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One of the main use of my laptop is to watch movies. Having a great video player would help when watching a film comfortably. I have always tried to stick with the ?alternative? players instead of the Windows standard Media Player. One reason for this is that most other players are far more stable than Windows Media Player. Earlier I had introduced a fine piece of open source software which goes by the name Media Player Classic (MPC). But the MPC development has be stalled for some time. So searching for a more up-to-date freeware video player, I came up with GOM Player.

GOM Player (Gretech Online Movie Player) supports a wide range of standard video formats MPG, AVI, VOB, WMV, 3GP etc. It also supports playback of HTTP Streaming (Internet Streaming) ASF, OGG, MP3 and AVI contents.

Usage/Interface

Right after installation, the setup shows a basic wizard to configure the quality, output mode (VMR7/VMR9), sub-titles, the video/audio codec to use, speaker channel support, automatic file association, process priority etc.

The interface is quiet clean and simple. Just a section to view the video and all the basic controls (Play,Previous,Next,etc.) and seek bar at the bottom. Most users should quickly get comfortable with this interface.

The seek bar is a quiet comfortable one, and the mouse wheel can control the volume. The only problem I found at the interface level was that double clicking on the screen does not automatically switch to full-screen, like most other players.

One simple question you could ask is ?Where are all the menus??. If you are very much used to modern media players, you know very well where to look for it. Simply right-click the screen, and you are presented with a host of options. All major options including Opening a DVD/VCD, Playback settings, Video/Audio settings, Aspect ration, Pan & Scan, Skins etc. are directly available in this right-click menu. So, not much to learn.

Speed/Stability

On extensive usage of the software, I found it to be quiet stable. It can read most ?scratched? DVDs without actually ?crashing?. Since the interface is so simple, it is no surprise that the software starts-up in no-time. The response time is also quiet quick.

Related Links

• GOM Player main download site
• GOM Player on Wikipedia

This software does not require much introduction. It is one of the most popular image viewing software with over 1 Million downloads every month. Packed with such a large set of features and tagged as a freeware, it is a must for any computer. I was started using IrfanView around six years back. After that, I have never found another image viewing software with such feature pack and simplicity.

IrfanView is created by Irfan Skilijan. It has always been popular for it?s speed and simplicity. At first look, it is just like any other image viewing software. Just the basic set of toolbar icons. The menu also appears to be very normal: the usual File, Edit, etc. All the power is actually packaged in to the menus.

File Opening, Saving and Converting

IrfanView natively supports around 20 popular image/video formats natively. These include the popular jpg, gif, png, psd, tif, ico etc. Apart from these, it also support around 45 other formats using plug-ins. Although the viewing of video files are quiet limited, it can still be considered as a simple video player. It also supports opening Macromedia Flash Format (swf) using plug-in.

It has to be noted that saving of images can only be done in 21 formats. Video cannot be saved, and it cannot be converted to images. Also, incompatible formats like flash cannot be converted to images.

Batch Conversion options are also available to convert a set of files to a different format using any required image processing.

Image Editing & Enhancement

Although it is not a full-fledged image editor, it still supports lots of good image manipulation options. Starting with the basic option of cropping, resizing, rotation, flip, grayscale, sharpen etc., it also supports some special enhancement options including 3D button, blur, emboss, edge detection, explosion, sepia, negative etc.

Shell Integration

IrfanView supports advanced shell integration for all the formats it support. Although, by default, it shows the same icon for all files (in any format) that has been associated with this app, it has an advanced option to show different icon based on the format. For example, jpg files will have JPG inscribed under the icon.

You can also associate IrfanView with USB events of scanner, digital cameras, webcams, etc. For example, if your webcam has a button to take picture, if the button is pressed, you can configure IrfanView to show up the taken picture.

Screenshot capturing section is also available where you can specify which areas to be take, the hot key that will activate screenshot, etc.

Conclusion

I might have mentioned only less than 1/4th of the options available with IrfanView. The options available is so diverse and complex that the configuration page itself contains 12 tabs. Overall, this app is a must have. If you have any other image viewing software, you can still keep a copy of IrfanView on your system. After all, it?s free and quiet light-weight.

Related Links

• Download IrfanView

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Technorati Tags: Image,Viewer,Editor,Converter
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If it?s from Google, it should be one-of-a-kind. Google Picasa has always been one of the best and unique Picture Management software of all times. All Google products showcase cutting edge technologies and features not find in any other software. Picasa is no different.

At it?s root, Picasa is a picture aggregator. It collects pictures from all over your hard disk and displays it as a single collection, which can then be categorized based on year taken and folder. Different custom views are also available.

Photo Editing

The photo editing features found in Picasa are some of the most unique set of features.

