Joomla is an award winning open source content management system (CMS) that allows you to build websites of different varieties like blogs, personal portfolio site, photo galleries, e-commerce sites, etc. Joomla is easy to customize and thanks to the Joomla community, there are plenty of beautiful templates to choose from so you can have a great looking Joomla powered website and online application.

This following post is dedicated to Joomla users and those who wish to start with Joomla. Here are some beautiful and professionally looking Joomla templates you should know.

Free Joomla Templates

City sky | Demo | Download
The template features 2 parameters that serve to change the background on the one hand and to insert one’s twitter URL on the other, the latter then being highlighted to direct the attention of your readers to your twitter account.

Guild Wars | Demo | Download
Perfect for your online games website, it is perfect for clan forum.

Disco Beat | Demo | Download
Help you distribute your site contents between 4 layout columns – a 2-column central area and two neighboring sidebars (left & right). The main area will be your main site contents holder, while the sidebars will allow you to set apart supporting classified information.

PJ Enchanted | Demo | Download
Available in both native Joomla 1.5 as well as Joomla 1.0.x versions.

Top Gear | Demo | Download
Organized in 4 columns, including a 2-column main area, surrounded by a left and a right sidebar. The top-speed JavaScript based main menu bar will allow for a real quick navigation to the internal pages of your car racing website.

JS Lunar Eclipse | Demo | Download
Easy navigation and plenty of space to make modular websites expand.

Forex Trading | Demo | Download
Dedicated to the foreign exchange market affairs and is targeted at banks or other official institutions operating that trade markets globally.

Violin1 | Demo | Download

JS Optimus | Demo | Download
Clean template that let’s your all important content speak for your site, and not get buried under a distracting template. Built to be SEO optimized and take subtle advantage of Joomla 1.5’s template override features.

Bikini Beach | Demo | Download
This template can be successfully used for various leisure time related websites – from professional travel agency portals promoting their hot offers online, through e-stores offering sunbathing accessories, to personal sites representing trip diaries.

World of Warcraft Flash Joomla Template | Demo | Download
One more perfect Joomla template for game website.

Contaminated | Demo | Download
Black based toxic green for the alternative people out there with breadcrumb supported.

Sabana Plazza | Demo | Download
Lightweight and fast loading (its filesize only about 50 Kb).

Diablo III FLASH | Demo | Download
This is the FLASH version of Diablo III templates for Joomla. This is a standard Joomla template. However, it includes a flash header with great effects.

The DailyPraise | Demo | Download
Makes creating news and magazine site easy.

Digital Systems | Demo | Download
Comes with many standard features and is very easy to integrate with any Joomla installation. It comes with a custom right menu and all module positions are fully collapsible.

Default | Demo | Download

Professional Joomla Templates

Delicious | Demo
Features a 3 column layout, plenty of module positions, a menu with built-in support for VirtueMart 1.1 and a native or blog styled date tag for articles.

Dark Rational | Demo
This template has enough features to satisfy your need for gadgets, but still lightweight enough to be fast and super good looking as well.

Espresso | Demo
Espresso comes packed with themes for some of the top components for Joomla!, including: My Blog, Jomsocial, JomComment, Kunena, Seyret, and exclusive Joomla! content overides.

JA Tube | Demo

Showcase Plazza | Demo
For those of you who want to make your own CSS gallery website.

Blog You | Demo
Gives you complete control over the template styles in our custom TI template manager, from preset styles to your own custom styles, template control has never been easier.

Bliss | Demo

Snappa | Demo
A little grunge and dirty look.

NewsPro Darkness | Demo
Perfect for online newsportals, magazines, blogs, fashion and entertainment sites.

You Tutorials | Demo
Advanced Joomla frontpage styling that takes off the standard Joomla template look and gives your more flexibility and uniqueness.

Sea of Glass | Demo

JA Quartz | Demo

SuperBlog | Demo
Incorporates two very powerful extensions, K2 and the Superblogger Plugin (both from JoomlaWorks).

Creative | Demo
Introduces new styling and layout concepts in the Joomla template world. Menus with shadows, blog date tags with multiple designs and collapsible module positions give this template maximum flexibility. You can enable the blog styled dates to make it work as a blog, the VirtueMart enabled menus to make it an e-commerce website, or keep it simple and use it as a presentation page.

Mediaplate | Demo

PopPraise | Demo
One big trendy guilty pleasure that comes with drop-shadows, gradients, rounded corners, sex appeal, and even a pink color theme option.

eShop Dark | Demo

JA Cooper | Demo

Meridian | Demo

Microblog Plazza | Demo
Microblog Plazza is completed with a TPStatus component, where a user in your website will have his/her own microblogging page in which he/she can write a status update and then receive comments from other users. It’s like a great mix of twitter and facebook.

Zappa | Demo
Make your website gleam with a fun and bright Web 2.0 style template.

JA Opal | Demo

Refraction | Demo
Refraction is a template to inspire and amaze. Utilising transparent overlays over professional and artistic background images produces staggering results, all matched with the perfect colour combination. Its easy to radically change the design with just an image and colour.

EcoLife | Demo
This ground breaking new template has been handcrafted to be Eco-Friendly, feature filled & graphically stunning. This template comes bundled with many extra features & extra stylings for some of the most popular Joomla! components.

Grunge!sta v2 | Demo
Created in antique elegance manner with a touch of Gothic style for those who want to stand out.

Viyo | Demo

Dub | Demo
Packed with Moo + Jquery effects and Modules, Dub offers some of the most advanced effects and scripts on the web. Dub offers multiple themes and 2 layout styles with a host of graphic elements and font colors.

Affinity | Demo
Released from RocketTheme and features extensive third party support for powerful and popular community products, such as JomSocial, K2 and phpBB3. The template’s core feature is Sortable Elements, which allows for the movement of modular rows, individual positions and stacks of modules.

Yougames | Demo

Scene | Demo

ElveSocial | Demo

Infuse | Demo
Infuse is an infusion of artistic flair and functionality. The theme boasts six, individual and unique, style variations, meticulously constructed to perfection. The theme is accompanied by 6 Style Variations, each with 3 different background options, culminating in a total of 18 possible combinations.

Crystal | Demo
Crystal offers lots of different color variations for menu items, allowing you to style every page in a different color.

About author:Dainis is blogger from Latvia. He is webmaster of Psdeluxe.com (Photoshop deluxe) – Design community where you find photoshop tutorials and useful resources for web and graphic designers. Follow Dainis on Twitter

A well designed newsletter/email template can be the difference between success an failure. Whether its to update customers about a product, or to share information, having a well designed template can be a great starting point to guide your readers and give them a clear coherent flow when they read your email. This is crucial, considering how important the first impression is.

Here is round-up of some of the best free HTML newsletter templates on the Internet you can download without paying a penny.

Here are more related entries you might be interested:

• XHTML/CSS Website Templates
• Web Templates and Layouts

Full list after jump.

