ShapeShifter

Shapeshifter is a clipboard manager for the typical Windows power-user. That’s not to say than novices couldn’t use it but, power users will find this application very helpful. It allows you to have several items in your clipboard (copying several items), and easily swap between them. Furthermore, it improves the way Windows handles copied information, by compressing it in the memory. So it is functional as a speed utility, an item utility, and an application utility. It’s nice to think of this program as something that can make working with some of you office products even easier.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot

Photo Magician

There's no shortage of free tools for resizing your digital photos and other images, though they range in size and complexity from command-line DOS tools to applications sophisticated enough to rival Photoshop. Photo Magician from Sheldon Solutions is extremely easy to use, but where it excels is in converting batches of photos to the same size and format for easy storage and display. With what amounts to one-click, set-and-forget conversion, Photo Magician may be the simplest such app we've tried. There's no red-eye correction or color adjustment, just the basics.

Photo Magician's sparse but efficient and attractive interface signals right away that this program is all about doing a specific job as quickly and easily as possible. There's a simple tabbed dialog with a wizard-based process for configuring Profiles that save your preferred settings. We browsed to and selected our Input and Output folders and moved to the Profile tab. Clicking Select a Profile opened a drop-down list containing preconfigured settings for everything from iPods to HDTVs, with custom options, too. Simple controls let us scale our images, and the Profile Editor let us access and change all our saved Profiles. The Conversion Settings tab includes check boxes and brief but clear explanations; for instance, the EXIF data option explains that the conversion process is faster with preview turned off. The Options tab let us change the interface language, set TIFF output compression and the output format for other file types, check for updates, and access command-line parameters. When we had our profile configured and saved, all we had to do was select our images and click Quick Convert Mode. Photo Magician processed and saved our images without any fuss.

It's not uncommon for people to end up with several folders full of duplicate images of various sizes and formats, mostly digital snapshots uploaded in bulk from a camera. Other free tools do more, of course, which can just mean they're less useful because they're too complicated or take too long.

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Mailinator is a Quick and Easy Disposable E-Mail Address

Mailinator, a free and easy service that gives you a temporary, Web-accessible e-mail address.

What I like about Mailinator is that it requires no registration or setup of any kind. You just think up an e-mail address on the fly, tack on @mailinator.com, and then type it in. For example: TisI@mailinator.com.

To check your e-mail, just head to the Mailinator site, enter your invented address under "Check your inbox," and then click Go. Presto: there's your mail. There's no password required (meaning this is a highly non-secure system, so use it only for things that don't require absolute privacy).

This is a great little service, one that can really help cut down your spam.

Here's wishing you a Good Booy.

ImgBurn - a lightweight CD/DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-ray burning application

ImgBurn is a lightweight CD/DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-ray burning application that has several modes, each for performing a different task: Read - read a disc to an image file; Build - creates an image file from files on your computer or network (you also can write the files directly to a disc); Write - write an image file to a disc; Verify - ensure that a disc is 100% readable (you can also have ImgBurn compare it against a given image file to ensure the actual data is correct); and Discovery - used in combination with DVDInfoPro, you can check the quality of the burns your drive is producing.

Flash Cookie Cleaner

Unlike standard cookies which can easily be controlled and cleaned by your respective browser, cookies set and used by Flash are a different animal altogether. Because Flash works outside of your browser, it has the ability to store cookies (aka LSO’s) in various folders throughout your system which is the foundation of how the "super cookie" you may have heard about works.

So essentially, when you are deleting browser cookies, Flash cookies are not deleted and can easily be "respawned" as browser cookies. To get rid of them, you have to clean them separately. Firefox offers the BetterPrivacy add-on which does this automatically, but if you don’t use Firefox a utility which can do this for you is the appropriately named Flash Cookies Cleaner. (As a side note, I believe CCleaner will remove Flash cookies, but I am not 100% sure.)

If you are concerned about your online privacy, cleaning Flash cookies has become a must.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

Awesome Duplicate File Finder

Duplicate images can take up a lot of space on your hard drive, but identifying and deleting them can be a major hassle. Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder promises to make this process easier, and it does, to some extent. Depending on the number of duplicates you have, this may or may not be the program for you.

