Steam

Steam is an online service and application that can be compared with iTunes, but for games. You can find any game you want for the PC and MAC and buy it either online on the steam website, or using the application. The great advantage of using the steam application is that it can keep your games updated without manually looking for software patches. You can also create wishlists. Like many other personalized services, you will first need to create an account. This will allow you to create wishlists and save them online as well as other personal services. The games offered in steam are usually highly discounted and can be instantly downloaded upon purchase.

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FireFox Addon: Siphon

Siphon is an addon for FireFox that gives the ability to keep track of all your installed addons and have them also installed (or not) on other computers you have. This can also be used to reinstall all the addons you had when you have to reinstall FireFox or when you switch computers. Unfortunately it does not sync the settings of each addon, which could be handy for some addons.

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FireFox Addon: FastDial

FastDial is an addon for FireFox that adds the ability to have a page (can also be set as start page) of links to your favorite websites with previews. You can also create folders with links and thus create groups. By default it will create a preview of the website (or folder) or you can choose your own image instead. To add a link simply click on an empty spot and enter the URL and a description, or right-click on a page you want to add and select �add to FastDial�. A very handy alternative to using bookmarks since it is easier to find a website by it�s appearance rather than it�s name.

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Freemake Video Downloader

Freemake Video Downloader is a free and user-friendly program that can download video�s from YouTube, Facebook, MTV, Hulu, Vimeo, and other sites, extract lossless audio, convert online videos to AVI, MKV, MP3, iPod, iPhone, PSP and Android.

Upon entering the url of the video you wish to download, you can choose the quality of the video to download and even convert to another format so you can save it and play it on your mobile device, or simply extract the audio only.

I really love the interface and the simplicity of this application and that it combines download and conversion in one. Normally you would have to download the video using one program or browser plugin, then convert the video using another program.

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Z-TaskHelp

Z-TaskHelp is a tool that can schedule running applications on your computer. It uses the Windows Task Scheduler to run tasks, so it does not take any resources on your computer and only works as a front-end for the more conspicuous Windows Task Scheduler (that can be hard to find and use). If for example you wish to run a program once every hour of the day, schedule it to run once a day and go to the �advanced� section. There you can schedule the task to run every hour for the next 24 hours, since you have scheduled it to run once every day.

I have posted about FireTask before, but found it a bit buggy and a bit inefficient to have an extra task scheduler running while I have the Windows Task scheduler.

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f.lux

Ever notice how people texting at night have that eerie blue glow?

Or wake up ready to write down the Next Great Idea, and get blinded by your computer screen?

During the day, computer screens look good�they're designed to look like the sun. But, at 9PM, 10PM, or 3AM, you probably shouldn't be looking at the sun.

f.lux

F.lux fixes this: it makes the color of your computer's display adapt to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day.

It's even possible that you're staying up too late because of your computer. You could use f.lux because it makes you sleep better, or you could just use it just because it makes your computer look better.

f.lux makes your computer screen look like the room you're in, all the time. When the sun sets, it makes your computer look like your indoor lights. In the morning, it makes things look like sunlight again.

Tell f.lux what kind of lighting you have, and where you live. Then forget about it. F.lux will do the rest, automatically.

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Windows Live Essentials 2011

Windows Live Essentials 2011 offers some free and useful applications. Here is my overview on all the optional applications. You can choose what applications you wish to install if you click on �Custom install� when prompted.

The good:

Mail
Windows Live Mail is an excellent mail program. I have used Mozilla Thunderbird but it was very unstable and the interface looked outdated (compared to Live Mail). The ribbon interface makes the program very easy to understand and use. Also the overall modern feel of the program and fast response makes it very pleasant to use. The quick search with live results is also extremely useful.

Writer
Writer can be very handy if you have a blog. You can add all your blogs in this program and compose / edit your posts. Easily insert images or videos by uploading them or choosing a video from an online service by pasting the video URL or logging in to your online video account like YouTube. The only feature I miss here though is to see a total overview of all your posts per blog and be able to delete posts.

Photo Gallery and Movie Maker
Photo Gallery is highly improved compared to the standard Windows Photo Gallery that is shipped with Windows. Now it comes with face recognition and you are able to easily upload photos to your online account like Facebook, Youtube, etc,, If your preferred online sharing service is not listed in the publish box, try to find it in the Plugins that you can download.
Movie Maker is also a very handy free movie editor. It can accept almost any video and image format and comes with transitions, effect and you can even speed up or slow down your video. Publish the movie directly to your YouTube account or other sharing service, or save the video on your desktop.

Windows Live Mesh
Allows you to share and sync folders with friends and other computers in your personal network. It uses a �p2p� (peer-to-peer) or (computer-to-computer) system so the transfers are directly to the other computer rather than through several servers. You could say that it is like �cloud� file sharing, as it can also download the same file from other computers in the network to speed up transfer. I use this a lot to sync my music and wallpapers with all my computers. There is no file size or sharing limit (like other similar paid services do).

The Bad:

Messenger
Personally I do not use this. I remember years ago when I used one of the first versions of MSN messenger. It was a small, lightweight, advertising-free chat application. In time I have seen it change. Tabs and banners were introduced and some other things I rather not see. Since then I stopped using MSN Messenger and moved to Pidgin, also because I have a Gmail account and wish to be available on Google Talk as well. I did test the new Messenger and it was just as I expected. The program got even bigger (visually) and now it�s more a browser than a small and simple chat client.

Messenger Companion
Since I do not use Messenger I did not bother installing this. In the description is says that it allows you to share links to websites with your friends. I wonder what happened to the good old �Select URL, CTRL+C, click on chat window, CTRL+V ?

Family Safety
I have tried this myself and have set it up to block only �adult� websites. However, it was also blocking me from viewing regular sites and I had to constantly allow access to sites that do not contain �adult� material. Also sometimes the online service was down and I could not allow access to a regular website until the online service was back up. I highly recommend using K9 Web Protection instead of Family Safety.

Bing bar
Just what the world was looking for, another toolbar to add to the Internet Explorer clutter. If I want to use Bing I rather go to the website or add Bing search to my FireFox search box. I have even tried Bing myself instead of Google and too often it did not find what I was looking for. The difference with Google is that usually the first result in google is exactly what I have been looking for. In Bing it is usually the fifth or never.

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