Top Five: Free Newsletter Templates We Like Best

• Campaign Monitor – 30 FREE HTML Newsletter Templates
  Here is a neatly sorted collection of 30 well produced templates which have been tested against all major email clients and web mail, for example Outlook, Thunderbird and Gmail. One of the feature is that it already pre-sorts all the templates into those with left or right sidebars, or single column templates

  

• Carbon Graffiti – 10 Free email marketing templates
  Carbon Graffiti is a great design website, and one of the cool resources theyve made available are 10 free email marketing templates. Designs range from very simple basic ones to custom complex templates.
  

• Aweber: – 5 Awesome Functional Newsletter Templates
  Aweber has some of the best newsletter templates out there, and some of them go beyond a good design and are pretty darn functional as well. Here are 5 of the best from Aweber.

  Download
  This is a great email template to use when sending over a note asking someone to download a file. This template also comes in 3 flavors – one for PDFs, one for audio, and one for any other files, as well as 6 colors – so youre able to easily customize your readers download experience.

  

  Welcome
  This is a perfect email template to use send when youre welcoming new members to your service.

  

  Blog Newsletter
  If you write a blog, this is a great template to share your info and updates in a newsletter to build a stronger relationship with your readers.

  

  Malibu
  This email template was specially built to communicate promotional offers in a quick and efficient manner.

  

  Outdoorsy
  2-column (right-hand sidebar) email template with an organic feel and navigation links available to use in the header.

  

• MailChimp – 4 basic flexible HTML email templates
  Mailchip four basic, flexible templates that you can use to get started. They’ve been tested to render properly in all the major email programs, like Outlook 2007, Lotus Notes, Gmail, and more.

  

• Cakemail – 17 Well Designed Newsletter Templates

  

More Free Newsletter Templates

Here are some other sites which also offer up free newsletter templates for download.

• Interspire – 30 Free Newsletter templates

  

• Stock Layouts – TechTimes theme
  This is a beautifully designed theme, although it requires you to register (for free) on the site.

  

• Octeth – 10 Free Email Templates

  

• Hot Email Templates – 28 Free HTML Email Templates

  

• Active Campaign – 11 Free Email Templates

  

• Mach5 – 4 Free Email Templates

  

• Omnistare Tools – 10 Free Email Newsletter Templates
  A variety of free templates, but it requires (free) signup.

  

• Benchmark – 3 Simple HTML Email Templates

  

• Delivery Success – 10 Free Newsletter Templates

  

• Templatesbox – 84 Free Newletter Templates

  

About Author: James Yeang is the writer of a Malaysian tech blog called Friedbeef’s Tech, and can also be found on Twitter.

Portable applications in general are software and programs you can run independently from a removable drives (like flash/pen drive) without going through the hassle of installing them. They are widely used and have been a favorite approach for professionals of different various industries.

With portable applications, you can leave your laptop behind; plug in the thumb drive in any client machine, run the application without worrying about leaving anything behind. In this post, we attempt to show a collection of useful and free applications you can run independently from thumb drives, sorting by profession by general. You’ll be surprise how many applications you can actually run without installation. Full list after jump.

Portable Apps For Bloggers

1. Mozilla Firefox

   Mozilla Firefox, portable version allows you leave no personal information behind on the machine you run it on, so you can take your favorite browser along with all your favorite bookmarks and extensions with you wherever you go.

   

2. Opera

   Full featured web browser, rapidly gaining popularity. Fully portable, keeping all data in its local folder.

   

3. Google Chrome

   

4. Portable Safari

   Portable Safari is packaged so you can carry around on any portable device, USB thumb drive, iPod, portable hard drive, memory card, other portable device (or also on your internal hard disk), taking your preferences with you.

   

5. Windows Live Writer Portable

   Windows Live Writer Portable has all your blog settings, ping server settings and FTP settings to redo.

   

6. Zoundry Raven

   Zoundry Raven™ is the next generation WYSIWYG blog editor that makes posting to your blogs easier and faster.

   

7. FileZilla

   FileZilla is a fast and reliable FTP and SFTP client. It includes a site manager and supports uploads/downloads queue, keepalive, timeout detection, SOCKS 4/5 and HTTP 1.1 proxy etc.

   

8. FeedReader

   Feedreader is a FREE RSS news aggregation solution that provides robust, state-of-the-art features in an intuitive, user-friendly environment.

   

9. GreatNews

   GreatNews displays full pages of news articles across rss feeds, optimized for fast reading.

   

10. Foxit Reader

    Foxit Reader is a small and fast PDF viewer.

    

11. StickyTweets

    A lightweight Twitter client built in C/C++ with Win32. No additional frameworks required.

    

12. Fruitfultime Bookmark Manager

    Bookmark websites from any web browser with a global hotkey and bookmark documents, pictures, and other files with drag and drop ease.

    

13. Web Design Toy

    Web Design Toy provides a deceptively simple split-window layout. Whatever HTML is typed in the editor window is instantly shown in web-page form in the display window.

    

14. Lingoes Portable 2.6.2

    Lingoes Portable is green portable version of Lingoes released by Lingoes Project.

    

Portable Apps For Designers

1. GIMP Portable

   The GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

   

2. Artweaver

   Artweaver is a Windows Freeware program to simulate natural brush tools.

   

3. MobaPhoto

   MobaPhoto is a nice freeware for managing your digital photos. MobaPhoto allows you to resize, crop, correct red-eyes of all your pictures very easily in "batch-mode".

   

4. Active Pixels

   Activepixels is a neat full-featured photo editor. Interesting auto enhance options (including shadow/hilight recovery), many filters, correction and denoise settings.

   

5. Photoscape

   Photoscape is the fun and easy photo editing software that enables you to fix and enhance photos.

   

6. PhotoFiltre

   PhotoFiltre is a complete image retouching program. It allows you to do simple or advanced adjustments to an image and apply a vast range of filters on it.

   

7. Fotografix

   An image editor that can be used for image enhancement and graphic design.

   

8. Anim8or

   Anim8or is a 3D modeling and character animation program.

   

9. XBlender

   Blender is an integrated 3D creation software suite.
   It lets users create high quality 3D graphics, movies and replay real-time, interactive 3D content.

   

10. X-Inkscape

    Inkscape is a vector editor that supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface.

    

11. Inkscape

    Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editor.

    

12. Diagram Designer

    Simple vector graphics editor for creating flowcharts, UML class diagrams, illustrations and slide shows.

    

13. FastStone Photo Resizer

    FastStone Photo Resizer enables users to convert, rename, resize, crop, rotate, change color depth, add text and watermarks to images in a quick and easy batch mode.

    

14. JPEGCrops

    JPEGCrops is a Windows program, created for preparation of a batch of images for printing. It provides lossless cropping with fixed aspects using jpegtran.

    

15. Riot

    Riot allows you to save images for web/email/other media with the best compression ratio and quality.

    

16. SmillaEnlarger

    SmillaEnlarger is a small graphical tool ( based on Qt ) to resize, especially magnify bitmaps in high quality.

    

17. PNG Optimizer

    Png Optimizer creates PNG screenshots and make them easily available.

