Rating: 5 

Version tested: Beta

Description: Meebo is a universal chat Ajax-based web application. It enables you to access your AIM, Yahoo, MSN messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, and Jabber instant messaging services in the same place from any browser, without having to install any messaging software locally on your machine. It also provides you with the ability to embed a widget on a website where visitors can instant message your Meebo account in real time if you are logged on.

You are part of the new digital age, which means that you likely keep in touch with you friends, family, and co-worker across multiple IM clients (AIM, Yahoo, etc.). You’ve discovered that you can use a universal chat client like (freeware) GAIM or Miranda IM, and it’s made your life so much easier, but what do you do when you’re away from your computer; on the road or travelling or just using someone else’s machine? Read more »

I’m finally back online after my site was down for approximately 20 hours. The hosting company (Anhosting/Midphase) pulled the plug on it, saying it was taking ‘too many resources’ off the shared server. I’m still not sure what that means or how my Wordpress blog would do that; they wouldn’t or couldn’t tell me what might have been happening or what (we) could do to fix it. The only option they could provide was to buy an expensive dedicated server, which was out of the question for me. It took more than 10 hours of wrangling before someone offered me another alternative.

Which is not to say that their tech support people weren’t helpful, depending on who I was talking to. Some guy early on really put a good effort, went beyond the call of duty to help me, but that produced nothing. You really can’t help but think that most of the tech support people, especially the ones answering phones or doing live chat, are (to quote one of them) “the bottom of the totem pole”, and really can’t do much of anything (except meet the company’s promise of 24hr tech support?). Read more »

Rating: 5 

Version tested:  0.4.4 Beta

Description: AVI2DVD is a tool that will convert your AVI files into playable DVDs, VCDs, or SVCDs, or alternately convert DVDs into VCDs or SVCDs. It will generate an ISO file that you can burn into DVD or CD media.

AVI2DVD is a a front-end GUI that utilizes a number of freeware tools to do the conversion. For the purposes of testing I converted a 700 meg Xvid-encoded AVI file into DVD format. It took AVI2DVD 2 hours and 45 minutes to do the job, and the final product was excellent! Note that the time it takes will depend on your source file(s), your chosen settings, and the processing power of your hardware.

Note that AVI2DVD is still BETA software, and may be buggy. Having used it I can report that I have not found any problems with it so far. Read more »

Rating: 5 

Description: Gorillaz Finaldrive is a little stunt-car-driving flash game.

Never thought I’d post a flash game, but this one is really well done and, well, very cool. Actually I’m not sure if there’s much of a game in there, but simply driving around in the virtual environment and trying to do stunt tricks is pretty satisfying.

This game was put together by the Gorillaz cartoon band as a kind of promotion. A great way to promote themselves in my opinion. I’m not much of a Gorillaz fan myself but I must admit the song is a really good one.

Click here to check it out. Read more »

Rating: 5 pick

Version tested:  5.0.305

[Note: this review was written by my friend Khader Humeid of Metaform Studios in New York; see his website at http://www.metaformstudio.com - The Freewaregenius]

Description: SketchUp is a powerful and yet easy to use 3D modeling software. It allows any user to build an accurate model of any idea whatsoever, from dog house to dream house. The program is so intuitive it sometimes feels too good to be true.

I discovered this software 2 years ago and it’s been getting better and better with every new version. As an architect and designer, I can’t imagine living without it.  The nice thing about the software is its simplicity and speed. A great feature is that any user can watch the free video tutorials. I found them to be the best learning tutorials I ever used. They allow you to master this program in 2-3 weekends. Read more »

Rating: 5 

Version tested:  2.2

Description: Undelete Plus is an award winning free program that can recover deleted files after they have been deleted. It can also wipe files that remain on your hard drive so they cannot be recovered.

You are looking for a file all over your hard drive, when it suddenly dawns on you that you had accidentally deleted the last version of it. What to do now?

Enter Undelete Plus, a small utility that will scan your hard drive for all files that can be undeleted and attempt to salvage the file for you. Read more »

Rating: 5 pick 

Version tested:  5.6.2.8

Description: Starter is a small but powerful program that functions both as a startup manager and process monitor.

There are many programs that launch themselves when Windows starts up; some of these you want and others you don’t need (or can be launched when needed), and end up simply hogging your system resources. You can use Starter to ‘uncheck’ any program that is in your startup list so that it doesn’t run on startup any more.

What I like about this program is that you can uncheck something so it doesn’t run on startup, then come back later and re-check it if you choose. With other programs once you remove something from your startup list it disappears altogether, and to re-instate it you have to (a) remember what it was, and (b) re-create the entry, which will involve manually browsing back to where the program resides on the hard drive. I am continually amazed as to how many startup managers force you to do this if you change your mind or simply want to test something. Read more »

Rating: 4 

Description: Media-Convert is a website that provides document and media file conversions online. Upload your file (it will accept every format you can think of), select your output format, wait for the conversion to take place, then download your converted file.