• Basic Fix ? Enables you to do basic touch-up of the photo. This includes Retouch, Auto Contrast, Auto Color etc. Also featured is the ?I?m Feeling Lucky? option which analyzes a photo and tries different fixes possible.
• Tuning ? Very basic set of option to Fill Light, Highlights, Shadows, Color Temperature, Neutral Color Picker etc.
• Effects ? Different kinds of effects that can be applied to a photo like Sharpen, Sepia, B&W, Film Grain etc.

Collages

With Picasa, creating Collage is a breeze. Just select the set of photos that you want to appear in the collage and press Collage button. A randomly order pictures are shown. You can align, rotate or resize the photos to get a perfect effect.

Photo Sharing

Photos Sharing is one of the main purpose of Google Picasa. Picasa supports direct upload to Google?s online Picasa Web Album. This can be very helpful if you want to share pictures with friends and relatives. You can also specify to only allow access to a specific album public access. Another part of sharing supported is the ?BlogThis? features. Using this option, you just have to provide the Google account username and password to post the updates to out website.

Conclusion

Google Picasa is a must-have app if you have lots of photos to manage. Quiet simple to use and packed with very powerful features, that is Google Picasa. The above options are just the start. It has tons of more options like Movie Making, Geo-tag, tagging, etc.

Related Links

• Download Picasa 3

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del.icio.us Tags: Image,Viewer,Editor,Photo
Technorati Tags: Image,Viewer,Editor,Photo

No matter how high end system you have, it always appears to slow down with time. This has become inevitable. Most people know that the reason for this slow down is installation of junk software. Most people tend to install software they find on magazine CDs, internet shareware sites, etc. Over time, this leaves junks of waste data that are not properly disposed by the system.

Uniblue SpeedUpMyPC 2009 is a system cleaner with integrated Junk File and Privacy File cleanup. Also integrated is a set of Network tweaks, Windows tweaks and Startup tweaks. The interface is very basic and quite easy to use.

Junk File Cleanup

The junk file cleanup section contains the standard set of temporary files including chk, dmp, old, tmp etc. There is no extra features compared to other junk file cleanup software available. Just plain old find by extension and delete.

Privacy Cleanup

Again a standard set of features here. Browser history & cookie cleanup of Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, Find file list, Chat history, MRU, Downloaded Files etc.

Optimizations

• CPU optimization enables you to control the priority of the process.
• Memory optimization cleans-up memory and clipboard data.
• Network optimization contains tweaks for Firefox, Internet Explorer and also general Network tweaks.
• Application optimization is a set of 3 sections: Startup manager, Uninstall manager, Quaratine manager. Of these, the Quarantine manager is a unique product not found in any other applications. In this section you can isolate or disable a running process in your system if you suspect it is a malicious process.
• Windows optimization contains a set of registry based Performance tweaks, Hard drive tweaks, XP user interface tweaks and Vista user interface tweaks.

Final Note

It cannot be said to be the most powerful of its class. There are several other software in this category that does a better job. But yet, it is quiet easy to use, and it?s interface is quiet pleasant.

SpeedUpMyPC 2009 is also available as a part of Uniblue PowerSuite 2009 (which also contains Registry Booster 2009 and Driver Scanner 2009)

Related Links

• SpeedUpMyPC on UniBlue.com

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Technorati Tags: System,Performance,Tweaks,Junk Cleaner,Privacy Cleaner
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Sometimes I like to look at old apps that still seem to work fine. Here we have AnalogX NetStat Live. Like most other small utility softwares of AnalogX, this is also a still very handy utility. The development of the software stopped at around 2001 I guess.

Basically, it is a net usage monitoring utility. It shows a simple geraphical display of all incoming and outgoing internet traffic. Statistics of net usage after Last Reboot of system and the whole month net usage are also shown.

Overall it is a very basic utility, very useful for broadband users with bandwidth usage limit. Although there hasn?t been an update for a very very long time, it still seems to work fine without any bugs. I haven?t actually tested it on Windows Vista, but I guess it should work fine.

Related Links

• NetStat Live on AnalogX Website

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Technorati Tags: Bandwidth,Monitor
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Want to record everything you do on-screen? Presenting RenderSoft CamStudio. This tiny little open source software records whatever you do on your computer into an AVI file. Its a great tool for basic presentation of software.

CamStudio supports just the basic set of recording options including fixed-region recording, full-screen recording, video recording frame rate, virtual cursor & highlight cursor, record audio from microphone or speaker, Autopan, basic annotations, etc.

Also available with this tool are two separate tools. One is a basic AVI Movie Player. Another tool available is the SWF Producer. The SWF Producer converts an AVI file to SWF file so that they can be integrated in to web-pages.

Final note, the last update to the main program was in around 2007 I think. Hope, new updates do keep coming.

Related Links

• CamStudio Websites
• CamStudio Official Blog
• CamStudio on Wikipedia

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Technorati Tags: CamStudio,Screen Recorder,Screen Capture
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