Description: Xobni is a free program that adds a sidebar with a slew of organizational functions to your Outlook. Principally built around organizing your Outlook data around people (similar in many ways to the Gmail model), Xobni provides a quick way to view threaded conversations with other people, view exchanged attachment history, view contacts you might have in common with another person, perform "lightning fast" searches, view email analytics data, and other functions.

Xobni ("inbox" spelled backwards, pronounced zob-nee) is an add on that aims to provide an alternative way to access your emails and data. Although currently it is only available for Outlook (apparently the world’s most used email client), there are plans to release this for other clients in the future.

I’ve been using this for a while now, waiting for it to move beyond the "invite only" beta in order to post it on Freewaregenius, which just recently happened. You might have had a glimpse of some degree of publicity surrounding Xobni, being featured in the New York Times, Newsweek, etc., and if you were wondering whether it lives up to the hype the answer is a definite yes. Xobni to Outlook is just what the doctor prescribed; it takes a somewhat dysfunctional, top-heavy and unexciting piece of software and adds a set of functions that are innovative and exciting, but - most importantly - it is fast and it works.

Here are the top five things I like about this program:

1- People-centric organization: search for someone by name and Xobni will construct and display a "profile" for that person that includes contact info, statistics, network of contacts, and other info. It will also display the email history with that person with the most recent messages displayed on top. You will like this person-centric approach if you like and/or used to Gmail (although it doesn’t quite replicate Gmail’s "conversations", it’s a good approximation).

2- Quick attachment discovery: search for someone and Xobni will display a history of exchanged attachments with that person (to and from) for easy access. This surprisingly useful in practice, probably more useful than you would expect at first.

3- Extremely fast search: forget about Outlook’s search; Xobni does its own indexing of your Outlook data when it is first installed and will keep all subsequently data indexed as well. The result: extremely fast searches without having to install the bloated and top heavy MS desktop search.
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Description: MailStore Home is a free program that can backup your email from multiple email applications/accounts and consolidate these into a single, centralized archive that it can burn into a backup CD. Also offers the ability to perform advanced searches and quickly view archived email. Supported email clients include Outlook, Windows Mail, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Exchange, as well as POP/IMAP accounts (including all webmail services that IMAP or POP support such as Gmail and Yahoo), and local files.

This program can backup your email from a wide range of supported applications and services (including webmail services such as gmail) into a single centralized archive. It offers a high degree of configurability in terms of what you want and do not want it to backup, and allows for exporting your email across applications (so, for example, you can export your Outlook email into Thunderbird). More notes below:

• Backup options: you can tell it which folders you want backed-up and which ones you don’t. This might be useful if, say, you send a lot of email newsletters to certain folder(s) and do not care to have these backed up. Note that backups are incremental, such that Mailstore will add to the existing archive only those emails that have been added since the last backup.
• Exporting mail: if you need to you can select a folder structure or email/emails and export these into a another supported application (e.g. Outlook to Outlook Express, Thunderbird, etc.). You could also back them up to CD, save them individually to IMAP or hard disk , or even forward them by SMTP to an email address.
• The user experience: is tremendous. This is a sleek looking program that is well designed overall intuitive to use.
• Supported email clients/services: Outlook, Windows Mail, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Exchange, as well as POP/IMAP accounts and local files. Archiving webmail: such as Gmail, Yahoo, AOL is possible, but Hotmail is not (Mailstore can archive any service that have a POP3 nor an IMAP server, which Hotmail doesn’t). See this page and this page for more info on configuring webmail.
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Description: Deluge is a full-featured open source bittorrent client that runs on multiple platforms. It is designed to be low on system resources utilization while providing powerful features and a user friendly experience.

I am not sure why, but I’ve been always looking for a good alternative to Azureus or µTorrent, admittedly the two most powerful Torrent clients. I have been using the Azureus-based BitTyrant (more on that one here), but have also had my eye out for some time on the open-source Deluge. And although I have previously tried multiple releases of the Windows version, they have always been somewhat unreliable and buggy; until this one: from the purely subjective experience of a single user I can report that this release (v.0.5.8.9) seems to be a very good, solid torrent client.

