Rating: 5 pick

Version tested: b29

Description: Floola is a small, cross platform app that can copy music files, video files, and playlists to and from your Ipod on any computer without having iTunes installed.You can also use it to manage your audio collection straight on the Ipod, including editing or deleting files and or artist/album/genre information, as well as creating playlist and/or playing your Ipod-resident music files. It can also manage Motorolla phones that are supported by iTunes.

Here’s what you need to know about this software:

• Yes you read it correctly; finally a free iTunes replacement that can move video files to and from the Ipod
• Installation is a breeze, and involves simply moving the Floola executable into the Ipod from within the Windows file system. Note that you have to (a) enable the Ipod as a portable hard drive (Ipod will appear in ’My Computer’), and (b) switch off the Auto-sync option in iTunes (to prevent iTunes from erasing the files you independently copy to your Ipod with Floola). To uninstall, simply delete Floola from the Ipod.
• Installing Floola on the Ipod itself means that you could copy files to/from your Ipod on any PC; just plug it in, run Floola, and you’re on your way.
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Rating: 5

Version tested: 1.72

Description: PC Wizard 2007 is an advanced hardware detection, system analysis and benchmarking utility. It provides information on both your computer’s hardware and software.

I don’t build computers, nor am I a modder. I stumbled into PC Wizard because I recently got my hands a computer that badly needed a clean Windows install. Once I did this I was subsequently able to use PC Wizard to identify the computer’s hardware components (a job that it performed very well), in order to be able to go to the manufacturers’s websites and download all the drivers that I needed for the various hardware components to function properly.

All of what this program does is give you information: information on what hardware you have and the details of your software setup, such as what technologies you have installed, the details of your internet connection, your file associations, your startup programs, your installed version of DirectX, etc. But where it adds the most value is the benchmarking information functionality. You can look at your computer’s overall performance or otherwise you can benchmark individual components or processes, such as your CPU, memory, hard drives, or video performance.
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Rating: 4

Version tested: 1.8

Description: Folder2MyPC is a small free app that can add folders, application-shortcuts or system services to ’My Computer’. It can also add any application(s) to ’Control Panel’.

Here’s what you need to know about this program:

• Folder2MyPC can add any folders and apps you choose to ’My Compuer’ (see screenshot).
• It can add applications to ’Control Panel’, within or without a category.
• Adding a folder to My Computer can be a handy way to access these from save/open file dialogs within any app when the ’My Computer’ button is pressed.
• It can also add Windows services to ’My Computer’ (e.g. Recycling bin, Start Menu, Temporary Internet Folder, etc.)
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Rating: 4

Version tested: 2.3

Description: Free YouTube to iPod Converter is a tool that can download YouTube flash (FLV) videos and convert them into Ipod Video, PSP, or Mobile device compliant MP4 video file formats.

Here’s how it works. Find a video on YouTube that you want and copy its URL, then paste it into “Free YouTube to iPod Converter”. Next choose the quality setting for your desired video and, after a brief wait (depending on the size of the video file) your file is done, ready to be uploaded into your Ipod or device.

What’s really cool about this program is that for each type of supported device (Ipod, PSP, mobile) it has three predefined quality settings that you could choose from that make it extremely easy to use. The user has nothing more to decide than low, medium, and high quality. After that the video is downloaded and converted efficiently and , in my experience, without problems (no missing audio, no audio/video sync problems).
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Rating: 5

Version tested: 1.25

Description: Rooms is a free point & click flash puzzle game where the goal is to find a way out of a mansion set in some sort of alternate reality. The game can be downloaded or played online in the browser.

In Rooms, your objective is to guide your character (a Keanu Reeves lookalike replete with a long black coat straight out of the Matrix) as you try to find a way out of a mansion which looks like it belongs in Sherlock Holmes’ victorian England. The mansion is made up of rooms that can be traveled through as well as moved around, sliding-puzzle style. Each stage consists of a handful of rooms that have to be arranged and navigated such that your character can get to the exit.

But there’s more; finding your way to the exit in each level is just one part of your mission. The other part consists of a sort of meta-puzzle, whereby the arrangement of the rooms for each level you complete is in itself part of a larger puzzle.
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Rating: 5

Version tested: 1.0.55

Description: Mobysaurus is a free English thesaurus and dictionary that runs in the background and be accessed inside any application from the system tray or using a hotkey. It resides locally on your machine, which means that it can be used offline, and integrates an impressive range of references including Roget’s Thesaurus, WordNet, GCDIE Dictionary, and Moby Thesaurus II.

