This is not a software, but it is extremely useful for website designers who wish to check how the site looks under various browsers. Browsershots is a free open source on-line service developed by Johann C. Rocholl that allows users to view screenshots of sites in different browsers.

All that is required is to submit the URL of the web address here, and the job will be added to the queue. After which, a number of distributed computers will open the designated website in their browsers with screen shots taken and uploaded to the central server.

Users can then view these screenshots instantly. Check it out today!

Thanks to Raymond Camden’s ColdFusion Blog, I was then informed of Adobe’s release of ColdFusion 8 Beta to the public.

This application, Adobe® ColdFusion® 8, allows developers to quickly and easily create compelling Internet applications that fit in today’s complex enterprise environments. Faster than any previous version of the software, ColdFusion 8 lets developers write more applications in less time with fewer lines of code—and then tune these applications for optimum performance.

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Google has once again released another incredible product, known as Google Gears (BETA). This software is an open source browser extension that allows web applications to provide off-line functionality using the following JavaScripts APIs:

• - Store and serve application resources locally
• - Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database
• - Run asynchronous Javascript to improve application responsiveness

As this is still currently an early release (beta release), it is important to pay attention to the warning dialogs and gain access to trusted websites only. Also, it is not advised to deployed on production machines.

Google Gears Beta supports Windows XP/Vista, Mac and Linux operating systems, on browsers, Mozilla Firefox 1.5+ and Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0+.

Download Extension
Google Gears

Have you ever experience a poor Internet connection speed with your current Internet Service Provider (ISP)? Particularly, when you are having a dialup connection or even a Broadband (DSL or Cable), users can harness the capability of SpeedVPN to accelerate and optimise the Internet connectivity with the improvised compression technology embedded within the software.

With this application, all that is required is a user name and a password for your dial-up account and SpeedVPN will does the remaining job.

Features:

• - 5x faster than Dialup
• - 3x faster than Broadband DSL
• - new idea
• - easy to implement and install
• - works with any Internet connection in any country.

Furthermore, it is known to be an alternative solution to DSL Broadband. So, instead of paying high fees to upgrade, perhaps this software might give you what you need at no cost.

Download Software
SpeedVPN 1.1

Similar to SARG, Free-SA is a statistic analyzer for daemons log files. Its main advantages over SARG are:

1. faster speed
2. more report information
3. cross-platform work
4. W3C compliance of generated HTML/CSS reports

These are the following uses with Free-SA:

1. control traffic usage
2. control internet access to security policies
3. investigate security incidents
4. evaluate server efficiency
5. trouble detection with configuration

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Managing WiFi connections and settings are now easier with WiFi-Manager 2.3, an application developed by NicomSoft. This is particularly useful for developers who are programming software for Windows applications, e.g. Windows XP and Windows Vista. Despite that both platforms can manage WiFi settings, but they actually use different APIs for wireless network management.

Windows XP SP2
- uses the “Wireless Zero Configuration” (WZC) API. This API is almost undocumented and there aren’t any examples how to use it, although this API can perform all necessary operations with WiFi connections and Windows XP SP2 is the most popular version of Windows at present.

Windows Vista
- uses the “Native WiFi” API. This is a new API that allows you to manage WiFi networks, this API is simpler and more documented, although there is only one example how to use it. You can find this example for the C++ language in the Vista SDK.

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It should be quite apparent that what I am going to introduce here is a web page generator, known as Apefly. Generally, this application allows users to create simple, yet fully functional web pages without the need to understand or know any sophisticated HTML languages (perhaps maybe the very basic stuffs). Furthermore, it has the ability to provide an educational approach for students who are picking up web design.

Initially, Apefly began as an Online/JavaScript based web page generator. It was further enhanced to develop into simple web page generator to create clean and valid XHTML/CSS web pages. Thus, these are the following functions:

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After a patience wait, WordPress 2.2 is now officially released to the public. This release is given the codename, Getz, in honor of tenor saxophonist, Stan Getz.

This version contains over two hundred bug fixes and integration of some new features, particularly widgets. Some of these features are listed below:

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According to WordPress Codex website, the first release candidate for WordPress 2.2 is now available. Some of the new features are as follow:

• * Improved comment editing
• * Widgets (no longer a plugin but available under Presentation tab)
o Widget capability added to Default and Classic themes
o Archives and categories widgets have option to display in pulldown box
• * Deactivate Plugins automatically (activate automatically not in yet)
• * New Blogger Import
• * Fewer clicks and better user experience for upgrades
• * Improved login accessibility
• * Improved UI when deleting Drafts
• * Improved clarity regarding “Spam it:” and “Delete it:” in comment notification e-mails

In this major release, there are much more powerful features than you might see here. A lot of improvement has been made towards this version over WordPress 2.1. Whilst this may attract a lot of attention, but it is vital to note that it is still a release candidate. Hence, bugs may still be present.

Download Link
WordPress 2.2 RC 1

Good news for Linux users. The long awaiting release for the next version of Skype for Linux is now available - Skype for Linux 1.4! As of the moment, the release is still considered under alpha development, which means it could be highly unstable. Users are welcomed to test out this development release, but it is important to note that such release is best not to be deployed in production machines.

Below are some new features:

• * Major user interface overhaul.
• * Audio quality has been improved.
• * Calls are now contained in a separate window.
• * Chat history can be loaded in time-specific increments (rather than ‘recent’ and the very slow, ‘all’)
• * File transfers are now grouped in a common window, and similar transfers are also grouped together.
• * Event history now contains chats and other events in addition to calls.
• * Sound files are now located in /usr/share/skype/sounds. This directory will be configurable later, however the sound files from the original Skype 1.4 package should be placed into this directory for now.
• * The top menu bar has been removed. You can access the Main Menu by clicking on the ‘cog wheel’ down the bottom left of the client, or by right-clicking on the system tray icon.
• * Add/Search users can be accessed by clicking on the Green + button in the bottom-left corner.

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