It is worth mentioning that as of the 0.5 release, Deluge was completely re-written from the earlier code and supports more features and better stability. Here are more notes on this program:

• The user experience: the interesting thing about this program is that it is very simple and “clean” looking, perfect for regular users who do not want to deal with a lot of complexity.
• Features: as of the 0.5 release Deluge supports encryption, peer exchange, binary prefix and UPnP, and a web UI that works on Firefox (didn’t try it - sorry). Other features include global as well as individual torrent upload/download limits, moving incomplete torrents on the local drive, enabling safe “blocklists” (Safepeer, Peerguadian, Emule), peer exchange, local peer discovery, private torrents, password protection, RSS, minimizing to tray, and other features which I either do not care to mention or do not understand.
• Technical comparison: for a technical features comparison with Azureus and µTorrent, click the thumbnail to the right (table adapted from Wikipedia’s torrent comparison article).
• Plugin architecture: makes this program (a) adaptable and easy to work with, and (b) quite powerful. Note that many of the features mentioned above might require activating the relevant plugins. At the time of this writing, all Deluge plugins were included in the installation package.
• Memory consumption: a mere 15 megs in memory. This is important given that Torrent clients typically reside in the background doing their thing while you work on other applications.
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Description: “IE Open Last Closed Tab” is a free Internet Explorer extension that can retrieve and launch previously visited URLs. On pressing a hotkey it displays a page of thumbnails representing previously viewed URLs that can be used to quickly access any of these sties.

I was doing some freeware research the other day and had about 8 or 10 tabs open on IE (yes, I use IE7, for work-related reasons). It was at the end of my lunchbreak at work and I had to switch quickly from blogging mode to work mode; except I wanted to be able to access the tabs/URLs I had open later on and not lose them. I knew that you could do this fairly easily with some Firefox plugins and so I started searching for a freeware Internet Explorer extension that delivered that functionality. Eventually I found that MuvExToe’s “IE Open Last Closed Tab” and IE7Pro, both offered this function (and both are freeware). I decided to post the former because (a) it featured a nifty “Quick Tab” thumbnail view with the latter didn’t, and (b) I was more interested in a single extension that did this rather than a program that offered multiple tools. Here are more notes on “IE Open Last Closed Tab”:

• How it works: the extension installs itself in Internet Explorer 7 and monitors sites visited. It will install a button on the IE command bar that, when pressed, will display a list of visited sites (see screenshot to the right). Alternately you can press a hotkey (Alt+Q by default) and get a page of sites represented as thumbnails (see screenshot above).
• The site history: this program apparently stores the URL history and does not use that of IE. What this means is that the list of visited sites can be retrieved even after you delete your browsing history, cookies, cache, temporary internet files, etc. You can delete the visited sites history from within the program itself.
• Quick tab style view: i.e. the page with site thumbnails. A rather cool feature. I am not sure why but many sites end up without a thumbnail/visual representation. Note: this page includes an ad at the bottom of the page, but the ad can be disabled; click on “disable product bar”.
• Number of tabs to remember: is set at 25 by default but can be increased up to 200.
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Description: IE Alias is an free extension for Internet Explorer that allows you to type in a user defined text shortcut in IE’s address box in order to launch your favorite site or sites.

Imagine being able to, say, type in FWG in Internet Explorer’s address box in order to launch the Freewaregenius site, without having to type the entire URL or clicking on a bookmark. Imagine further that, say, you type in “news” in the address box to launch your 4 favorite news sites simultaneously, or entering “freeware” to launch a handful of your favorite freeware sites, etc. This is what IE Alias allows you to do. Here are more notes on this program:

• How to set it up: click on the tools menu then “MuvExToE - IE Aliases Setup”. You will be presented with a dialog where you can define your shortcuts. For multiple sites launched using a single alias, you can either define the same alias repeatedly for all the sites you want to associate with it, or simply edit the row that contains the alias directly (see “editing” below).
• Editing aliases: is a cinch. Just click into the “cells” and edit, much like a spreadsheet (see screenshot).
• Max allowed URLs per alias: is not clear. I was able to successfully define 21 URLs tied to a single alias before I decided to stop.
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Description: Time Machiner is a web service that can be used to send emails to anyone on a future date, useful as reminders to yourself or others about future appointment or pre-scheduled birthday/anniversary congratulation notes, and so on.

