Banana Munki

I use Songbird – it is my favorite in music players with all it’s features/add-ons (radio steamers as one example). I like it’s look and it simply ”feels right”. I even dedicated a post to it so it’s unfortunate that I find Songbird be a bit too unacceptably slow.

I decided to do a search on Open Source Music Player and after giving quite a few other music players a chance to enthrall me I am giving the best candidate  i could find one week to get me hooked.

The lucky winner is Media Monkey. Music manager and Media Jukebox for large collections developed by Ventis Media Inc for organizing and playing audio on Microsoft Windows operating systems.  Available in a free version as well as a paid one, called Gold licence. Skinnable, with extension scripts and plug-ins.

I wouldn’t mind Amarok, not at all. I use Windows and isn’t going to switch (back) to Linux over music players so I’ll keep my eyes open for a Windows version.

I’m not ruling out the possibility that there is a way to make (my beloved xD ) Songbird speed up. Songbird is perfection <3. Ha!

I find Speccy (a System Information tool) to be a very useful software for technical support and upgrade or repair of system. Speccy recieves my personal approval

Speccy is an andvanced system information product from Piriform, a privatley owned US software house (Piriforms CCleaner is a hugely popular freeware tool) offering Windows users (win 95 – win 7) free applications.

Speccy can be very useful not only for power users but normal users as well to help in everyday computing life as it will give you detailed statistics of your hardware. Including CPU, Motherboard, RAM, Graphics Cards, Hard Disks, Optical Drivers and Audio support.

Mobile broadband can be slow. For anyone with mobile broadband who also is frequently using the social network Facebook – Fishbowl for Facebook can be a good alternative to web browsers.

I have installed Fishbowl on my laptop, a good solution for me.

I recently received an .xls file through an e-mail from a relative. It is a Microsoft Excel (spreadsheet program used for calculation, graphing, pivot tables and a macro programming) file.

I don’t have Microsoft Office installed and I don’t want it either. It appear to be a feature rich program but I have everything I need at the moment.

So how do I read the file my relative sent to me? Even though I don’t have Microsoft Office, I can still open the Excel file by downloading Microsoft’s free Excel Viewer (DL link) over at Microsoft’s Download Center. Excel Viewer handles opening, viewing and printing of Excel workbooks, even if you don’t have Microsoft Office installed.
Download Excel Viewer

I am a fan of this practical and lightweight (1,4mb) task organizer. I am really shallow about software  and the GUI is very attractive. With a simple and easy to understand and operate interface Doit.im receive high approval from me.

Doit.im as a free and powerful task management system, which has a deep insight of GTD, and aimed at create a pressure-free yet efficient task management.

This is what the creators have to say about their invention, Doit.im AIR, which is and promised to forever be; free:

Under the guidance of the excellent task management principles of GTD, Doit.im conducts you to have your head cleared, to get rid of various pending ideas on your mind, and helps you organize tasks and focus on items in hand, so that you can closely track the process of your work and feel easy when faced with bulks of complicated projects. With no pressure but efficiency, you’ll further enjoy your work and achieve unexpected success.

There are times that I like to enhance my photos. Photoshop requires some knowledge to create nice edits and there are many fantastic tutorials all across the web and in magazines and Photoshop is so fun but it is an advanced program and at times all I need is something that is lightweight and simple. Like these three free and useful photo editors, each with its unique qualities.

1. Photo! Editor

http://pho.to

Photo! Editor is powerful multifunctional software offering a complete set of image editing tools. It contains anything a digital camera owner might need to correct or enhance their photos. You will enjoy the ultimate convenience and professional approach provided by each of the tools.

With Photo! Editor, you can remove red eye instantly, enhance the color of the image, make funny caricatures, add astonishing lighting effects, denoise, straighten, resample and crop images. You will also appreciate the Make Up tool, which will make the best of your portrait photos.

Images:

2. PhotoScape

http://www.photoscape.org

Photoscape is the fun photo editing software that will allow you to easily fix and enhance photos.

Here are some key features of ”PhotoScape”:
· Viewer: View your folders photos, slideshow
· Editor: resizing, brightness and color adjustment, white balance, backlight correction, frames, balloons, mosaic mode, adding text, drawing pictures, cropping, filters, red eye removal, blooming
· Batch editor: Batch editing multiple photos
· Page: Make one photo by merging multiple photos at the page frame
· Combine: Make one photo by attaching multiple photos vertically or horizontally
· Animated GIF: Make one animation photo with multiple photos
· Print: Print portrait shot, carte de visite, passport photo
· Splitter: Divide a photo into multiple parts
· Screen Capture: Capture your screenshot and save it
· Color Picker: Zoom in screen on images, search and pick the color
· Rename: Change photo file names in batch mode
· Raw Converter: Convert RAW to JPG

Images:

3. Fly Free Photo Editing & Viewer

http://www.5dfly.com

Fly Free Photo Editor & Viewer software, you can view, edit, enhance and manipulate your pictures easily. It provides an easy way to view, edit and share multiple photos simultaneously in multiple tabs.

Key features of photo editing include photo batch rezise, batch photo slideshow PowerPoint, upload Flickr/Google/Facebook, convert entire web page from HTML to image and powerful photo editor like crop, resize, RGB, gray scale, bright, contrast, rotate, add text, remove red eye and more.