecessor to Windows Vista.

Now that Microsoft has stayed true to their promise of releasing the first version for businesses, we can rest assured that we all will be able to get the “everybody version” [consumer version] early next year as promised.

Click here for the full gist of the launch.

Click here for more info on Office 2007 and free test drive of Office 2007.

Don’t you think it’s high time you changed the look on your desktop? If you do, you might want to use Wirechanger.

WireChanger is a Wallpaper manager that includes built-in utilities, templates, calendar and the option to add active clocks to your desktop. WireChanger offers you total and complete solution to manage your own desktop wallpapers, especially If you want to see something fresh every time you minimize your applications.

WireChanger will put customizable sticky notes on your desktop. To add a new note you just double-click your wallpaper in a free area and type the note’s text. I love the fact that your wallpaper can be colored and altered with special templates. Templates overlay your desktop background with useful information such as a calendar, the weather forecast, or famous quotations.

The calendar template transforms part or all of your background into a handy desktop calendar for two weeks or a current month with interactive day-by-day post-it notes. It can add an analog or digital desktop clock from the ColClocks collection to your wallpaper. You can also download a small utility called Desktop FlashGen to create an interactive desktop from your favorite flash file.

Want to check it out? Visit http://www.wiredplane.com/en/wirechanger/about.php