Jake

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• Posted New design launched using Movable Type to Sheppard Mulin Test
  Our web site is sporting a new look and feel thanks to Movable Type and the Professional Template Set. The Professional Template Set makes it possible for just about anyone to get up and running with a new web...
• Posted Best Mac Fax Application to Software Update
  "What's the best fax application for Mac OS X?" If you need a fax application to send the occasional fax with your Mac, I wouldn't use an application at all. For the very occasional use, I recommend free fax site FaxZero. It allows you to upload a file to fax and choose a recipient for your fax without spending any money. If you need to receive faxes or want to send many faxes every month, there are some other suggestions I would make instead....
• Posted Best Free Twitter Software Client to Best Free Windows Software
  If you use Twitter daily, you might realize that using the Twitter.com Web interface isn't giving you the best access to Twitter. In the sea of solutions for Twitter, it can be hard to sort out which Twitter software is the best solution for what you need. Here are some that we find to be the best on your desktop....
• Posted My Kingdom for the Princess Walkthrough, Tips, and Cheats to Game Guides
  My Kingdom for the Princess is one of those great beat-the-clock games where you have to choose the right sequence of events to complete the level before time runs out. By gathering materials and repairing buildings, you clear the path...
• Posted Recover Missing Outlook Express Email to Software Update
  When your computer crashes and you lose your Outlook Express data file, there's a good chance panic sets in and you're wondering how you're ever going to recover all those important emails. The Outlook Express .DBX file is volatile under the best of conditions, so having the data file missing is a frightening prospect. In many cases, you can still get your Outlook Express email back, but the solution won't be a free one....
• Posted How to Use BitTorrent to Vista Torrent
  My friend sent me a link to download a movie from BitTorrent but I can't get the link to work. What do I have to do to download movies from BitTorrent? BitTorrent downloads, usually simply referred to as Torrents are...
• Posted Convert Vinyl to MP3 with Better Ion Turntable Software to Software Update
  If you've got one of those Ion USB Turntables, you've probably recorded a few albums using either Audacity or ez Vinyl Converter. While both of these software solutions will work for recording your music collection and converting it to CD or MP3, they are both incredibly frustrating. There's a more automated way to record albums from your Ion Turntable, but you'll need to download some additional software to make it work. The software upgrade recommended for getting more from your Ion Turntable: Download Spin It Again. The software fixes pops and clicks from old records automatically. It records the full side of an album and divides it into individual tracks. Spin It Again also looks up album information, adds your tracks to iTunes, and handles CD burning all from one convenient location. Using Spin It Again you no longer have to sit and mark a new track the way ez Vinyl Converter works, and the number of clicks required to make an album makes conversion a snap. Download Spin It Again and start getting better MP3 recordings from your old vinyl records and cassettes....
• Posted Best Educational Program or Game 2009 SIC People's Choice Awards to Software Update
  AceReader Pro by StepWare, Inc. AceReader Pro is a genuinely awesome application! If you want to improve reading comprehension and read faster for any reason, you should download this app right now. The drills and training, coupled with the Online Reader feature dramatically improve your reading and comprehension with just a few minutes of time invested each day. The payoff is you get those minutes back in the form of less time spent reading later. I have personally used AceReader Pro to boost my reading speed by an additional 100wpm and seen my comprehension go up too. [Windows XP/Vista Mac OS X $49.95]...
• Posted Best Business Application or Utility 2009 SIC People's Choice Awards to Software Update
  PayWindow by ZPAY Payroll Systems, Inc. I don't have a payroll to process, so I'm taking the people's word for this one. I did take a look at the app and it seems to do everything I'd need if I had any payroll to process (and it's less confusing to my mind than QuickBooks). Manage pay periods, salaried and hourly workers, contract employees, and commissioned sales people for payrolls ranging from the simple to the complex. Cut checks for payroll, pay 941 payroll taxes, and generate 1099-MISC and W2 statements at tax time. Built-in backup means you won't lose your payroll data (as long as you use it). [Windows XP/Vista $69.95]...
• Posted Best Graphics Program or Utility 2009 SIC People's Choice Awards to Software Update
  Paint Shop Pro by Corel Corporation Paint Shop Pro kind of fell off my radar when it went from being developed by JASC to being part of the software acquiring Corel Corporation. It's always been a solid independent contender against the Adobe Photoshop empire, with the advantage of also supporting Photoshop plug-ins. From the image editing basics, to custom masking and image enhancements, there is very little you can't accomplish using Paint Shop Pro. The interface is fairly intuitive, eliminating some of the poking around to figure out how stuff works I have found in many of the free image editing solutions. If you're into High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography, PSP is among the easiest tools I've seen for building HDR images. One of the strongest features of the X2 Ultimate version is it's background removal, which allows you to creatively replace the background on almost any image. [Windows XP/Vista $79.00 or $99.00]...