I don’t know how many have calendar/reminder programs, but I am willing to bet that the number is small, and that the number of people who actually use them is much smaller. Most everyone uses email though, and if you wanted a good way to make sure that either you or other people that you know are reminded of events send them a "future" email using Time Machiner. More notes on this service:

• Plan the email reminders in advance: if there’s an event that is taking place in ten days, for example, you can use this service to schedule a reminder email in, say, seven days and another one the day before the event. You can set these email reminders in motion now and not have to worry about them any longer.
• Send notes to yourself or others. "Hello future self, this is slightly older self; I just wanted to tell you that you’re fantastic and I love you"
• Email formatting: strangely does not allow carriage returns (your message will be a single unbroken sentence). No styles/formatting and of course no attachments.
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Description: Free Wi-Fi Hotspot Finder is a web service that can give you a list of free wireless internet locations for any address of your choosing and present these locations visually on a map of the area.

If, say, you’re going to a conference, going to visit relatives, or for whatever reason will be in an unfamiliar part of town and wondering about the available options for wireless internet check out this neat service. Free Wi-Fi Hotspot Finder allows you to enter an address (e.g. a zip code) and gives you a list of Wi-Fi hotpots in that area. It will also place these venues on a Google map mashup.

Of course, this will only help you if you’re planning ahead, unless you have an internet-enabled mobile phone in which case you can log-on and get this information on the spot when you need it. I tried this with mine and although the Google maps service does not show inside the browser on my iPhone I was still able to get a list of Wi-Fi places.

I tested this service on the two locations which I know the most: my neighborhood where I live, and the downtown area where I work, and I can report that it was able to identify more than 95% of places (in both cases it missed only one place that I knew of, but revealed a number of others that I had not known about previously).
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Description: Mikogo is a free, browser-based screen sharing and remote computer access platform for Windows. It allows you to create virtual meetings/webinars where any of the participant’s screens can be shared, to define which applications can or cannot be accessed remotely, and to instantly share files with participants, all without the need to configure firewalls, ports, and routers etc.

Say you want to demonstrate to your friend in another town how you perform a certain trick with Photoshop, or say you want to send your mother in a different time zone a really good freeware antispyware program and install for her on the spot. Mikogo will allow you to do all of the above.

I work in a company here in Seattle that’s been merged with another one on the east coast, and a few days ago I had to give a presentation “virtually” to a group of my colleagues back east. A conference call was arranged for the audio part, but what was needed was a platform whereby I could share my screen with multiple PCs on the other side of the continent. This being the business world, we used an expensive proprietary software, but I nonetheless started researching easy ways this could be done for free and found and tested Mikogo.

Once you download and install this program, you will have to create an account and log in. What’s really cool is that if screen sharing/broadcasting is all you need you audience on the other side would not need to create accounts or install software (they do, however, need to download and run a single no-install executable). Moreover, all interaction happens through the browser and there are no firewalls or routers to configure, no IP addresses to investigate and ports to open or close. Here are more notes on this program:

• How to share your screen: once you launch your Mikogo account and log in, right click on the Mikogo icon in the system tray and select “Start meeting”. You will be provided with a meeting ID (a kind of password) that others could use to view your screen. Once you have your meeting up and running, you can easily switch presenter to view another user’s screen rather than them seeing yours (subject to their acceptance, of course). Meeting limited to 10 participants.
• How others can view your screen: all your audience members need to do is go to the Mikogo website and click on “join meeting” which will download a small executable (approx 680K) that they can run and enter the meeting ID into. This will instantly open a browser window with your own shared screen displayed in it. They can also switch to broadcasting their screen or controlling another desktop without the need for any further download. Once the meeting is over, they can simply delete the executable and the config file that it creates (in the same directory in-which it is placed).
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Description: AnyClient is a free file transfer client that is available both as a web service that can be accessed from any internet enabled computer and as a standalone program you can install locally on your machine. Supports FTP, FTPS, SFTP and WebDAV.

I must admit that the idea of an FTP client as a web service accessible from any browser never occurred to me, but now I think of the possibilities: you can use the web applet and forgo installing an FTP client altogether (site profiles that you create are saved locally), you can transfer files from a friend’s computer straight into your FTP account without installing any software on their PC, or you can keep a set of tools and files on your FTP account that you can log into and download from any machine, no need to carry a USB thumbdrive around. Here are more notes on this program that apply to both the local and online incarnations of this program:

