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Finally Nero did introduce a free version of their popular burning program for Windows. This is what they did: they took the pro version of the product, stripped away about 90% of the features leaving a very crippled Nero 9 Essential. And then gave it away for free. Nero 9 essential is basic, a very basic burning program, supporting only disc burning and CD/DVD copying operations. It supports only data disc burning. No audio CDs, no video CDs or DVDs. You can’t rip CDs or burn disc image. You can’t access any of the advanced features. Even the burning speed selection is limited.  There is nothing to review about this program. There is not much to show either. And what about the bloat? The size of the installer is 55 MB, and upon installation it occupies 130 MB of disk space. 130 goddamn Mega Bytes!! And when it’s running it gobbles up 100 MB of RAM. Please skip this program and choose any one from these .

The words “Microsoft” and “Open Source” occurring together in the same sentence might surprise some people, but the fact is, Microsoft is no stranger to open source. They have been contributing to the open source community, in a limited way of course, for the last couple of years. Recently, they even started venturing into uncharted territory by releasing 20,000 lines of code for the Linux community, to improve performance of Linux running as a virtual machine on top of Hyper-V. Microsoft also owns an open source project hosting website, similar to SourgeForge, called CodePlex. In fact, the open source Wiki engine, WikiPlex , that Microsoft recently released is the underlying engine that runs CodePlex. WikiPlex’s code has been rewritten and released under the MS-PL (Microsoft Public License), allowing developers to use it for their own application. WikiPlex is a regular expression based wiki engine that allows developers to integrate a wiki experience into an existing .NE

1. Verified Pages : Do you use Twitter to follow celebrities or some famous organizations like NASA or brands like Intel? Are you sure the person you are following is actually the one he or she is claiming to be? If you are unsure, get it verified at Verified Pages. Verified Pages gives people confidence that the social networking accounts and pages they find all over the web are actually associated with the brands they claim to be. 2. How To Hijack 'Every iPhone In The World' : If you receive a text message on your iPhone any time after Thursday afternoon containing only a single square character, Charlie Miller would suggest you turn the device off. Quickly. 3. NASA Apollo 11 Manual : This manual looks at the evolution and design of the mighty Saturn V rocket, the Command and Service Modules, and the Lunar Module. It describes the space suits worn by the crew and their special life support and communications systems. We learn about how the Apollo 11 mission was flown

Border Skin is a new software that enables the famous Aero effect in Windows XP title bars and borders. The software adds transparency, blur and reflection as seen on Windows 7 and Windows Vista. Border Skin requires no installation. Just unzip it and run the executable to transform all window borders to the Aero look. Every effect the software enables on the border can be turned on or off by the user. So you can enable only transparency without reflection, or adjust the blur level to a desired value or simply turn it off. The software also includes a great number of skins with various shades of color. Be aware, that any eye candy on Windows is heavy on the resources. Border Skin consumes about 50 MB of system memory but the performance is generally smooth and acceptable.

VueMinder is one of the best desktop calendar program for Windows with an impressive number of features, which until recently, was available only on paid commercial license. Last week they released a new version of their software, and with it released a freeware edition of the program – VueMinder Lite. The Lite version doesn’t have as many bells and whistles as the Pro version but even after stripping down, it still leaves you a wide array of features, sufficient for most users. Let us look at some of the features that makes VueMinder worthy to be on your desktop. Integrated Desktop Calendar : VueMinder Calendar integrates a monthly Desktop Calendar into the Windows desktop. This isn’t a mere image of the calendar or something but an interactive, simplified version of the Main Window. You can navigate through days and months and view events. You can even create new events, or edit existing ones or delete them right on the integrated calendar. The Desktop Calendar's size,

Desktop Linux Reviews ran a post two days ago reviewing a new Linux distribution called “ Hannah Montana Linux ”…… Wait! What? A Linux on Hannah Montana? Isn’t that the obnoxious kid at Disney Channel or whatever? Yes, that’s precisely her, and now they have a whole distribution dedicated to her. Facepalm. If the name of the distribution itself did not make you sick in the stomach, certainly these screenshots will. Unfortunately, the horror doesn’t end here. Quoting from the review at DLR, When I booted into my Hannah Montana desktop I was greeted by two horrific things. The first was some cheesy music with her singing something about “the best of both worlds” or whatever. To me it was the worst of all worlds. Ugh. And the audio didn’t end. It just kept looping, over and over although she did seem to stop singing. But the cheesy pop guitar continued on and on and on… The second thing I noticed was the color purple. Or perhaps it’s a dark pink. I really c

My previous two themes collections for Windows XP ( part1 & part2 ) has been well received by a lot of readers, barring a few who lamented that they can’t use these on Windows Vista. Now that Windows 7 is already visible at the horizon, Vista users are probably getting ready for the upgrade. But just before Windows 7 docks at the shore, let me bring you a collection of 25 beautiful themes for Windows Vista, hand picked by me. Also see 32 gorgeous and unique Windows 7 themes Note: Please follow the instructions given on the theme author’s page. Some themes include additional resources like dock application, styler bars, sidebar skins and such, necessary to achieve the complete transformation. General instructions on how to apply Windows Vista visual style is provided at the end of the article. SteelFlash Windows Se7en for Vista Aero Diamond Aero Blue Aurorarion Darkside vR2 Clearlooks for Vista Clearscreen Sharp for Vista Erubescence LIM Leopard Lumen VS LumenS for Vi

Visikid is the perfect solution for working parents who has to leave their kids at home and hope they aren’t wasting time online, or worse, viewing online porn when they should be doing their homework. Instead of using application and site blocking tools, which never really work, Visikid emphasizes on teaching the child to be responsible and obey rules. Visikid consist of a client application which runs on a computer running Windows. This application collects information such as websites visited and the amount of time spent on these sites, applications accessed etc and uploads these information to Visikid’s online server. The parent can login to the online account and monitor their child’s computer and online usage, in real time, from their workplace or practically anywhere.   The application is password protected and cannot be disabled by the child. In fact, it’s so paranoid that it prompts for password each time you try to access it’s menu items from the system tray.

