Task Manager is a life saver when you computer freezes. It can help you end programs that do not respond. It also has many other functions like, checking ram & CPU usage of programs among other things.

Auslogics Task Manager is a freeware that helps to manage your computers resources and track all running applications and services. Using this program you can track and end unnecessary programs and services to increase you computer’s performance.

The main difference between this program and the inbuild task manager is that this one shows you all the Windows services running on your computer. It also gives information about these services which helps users to understand and stop unwanted programs or services.

Another great feature of this software is that it allows you to give priority to a program or service. Choose the program and click “Speed Up” on the left pane. You may also reduce the priority of programs.

A portable version is available for users who like to carry their tools on USB disks.

Download Auslogics Task Manager

This is a post from TechiePortal.

Read the original post at Auslogics Task Manager – Replacement Task Manager for Windows
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Xmarks

Everytime you make a change to your bookmarks, Xmarks will sync and make a backup on its server. This backup can then be restored on other computers you may want to use. It also supports profiles so that you can have different sets of bookmarks for your office and home.

You can also view and edit your bookmarks directly from the browser by going to my.xmarks.com after login.

Xmarks also allows you to sync saved passwords (in browsers) between different computers. This is optional and secure.

Another feature of Xmark (which I didn’t like) was Discovery. This feature edits your search results in Google and shows you the top pages that other people have bookmarked. It also shows you similar sites and info about each site. This feature can be turned off.

Currently the browsers Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. There is news that an alpha build for Chrome is on its way. I have only installed the FireFox addon for Xmarks as its gets the job done for me.

Try Xmarks

This is a post from TechiePortal.

Read the original post at Xmarks – Sync your bookmarks between browsers or computers
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We had written about one such tool, Norton UAC. This free program allows you to remember your UAC choice for different programs.

SmartUAC is another UAC replacement alternative for Vista. So why is this better than the Norton UAC ? It has a database of programs which blocks the program if it is considered to be malicious. When Smart UAC identifies malicious program, a red prompt window appears and asks you weather you want to kill detected threat or allow it.

The software also allows you to remember your choices for different programs. It can then automatically allow or deny them, the next time you run it.

SmartUAC will scan every program that is run and check them for trojans, spyware and other malicious software against its inbuilt databse. The database used by SmartUAC is updated regularly via the internet. You can also whitelist and blacklist programs and manage them from the SmartUAC settings.

Would I recommend this over Norton UAC ? Hmmm I am quite happy with Norton’s AUC replacement and dont really need a program to tell me if the file is safe or not.

Download SmartUAC

This is a post from TechiePortal.

Read the original post at SmartUAC – Replace Vista UAC with a better alternative
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JDownloader is a free software that allows you to que and download files from sites like Rapidshare and Megaupload. The software can also help you download files like music and videos as long as you can provide the URL of the file.

The software can also download CCF, RSDF and DLC container files which is used by many forums so that files don’t get deleted from Rapidshare. The program is written in Java and takes about 15 secs  while starting up. Once it is loaded any links (URL) copied in the clipboard can be seen in JDownloader’s “LinkGrabber” tab. These files can then be downloaded by right clicking and choosing Continue.

The software can also download videos from youtube if the URL of the page is copied. To download from Rapidshare just copy the URL of the file and Jdownloader will show you the file. Click the Play/Start button at the top of the program to start the downloads. It will automatically wait for the required time, by pass the captha check of Rapidshare and download the file.

There are many addons available for JDownloader but my favourite is the AutoShutdown. Once the downloads and complete, it will shut down you computer. There is also an option to limit the speed of downloads. This is useful when you want to download as well as browse the internet.

This has officially become my download manager and I only wish that it would startup a little faster in later versions. There is a portable version of JDownloader that can be stored and used from USB drives without any installation.

Download JDownloader

This is a post from TechiePortal.

Read the original post at JDownloader – Download files from Rapidshare and Megaupload without waiting
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You can choose from 80 different genres, thousands of artists and millions of songs. It can search from thousands of radio stations according to the users choice and can record from them with music store quality. Almost all the radio stations available on the internet are constantly added to Radiotracker.

The software also allows you to download podcasts, play music and burn the downloaded songs into an MP3 disc.

The software actually costs 29€, but we have found a way to get it to you for free. You can get the premium version though a tie up that was done with computerbild.de. Go to the download page given at the end of this post and click the link shown below to download it (since it is in German).

Download Radiotracker

This is a post from TechiePortal.

Read the original post at Radiotracker Full Licensed version – Download free and legal music
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By introducing Microsoft Security Essentials, the company hopes that more people who are unprotected will start using the software, thereby increases the damaged security reputation of Windows. If you would like to read a full review on the software you may do so at MobilityMinded.

Lets move onto the software, its intallation and performance. Microsoft Security Essentials can be downloaded directly from Microsoft. The installation file is only a mere 4.3 MB and the procedure is simple. After the installation is done the software needs to perform an update before it starts scanning.

There are 3 options for scanning :- Quick, Full and Custom. The quick scan searches the critical areas of Windows for any viruses or spyware. It scanned 41,500 files in under 2 minutes, which I am quite impressed with. Custom scans allow you to scan a specific folder or file that you consider to be suspicious.