    

18. IcoFX

    IcoFX is an all-in-one solution for icon creation, extraction and editing.

    

19. Greenfish Icon Editor Pro

    Greenfish Icon Editor Pro is a professional, yet easy to use tool for designing and retouching icons, cursors, animations and static images, and assembling icon libraries.

    

20. WinSnap

    WinSnap includes easy capture of non-rectangular windows with customized and transparent backgrounds, simple and automatic canvas transformations, coloring effects, and the addition of eye-candy drop shadows.

    

21. PicPick Tools

    PicPick features a powerful capture tool, image editor, color picker, color palette, pixel ruler, protractor, crosshair, whiteboard and etc.

    

22. SiteShoter

    SiteShoter is a free tool that can be used to take a screenshot of any webpage.

    

23. Greenshot

    Greenshot is a revolutionary screenshot tool optimized for productivity.

    

24. FastStone Image Viewer

    FastStone Image Viewer has a nice array of features that include image viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping and color adjustments.

    

25. IrfanView

    IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative graphic viewer for beginners and powerful for professionals.

    

26. Cornice Portable

    Cornice Portable is an image viewer that has thumbnail previews, full screen modes, rotation, slideshow modes and more.

    

27. Osiva

    Osiva is a free image viewing program that opens and scale images fast — get images into view and out of the way

    

28. RealWorld Paint.COM

    RealWorld Paint.COM can display images using any zoom factor and always shows 100% accurate preview of the drawn shape. Tooltips are displayed throughout the user interface to explain meaning of controls.

    

29. AMP Font Viewer

    AMP Font Viewer is an easy to use but powerful font manager, which allows getting a quick overview of both installed and non installed fonts.

    

30. FotoSketcher

    FotoSketcher is a 100% free program which can help you convert your digital photos into art, automatically.

    

31. Dia Portable

    Dia can be used to draw many different kinds of diagrams and has special objects to help draw entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and many other diagrams.

    

32. Oiko CSS-Editor

    Oiko is a visual CSS editor. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) allows to separate the representation definitions of such structured documents as HTML, XHTML, XML from their content, which is an effective principle in the design of web sites.

    

Portable Apps for Business Purposes

1. OpenOffice.org

   OpenOffice.org Portable is a complete office suite — including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, drawing package and database

   

2. Notepad++

   Notepad++ is a free (as in “free speech” and also as in “free beer”) source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages.

   

3. SoftMaker Office 2006

   An Office Suite which contains components that compatible with Windows Office applications like Word, Excel, etc.

   

4. PNotes

   PNotes is fast and light-weight. It has flexible settings – both for the program in whole and for individual note.

   

5. AbiWord

   AbiWord is a free word processing program similar to Microsoft® Word. It is suitable for a wide variety of word processing tasks.

   

6. Jarte

   Jarte is a WordPad based, FREE word processor whose unique interface will make you feel like you are piloting a swift, nimble yacht by comparison.

   

7. Portable Office Exec

   

8. ToDoList

   A simple and effective way to keep track of your current programming tasks.

   

9. Task Coach

   Task Coach Portable lets you bring your to-do list and task manager with you so you always stay on top of things.

   

10. Date Reminder

    Date Reminder reminds you of recurring or nonrecurring events, like birthdays, bills to pay, appointments etc.

    

11. Sunbird

    Sunbird Portable is a standalone calendaring and task management application built on the same technology as the Firefox web browser.

    

12. Koma-Mail

    Koma-Mail is an email client which is comfortable and has very handy functions. It does not need an installation, so that you can run Koma-Mail from your flash drive but, of course, also on your desktop.

    

13. Thunderbird

    Mozilla Thunderbird is the safe, fast email client that’s easy to use. It has lots of great features including quick message search, customizable views, support for IMAP/POP, RSS support and more.

    

14. Qm – The Quick Mailer

    Qm – The Quick Mailer is a tiny program for sending quick e-mail messages without having to load your main email client program.

    

15. WinMerge

    WinMerge can compare both folders and files, presenting differences in a visual text format that is easy to understand and handle.

    

16. KeyDb

    Keydb is a password manager. With it you create and store strong random passwords required by many websites.

    

17. 7-Zip

    For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip

    

18. Express Burn

    Express Burn lets you create and record audio or data CDs with any CDRW drive.

    

19. Recover Files

    Recover Files is an award winning program that can undelete / recover deleted files after they have been deleted.

    

20. Team Talk

    TeamTalk allows you to talk to friends and colleagues using the internet as audio carrier. With TeamTalk any number of people can participate in a conversation and is only limited by the bandwidth you have available.

    

21. Blowfish Advanced CS

    One powerful file encryption and security tool for the Windows platform.

    

22. TrueCrypt

    TrueCrypt is a software application used for real-time on-the-fly encryption.

    

23. Tomahawk PDF+

    Tomahawk PDF+ is one of the most advanced word processing/pdf creation software packages available for the Windows platform.

    

24. GnuCash Portable

    GnuCash Portable is the open source financial management software packaged as a portable app, so you can take your financial data with you.

    

The moment you decide to run an online store selling your favorite stuff, you are immediately thrown with dozens of questions and obstacles. For starters, you’ll need to decide between clean inventory/excess stock, then comes the resource for products. Ultimately, when it comes to open an e-commerce site, the biggest decision is – Which platform should I use?

The software you’ve decided upon will be the foundation of your entire e-commerce site and will not likely be changed in the future, therefore it’s utmost important that you know all of the best one before you choose and regret later. In this post, we want to bring to your attention some of the best (free) open-source shopping carts available on the Internet. Do check them out, test of the demo, play around with it to know if the functionality suits your business before deciding on one.

Full list after jump.

OsCommerce (PHP/MySQL)

OsCommerce Online Merchant is an open source online shop e-commerce solution that is available for free under the GNU General Public License. It features a rich set of out-of-the-box online shopping cart functionality that allows store owners to setup, run, and maintain online stores with minimum effort and with no costs, fees, or limitations involved.

Zen Cart (PHP/MySQL)

Zen Cart truly is the art of e-commerce; free, user-friendly, open source shopping cart software. The ecommerce web site design program is being developed by a group of like-minded shop owners, programmers, designers, and consultants that think ecommerce web design could be and should be done differently.

PrestaShop (PHP/MySQL)

PrestaShop is a professional e-Commerce shopping cart software that you can download and use for free. Having a very powerful back-end, store admins can manage the inventory, orders, customers & payments easily. System never limits you as it supports unlimited categories, sub-categories & image pictures.

CubeCart (PHP/MySQL)

CubeCart is written to run on servers that have PHP & MySQL support. With CubeCart you can quickly setup a powerful online store which can be used to sell digital or tangible products to new and existing customers all over the world.

Magento Commerce (PHP/MySQL)

Magento is a feature-rich eCommerce platform built on open-source technology that provides online merchants with unprecedented flexibility and control over the look, content and functionality of their eCommerce store. Magento’s intuitive administration interface features powerful marketing, search engine optimization and catalog-management tools to give merchants the power to create sites that are tailored to their unique business needs. Magento also comes with a much more powerful Enterprise version.