The program's interface is attractive and intuitive. Users simply select the folders they want to scan for duplicates and then click the Start Search button. Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder scanned our hard drive quickly and then displayed the results as a list of file names, with duplicates listed side by side. A preview pane let us visually compare each set of images, and a similarity rating let us know exactly how similar the program found the images to be. This part of the program worked great; it was fast, and the results were thorough and accurate. The problem came when it was time to start deleting images. There's no way to delete them in batches, and if you're working with a large number of duplicates, it can get quite tedious to delete them one at a time. That said, those who don't mind deleting each duplicate individually will find little to complain about with Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder; the program works great otherwise. We also liked the fact that it supports JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP images. A Help file would have been nice, but it's not really necessary; anyone with basic computer literacy will be able to figure it out without problems.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

FrameSize 2.0

A digital photo frame file resizing application. Format and optimize your digital pictures for your digital photo frame. Avoid black bars, cropped images and fit many more photos into the frames memory. Preserve and stamp EXIF data onto output. Zoom in on areas of your digital photos for frame display without compromising quality. Maintain settings for multiple photo frames on the same computer. Adjust the output quality to store even more photos on a frame.

Digital Photo Frames are great, and becoming increasingly popular. However, typically they come in widescreen (16:9) sizes , which is great for movies, but less great for digital photos which are commonly taken by digital cameras in a non-widescreen format (usually 4:3). This results in the photo frame having to display the image with ugly black bars down the sides, or having to crop the image losing the top and bottom of the picture.

FrameSize is an application that allows you to quickly overcome these limitations and produce high quality images from your digital photographs that are formatted properly and perfectly optimised for your digital photo frame.

Using FrameSize provides the digital photo frame user with several benefits:

The photos being displayed on the frame will be in the correct aspect ratio for the frame; The photos being displayed on the frame will contain exactly the correct number of pixels for the frame, making each image file much smaller than the original - fit many more photos into the frame memory; The photos can be saved with a specified output quality allowing even more photos to be saved on a frame; Multiple sets of options can be saved and loaded allowing several photo frames to be maintained on he same PC; Information about the original photo can be written onto the output image.

FrameSize allows these transformations to be performed on individual photos as a one off operation, or on multiple photos if, for example, you need to reformat many photos in one session.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

John's Background Switcher

Switch your desktop wallpaper periodically

Do you get bored of your background wallpaper? John's Background Switcher periodically changes the background image on your computer to ensure it's always looking fresh.

John's Background Switcher allows you to configure when you want to change the background (such as every hour or every day) and you can specify which pictures to use in a number of ways. For example, one way is to select a list of specific pictures on your computer. Alternatively, you can direct John's Background Switcher to point at a particular folder such as 'My Pictures' and it will select random pictures...
Read more

Pros
* Allows you to select several different sources
* Can use Flickr photos as background images

Cons
* Doesn't work with all image format types

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

Ditto

This free clipboard manager looks straightforward at first but ultimately lacks cut-and-paste simplicity. The system-tray icon's Quick Paste option displays recent clipboard items, which you can drag and drop or double-click to insert in the current document. The 10 most recently copied items are numbered and can be accessed through hot keys; others appear in the order they were copied. You can sort clips in ascending or descending order, but the Filter box at the bottom of Ditto's window didn't work in our tests, and managing clips became more difficult with each new entry. The multitabbed Options window looks drab and cluttered, and while some settings, such as keeping the program on top, are easy to understand, others need explanation the meager help file doesn't provide. Ditto covers the basics, but many users--especially novices--will be disappointed by its lack of guidance and limited clip-management capabilities.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

FoxTab PDF Converter

FoxTab PDF Converter is a free tool that lets you create and convert any file to PDF (Adobe Portable Document Format).

The most stable and comprehensive PDF converter available and is very easy to use.

License: Freeware Free
Operating system: Windows XP/Vista/7/2000

Description:
FoxTab PDF Converter easily creates PDFs from any Windows program. this tool enables you to create PDF documents from almost any application (Word, Excel, Internet Explorer and more) The easiest way to create and convert any file to a PDF file format.

