Sofia Elizabella Wyciślik-Wilson

If you own a computer, there’s a pretty high chance that you also own a digital camera, and this means that you probably have a large number of photos on your hard drive. Unless you have been particularly fastidious in renaming all of your images as you copy them from memory cards, your photo collection may well be a disorganized mess.

Now you can stop hunting for a solution as we’re giving away a free copy of Ashampoo Photo Commander 9 worth $49.99! It’s worth noting that this is a full current product.

Continue reading →

Another busy week of software releases is behind us and, in case you managed to miss some of them, we’ve collected some of the most-compelling titles together into this week’s roundup.

If you spend time installing a lot of the programs we highlight here, you’re going to need a suitable launcher to help you manage them. Winstep Nexus 12.20 is a stylish dock for Windows that provides easy access to all of your apps. The software is perfectly complimented by Winstep Xtreme 12.20, which enables you to completely customize the appearance of your desktop with skins and widgets that can be as adventurous as you like.

Continue reading →

A huge proportion of us are now multi-device users. In addition to our home computers, there is also a work machine to think about and to this you can add other mobile devices such as iPads and Android phones. Almost without realizing it, we have become used to living in the cloud and web-based email services such as Gmail, and online office tools such as Google Doc, have made it possible to access our emails and files on any device with an internet connection.

There is no reason that the same philosophy should not be applied to files, and this is something that SugarSync aims to address. The latest version has been redesigned from scratch, bringing a new look and ways of working for anyone who managed to get their hands on a new iPad.

Continue reading →

Compressed files are not always used for the space savings reasons they were initially created for, but they are still very important. The widespread availability of high-speed Internet connections means that the size of downloads is far less important than used to be the case, but many downloads are still supplied in one of the many compressed formats that are available. OS X includes integrated support for a number of formats but if you want to be able to extract the contents of more archives The Unarchiver has been updated to version 3.0 with support for more compressed files types than ever before.

As you’ve probably guessed from the name of the app, this is a piece of software that is concerned solely with the decompression of archives, so if you’re looking to compress files you’re going to need to look elsewhere. In the software world there is a general trend towards jack-of-all-trades utilities, so it is slightly unusual to come across an app that does just one thing -- thankfully, The Archiver does it well, so it can be let off the hook somewhat.

Continue reading →

There are countless websites that provide streaming content, either in an episodic or less structure form. Add to this the media files you already have stored on your hard drive and you have a lot of audio and video to contend with. Miro is a powerful media player that can be used to play local files, but is also geared up to playing online content from the likes of YouTube and Hulu. The application itself is nothing new, but the release candidate of version 5 of the program gives a tantalizing taste of what’s to come.

While there is a leaning towards video in Miro, the release candidate helps to highlight that it can be used for other media as well. If you have a hefty MP3 collection on your hard drive, Miro can be used to listen to your favorite albums and while you’re doing so, you can take advantage of the application’s ability to go online and retrieve the correct album art and information for any track or albums that are incorrectly labelled.

Continue reading →

Free WiFi is more prevalent than ever and the popularity of mobile devices means that more and more of us are connecting to these free networks using laptops, tablets and mobiles. In these situations, using their own computer, most people would not give a second thought to security.

But if you’re using your MacBook, iPhone or iPad in a public place with free Internet, such as a coffee shop, it is possible for someone to tap into your connection and steal your private data. Cloak is a security tool for Apple fans that makes securing these connections quick and easy.

Continue reading →

Whether you share your computer or not, you should probably think about encrypting some of your private documents. Files relating to your finances, work and personal life can reveal a great deal of information about you, and it is not just a matter of wanting to maintain personal privacy. Identity theft is a serious problem, and if your personal details fall into the wrong hands, there is no way of knowing just how it will be used.

CryptBox 2012 is an immensely powerful encryption tool that can be used to secure your data and you can grab yourself a free copy in today’s giveaway.