I am quite impressed by the range of features that Mobysaurus has to offer. These include over 30,000 headwords and 2,500,000 synonyms, cross-referencing, wildcard Search, extra online references, the ability to flag favorite searches, and a fully traceable search history that Mobysaurus saves.

Mobysaurus comes with a competent tabbed interface. There are five main tabs within the main UI: Find Synonyms, Find Synonyms Headwords, Suggest Headwords, Find Online, and History and Favorites. I am somewhat unclear as to whether there are sufficient differences between the three main tabs; these seem to contain pretty much the same info with the middle one (Find Synonymous headwords) the most useful. A single, user configurable tab would have been better. As it is the three tabs seem spammy and redundant.
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Rating: 5

Version tested: 2.1 beta

Description: Icon Phile is a small program that can be used to change Windows system icons (including desktop icons, cursors, drives, start menu and folders), as well as the icons for any document format/extension such as compressed files, MS offices files, graphic and media files and others.

Ever installed a really cool program such as an image viewing program, zip/compression program, etc., and really liked it but could not stomach the file icon at all? If so (yes I know it happened to most all of us) then Icon Phile is exactly what you need.

You can use Icon Phile to quickly change the icon not just of system icons but for any file extension that you want. Here’s a list of some of the coolest features: Read more »

Rating: 5 pick

Version tested: 2006-12-15

Description: CCCP (short for Combined Community Codec Pack) is a filter pack designed to enable your applications to play as many media file formats as possible while being as light and un-intrusive as possible. It includes tools such as Media Player classic, Zoom Player, and Haali Media Splitter.

Origins: CCCP was apparently conceived in order to enable the playback of all the different formats that were proliferating quickly on the Anime scene; with all the different Anime ’groups’ promising to support it. (A codec pack is a collection of Directshow filters that enable media players and media editing applications to decode/read/play and sometimes encode/write various media file formats).

I want my computer to play and/or edit most any media file formats that is out there: in this case, CCCP is for you. These are the reasons I highly recommend it:

• It works: It is not merely a mish-mash of a things that may or may not work (like some other codec packs are).
• It’s compact: CCCP is designed to be lightweight: while some codec packs contain overlapping filters that do the same thing, CCCP does not contain unnecessary extras.
• It’s safe: CCCP is built so it will not ruin your system and/or send it into a tailspin. The CCCP site actually states that installing CCCP might resolve previously existing conflicts. Read more »

Rating: 4

Description: Bugmenot is a web service that can provide temporary logins and passwords to websites/forums that require compulsory registration and/or collection of personal information before accessing their content.

Before you get a temporary email in order to register with a website that you are trying to access, try bugmenot. It is truly surprising just how many sites bugmenot can grant access to. It is not the case that the logins and passwords provided by bugmenot will work with every site all of the time, but the success rate is impressive. Each login/password combination has a % success rate based on the user’s feedback.

I successfully received logins and passwords to 5 sites from bugmenot. Of these all “worked” in the sense that I was granted access to the site, but one did not give me access to the page I wanted, although it did grant me access to other pages. Read more »

Rating: 5 pick

Version tested: 4.2a

Description: TrueCrypt is a free, open source encryption program. It works by mounting an encrypted file as a virtual hard drive and encrypting/decypting all read/write operations on-the-fly. It can also encrypt entire partitions or storage mediums such as USB drives, memory sticks, and floppy disks.

This is how this program works:

• Encryption Algorythms: TrueCrypt offers a number of encryption alogorythms including Blowfish, Serpent, Twofish, CAST5 and others. It will also allow the use of a so-called cascade of different ciphers; i.e. applying a number of these sequentially (If you don’t know what any of this means forget it; its just to say that the data is EXTREMELY secure).
• Creation of an encrypted file: you’ll have to determine how much encrypted storage you want. If, say, you choose to create a 100 meg volume you will have to create a 100 meg file somewhere on you hard drive. The contents of this file will be completely inaccessible when TrueCrypt is not mounting/decrypting it (including file and folder names and structure). Someone snooping around your computer might see that the file is there, but it will look like random data. If you want to make the file hidden from the file system, you can either use TrueCrypt to encrypt an entire partition or put your file on a hidden partition (hiding/unhiding partitions is a simple Windows registry function; a program like TweakUI can do it; to create a partition you can use Gparted).
• USB drives: TrueCrypt needs to either be installed on the machine on which you wish to view the data, or otherwise can be available on the USB drive in portable format. For a tutorial on how to do this go here; or go here for a nice script that can help you out. Read more »