Windows 7 does not provide an easy upgrade path from Windows XP to Windows. So if you are running Windows XP and want to move to Windows 7 you have to get your hands dirty with a few extra work. The steps involved are these: First copy your Windows XP files and settings to a removable media, such as an external hard drive Next, you will install Windows 7 and then migrate your files back from the removable media onto your computer. When you are finished, you must install your software programs again, but your files and settings will remain intact from Windows XP. Here are steps in detail: Copy files using Windows Easy Transfer 1. Insert the Windows 7 DVD while running Windows XP. If the Windows 7 installation window opens automatically, close it. 2. Open Windows Explorer and browse to the DVD drive on your computer and click migsetup.exe in the Support\Migwiz directory. 3. The Windows Easy Transfer window opens. Click Next. 4. Select An external hard disk

Nokia Music is a music manager software for the PC and compatible Nokia devices using which you can play music, rip and burn your audio CDs, and transfer tracks between your PC and Nokia mobile phones. Nokia Music also integrates with Nokia music store allowing you to buy and discover new music from within the application. Nokia Music can connect to multiple Nokia devices and organize your music collection on them. The My Devices area shows the devices that are currently connected, which one is selected for viewing, and the status of the ongoing rip, burn, and transfer operations. Here are some key features of Nokia Music: · Search, organize and listen to your music collection easily in one place; whether from the PC, mobile devices, CDs, or Nokia Music Store. · Moving tracks and playlists to and from your PC and mobile devices has never been easier. Simply set up auto-transfer rules between your mobile device and PC or just drag and drop your music where you want

In a surreal world perverted by television, one man is distraught to learn what his wife does with the milkman. An ordinary story executed with a bizarre and humorous concept.

A typical webpage contains several different sections other than the article - ads, images, snippets of related contents and some not so related contents. Why waste pages by printing everything on a webpage when you are only interested in the article or maybe only a part of the article? Previously I wrote about a software called GreenPrint that allows you to remove clutter from a page before sending it to print. Printee for Internet Explorer is a similar tool, however, this one is available as a plug-in for the said browser. It allows you to edit a webpage directly inside Internet Explorer and condense any web page down to just the content you want. When you want to print a page, before clicking on the Print button click on the Printee button. A toolbar will show up at the top of the page with an array of buttons to perform edit operations. You can select regions on the page you want to remove, expand, shrink, fit to width and so on. You can even change the font type and

Pluto Strikes Back , is a great little game to waste away your weekend (and thereafter). The game’s storyline is this: Pluto is angry at being demoted from a full planet status to a humiliating “dwarf planet”. To seek revenge he powers up his "meteor magnet" or in other words, his gravitational pull, and equipped with a large baseball bat knocks all incoming meteors and space debris at the rest of the planets of the solar system.     You control the swings of the bat by moving the mouse pointer around, aiming to maximize the score by making powerful and direct hits. The meteors at first appears to drift slowly into view then suddenly gains speed as it’s captured by the new intense gravitational field of the angry planet. It takes a few minutes to adjust to the sudden burst in velocity as the rocks approach the planet. You get extra points for ricochets and other trick shots. But missing a swing inflicts massive damage on Pluto, which takes a heavy toll on it’s health

Skinny Clock is a clock application for Windows that offers a number of clock gadgets for the desktop as well as an option to customize Windows system tray clock, which is not natively possible in Windows. Skinny Clock can be used in two ways. One way is to use it as a floating clock window, whose look can be changed using different skins. There are several pre-made skins that comes with the application, the only problem is, except one or two most of them are rather ugly. Thankfully, you can design your own skins from scratch using custom images and a configuration file, if you want to. (I suggest ClocX ). The clock window supports alpha transparency and can be dragged and placed anywhere on the screen. The clock can be hidden from view and displayed with a hotkey. The second way of using Skinny Clock is the one that made me write about it. Skinny Clock can be used to override the taskbar clock to show the time using format and font of your choice. With Skinny Clock you

The Animated Portable Network Graphics (APNG) is an unofficial extension to the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) file format that supports animation. PNG does not support animation natively, but APNG brings animation to PNG files that work similarly to animated GIF files. APNG supports 24-bit images while retaining 8-bit transparency which is not available in GIFs. It also retains backward compatibility with non-animated PNG files. APNG is a new technology which is still not adopted by most browsers; Firefox 3 and Opera 9.5 are the only browsers that support APNG.   Example animated PNG. Why APNG is better than GIF? From Mozilla Labs : The two most apparent problems are that GIF images can only contain 256 colors, and lack support for partially-transparent pixels. This results in images which often look grainy or rough, and which do not smoothly blend into their background. Let’s take the following example: