Lets say you got this nice little word document from a friend or colleague and stumble upon a word or words -like obiter dictum – that you do not know. How would you normally look it up ? You either pick up a dictionary or fire up your browser and search on the Internet for a definition of the word. This does not slow you down that much if it is only one word but what if there are more of them ? It could really slow you down unless you find a better way to lookup those words.

I normally do not have to create a lot of thumbnails, maybe one or two per day for my articles but that is it. I use GIMP for the purpose, definitely not the best choice because of the long loading times but good enough for the few that I have to create. Sometimes however I’m in the position to create thumbnails of hundreds of images and there is no way to create them with GIMP because it would take a very long time.

I got a new Nokia N73 with a USB cable recently and have been searching for games and applications that I could download without charge and install on my new mobile phone. I have never put much thought into this sector before mainly because of my laziness and an old phone that had no data cable.

A new version of FairUse4WM hit the Internet two days ago which is able to strip the DRM – that is Digital Rights Management – right of music files that use MS DRM IBX components up to version 11.0.6000.6324. So, if you own a Zune, use the Yahoo music service, Urge or several other services you might want to give FairUse4WM a try and get rid of the DRM in the music.

Optimizing a computer to improve performance while keeping everything stable is something that I really like to do. The first thing that I do when I get a new computer is to get rid of useless softwares and take a look at system settings to find ways to improve them.

Apple’s iPhone is officially only working with AT&T at the moment and many users have been searching for ways to unlock their iPhone to be able to use it with different providers. I do not have a iPhone and will not buy one but I thought it would be nice to link to a software [...]

After a few months of using Launchy and Rocket Dock I realized that I actually did not use the startmenu of my Windows operating system at all. I either use these great apps that give me more flexibility and speed or use icons on my desktop for certain tasks.
Another reason why I’m not using the startmenu anymore is that it really looks and feels messy after a while because every new application adds it’s own folder to it. The question that came up for me is whether I needed the startmenu at all.

I’m using a sweet little freeware for some time now on Windows XP that tabs normal windows giving my desktop a clean look most of the time while still giving me access to all the folders that I need to work with at that time. I got used to it pretty quickly and thought that it would be a great way to expand this behavior to applications as well.

The MAC address is an identifier for most network adapters. Although several Internet websites and manufacturers claim that it is not possible to change the MAC address. SMAC leaves the hardware MAC address alone but offers a software based way to change it which remains changed even after rebooting the computer.

Driver Grabber is a small application for Microsoft Windows operating systems which grabs all device drivers except drivers from Microsoft and saves them in the same directory where Drive Grabber was executed from. This can be extremely useful but the application is mainly geared towards techies and not casual users.

If you are looking for a quick and easy way to backup your files on your Windows operating system you should take a closer look at Everyday Auto Backup which is a basic but useful backup utility which is able to schedule backups of files and folders that you have selected.

I thought it was not possible to to improve CoolSwitch but I was obviously wrong. Xilokit.com came out with another interesting concept that brings an interesting concept to Windows. It’s a freeware application called Deskloops which offers an refreshing idea on how to handle windows in Windows.

A friend of mine was asking me if there was a quick and easy way to stream music over the Internet. I did some research for him and found the solution in the free software Vibe Streamer. This program makes it possible to stream music over Internet and Lan and comes equipped with all the features necessary to make it a great product.

It’s been a long time since Wildbits started to provide an amazing and free music identification software called Tunatic which helped me many times identify a song I loved. This happened for instance when I recorded Internet radio streams without information about the artist or the song name. I bet you’ve happened to be in such situation too.

Bid-O-Matic is a so called sniper tool for eBay. Sniper tools take advantage of the speed that computers use to perform tasks in contrast to humans. It takes only a fracture of a second to bid on an eBay auction for a computer while a human would need between 5-15 seconds to do the same.

Messenger Plus Live is an add-on for the Windows Live Messenger which adds a multitude of new features to the main program. Messenger Plus Live works with Windows Live Messenger 8 and 8.5 and can be used on Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Microsoft USB Flash Drive Manager is a free software for Windows XP created by Microsoft to make it easier to backup and restore files on USB devices that get connected to the computer. It was primarily designed as a backup and restoration utility but offers several other features that make it worthwhile.

I always thought that it would be pretty nice to be able to add the most used folders and applications to My Computer. I personally use My Computer to achieve two goals. First I use it to access my DVD and virtual drives to start applications for instance. The second use is that I access folders that I tend to use very often. Folders like my mp3 collection, profile folders and several applications fall under this category as well.

Torrent Swapper is a bittorrent client with some interesting features that make it stick out of the crowd of bittorrent clients. First of all it was written in Python making it independent from any operating system. Several other clients offer this as well though and the main feature that distinguishes Torrent Swapper from other clients is the feature to share upload speed between computers.

The default clock that is shown on every Windows operating system in the lower left corner was always a thorn in my eyes. It displayed the time but the current date was always a click away. I always wanted to change this and customize the way the clock was displayed in the system tray leaving the boundaries of the Microsoft clock.

Autopatcher is an ongoing project that creates a monthly executable that contains all patches for Microsoft operating systems that have been released in that month. It is then possible to execute this program and apply all patches that have been released by Microsoft at once without connecting to the Microsoft server at all.

I had the chance to test hundreds of freeware and open-source softwares in the last months and would like to list 20 of them that I would recommend. I’m actually using half of them on my Windows XP computer right now and I’m glad that I made the change from some respected popular programs to lesser known but better alternatives.

It is quite uncomfortable to download videos from various video portals such as Youtube or MyVideo even with Firefox extensions like Video Downloader or external softwares such as Grab++. One great way to download multiple videos at once is to use the free software Ashampoo ClipFinder which offers a way to search for and download video files from various popular video portals such as Youtube, Google Video, Dailymotion and a handful of others.

I’m not sure why someone would want to have the Windows Vista startmenu for Windows XP because I feel that the missing run box is not properly compensated by the search box. The look and feel are nice though and this might be the main reason why some users would consider switching to the new startmenu.

Video Conferencing might not be that interesting to most of my regular readers but I know that some of them actively use it for the business they run. The free video conferencing software ooVoo offers several elements that most, if not all, free softwares of that kind do not offer.

The first and most notable is the feature that up to six participants can use ooVoo simultaneously which is great if you want to video chat with your friends or need to bring people from different locations together to take part in a meeting. It runs pretty smooth even with six users and offers a good sound quality.

I wrote an article about the software Rapget yesterday which could be used to queue downloads for files that are hosted on file hosting websites such as rapidshare or megaupload. Rapget had the problem, that the download from rapidshare for instance was not working if you did not have a premium account.

Rapget is a sweat little freeware program that can be used to download multiple files at once from over 60 file hosts including Rapidshare.com, Megaupload.com, Yourfilehost.com and others. The real beauty of Rapget lies in the fact that it automatically bypasses the annoying captcha that is used on most websites to prevent access with download managers.

It is furthermore possible to add username and password of premium accounts if available which has to be done for several services unfortunately. I was not able to download files from rapidshare.com for instance without adding premium account details.

The outcry of the Internet community was loud and clear when then information was published that songs purchased without DRM from Apple’s iTunes store would contain the name and username of the buyer. Horror scenarios where created that suggested that someone could get convicted if his purchased songs would be found on P2P websites even if he did not share them personally.

I’m not sure why someone would want to change the style of his XP installation to that of Windows Vista but it seems that the demand for this is immense. Version 7 of the Vista Transformation Package has been released yesterday which turns your ordinary XP style into one that resembles the style of Windows Vista.

Everton from Connected Internet posted a nice article where he is detailing his steps to add tags and cover artwork to his mp3 collection using a few selected freeware programs and iTunes. He suggests to use Picard for the tagging process because Picard is able to add most tags of known albums automatically.

The only information that are not added by Picard are the cover artwork and the genre. It is understandable that the genre is not being added because it is sometimes difficulty to select a genre that everyone would be comfortable with. Itunes will be used to add the cover artwork right from the iTunes store.

Nothing is more frustrating than to witness that the movie that you downloaded for hours won’t play on your computer. Maybe there is only black screen, no audio, blurred pictures or out of sync audio and video. The most likely cause for this behavior is that a audio or video codec is missing on your system.

I’m probably the last person on earth who is not having an Last.fm account. I never paid much attention although Last.fm was mentioned every now and then in news and in chats. The main interface reminds me of Pandora but the options and possibilities given by Last.fm exceed those of Pandora by a large margin.

The Last Ripper is a freeware audio recorder that saves Last.fm streams as mp3 music files on your hard drive. A Last.fm account is necessary to use The Last Ripper. Once installed you enter your login name and password into the software and choose one of the radio stations available.

IJigg is a social music website much like the popular Digg. Users post songs to iJigg and everyone else may vote for the songs and comment on them. Every song can be played on their website and even embedded in websites.

I personally do not like the layout of the site that much. The popular songs are displayed when you visit iJigg and you can navigate to the most recent songs as well. The option to filter certain genres or languages is available in the right menu. I had serious difficulties with the language filter though, it would show non-English titles even if I filtered all languages except English.

Did you know that the iPod is supporting two additional audiobook features ? Audiobooks in the m4b format support the adjustment of the reading speed and pointers to the last reading position of the audiobook. Those features are not available if your audiobooks have the extension mp3.

I’ve been using Opera’s integrated RSS reader for a long time and it sure is a fine enhancement. But I still feel that it’s not so ultimate and it misses some things. Especially it’s interface could look a little better and have few more features. For example, in Opera you can’t display the news from all sources at once, well-arranged in a nice interface, instead you always have to click the source, read some news and then switch to the next one and so on. This is a little clumsy. However, Opera is mainly a great browser, not an RSS reader.

Don’t you hate it when Windows creates a new folder all the time with the name new folder ? This can be quite problematic if you have to create a number of folders in a row or during your daily routine.