Overall I like Microsoft Security Essentials, it has effectively replaced my previous antivirus and looked like its going to stay that was for a long time to come.

Download Microsoft Security Essentials Antivirus

This is a post from TechiePortal.

Read the original post at Microsoft Security Essentials – Free Antivirus from Microsoft
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OutSync is a free application for Windows that can sync photos of your Facebook friends with those in Outlook contacts. The app is only 0.6MB and needs access to  Facebook in order to perform the sync.

Install the app and launch it from the start menu. It will ask you to login to facebook after which it builds a list of your friends. Then it tries to automatically match friends and contacts which have the same name.

The main problem with this tool is that the name in Outlook and Facebook needs to match before they can be synced. There seems to be no option to manually match the contacts. Luckyly for me my HTC Touch Pro 2 syncs with Facebook and that gets synced with Outlook, so most contacts have the photos associated with them.

If you are looking to sync Facebook photos with contacts on Windows Mobile, try BookSync.

Download OutSync

This is a post from TechiePortal.

Read the original post at Sync Outlook Contacts with Facebook Friends
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RichFLV is an AdobeAir application that allows you to edit FLV files. The application is fairly simple to install since Adode Air makes it simple to download and install the app.

The FLV video editor can read meta data of the video file, it can also read and edit the cue points in the videos.  The red slider at the bottom of the application allows you to select and export parts of the FLV file. Saving the cut part just takes seconds.

The app can also change the sound track of the video. You may also convert the sound to mp3 format. Lastly, exporting to  swf format is also supported.

The app can be used to extract and mp3 from music video files.

Download RichFLV FLV Editor

This is a post from TechiePortal.

Read the original post at Free FLV Editor – Edit and save parts from FLV videos
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Chit Chat for Facebook

Chit Chat for Facebook is a  free instant messenger that allows you to login and chat with your friends on Facebook. It does not require you to have the Facebook page open and works from the system tray similar to Yahoo and Live Messenger.

The program is lightweight with a download size of only 1MB and uses about 5MB of memory while running. The interface is quite simple and easy to use. No complicated options or menu’s.

The program shows you a list of friends that are online on Facebook. It also shows you a notification when friends login or logout. This feature can get quite irritating, especailly if you play games. The notification minimizes the game. Hope the developer adds and option to disable it.

Other Ways to stay logged in to Facebook Chat Outside Facebook

1) Instant Messenger Clients

Digsby is another instant messenger that has support for Facebook. The reason I do not recommend digsby is because  there have been reports of the installer coming  with malware. While there is a digsby installer which doesnt not contain the additional malware, there are still reports that Digsby uses you system to run some research as discussed here.

Pidgin also has a Facebook chat plugin. This is not an official plugin, rather a user made one.

2) Online IM client

Meebo is an old and well known web messenger that supports multiple platforms including facebook.  Founded in 2005, Meebo enables real-time social interactions with instant messaging and group chat at meebo.com. It also allows video chatting with Facebook friends by making use of tokbox. This can be helpful if you are at work and not allowed to install software or access Facebook. The chat will still work as the connection is made to meebo.

3) Mac Users

Mac users need not worry, Adium is a free instant messaging application for Mac OS X that can connect to Facebook, AIM, MSN, Jabber & Yahoo.

If you would like to contribute to this post with more info, please do so by leaving a comment below.

This is a post from TechiePortal.

Read the original post at Facebook Instant Messenger (IM) – Use Facebook Chat outside Facebook
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TeraCopy

Teracopy is the most popular program that helps you speed up the copy / move process in windows. TeraCopy uses dynamically adjusted buffers to reduce seek times. Asynchronous copy speeds up file transfer between two physical hard drives.

Pause copy process at any time to free up system resources and continue with a single click. In case of copy error, TeraCopy will try several times and in the worse case just skips the file, not terminating the entire transfer. It shows failed file transfers and lets you fix the problem and recopy only problem files.

There is a portable version available that can run directly from your USB device or external hard disk. This is the software I prefer to use.

Extreme Copy

Extreme Copy is another freeware that can speed up the copy process by 20-120%. The speed increase is really noticeable on large files.

It also support pausing the copy process and shows an estimated time remaining for the copy process.

Supports error processing, it will not stop the copy process if a few files have errors, so that you dont have to copy all the other files again.

Super Copy

Super Copy provides a very robust way to copy files in Windows. Super Copy does not prompt you for more information once the copy has started; all options are specified beforehand. This is simply a lightweight interface for XCOPY, and will not negatively affect your system’s performance.

Features

• “Calculate Results” mode allows you to see what files will be affected.
• “Open” and “Save” allow you to import and export automatically generated batch files
• Resume ability – recover from a power failure without having to restart the process.
• Log summaries
• Handles large amounts of data (over 100GB per transfer)
• Ignores locked files
• Copies hidden/system files
• Recovers from temporary network disconnects

Fast Copy

This program claims to be the fastest program that can copy files (untested). Seems to have a lot of support for command line.

This is a post from TechiePortal.

Read the original post at 4 Tools to Copy or Move files faster in Windows
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