Digistore (PHP/MySQL)

Digistore Ecommerce 4.0 is a fully featured open source ecommerce solution based on the popular osCommerce engine. Boasting improvements both to the administration and the end user experience – Digistore has quickly become a popular choice for people wishing to market products online.

Opencart (PHP/MySQL)

A robust e-commerce solution for Internet merchants with the ability to create their own online business and participate in e-commerce at a minimal cost. OpenCart is designed feature rich, easy to use, search engine friendly and with a visually appealing interface.

Spree Commerce (Ruby on Rails/MySQL)

Spree capitalizes on the dynamic nature of the Ruby progamming language to provide the most flexible commerce platform available. Spree has been designed from the ground up to be as open and extensible as possible. You no longer have to be frustrated with the limited set of choices provided by most platforms.

CREloaded (PHP/MySQL)

CRE Loaded is much more than your average shopping cart. It’s the industry’s first downloadable e-commerce system that makes your store fully compliant with all Payment Card Industry (PCI) security rules. Organize, manage and ship your products from your online store. Accept credit card transactions safely.

Zeuscart (PHP/MySQL)

The Zeuscart shopping cart is based on PHP application and it is used as scripting language which facilitates developer in making dynamically driven websites. It is very facile to learn and understand. To be precise, application of PHP is most popular because of its functionality which can be changed as per ones requirements.

Agoracart (Perl/MySQL)

Offers a very wide range of features that allow you to setup an online storefront or shop ranging from a simple template based store for novices to the integration of complex web design concepts created by your web designer.

Afcommerce (PHP/MySQL)

AFCommerce is a full and complete online store with both a store front and administration area directly Out-Of-The-Box, which can be easily installed, configured, and maintained over a web-based interface. AFCommerce now includes our Ecommerce Website Building Software, AFBuilder, included completely Free.

RapidShop (PHP/without MySQL)

Very fast and easy to use, without MySQL (and can without PHP), direct from MS Excel. For 1000-2000 item of products. RapidShop is integrated with PayPal, EGold and any payment system. You can link your shopping cart to any credit card merchant account or payment gateway. Search Engine Optimized.

For Designers and Photographers

These following shopping carts are light, simple and utmost useful for those who wish to sell stock photos, video and print graphics online.

• Cmsaccount Photo Store Script (PHP/MySQL)
  Photo store software for selling your photos, images, artwork, audio, videos, vector illustrations and prints online.

  

• Ktools Photostore (PHP/MySQL)
  PhotoStore allows you to setup a complete photo selling website on your server or hosting space in just minutes. Perfect for professional photographers looking to sell their images or prints to their customers online.

  

• Xpoze (PHP/MySQL)
  Complete and easy to use solution for selling images and other media files such as videos, vectors or 3D graphics. As everyone tends for something unique Xpoze have worked had to provide you with the best flexibility to customize the look and the features you want to use without much fuss and programming knowledge.

  

Shopping Carts That Integrates With Others

Joomla

• VirtueMart (PHP/MySQL)
  The complete e-Commerce shopping cart solution for Joomla! – used by thousands of store owners. It can be run in Store- and Catalog-Mode. With its powerful Administration Tool you can handle an unlimited Number of Categories, Products, Orders, Discounts, Shopper Groups and Customers. VirtueMart works for both Joomla and Mambo.

  

• RokQuickCart (PHP/MySQL)
  RokQuickCart is a simple shopping cart for Joomla. It takes a simple, yet elegant, shopping cart script and integrates directly into Joomla. It allows you to showcase products, inclusive of images, descriptions and additional options, and purchase these items, with support for shipping and tax calculation.

  

• Seber Cart (PHP/MySQL)
  Small, fast and easy to use shopping cart for Joomla.

  

• SimpleCaddy (PHP/MySQL)
  Integrate a simple shopping cart into your content. No need to set up a complete system like VirtueMart if you are only selling a few items or you don’t want to setup a complete shop.

  

Wordpress

• ShopperPress (PHP/MySQL)
  ShopperPress is a fully featured shopping cart plugin for wordpress, suitable for selling any types of products, services, and digital downloads online. ShopperPress has built in support for multiple payment gateways allowing you to accept product payments online.

  

• Fat Free Cart (PHP/MySQL)
  With FatFreeCart Plugin you do not have to generate or paste any code in CSS or HTML of WordPress theme. The plugin is designed to work within your WordPress post editor.

  

• WordPress e-Commerce (PHP/MySQL)
  WordPress e-Commerce is a WordPress Shopping Cart Plugin that is truly an industrial strength elegant easy to use and fully featured shopping cart solution suitable for selling your products, services, and or fees online.

  

Premium Carts Worth Knowing

Last but not least, we throw in some shooping cart that comes with a price tag. For those who have budgets for their online business, these following shopping carts are worth knowing too.

• CS-Cart (PHP/MySQL)
  CS-Cart is an "out of the box" ecommerce software solution with easy-to-use functionality that allows to start selling online immediately. Its feature set fits into businesses of any size, from a small single-product shop to a fully-featured online storefront. Designed for ease of use along with flexibility, CS-Cart is equipped with the latest ecommerce innovations (like one-page checkout, AJAX-based web interface, block manager and others) built into a highly configurable and modifiable sales and promotion engine.

  

• Bosscart (PHP/MySQL)
  Boss Cart is an eCommerce shopping basket application, specifically developed to meet the needs of small to medium sized retailers. Boss Cart has been created using the latest technology and runs on Windows, Linux and all other Web platforms. Boss Cart has been tested with over 20,000 items to ensure maximum speed and efficiency.

  

• Avactis (PHP/MySQL)
  Avactis shopping cart is a software package that allows you to open an online store on the Internet. It comprises two parts – a client side and an administrator side. The client side is your website as seen by visitors. The Avactis’s client side allows the visitors to your site to browse products in the online store, select products and put them into the shopping cart, as in a conventional supermarket, and then pay for the selected products using a credit card or other payment options.

  

• Lite Commerce (PHP/MySQL)
  LiteCommerce is a lightweight high-tech ecommerce solution devoted to make an internet store launching process as easy as surfing the Web. LiteCommerce is more than just a shopping cart. It is a multipurpose ecommerce store platform. Numerous built-in features will make your online store and your business successful: inventory management, credit card processing, SEO tools, special offers, discount coupons and others.

  

• X-cart (PHP/MySQL)
  X-Cart shopping cart software is based on PHP Smarty templates, this makes it very flexible and easy to modify. The data is stored in MySQL database. X-Cart is a turnkey package. Installation is handled by web-based step-by-step wizard to make the system running immediately after receiving it. X-Cart is search engine friendly. A merchant can specify meta tags and define custom URLs for product and category pages that results in higher search engine rankings.

  

• Instantestore (Hosting not required)
  InstanteStore provides a variety of SEO, marketing, and promotional tools that you can make use of to bring in traffic and customers. These features will help you reach your potential customer market and get them buying at your store.

  

• Interspire (PHP/MySQL)
  From complete SEO optimization to single page checkout, track-able coupon codes and business intelligence reports – no other shopping cart software increases your online sales like Interspire Shopping Cart. Guaranteed, or your money back. We offer both a PHP-based shopping cart and also a hosted, fully-managed ecommerce solution called BigCommerce.

  

• Sunshop (PHP/MySQL)
  SunShop shopping cart is search engine friendly shopping cart system. A complete ecommerce solution packed with and extensive feature list. SunShop offers all of the standard features you would find in any off the shelf shopping cart software plus much more. What makes SunShop shopping cart stand above the rest is the ease of use.

  

• Squirrel Cart (PHP/MySQL)
  Squirrelcart PHP Shopping Cart software is a fully customizable, robust php shopping cart, designed with the advanced developer and web novice in mind. If you are a web novice, you will appreciate its ease of use, and the fact that Squirrelcart will generate the HTML for all of your store’s pages based on the built in templates provided. If you have a strong knowledge of HTML, you will appreciate the ability to make Squirrelcart look and work the way YOU want it to.

  

• Shopfactory (PHP/MySQL)
  ShopFactory 8 all-in-one shopping cart software allows anyone to quickly create and manage their own professional Internet shop — despite being one of the most powerful and feature rich eCommerce solutions on the market. Now you can update your own website and products to sell securely online without professional help.

  

• 3dcart (Hosting not required)
  Shopping Carts from 3dCart are complete e-commerce storefront solutions for your new or existing web site. Easily build, edit, and maintain your online shop, and collect orders without any programming or HTML knowledge!

  

• Viart (PHP/MySQL)
  The Viart range of software provides the tools you need to make full use of the Internet in your business. Now anyone can set up a secure online store without the need for any programming knowledge. The Viart suite of products is designed by Viart in-house team of e-commerce software developers. Together team has over thirty years of experience in this arena.

  

• Pinnacle Cart (PHP/MySQL)
  Pinnacle Cart is an extremely powerful php shopping cart and website builder application. Designed from marketing perspective, this eCommerce application is feature-packed, robust, scalable and easy to use. Pinnacle Cart is the clear choice for serious merchants focused on rapidly and cost effectively deploying, managing and growing a successful web-based business.

  

About author:Dainis is blogger from Latvia. He is webmaster of Psdeluxe.com (Photoshop deluxe) – Design community where you find photoshop tutorials and useful resources for web and graphic designers. Follow Dainis on Twitter

It all began in Plaza Hotel, New York City on the 10th of November 1983. Two Microsoft founders Paul Allen and Bill Gates officially announced their corporation’s first and next-generation graphical user interface operating system – Microsoft Windows.

Despite the criticism on stability and constantly being compared to their rivals Apple Macintosh, Microsoft Windows is still the most widely used operating systems in the world. In this article, we’ll bring you back to 1985 where the very first official Microsoft Windows 1.0 was announced, and then we take a trip down memory lane to see all boot screens and desktop interface of all Windows operating system possible.

Here are more related entries we’ve previously published:

• Evolution of Photoshop: 1988 – 2009
• Websites We Visit: How They Look Like 10 Years Ago

Full content after jump.

Windows 1.01 (1985)

Officially released on November 20, 1985, this 16-bit OS that cost less than 1MB in overall is Microsoft’s very first operating system that allows multi tasking with graphical user interface on PC platform that runs on MS-DOS 5.0.

Windows 1.03 (1986)

Introduced in 1986, Windows 1.03 is an upgrade to its previous predecessor Windows 1.01. Entire operating system cost about 2.2Mb hard disk space.

Windows 2.03 (1987)

Taking advantage of the speed of Intel 286/386 processor at that time, Windows 2.03 is a replacement for Windows 1.x. It also starts the era where users are able to overlap windows, customize screens, etc. Still the entire operating system cost no more than 2.5Mb.

Windows 2.86 (1989)

Windows 3.0 (1990)

This is the third major released of Microsoft Windows with a improved set of Windows icons and applications like File Manager, Program Manager that is still being used in today’s Windows. This 22 May 1990 released operating system is then replaced by Windows 3.1 two years later.

Windows 3.1 (1992)

Windows 3.1 is probably the earliest Windows most of us are familiar with. Windows 3.1 and later Windows 3.1x is an upgrade to Windows 3.0 with bug fixes and multimedia support.

Windows NT 3.1 (1993)

The first Windows New Technology (NT) introduced. It maintains consistency with the Windows 3.1, a well-established home and business operating system at the time, the new Windows NT operating system began with version 3.1. Unlike Windows 3.1, however, Windows NT 3.1 was a 32-bit operating system.

Windows 3.11 (1993)

A superset of Windows 3.1, Windows for Workgroups 3.11 added peer-to-peer workgroup and domain networking support. For the first time, Windows–based PCs were network-aware and became an integral part of the emerging client/server computing evolution – Microsoft

Windows NT 3.51 Workstation (1995)

The Windows NT Workstation 3.5 release provided the highest degree of protection yet for critical business applications and data. With support for the OpenGL graphics standard, this operating system helped power high-end applications for software development, engineering, financial analysis, scientific, and business-critical tasks – Microsoft

Windows 95 (1995)

Previously code-named Chicago, Windows 95 is a successor to all the existing Windows operating system so far. It gives full graphical user interface support, integrated a 32-bit TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) stack for built-in Internet support, dial-up networking, and new Plug and Play capabilities that made it easy for users to install hardware and software.

Windows NT 4.0 (1996)

Windows NT Workstation 4.0 included the popular Windows 95 user interface yet provided improved networking support for easier and more secure access to the Internet and corporate intranets – Microsoft.

Windows NT Server 4.0 (1996)

Windows 98 (1998)

Windows 98 was the upgrade from Windows 95. Described as an operating system that "Works Better, Plays Better," Windows 98 was the first version of Windows designed specifically for consumers – Microsoft.

Windows 2000 (2000)

More than just the upgrade to Windows NT Workstation 4.0, Windows 2000 Professional was also designed to replace Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT Workstation 4.0 on all business desktops and laptops. Built on top of the proven Windows NT Workstation 4.0 code base, Windows 2000 added major improvements in reliability, ease of use, Internet compatibility, and support for mobile computing – Microsoft.

Windows 2000 Server (2000)

Windows ME (2000)

Designed for home computer users, Windows Me offered consumers numerous music, video, and home networking enhancements and reliability improvements – Microsoft.

Windows XP (2001)

Windows XP Professional brings the solid foundation of Windows 2000 to the PC desktop, enhancing reliability, security, and performance. With a fresh visual design, Windows XP Professional includes features for business and advanced home computing, including remote desktop support, an encrypting file system, and system restore and advanced networking features – Microsoft.

Windows Server 2003 (2003)

Released on April 2003, and also known as Win2k3, this operating system is a sucessor to it’s predecessor Windows Server 2000 (Win2k).

Windows Vista (2006)

Came more than 5 years after it’s predecessor Windows XP, Vista is the longest timeline break for Microsoft between two operating system. Read more.

Windows 7 (2009)

Codenamed Blackcomb, Windows 7 is one of the most anticipated operating system which should be available somewhere in Oct 2009. Read more.

References

In order to gather all boot screens and interfaces of various Windows Operating System, we crawled the Internet up and down. Here are some sites we’ve cross-referenced:

• A Visual Tour of Windows 1.01 – Vista
• Microsoft Evolution in Technology
• Desktop Evolution: Windows and Mac OS Visual Comparison Through the Years
• Windows History
• History of MS Windows

We use shortening URL services like TinyURL, Bit.ly, su.pr, etc on daily basis. These services are great, but have you thought of creating something similar your own? Setting up such service on your own is fairly easy, and if you are using Wordpress it too comes with a plug-in that work seamlessly well.

YOURLS (Your Own URL Shortener) is what we’re talking about. It’s a free PHP script created by Lester Chan and Ozh Richard that allow you to create something similar to TinyURL and Bit.ly. We’ve installed and played around with it for a while, and here are our thoughts:

• Easy to install – If you’ve got no problem installing Wordpress, then setting YOURLS is a piece of cake.
• Customizable links – You can customize the links instead of the random characters that make no sense.
• Statistics – An admin page that allows you to manage and keep track of details like date of creation, IP, clicks, etc.
• Public/Private links- You control whether this service is available for public to use or yourself only.
• Bookmarklet – Easy bookmarklet to create your own short URL on the fly.

YOURLS also comes with developer API as well as Wordpress plugin. If you like the idea of owning a private url shortening services, please read on. We’ll cover a simple guide on how to setup YOURLS.

First and formost

Here are some things you’ll need before the installation:

1. A domain – A short one would be perfect but it’s hard to get these days. If you are thinking of getting a really short domain name, we suggest you try your luck on country code top-level domains like .at, .lv, .ly, etc with domain.nr.
2. PHP Supported account – YOURLS runs on PHP, so you will need to make sure the server (dedicated or shared hosting) supports PHP 4.3 and MYSQL 4.1 and above with mod_rewrite enabled.

Read more about YOURLS requirements.

1. Download

Download the latest version of YOURLS. Unzip it and fire up your favorite text editor. We are about to do some configurations.

2. Configure

1. Look for includes/config-sample.php, rename it to includes/config.php and open up in editor.
2. Mandatory settings you’ll need to change are: YOURLS_DB_USER, YOURLS_DB_PASS, YOURLS_DB_NAME, YOURLS_SITE. Last but not least, change your password for username and username2. The rest of the settings are optional. We suggest you go through the entire thing, it’s pretty self-explanatory. Please drop us a comment if you have problem filling this, or check out the YOURLS configuration guide.
3. Create a database – Create a database with the name you’ve inserted for YOURLS_DB_NAME. If your web hosting account provide you with cPanel, login and find "MySQL Database" under Databases column.
   
   

3. Upload

Upload all files and folders in the exact same structure to the root folder of your web hosting account. Your root folder name might varies from public_html, www, html, etc.

4. Install

We are almost done now. Fire up a browser, type in your domain name as url, follow by /admin/install.php. For example: http://yoursite.com/admin/install.php.

If everything is setup correctly, you’ll see these following messages with the link to your admin page at the end of the line.

5. Done!

Go on, login and start creating your very own short URL. Make sure you check out the Tools too, if you’d like to make a bookmarklet. Here’s a sample of how our YOURLS admin page looks like.

Hope it works for you, drop us a comment if you have any questions :-)

In a nutshell, bookmarklets are small little applications you can place as browser’s bookmark bar and they each perform a specific function, depending on what they are coded for. Bookmarklets are usually written in Javascript and they are extremely easy to install/remove. Bookmarklets work in most common used browsers like Firefox, Opera and Safari but probably lesser support in Internet Explorer.

In this article, we’ll show you some of the most useful bookmarklets for designers, developers or even if you are a net surfer, they might just come in handy. Installing a bookmarklet is simple – all you need to do is drag them to your bookmark toolbar, that’s all.

Why bookmarklet are cool?

They are efficient! We figured you might compare it with add-ons and browser plug-ins. Here are some advantages of bookmarklets over plug-ins we can quickly come out with:

• Hassle-less installation – Installing a bookmarklet is simple. All you need to do is drag it up to the bookmark toolbar. To remove them, just right click on it and hit delete.
• Light – If you’ve installed more than 15 add-ons in your Firefox, you’ll probably find it slower to start. Bookmarklets are just couple of lines of Javascript codes. You can have 50 and Firefox doesn’t even lag a bit.
• No updates – Most plugins require update especially when there is a new version of the browser. Boomarklet on the other hand, are less likely to require an update.
• Cross Browser compatibility – Bookmarklets are written with Javascripts, they work in most browsers.

Social Bookmarking and Sharing

Here are a bunch of social bookmarking bookmarklets that might come in handy:

• Digg this!
• Delicious
• Design Float
• Reddit
• Mixx
• Designmoo
• Facebook – Share links in Facebook.
• Stumble Upon? – Check if a site/page has been Stumble Uponed.
• Tumblr – Share images on Tumblr.
• Gmail This – Quickly paste a link in Gmail

Browser resize

Here’s a complete article of browser resizing bookmarklets with positioning capability.

Readability, Download and Prints

Shorten URL – In this case, we use bit.ly’s shortening bookmarklet. Click here for a list of URL shorteners with bookmarklet scripts.

Kwout – Make a screen shot of any website you are in with Kwout.

Print Screen – Another print screen bookmarklet. By Aviary.

Browsershot – Get a browsershot printscreen of any website.

Better Readability – This bookmarklet cleans up the page, leaving you with nothing but clean content for better readability. You can create a customized version at Arc90 Lab.

Tidy Read – Tidy up your page for better readability.

Remove bloat- Remove all occurrences of Flash, Java,and other third-party iframes.

Edit Website – Allows you to edit any websites you viewed. Original display will be restored upon refresh.

Customize Print – Allows you to customize the layout, fonts, colors, etc before printing a webpage. By printwhatyoulike.

Download as PDF (Firefox) – Convert and save page as PDF. Click here for bookmarklets of other browsers. By pdfdownload.

Download video – Supports YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe, Myspace, Break.com, Putfile, Dailymotion, Sevenload, MyVideo.de and Clipfish.de.

More: Zoom in, Zoom out, Remove background, Highlight links

Traffic, Password and Site Information

Zap Cookie – Removes cookies set by the site, including cookies with paths and domains.

Show Password – Set a password and forgot? This bookmarklet takes in your ***** from form field and output you the actual password.

Site Info – A bookmarklet that gives you information (advertising network, platform, widgets, etc) of the website you are currently viewing. By sitonomy.

Site Info – Another bookmarklet to find site info By Buildwith.

Domain owner – Tells you who own the domain of the site you are viewing.

Delicious – Shows you who, how many people bookmarked the site in delicious.

Alexa – Shows you the Alexa ranking of the site.