The sheer range of supported formats is just astounding. Want to convert an MP3 into a Soundblaster file (.VOC) or an Amiga sound file (.MAUD)? No problem. How about PDF to text or Rich Text Format (.RTS). You will most surely find the output format that you want supported by media-convert. For evaluation purposes I tried a random batch of conversions, including PDF to RTF, PDF to TXT, PDF to Flash (.SWF), JPG to HTML, AVI to Ipod MP4, MP3 to FLAC. What I found out is that (a) the conversions mostly were quite reliable (although PDF to .SWF didn’t work), and (b) this service is NOT geared to do Optical Character Recognition (OCR); it does not give you the option to convert images to useable text. If you are looking for OCR I suggest you try Docmorph, a similar service to this one which does a very comptent job. Read more »

Rating: 5 

Version tested:  1.3

Description: ImageToMp3 is a small program that can save album artwork within your individual MP3s, making the images available for display when the tracks are played in media player software or hardware mp3 players like the Ipod.

This program is as simple as you’d want it to be; select the audio files, load up the artwork and let it do its work. If you do not have the artwork and do not know where to get it, I suggest you try either Amazon.com or Google image search. With Amazon, you can click the ’see larger image’ link to display the artwork in its largest size, then save that to your hard drive. Read more »

Rating: 5 

Version tested:  2.0.62

Description: Arovax Shield is a free memory-resident program that offers protection against malicious software such as spyware, adware, browsers hijacks, trojans, viruses, worms, keyloggers, and other malware. It functions as a kind of a ‘firewall’ for the system/registry.

Most real-time antispyware protection software scans for traces of known code and/or applications that receive or send data over the internet. Other antispyware ‘immunizers’ prevent infection by modifying the places in the registry where the spyware would normally reside. Arovax Shield takes a little bit different approach in that it it does NOT scan your hard drive or memory for traces of code but keeps on the lookout for the different actions that malicious code typically performs in order to install itself on a computer; it will then foil these attempts, thereby preventing the successfull installation of malware. To quote the Avorax website “It blocks programs that attempt to launch automatically at Windows startup, prevents browser hijacking, protects the Registry, and stops various other stealthy installation techniques.” Read more »

Rating: 5 

Version tested:  2.2

Description: Id3ToFolder is a powerful program that enables you to change or rebuild the folder structure of your mp3 collection based on their tag information.

Your digital music collection has grown and grown over the years. Let’s say that initially you were putting all folders in the same place, adopting the naming convention “artistname - albumname”, and now after all this time you are wishing you organized them differently. Or conversley, let’s say that you were using a ripping software that was creating a foldername for each artist, with all the folders for the different albums placed inside, and now you would like your music organized some other way. Or let’s say that all of your music has somehow ended up in one big folder, with no organization whatsover, and you’re wishing there was a way to organize all of it into folders without having to do it manually. Read more »

Rating: 5 

Version tested:  2.1.6.101

Description: AVS Disk Creator is a simple yet powerful CD/DVD burning program that offers many useful features including data verification, multisession support, and ISO support. AVS can read/burn a wide variety of media formats, including dual-layer and the new Blu-Ray.

This is one of the most powerful and best looking CD/DVD burning solutions; my definite choice for freeware programs in its category.

What this program offers:

• A straightforward design that is simple and easy to use. Working with files and folder (adding, deleting, renaming, etc.) is very intuitive.
• A clean, compact sleek look (comes replete with a handful of skins).
• Support for a wide variety of drives and media formats, including dual layer the next generation Blu-Ray formats. Supported media formats include: CD-R/RW, DVD+/-R, DVD+/-RW, DVD-RAM, Double/Dual Layer DVD and the latest Blu-ray technology BD-R and BD-RE.HD-DVD format support promised in future versions. Read more »

Rating: 5 

Version tested:  2.3.3

Description: Zsoft Uninstaller is an uninstall utility that provides additional functionality that is not available in the Windows’ Add/Remove control panel, including much faster uninstalls, the ability to find and remove uninstalled programs that somehow remained in the registry, and the ability to monitor an installation and revert back to the pre-installation state afterwards.

What you need to know about this program:

• Zsoft Uninstaller removes programs completely, including the install folder and registry entries.
• It will allow you to delete obsolete entries that are not actually there but are still on the add/remove list.
• Zsoft Uninstaller provides the option to ‘analyze’ an installion, i.e. take a snapshot of the system/registry before and after an installion and compare the two. This allows you to choose to ‘revert’ the changes completely, which might be a good option if you are installing a program that you feel may be dubious and suspect that it might be installing undesirable software on your machine. Read more »

Rating: 5 

Version tested:  1.0

Description: Apecsoft SWF2EXE is a simple tool that will convert your swf files into executables quickly and easily.

I guess now that the holiday season is upon us, we can count on the proliferation of those, ahem, cute flash greeting cards that everybody will be sending. With Apecsoft SWF2EXE you can convert your swf files into standalone exeutables; no need for browser or flash player. Read more »

Rating: 4 

Version tested:  1.1

Description: Filesort is a little program that will look at files within a directory and ’sort’ them (i.e. send them to the appropriate directory) based on user-defined rules. These rules can be either file-name rules, file-age rules, or file-size rules.

For example, you could set Filesort to ‘observe’ a folder and move all mp3’s within it to a specific directory, or all files older than 30 days into a specific folder, or all files over 100 megs into their own folder. Unfortunately, you cannot combine rule types, so for example you cannot send all avi video files that are larger than 100 megs into a directory of their own.

This software is probably most useful to either somebody, like me, who downloads so much software every day that it gets pretty confusing to manage, somebody who does a lot of p2p downloading, or somebody who works with a lot of files or data that belong to different projects and needs a way to keep the files organized. Read more »