Continue reading →

Protection software is something that most people will most readily associate with desktop and laptop computers, but even owners of mobile devices such as cell phones and tablets have to take care. It is not just viruses, something that can affect Android users, that mobile device owners have to worry about. It is the risk of losing a device or having it stolen.

Besides the value of the device itself, there is also the data it contains to consider. If you have concerns in any of these areas, AirCover is a free tool for iOS and Android that could help to give you peace of mind.

Continue reading →

The house of Mozilla is pumping out application updates faster than ever, and while we have now become used to the accelerated release schedule of Firefox, and indeed other browsers, this is not the only app to be given the fast-track treatment.

Mozilla’s email client, Thunderbird has also been moved onto the same rapid release cycle and this means that there are new alphas and betas to look forward to more frequently. Whether you’re only interested in running the most stable version of the software, or you’d prefer to try out the latest and greatest features as soon as possible, there is a version of the application for you.

Continue reading →

Apple's iPad dominated news about hardware this week, but there was still plenty else going on in the software world.

If you’re running Windows but like the idea of trying out different operating systems, or just installing a different version of Windows without the need for dual booting, VirtualBox 4.1.10 (build 76836) may be what you’re looking for. When you’re running virtual system in this way you can use VirtualBox Extension Pack 4.1.10 to add extra features such as better USB performance and networking booting.

Continue reading →

The iPad has not really taken off as a platform for ebooks yet. Thus far the screen resolution has been high, but still no match for the various e-ink screens available on dedicated ereaders. All this could well change with the release of the new iPad, tomorrow, thanks to its high-resolution Retina display that packs more pixels than ever before.

Kindle for iOS is among a host of apps being updated to take advantage of the increased resolution.

Continue reading →

It used to be that there were numerous chat clients to choose from -- the likes of AIM, MSN and Yahoo! -- but nowadays there are also social networks to consider. Trillian has always been a great tool for anyone who wants to keep in touch with friends that are using different chat networks, and support for this likes of Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and more has been added as the app has developed over time.

This latest update not only fixes a number of known problems, but also improves the app’s support for Twitter. The Twitter engine has received an overhaul so there is now support for native retweeting as well as the userstream.

Continue reading →

Apple dominated news the second week of March, but, not to be outdone, Microsoft released a couple of interesting tools that are well worth a look. Microsoft Research Cliplets 1.0.1 32-bit is a quite unique program that can be used to create something very impressive from your video clips. In short you can select a short video file and choose an area that should be played as normal while the remainder is montionless. You can come up with some very eye-catching results, and if you’re using a 64-bit version of Windows you should take a look at Microsoft Research Cliplets 1.0.1 64-bit.

You may have taken the plunge and installed Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Microsoft Device Center Beta 32-bit is available to help you to take full advantage of the Windows 8 specific features of Microsoft keyboards and mice. Again, if you are using a 64-bit version of Windows, there is a version for you in the form of Microsoft Device Center Beta 64-bit.

Continue reading →

Burning discs has become so fundamental to computing that practically every computer produced in the last decade has a disc burner of some sort built in. But in order to make use of your burner, you’re going to need some suitable software. Windows includes some very basic support for disc burning, but if you want to do much more than copy files from your hard drives onto a recordable disc, you’re going to have to look elsewhere.

The software that is supplied with CD, DVD and Blu-ray recorders is often complicated and packed with endless features you’ll never use. Ashampoo Burning Studio 2012 is a user friendly burning tool that strikes the perfect balance between ease of use and depth of features.

Continue reading →

CyberLink is a company that is synonymous with software that is incredibly powerful yet also incredibly easy to use.  When it comes to the arena of photo editing, there are a number of extremely high-end tools to choose from, and these have a tendency to not only be very complicated to use, but also restrictively expensive. The same cannot be said of CyberLink PhotoDirector, which includes all of the powerful tools you would expect to find in a professional image editing tool, but it is far easier to use than the likes of Adobe Photoshop.

We thought we’d let you in on a deal which will get you the latest PhotoDirector 3, which is retailing with a $149.95 MSRP for only $69.95, saving you a huge 54 percent. Read on.

Continue reading →