Compete – Shows compete.com ranking.

Technorati – Find out more information about a particular blog. Click here for more Technorati bookmarklets.

AttentionMeter – Gives you the Alexa, Quancast, Crunchbase, Alexa and Technorati ranking of the site in a lightbox.

Uptime Check – Check if a website is down for everyone or just you. By downforeveryoneorjustme.

Design and Develop

Aardvark – Aardvark is a Firefox plugin that gives you HTML element details like ID, class, image, position, etc of the page you are viewing. Good news is, it also comes in bookmarklet format.

Layout Grid – Applies a layout grid image to the body of the page.

Disable Image, Remove Image.

Test Selectors – Test and play with selectors. By Westciv.

Spry Media – Created by Spry Media, this bookmarklet allow you to view a page in grid view, with ruler measurement, measuring points with units and much more.

XRAY – See box model for any element on any site. By Westciv.

Reload CSS – Reloads CSS every 2 seconds. Useful for those who’s constantly editing on the design and need a fresh look at the effects.

Validate RSS – Check site RSS validity with feedvalidator.org.

Validate CSS – Validate site’s CSS. More CSS bookmarklets – View CSS, List Compute CSS.

Validate HTML- Check if site is using valid HTML based on w3.org. More HTML bookmarklets – Show tables, Show table headings, Show table cells.

Dictionary and Translation

Quickly search and get answers from these online sites:

• Wikipedia
• Acronym Finder
• Urban Dictionary
• Dictionary.com
• Thesaurus.com
• Reference.com

These following bookmarklets allow you to quickly translate a webpage from one language to another using Google translate.

• German to English
• Chinese Simplified to English
• Chinese Traditional to English
• Italian to English
• Spanish to English
• Japanese to English

You can also try this Auto Detect Language bookmarklet, or visit unusualbookmarklets for a complete set and various methods of translation bookmarklets.

Useful Tools and More Bookmarklets

How to Efficiently Manage Your Collection of Bookmarklets – Efficiently manage bookmarklets across all browsers and computers.

Translation Bookmarklets – Great list of various translation bookmarklets.

howtocreate.co.uk – More bookmarklets for designers and developers.

Blummy – Organize your bookmarklets, by Blummy.com.

webreference.com – How to create Bookmarklets.

Bookmarklets.com

Squarefree.com

PimpMySafari – Great collection of bookmarklets for Safari browser.

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This article will come in handy for those of you who are interested in Flash, or perhaps have a basic idea and would like to learn more about Adobe Flash.

Before we get started:
The list below provides you valuable and useful short tips including sample FLA source files to help you understand better and apply faster in your Flash projects. You need to have Adobe Flash CS3 or CS4 Professional software installed in your computer to open the source files.

1. Understanding Object Names

Usually some Flash beginners think that object names in the library are same as instance names. In fact, they ARE NOT. Please make sure that you do not get confused with instance names, class names, and object names in the library. They have totally different meanings in Flash. Below example shows that gray_box_01 is the instance name, graybox is the class name without spacing (which is used to create instances by ActionScripts), gray box is the movieclip (or object) name with spacing in the library.

Moreover, gray_box_01 is just an instance of gray box movieclip in the library, there can be gray_box_02, gray_box_03, gray_box_04, etc and they are just instances of the same gray box movieclip.

2. How to make URL buttons in ActionScript 3.0

1. Create a button in the library.
2. Drag it onto stage 2 times and position them.
3. Give the instance names button_01 and button_02.
4. Add Event Listeners as show in below screenshot and code below:

        button_01.addEventListener( MouseEvent.CLICK, goto_hongkiat );
        button_02.addEventListener( MouseEvent.CLICK, goto_koflash );
        function goto_hongkiat(e:MouseEvent):void
        {
        navigateToURL( new URLRequest( "http://www.hongkiat.com" ), "_blank" );
        }
        function goto_koflash(e:MouseEvent):void
        {
        navigateToURL( new URLRequest( "http://www.koflash.com" ), "_blank" );
        }
        

Download Source

3. How to duplicate MovieClips in ActionScript 3.0

1. Create a movieclip "box" in the library.
2. Right-click on it and click on Linkage…
3. Set the class as box as show in below screenshot.
4. var b:MovieClip = new box(); duplicates a movieclip.
5. Line no. 4 and 5 set the X and Y positions of a dupliated movieclip.
6. addChild() function adds that dupliated movieclip onto stage.

Download Source

4. How to add Right-Click menu in Flash ActionScript 3.0

1. Create custom menu items.
2. Add Event Listeners to those items.
3. Hide built-in items.
4. Apply the custom menu items.

Download Source

5. Using Tweener class or tween engine for motion tweening

There are a number of open source tween engines on the web. Tweener is one of the most popular tween engines for motion tweening.

1. Download Tweener Class (AS3).
2. Import Tweener class by unzipping it and put caurina folder into the folder that your flash file exists.
3. Create a movieclip "gray box" in the library.
4. Drag it 2 times and give them instance names gray_box_01 and gray_box_02.
5. Apply Tweener to them.
6. Download Tweener Documentations to understand and apply it better.

6. General Structural Guidelines for Flash

It is really important to keep your flash timeline structure and library clean and reusable. This way you can save a lot of time for future projects.

1. Create and apply layer folders when you have more than 10 layers on timeline.
2. Avoid using default layer names (examples: Layer 1, Layer 2, etc.) and give them meaningful names.
3. Put all actionscripts in one layer (named "actions") and put it on top of all layers.
4. Give the meaningful names for every object in the library and use folders to group related objects.
5. Remove unused objects from the library by clicking the small drop down arrow, then "Select Unused Items" and press delete button.
6. Download FLA file from Flashmo.

7. How to create a simple preloader

1. Add new scene preloader using the scene panel click on plus icon . (Window > Other panels > Scene or press Shift + F2)
2. Move the preloader scene above content scene as show in below screenshot.
3. Create a movieclip "preloader bar" drawing a rectangle using width 200px, height 4px, and color: #CCCCCC.
4. Create another movieclip "preloader bar bg" drawing a rectangle using width 400px, height 4px, and color: #666666.
5. Put them on stage giving instance names bar and bar_bg and align them centered as show in the screenshot.
6. Put a dynamic textfield loader_info and put it below the bar and centered.
7. Add an event listener with a function to calculate the percentage loaded as show in the screenshot.

Download Source

8. How to use Bandwidth Profiler and Simulate Download in Flash

You can simulate download in Flash. This is really a very useful tool in Flash, especially to check how flash movies are loaded for slow network speed users.

1. Run your flash file, go to main menu Control > Test Movie (or press Ctrl + Enter).
2. Click on View > Bandwidth Profiler (or press Ctrl + B) in Test Movie window.
3. Click on View> Simulate Download (or press Ctrl + Enter) in Test Movie window.
4. You can adjust the download speed by View > Download Settings > (different speed options).