• Posted Best Application 2009 SIC People's Choice Awards to Software Update
  TuneUp Utilities 2009 by TuneUp Distribution GmbH TuneUp is one of those Swiss Army Knife software apps, with many features under one roof. Its Disk Doctor performs error checking and repair on your drives. A file viewer allows you to take quick inventory of your hard drive. Many Windows tweaks are exposed for convenient configuration. Start-up application management effectively speeds up boot time, so you spend less time waiting for your computer to load. Tweaking the Windows logon and start screens is a standard feature. And most importantly, TuneUp includes software to recover deleted files and also software designed to permanently delete files beyond recovery. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. I could spend all day listing the features in TuneUp, or you could simply download it and try it out for yourself. The registered license is good for up to 3 computers. [Windows XP/Vista $49.95]...
• Posted Best Overall Utility 2009 SIC People's Choice Awards to Software Update
  WinZip by WinZip International, LLC. With great free zip utilities like 7-zip it's hard to get excited about a file compression utility that costs money, but WinZip went way beyond just doing file compression years ago. If you download WinZip Pro, there are a ton of automation features that make it a handy solution for file management. Being able to run a scheduled zip job on your files and then automatically upload those files to an FTP site for backup is among the handiest of the WinZip features. Built-in DVD burning allows you to put your zip files on DVD. If you want to quickly dump your photos from SD card to a Netbook, WinZip also helps with some routine image processing tasks, without creating a massive footprint the way an image editor would. I'm still a big fan of WinRAR, but WinZip certainly has it's place too. [Windows XP/Vista $29.95 or $49.95]...
• Posted Must-Have Free Outlook Add-ins to Best Free Windows Software
  Extending Outlook with add-ins is a great way to maximize your productivity, as long as you choose wisely. In the list below, we include a bunch of handy features with an added benefit - all these add-ins are free....
• Posted Reader's Choice Free Text Editor to Best Free Windows Software
  A text editor is something I use more than anything else on my computer, so having one I like is fairly important. I frequently switch between writing articles, tweaking HTML code, and filtering information I gather into organized chunks all from some kind of text entry interface. Choosing a notepad that meets your personal needs is a serious commitment, because once you've accepted the quirks of your text editor, it's tough to switch to a new one even if you know there might be something better. Readers suggested a total of 92 solutions in this category.
• Posted Reader's Choice Free Download Manager to Best Free Windows Software
  Download managers seemed more important in days of slower Internet connection speeds, where maximizing your Kbps was vital. They still come in handy for pulling down big files, but things like BitTorrent clients seem to fill a big part of that gap. If you need to accelerate your downloading, here are some great reader selected choices.
• Posted Reader's Choice Free Screen Capture Utility to Best Free Windows Software
  As a tutorial writer, screen capture is something I can't live without. My personal preference is for the pay product SnagIt, which includes extensive annotations tools not available in free screen capture apps. That doesn't mean there aren't great features in some of the free screen capture solutions. If you're willing to sacrifice convenience or use multiple free apps to handle all the potential aspects of screen capture, any of the free tools can work nicely.
• Posted Best Free Desktop Search to Best Free Windows Software
  Desktop search is one of those handy features I find hard to live without. I have some many documents, files, and other data buried in hundreds of folders, that I need an easy way to filter it all to recall exactly what I'm looking for. Rather than needing to remember the exact name of a Word document I wrote last year, I can do a quick search and recover exactly what I need fairly quickly with surprising accuracy. This is a category with a few usual suspects and the dependability of built-in Windows features.
• Posted Reader's Choice Free Browser Toolbar to Best Free Windows Software
  So many browser toolbars are available you could easily reduce your ability to see anything in a browser to almost zero by installing them all. Several useful toolbars exist and there are even some I've found I really enjoy having on my own computers. Reader's participating in the survey were largely in agreement on a favorite toolbar, with only 3 toolbars putting up numbers that were more than a blip on the map.
• Posted Reader's Choice Free Backup Program to Best Free Windows Software
  Backup software is one of those things we all wish we never needed. Sadly, many of us also never use a backup application until after a catastrophic data loss occurs. Here's your chance to be proactive and grab a popular free backup solution before disaster strikes. And if you don't want to install anything, there's always the option to backup files using a scheduled task. I've become a fan of backing up to online storage, simply because I can access my data from anywhere, but whatever you do, pick something and backup. ;)
• Posted Reader's Choice Free Instant Messenger to Best Free Windows Software
  Instant messaging has become an important part of most people's computing. A way to chat with friends around the city and around the globe, finding an IM client that escapes the notice of corporate IT watchdogs is gold when you want to plan lunch or waste some company time. Used properly, instant messaging clients can also be a handy way to accomplish work efficiently too. While there are many messenger clients with incompatible buddy lists, you might be surprised to find that the top client isn't one of the IM utilities bridging that gap.