What can you do?
Easily create PDF files from any program that is able to print.
Extract data from almost any type of PDF file
Sign your PDF files.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

DosBox: Run DOS Programs from Win Vista and Win 7

Windows 7 does not support the DOS programs. DosBox is an application which can fairly solve this issue. It is used to run DOS programs in Windows 7 and Windows Vista.

Here is how to use DosBox application to run DOS games on windows vista and windows 7.
* Download the DosBox from http://sourceforge.net/projects/dosbox/ and install it on your computer.
* Put all your DOS programs in a single folder. To better organize programs, you can create subfolders. Keep the folder names simple.
* Launch the DosBox either from desktop shortcut or from start menu.
* Give the command on as “mount (drive letter)(folder location)” in the DosBox command. The drive letter is that which you want to use as a virtual drive.
* This will virtually mount your desired drive. Go to C drive by typing C: and then to see the content’s list type Dir. To access contents from a sub folder type CD (foldername).
* Find the .exe file. Type the name of the file to launch the program.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.
Read more: http://beingpc.com/2011/04/dosbox-run-dos-programs-from-win-vista-and-win-7/#ixzz1KeFEjlhG

DeskTube Lite

By Steve Horton, PCWorld

One of the biggest bottlenecks to watching videos in YouTube is your Internet connection. The page has to load in your Web browser, then the video has to queue up, and other browser tabs can steal priority and bandwidth away ... it's not ideal. DeskTube Lite is a free, separate app solution that requires Adobe AIR, an application environment that DeskTube Lite will install onto your Windows system for you if you don't already have it.

Launching and viewing videos is fast in the DeskTube Lite app.DeskTube Lite is very easy to use and fast for playing, searching, sharing (via e-mail) and making playlists for videos. It doesn't download the video, but rather streams it from YouTube, so the video may still buffer from time to time.

If you're looking for an interface to upload and manage your own videos, which is what a lot of people use YouTube for, DeskTube Lite can't do that, yet. Developer e-works promises an upcoming paid version that will include this and other features. DeskTube Lite also comes in versions for Mac, Linux, Android, and iPhone.

You may also run into videos that won't play in DeskTube Lite. Sometimes a YouTube publisher will disable viewing through the interface that DeskTube Lite uses; in this case DeskTube Lite will provide a link to the YouTube website. One other limitation I noticed is that high-def videos play at the maximum resolution possible with no way to bump it down on slow Wi-Fi connections, as you can on YouTube's site.

On the upside, DeskTube Lite's search works much more quickly than the Web site version and found the video I was looking for right away.

If you're strictly after a YouTube player, DeskTube Lite runs better than vanilla YouTube, and it won't cost you anything, so if you watch a ton of YouTube videos, you're going to want this. If you upload a lot, you'll need to use YouTube's own Web site for the time being.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

Shellexview

Shell Extensions are in-process COM objects which extends the abilities of Windows operating system. Most shell extensions are automatically installed by the operating system, but there are also many other applications that install additional shell extension components. For example: If you install WinZip on your computer, you'll see a special WinZip menu when you right-click on a Zip file. This menu is created by adding a shell extension to the system.
The ShellExView utility displays the details of shell extensions installed on your computer, and allows you to easily disable and enable each shell extension.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

FILEminimizer

Do you find image files are taking up too much disk space, or want to send large images by email? FILEminimizer Pictures is designed to compress and optimize your images, saving you space while maintaining quality.

If you want to compress Microsoft Office files, however, check out our FILEminimizer Office download instead.

That sounds quite unlikely, but surprisingly FILEminimizer Pictures works very well. The simple interface features a 'to optimize' window, that you can drag and drop any image file into. Before optimization, you should either choose one of three compression settings, or customize your own. High compression gives you reduced quality, but tiny file sizes, whereas low compression keeps quality high while still reducing file size impressively. In our tests of FILEminimizer Pictures, file size was reduced from anywhere between 65% and 80%, which really makes a difference when optimizing in bulk.