• The user interface: is clean and as simple as it can get. Employs the familiar two side-by-side panels. Buttons and options are kept to a minimum, but you are able to do pretty much everything you need to do with an FTP client. Unfortunately it doesn not support drag and drop. (Screenshot taken is from the browser-based version).
• Security: to quote the site: “AnyClient supports several secure protocols which encrypt your data during transit including FTPS (FTP over SSL), SFTP/SSH and secure WebDAV via HTTPS”, and “all site profile information is saved locally on your computer and cannot be seen by users other than yourself”. Of course I still imagine that many users will feel more secure using local clients for some purposes anyway.
• The site manager: allows you to set up profiles that you can access later at the press of a button. Note that you can create multiple profile for the same account; for example a profile that connects to account A and opens at directory X, and another one that connects to the same account but opens at directory Z. Note that these profiles are saved locally whether you use the local or online versions.
• Zip Upload: a nice option whereby your files are zipped before they are uploaded. (Access this from one of the tiny buttons under the file dialog). Read more »

Description: Vidalia is a GUI for Tor, the free onion-router implementation that can provide anonymous internet communication. This program resides in the system tray and provides quick, 1-click anonymous internet access. It allows you to start and stop Tor, view it’s status and bandwidth usage, and even setup your own Tor server if you want that can contribute to the anonymous network.

If you’re not familiar with Tor, it is an “onion router” program that can provide some degree of internet anonymity through a worldwide network of interconnected servers that employ the technology (the “onion” metaphor refers to the use of a set of encrypted layers to get the anonymity). What Vidalia does is (a) make it really easy to use Tor straight from your system tray, and (b) install all the tools that you need to get anonymous internet access in one or two clicks (Tor, Privoxy, and TorButton for Firefox). Here are some notes on this program:

• Installation: the full Vidalia setup will also install Tor, Privoxy, and TorButton, which are all the tools that you will need.
• Setup: if you are using Firefox you will simply be able to turn Tor off and on using TorButton (click or right-click the bottom right corner in Firefox to access). You will have to configure Internet Explorer and other applications manually (say, a P2P app, Torrent client, or download manager). See here for how to do this (jump to step two: “To torrify other applications that support HTTP proxies ….”).
• The Tor Network map: a cool feature of Vidalia where you can observe the geographic location of servers on the Tor network on a world map, including where your own traffic is going.
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Description: ALToolbar is a free Internet Explorer toolbar that offers a number of very useful functions straight from the browser, including an internet cleaner, advanced find, automatic site login with online password storage, online bookmark management , screenshot capture for websites, quick access to multiple search engines, a flash ad blocker, control by mouse gestures, and a few others.

Let me be clear first that I usually do not like toolbars and try to avoid them. I especially do not like toolbars when they offer functions and features that have little value-added, and then try to force you to use their own custom search page. The only toolbar that I have previously recommended on Freewaregenius is the Google Toolbar (see this post). ALToolbar, however, offers a number of functions with high value added and I have no qualms giving it my highest possible endorsement.

The reason I recommend ALToolbar is because it brings together a terrific collection of browser tools in one place. And although it does have it’s own customized search page, the last used search engine (e.g. Google or whatever other engine you like) will be used as default, or you can define your own default search provider.

Note that of the many functions that ALToolbar offers, two of these (the automatic password login ALPass and the Bookmark manager) actually store your information online. The idea behind this is to enable you to manage your bookmarks or site logins on one computer (say, at home), and then access these from your work computer for example such that you will always have access to the will always be in sync. These are discussed in mroe detail below. Here’s a list of all the functions ALToolbar has to offer:

• The user interface: the toolbar generally looks good but what is cool is that it allows you to maximize it (so that a text label is displayed next to each button) or minimize it so that only the icons appear. The latter option is very useful if you are interested in minimizing your browser toolbar clutter.
• Customizability: ALToolbar allows you to pick and choose in terms of the buttons you would like to display within the toolbar and/or the functions that you would like enabled. If you do not care about any offered function(s) you can disable it and use the remaining ones.
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Description: uvLayer is an Adobe Air application that allows you to watch, collect, and share videos from a cool desktop-based interface. It can also log into your Facebook account and allow you to share videos with your Facebook friends simply by dragging and dropping them on your friends’ icons.