• Posted Reader's Choice Free Email Client or PIM to Best Free Windows Software
  I remain an Outlook user because I have years invested in managing contacts, email, calendar, a tasks in one common location. I migrated some of the data to Plaxo to assist in automatic updates, but it ties directly back to Outlook. Still, it's easy to see that most people could get by without Outlook and find something free with almost as much power. What's most interesting in this category is three of the top seven solutions in this category are Web apps. Here are the most popular email solutions chosen by readers in this year's reader survey.
• Posted Reader's Choice Free Media Player to Best Free Windows Software
  Windows Media Player might seem like the runaway winner in this category, simply because it ships on every Windows computer. iTunes also seems like a likely choice because of the millions of iPods and iPhones. Neither of these popular applications was rated best by reader's in the survey. Instead that honor goes to an open source audio and video player that solves many problems commercial applications from Microsoft and Apple simply don't touch. A total of 56 different applications were selected by readers, but most votes were concentrated on the top 8 apps.
• Posted Reader's Choice DVD Catalog to Best Free Windows Software
  There are plenty of reasons you might want to catalog your DVD collection. If you frequently loan things to friends, having cataloging software makes it easy to keep track of who has your DVDs. If you have a large collection, making a list of what you have makes it easier to recover if you ever make an insurance claim. Or you might simply be interested in keeping a running tally of every movie you ever watched, which is my primary motivation for using this type of software. Finding a great application for cataloging your movie collection should be a little easier by starting with this list of reader's favorite DVD cataloging software.
• Posted Reader's Choice Photo Organizer to Best Free Windows Software
  Great photo organizing apps for Windows are few and far between, although I find myself doing most of my organization online by uploading images to Flickr, so maybe this category of software will eventually fade away. Still it's helpful to be able to quickly filter images on your computer, so there's a good chance organizing tools will survive until we are truly always connected. Here are the reader selected best-of-the-best photo organizers for Windows.
• Posted Reader's Choice Free Photo Editor to Best Free Windows Software
  Photo Editing is something I've always used purchased products for - not because there aren't great free alternatives; I'm simply used to the work flow in Photoshop, which is an invaluable time savings I find worth the price. As part of the annual reader survey, reader's selected some of their favorite free apps, all of which provide great features and in some cases rival Photoshop in ability. Unless you're like me and simply want the familiar shortcuts and layout of your favorite pay product, there's really almost no reason to purchase an image editor when you could opt for one of these awesome free choices instead.
• Posted Reader's Choice BitTorrent Client to Best Free Windows Software
  BitTorrent changed the way we download movies, television, music, and software. The original tools for using BitTorrent, while functional, seem archaic compared with many of the available choices. RSS subscriptions for automatic downloads, bandwidth throttling, remote interfaces, there's so much more than simple downloading in many of the alternatives to the original BitTorrent client. Reader's selected 48 different apps for this category, but the bulk of reader's choice votes fell on four specific software applications.
• Posted Reader's Choice Free CD and DVD Burning Software to Best Free Windows Software
  CD and DVD burning software is an indispensable part of having a computer. From making backups, to creating music CDs, to sharing files with friends and family, I still burn many disks every week. Burning integration in Windows and apps like iTunes and Windows Media Player hasn't done away with the need to have an standalone application specifically for burning because those tools are hobbled to the point they only work for certain functions. As part of the reader survey, 102 different burning applications were recommended. The following list is the most popular from that group.
• Posted Reader's Choice Free Video Converter to Best Free Windows Software
  Until video publishers decide to agree on a standard format for movie downloads, video converters are a necessary evil. This is one of the most crowded software categories in existence, with literally thousands of products attempting to fill a void in some capacity. A full 183 different applications were selected as a favorite by readers, giving no one application a real lead in the space. Many of the 183 are single function tools that are great at what they do, a few offer conversion of several formats, but only a couple of them really deliver at being a great tool for most video conversion needs.
• Posted Reader's Choice Free Video Editor to Best Free Windows Software
  Video editing apps come in all shapes and sizes. I tend to spend most of my time in multi track video editors piecing together sequences from several different video clips, but there are also times where I'm just doing cuts and I want the simplicity of something like VirtualDub. According to the annual reader's poll below are the most popular video editing apps.
• Posted Best Free Audio Editor to Best Free Windows Software
  Audio editing can amount to simple tasks like trimming silence from the end of an MP3, to incredibly complex multi-track audio production. The applications presented here are capable of both, although I'm stretching a bit to feature some of the better free solutions because so many readers chose Audacity as their favorite free audio editor. While I agree that Audacity is outstanding at what it does, there are times when having a 2-track editor can be less frustrating, with that in mind, here are the reader choices for best free audio editor.