Results are impressive, so for bulk compression for things like email or saving to a USB for a presentation, FILEminimizer Pictures is really useful. There is little to criticize with FILEminimizer Pictures, except that the interface has too many buttons that repeat the same function. It's not necessary to have three for the same function! However, this odd design choice doesn't harm functionality.

FILEminimizer Pictures offers impressive compression of image files, without the inconvenience of having to decompress them for viewing. A great space saving app.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

Soluto

Soluto is a unique startup manager that can help you make your PC boot faster by disabling or delaying certain auto-start items. Unlike similar applications that merely list the programs that are set to start automatically whenever your computer starts, Soluto actually analyzes the boot process and shows you exactly which applications are starting on boot and how they influence your overall boot time. Based on community feedback and internal data, Soluto can classify programs into groups that suggest which applications can be safely disabled (No-Brainers), which require some advanced knowledge and which are required by the operating system and cannot be disabled. Whenever available, Soluto provides detailed information for each program as well as statistics that show what other users did with it. You can choose to disable (pause) a startup program or delay the start until after the boot process is complete. Other features include long-term boot time statistics and optional participation in the community Wiki.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

Fresh Diagnose

Fresh Diagnose is a utility designed to analyze and benchmark your computer system. It can analyze and benchmark many kinds of hardware, such as CPU performance, hard disk performance, video system information, mainboard / motherboard information, and much more...

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

LookInMyPC

Are you the kind of person who has to know everything that's going on in your system, and I mean absolutely everything? Then the free LookInMyPC is for you. It reports on the state of your system in exceptionally fine detail. Sure, it has the usuals, such as manufacturer, serial number, amount of RAM, hard disk space, and so on. But that's just a start. Want to know the part number of your RAM chips? It'll tell you that. How about all of your installed printer drivers, the name and address of your ISP, all of your installed updates and patches, your installed services....well, you get the idea. LookInMyPC does what it says--it looks in your PC in what seems like microscopic detail and then reports on the results in a local page in your default browser.

Install the program, click Generate Report, and LookInMyPC goes about its work. Be aware that the program needs a bit of time to do its analysis. In fact, you may think that it's no longer working, because after an initial notice that it's doing its job, you get no feedback and nothing seems to be happening. But be patient; after a few minutes, the report will appear in your browser. If you'd like, you can also have a report e-mailed--handy if you'd prefer to start LookInMyPC and then leave for a while.

If you want to spend less time and get a less-than-comprehensive report, that's an option, too. Before you click the Generate Report button, uncheck boxes for information you don't want, such as battery information (largely irrelevant for a desktop), or keyboard information (which is usually pretty obvious).

Especially useful is that after you generate the first report, LookInMyPC will also show you what changes have been made to your system. That report is used as a baseline, and for subsequent scans, you can see what's been changed.

It's also handy that you can install LookInMyPC as a portable installation, directly on a USB flash drive, memory card, or other removable media. You can then carry it around with you, plug it into any PC, and use it without making any changes at all to the system.

Any techie who wants to know everything going on in their system in great detail will get a lot out of LookInMyPC. For others, it may be overkill...but it's free, configurable, and so simple to use, it might be worth it, anyway.

Here's wishing you a Good boot

Clip Cube

ClipCube is a tiny clipboard history tool under development for Windows: it sits in the system tray, recording copied text for later use. Allows viewing saved items and re-copying them to the clipboard. It has an easy interface, and fits in a pocket: a self-contained program that does not need installation.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.

ClipX

ClipX is a tiny clipboard history manager. It is sweet, it is free, use it.
Also Download Plugins ClipX Stickies Plugin 1.9

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Evernote

Evernote makes it easy to remember things big and small from your notable life using your computer, phone, and the web. Get started today with a free account.

Capture everything.
Chances are, if you can see it or think of it, Evernote can help you remember it. Type a text note. Clip a web page. Snap a photo. Grab a screenshot. Evernote will keep it all safe.

Organize it. (Or let us do it.)
Everything you capture is automatically processed, indexed, and made searchable. If you like, you can add tags or organize notes into different notebooks.

Find anything fast.
Search for notes by keywords, titles, and tags. Evernote magically makes printed and handwritten text inside your images searchable, too.

Here's wishing you a Good Boot.