If you are serious about collecting videos, or serious about sharing them with your friends (or both), you should definitely check out uvLayer. What it is is a desktop interface that handles videos as thumbnailed-objects that can be dragged into folders on your uvLayer desktop. The end effect is really rather pleasing; so much so that even if it never occurred to you to (a) create collections of favorite videos, or (b) start sharing these with friends on Facebook, you might be persuaded to start doing so. Here are more notes on this program:

• The user inferface: looks very good (see screenshot). All videos and drag-and-droppable. You can move your videos into stacks on the uvLayer desktop or sort them within folders. You can also drag and drop them to share them with your Facebook friends.
• Video sources: the uvLayer help file indicates that the videos are obtained from YouTube and Truveo (with more to be added in the future). It would be cool if in the future uvLayer can function as a sort of meta search engine
• Search: naturally, this is the most important function. Search results are displayed as thumbnails in virtual folders, and mousing over these will deliver more info on each video in the form of a tooltip. Keeping the search folder on the desktop acts as a saved search.While the general coolness factor is undeniable, uvLayer might not be the most efficient way to search for a specific video if you prefer to quickly eyeball a page of results for all relevant info.
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Description: Netlicious is a desktop client that can manage your del.ici.ous account. It offers a number of useful features including a built-in browser, quick posts and tag editing, exporting your bookmarks to HTML/XML, a search box, the ability to add URLs from the browser, and others.

Del.icio.us, if you just landed from another planet, is a social bookmarks manager (i.e. an online bookmark management and sharing service). Netlicious connects to the Delicious API and creates a local copy of your bookmarks and tags. It allows you to perform any number of operations within the Netlicious interface that are instantly reflected online, including adding, removing, or editing posts or tags. Here are some notes on this program:

• Browsing your bookmarks: one of the most interesting features that Netlicious makes available is the ability to scroll down your list of bookmarks with an arrow key and instantly view the URL inside the Netlicious browser. This makes for a very efficient way to quickly flip through your favorites and/or keep up to date.
• Views: clicking on a tag (or Ctrl-clicking multiple tags) will filter the posts in your view accordingly. From the ’view’ menu, you can also filter whether to see public posts, private posts, or both.
• Exporting to HTML/XML: honestly this is one of my favorite features, insofar as the HTML file serves as a launchable, clickable list of all your Delicious bookmarks.
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Description: FeedCrier is a free web service that delivers RSS feeds into your IM client and works with AIM, MSN, and Jabber/GTalk. It can also provide a widget for your website that your readers can use to quickly subscribe to your site’s RSS feed and have it delivered into their IM clients.

If (a) you use AIM, MSN, or Jabber/GTalk, and (b) there is a site or news source that you follow religiously and like to be instantly notified in real time whenever updates are published (e.g. Freewaregenius ), you can use FeedCrier to deliver these RSS updates straight into your IM. Or for example if you publish a blog and would like to be instantly notified whenever there’s a new comment you can have your comments RSS delivered to your IM client in real time. Here are more notes on this service:

• How it works: all you have to do is add ’FeedCrier’ to your buddy list within your IM client. From that point forward you can add RSS subscriptions in 3 different ways (a) through your IM client itself, (b) using the FeedCrier site or a FeedCrier widget featured on a site, or (c) using a FeedCrier bookmarklet that you can add to your favorites.
• Interaction with FeedCrier: there are 4 commands; help, subscribe [URL], unsubscribe [URL] and list, which lists all of your RSS subscriptions. These simple commands allow you to quickly and easily manage your account, and I found them to be easier to use that man anging your account through your account page on the FeedCrier site. The URL used can either be the site URL (in-which case FeedCrier will attempt to find the RSS feed on its own), or you can specify the RSS feed URL itself.
• Adding a widget to your site or blog: is extremely easy; you can generate a little code snippet that does this that you can insert into your site.
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Description: “Sendto Flickr” is a free Windows explorer extension that allows you to upload images to Flickr through the right-click “send-to” menu.

If you’re a Flickr user you might already know that there are a number of desktop-based programs that can be used to upload photos to the photo sharing site; “Sendto Flickr” is another uploading option which, as the name implies, allows you to upload straight from the Windows “send-to” context menu. More notes on this one:

• Upload from anywhere: including network drives, removable drives, flash cards, memory cards, etc.
• Batch uploading: simply select multiple images and right click to upload. Files will be uploaded sequentially and previewed as they are uploaded.
• No image or metadata editing: unlike some of the other Flickr uploaders that do this, this one is just about 1-click uploading; you do not need to enter photo details.
• Authorization: will require that you authorize it to use the Flickr API to access your account. Will take you through the steps after installation. You will not need to enter account details every time you upload.

Wish list (or how this program can be even better)
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