Where graphical editing tools are concerned, in my opinion, there is nothing that beats these 2 top products in the market - Adobe Photoshop and GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). Whereas the former requires users to pay for its use, the latter is released under the GNU GPL license, such that users can download the application for free and use it as according to the regulation stated by its license. Anyway, the news here is that, GIMP Portable 2.6.2 is released for your update.

GIMP Portable 2.6.2 is slightly different from GIMP 2.6.2, in the sense that this application is “portable“; that is, the installation can be done on a USB thumb drive or a removable drive and data is not written onto the hard disk drive. Thus it allows users to carry the application on a thumb drive and move it from one PC to another. That is an amazing feature, if you are working in an environment where installation of programs is strictly prohibited on the host PC.

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GIMP Portable 2.6.2

One of the most useful applications developed by Microsoft is the Microsoft Outlook Connector. With this application, users can access Microsoft Windows Live Hotmail or Microsoft Office Live Mail accounts from their Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 or Microsoft Outlook 2007 software.

Using the connector, the emails messages, contacts and calendars are accessible directly from the client software. Best of all, it’s free!

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Ask anyone which application is the best software for FTP (file transfer protocol), most of them will point in the direct of Filezilla. Filezilla is a free FTP solution that provides both server and client applications; furthermore, it is an open source software, distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL. In other words, you can download this for free and use it for personal purpose, as long as it is within the GNU GPL agreement.

Having used Filezilla for a long time, I have absolutely no complaint with this software as it provides almost everything that is required for file transfer. In addition to common FTP communication, it supports SFTP (Secure FTP) and FTPS (FTP using SSL). In the latest release of Filezilla Client 3.1.4.1, some of the bug were fixed.

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The open-source GIMP, also known as the GNU Image Manipulation Program, has released the latest version of GIMP 2.6.1. For others who are not familiar with GIMP, you can consider as a substitute for the free version of Adobe Photoshop. This software is capable of performing complex tasks, such as photo re-touching, image composition and image authoring. On top of that, it runs on multiple operating systems and not just Microsoft Windows alone.

Release notes for this version is made available here. From a development point of view, GIMP 2.6 series is a rather important release as it features major changes to the user interface that addresses some complaints provided by users. Furthermore, there is a tentative integration of GEGL, the graph based image process library, that will bring a much detailed and comprehensive editing to the users’ experience.

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Just found something really cool! The UltraMixer 2.3.3 is a DJ audio mixing software that allows users to mix digital music in various formats, such as MP3, WMA, AAC, OGG, WAV or even CD in real-time. The basic hardware requirement is a good sound card. Similar to a physical DJ audio mixer, the DJ turntables are replaced by two digital SoundPlayers.

Here is some background information:

“…UltraMixer is the first DJ software in the world, that is available for the most popular operating systems Windows, Linux and Mac OS X…”

Exactly! Just when you need it at the party or in a restaurant, this “digitalised” version of DJ turntables will do just great! Three versions of UltraMixer are available; namely, the Free Edition, Basic Edition and the Professional Edition. The professional version costs as much as £129 and the Basic Edition costs approximately £59. If you are concerned about the cost, give the free edition for a trial run for no cost at all. However, it is only meant for private, non-public use.

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Picasa should ring a bell when this name is mentioned. I believe most of you will know that this application is a photo software, made free by Google. In the past, only Windows versions of Picasa have been actively maintained and improved. With the rising demand from the Linux community, the Linux-compatible version is also catching up with the Windows compatriot.

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Developed by CPUID, the next version of CPU-Z 1.4.7 is now released. This application is a free-ware that allows users to obtain information on some of the main devices on your computer system, such as CPU, Motherboard, Memory and Operating System.

Some of the new addition to the support of the chipset are as follow:

• - Intel Core i7 processor.
• - Intel Core 2 Duo S Mobile processors.
• - NVIDIA MCP79/7A chipset.
• - AMD 790GX / SB750 chipset.

Personally, I often use this application whenever I need to find a quick information on my Windows system, especially on the hardware details. The advantage of this software is that, it does not require any installation of the software for it to work. You can run it on-the-fly!

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CPU-Z 1.4.7

The latest release of VLC Media Player 0.9.2 is now available for public to download. To-date, it has already achieved close to 1 million downloads for this version, averaging about 2-3 downloads per second (Quite curious myself too, as if that’s really the case). The VLC Media Player is both a cross-platform multi-media player and a streaming server.

As a media player, it is highly portable, supporting various audio and video formats, such as MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, etc. Furthermore, the VLC player also playbacks DVDs and VCDs. In addition, it also works equally well as a streaming server to support unicast or multicast in IPv4 and IPv6 on high-bandwidth network.

The application is also available in many operating systems, thus making it ultra-portable. Download VLC Player here.

A very small and useful utility tool, CPU-Z 1.47 allows users to gather quick information about their hardware component and system, such as the motherboard, processor and memory data. In this latest version release, CPU-Z developer has added new supports for the processors.

• * Intel Core i7 processor.
• * Intel Core 2 Duo S Mobile processors.
• * NVIDIA MCP79/7A chipset.
• * AMD 790GX / SB750 chipset.

One of the beauties of this utility is that the application itself does not require any installation. Simply download and run the executable file; hence, no messing with the Windows registry. To remove the program, simply delete the files, it is as clean as it can get.

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CPU-Z 1.47

The recent release of Google Chrome to the World Wide Web (WWW) has created a big hoo-haa as a lot of users have rushed to download and try out the new application (for free). According to Google,

“…Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier…”

However, what users do not realise is that each Google Chrome installation contains a unique ID, thereby each computer has a unique “thumbprint” to identify the user. Even if two systems are installing from the same setup file, the identity is different, due to its underlying hidden algorithm that is obscured from users’ knowledge. Don’t forget, Google is exceptionally clever in data collection.

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