The tiny software integrates itself seamlessly into the windows Explorer adding advanced folder creation options to the right-click menu of it. You can choose a combination from any of the following:

Microsoft Office introduced several new file formats which can’t be read by older versions of the various Office products. I’m not sure why Microsoft decided to change the file formats but it is really a hassle for me. I’m running Office 2007 on my system while my girlfriend is still running an older version of Microsoft Office.

It happened twice already that she worked on my computer and saved a Microsoft Word format in the new format (.docx) and was not able to read the file on her computer. She does not have Internet access there which means that it was really problematic to get the right format on her computer.

Windows Vista Ultimate users have Dreamscene which brings video screensavers to their operating systems. Several hacked versions of Dreamscene have been published that can be installed on other Vista editions as well but not on Windows XP. Microsoft however released a video screensaver for XP in 2005 which makes me wonder why they limited Dreamscene to Vista Ultimate only.

The Microsoft Video Screensaver should work on all versions of Windows XP and includes one video from Microsoft. You can choose to use one or more of the videos located on your computer instead. You do this by pointing to a folder that contains at least one video.

I wrote about the Giganews Accelerator when it first came out which was just a bit more than two months ago and have been using it since then to speed up header downloads with my own Giganews account. The Giganews accelerator speeds up header downloads by the factor eight on my connection which is really great.

I always had to wait the longest time to wait until the headers of popular groups were downloaded which took an awfully long time. A great thing is that the Giganews Accelerator is also supporting SSL connections. Giganews released a total of eight new versions of the program since the initial release which is an astounding number if you ask me.

I do not know why some users swear on iTunes and prefer to use it as their main software for their music collection. The biggest drawback in my opinion is that iTunes was designed to only work with iPods and not other mp3 players from different manufacturers. I personally think that it is a bit way of to install iTunes if you do not own an iPod but apparently some users are doing it.

The original Windows explorer undoubtedly lacks many features a lot of us would like to see and provides some that we don’t need at all on the other hand. That’s one of reasons why I mostly use a file manager instead (Frigate3, would recommend as a very good choice even though it’s not 100% stable).

TeraCopy is a nice shell enhancement for Windows replacing the original copy popup with a more advanced version. It integrates itself into the context menu so that you work as usual and don’t need to run additional external applications for the same process. TeraCopy gives you more options to copy or move files, e.g. a pause/resume function, error recovery and an dynamically adjusted buffer.

PStart is a nice handy application that makes it easy to start applications or open folders on your portable devices. One of the main disadvantages of Windows is that it uses absolute paths in its shortcuts which becomes a big problem if a drive letter changes. A click on the shortcut to the portable version of Firefox would return a not found error message if the driver letter of the USB device changed after the creation of the shortcut.

The default logon screen of Windows XP looks plain and boring and many users would like to change the background image and other elements of the logon screen to have a better looking interface. There is a sweet and easy way to replace the existing logon screen with a custom one by either downloading pre-made logons or creating one by yourself.

You do need the software Stardock Logon Studio which is available for Windows XP and Windows Vista. This article concentrates on logons for Windows XP and a future article will do the same for Windows Vista.

Grab++ is a freeware addition from the developers of the Orbit Download Manager which runs in the background scanning all elements of a website for multimedia content. All content (music, video, flash) that is found is added to the list with information about its name, size and domain.

Many novice users fear the technical process that has do be done before or during the installation of a Linux distribution. Partitioning is something that most are not familiar with and the fear to do something wrong and wreck their standard operating system is probably one of the main reasons why many users do not install a Linux distribution.

I’m sometimes wondering if the companies leak betas on purpose to create news about their upcoming products or if this is just the way it goes in the software business. A beta version of the upcoming Real Player 11 has been leaked and everyone may download it as of know from the official real website.

Speed Simulator is a nice free tool that makes it possible to see how a website behaves under certain speed limitations. This is for instance useful if you want to see how a user with a 56K modem experiences your site and especially the loading time of it. Only the download speed can be reduced to simulate slower connections.

More Tunes monitors various music players such as iTunes, Winamp and Windows Media Player and fetches information like Artist, Album, Genre and Year about songs that are currently played. The data that has been fetched can then be used to repair or edit the ID3 tags of the song and rename it as well.

If you are looking for a universal archiv software other than 7-zip you should take a closer look at IZArc which lately replaced WinRar on my computer. The real beauty of IZArc is of course it’s support of most known archiv formats such as zip, rar, 7-zip, gz, ace, tar and dozens others including formats such as iso, bin and nrg.

I have been trying several newsreaders for the Usenet until I finally found the one and only newsreader Newsbin. I purchased it years ago and can only recommend it to everyone else who is serious about the Usenet. I do know however that some users prefer free software and that is why I took a look at the Pan newsreader which is available for Windows, Mac and Unix.

Pan Newsreader is offering a lot of features that commercial Usenet readers such as Newsbin are offering as well. It does support download binaries of course offering single-click encoding, multiple connections and simultaneous downloads and image previews of downloaded images.