Download Source

9. How to play timeline frames in reverse

1. Declare a boolean variable reverse which can be only 2 values, either true or false.
2. Add event listeners for mouse over, mouse out and enter frame events to the button instance box_01.
3. When mouse pointer is on the button, reverse value is set to true.
4. When mouse pointer is NOT on the button, reverse value is set to false.
5. Event.ENTER_FRAME executes run function continuously. It executes the run function 30 times per second if the frame rate is 30 fps.
6. run function continuously checks if the reverse value is true or false.
7. It goes to previous frame when reverse is true and it goes to next frame when reverse is false.
8. You may see how the timeline pointer goes in bandwidth profiler while testing this movie.

Download Source

10. How to use a Timer class in Flash

1. Create a new timer variable timer_01 as in this example.
2. Add an event listener function play_timer.
3. Copy box movieclip from the FLA file of TIP number 3 into the library.
4. Add play_timer function.

Additional: You may download and see how Timer is used with play/pause buttons in Flash XML photo rotator

Download Source

To make things easier for you, we’ve got all tutorials’ source files compressed in one single download file so you don’t have to download them one by one. Download All Source Files

Article by: Min Thu – Founder of flashmo.com and koflash.com. Follow Min Thu in Twitter.

Today’s technology and machines (whether it’s PC or Mac) are certainly capable of processing large original files like .PSD (Photoshop) and .AI (Illustrator) but the bad news is the sharing part aren’t . These files are fairly large in size and cumbersome to share with peers and clients. Two ways we would generally used – e-mailing and sharing via hosting account. Not saying it’s bad but e-mail comes with attachment limitation and usually doesn’t allow anything more than 100Mb. On the other hand sharing via web hosting account allows you to upload as big as your account can take but it also means the file is exposed by anyone who knows its direct path.

File-sharing web services solve most of these problems. They are free (most of them and they allow large files to be sent securely. Here are some free file-sharing sites we come to know and if you share files with friends or peers via Internet frequently, you might want to consider getting them done this way.

Streamfile

Based in Stockholm, Streamfile is a better looking, easier to use and the fastest way to deliver data, wherever you are in the world.

Max filesize: 300Mb | Registration: No | Premium account: Yes | Password Protection: No | Visit Website

Pando

Pando is free P2P software that makes downloading, streaming and sharing large media files fast, easy and fun.

Max filesize: 1GB | Registration: Yes | Premium account: Yes | Password Protection: Yes | Visit Website

Wikisend

Upload and download lots of files, big files, small files, data files, media files, archives or backups any files.

Max filesize: 100Mb | Registration: No | Premium account: No | Password Protection: Yes | Visit Website

PipeBytes

Instantly send music, movies, presentations or any other files to anybody!

Max filesize: Unlimited | Registration: No | Premium account: No | Password Protection: No | Visit Website

Mail Big File

Max filesize: 200Mb | Registration: No | Premium account: Yes | Password Protection: No | Visit Website

4Shared

Max filesize: 100Mb/file, 5Gb in total | Registration: Yes | Premium account: Yes | Password Protection: No | Visit Website

SendThisFile

SendThisFile allows you to easily send and receive large files to and from anyone, anywhere.

Max filesize: Unlimited | Registration: Yes | Premium account: Yes | Password Protection: Yes | Visit Website

Files2U

Files2U is a web-based service that allows you to send large files to a receiver without having to worry about the restrictions of email or slowdowns of FTP.

Max filesize: Unlimited | Registration: No | Premium account: No | Password Protection: Tracking Number | Visit Website

Driveway

Powered by iDrive Online Backup, this free web service allows both web file sharing or simply just share files via your PC’s desktop.

Max filesize: 500Mb | Registration: No | Premium account: Yes | Password Protection: No | Visit Website

MediaFire

Max filesize: 100Mb | Registration: No | Premium account: Yes | Password Protection: No | Visit Website

Drop.io

Privately share your files and collaborate in real time by web, email, phone, mobile, and more. Create each drop in two clicks and share what you want, how you want, with whom you want.

Max filesize: 100Mb | Registration: No | Premium account: Yes | Password Protection: Yes | Visit Website

Dropbox

Dropbox is software that syncs your files online and across your computers or even share it with friends and peers.

Max filesize: Unlimited | Registration: Yes | Premium account: Yes | Password Protection: Yes | Visit Website

Box

Box.net’s online file storage makes it easy to securely share content as a link or a shared folder with anyone – inside or outside your company.

Max filesize: Unlimited | Registration: Yes | Premium account: Yes | Password Protection: Yes | Visit Website

Senduit

Max filesize: Unlimited | Registration: No | Premium account: No | Password Protection: No | Visit Website

File Dropper

Max filesize: 5Gb | Registration: No | Premium account: Yes | Password Protection: No | Visit Website

More

Curious for more? Here are some file sharing services (not all are free) worth checking out too!

• Yousendit – Web-based pseudo-SaaS[1] digital content delivery service provided by YouSendIt, Inc. It lets users send, receive and track files on-demand. It is an alternative to sending large e-mail attachments, using FTP, and sending CDs or DVDs or tape or USB flash drive via courier. (via Wiki)
• BigUpload – Leading provider of services that allow secure uploading, transferring and file sharing. The service uses a network of the newest, quickest and most reliable servers with memory close to unlimited working on multi-gigabyte Internet connections.
• divShare – Share large files, music and video online.
• ADrive – Serves as an online, centralized vault for all important file types including: music, videos, photos, documents, and more.
• DropSend – Send up as big as 2Gb per file!
• Sendspace – Unlimited downloads and uploads, 300Mb per file.
• TransferBigFiles – There’s no registration required to use the website. You can just go to the home page and start uploading some files.

Table is an excellent way of presenting information, especially when a company wants to cite various prices for its services or products. For instance, some websites require users to sign up different levels of membership in order to access certain exclusive contents. They can present to users the distinct features that each level has to offer in a table-like format. Depending on the content, tables can be good for arranging many other kinds of data for deeper clarity other than pricing.

Creating a table is easy, but organizing data in an easy-to-understand tabular format together with an appealing layout is often challenging. Most of us have came across numerous tables on the net, and some of these can be rather plain-looking ones with no or minimal design whatsoever. However, we are about to show you that tables need not be such uninteresting and boring visual communication. It can be uniquely designed to suit your web content and stand out from the vast array of tables from websites all over the world. Also, we’ve put together a list of useful scripts to help you get the best of of table display.

Examples of Beautiful Tables

Placing data in cells often makes content presentation more organized. Here are some examples on how it’s done beautifully.

Bigcartel

Protoshare

Zen

Ballpark

Crazyegg
This table captures attention by using a ‘pop-up’ design for its cheapest sign-up package.

Formspring
Similar to the Crazyegg example, the table attempts to focus viewers’ attention to the most popular subscription by highlighting it in green.

Livestream

Jepco Storage
This is an interesting way of presenting info in the table: Using icons to signify the storage type of a particular address.

Simplified Building Concepts

Domestika

Basecamp

Fetch

Mint

ExpressionEngine

Wrike

Heroku
Again, the use of creative symbols to illustrate the different packages.

Scripts and Tools to build better Tables

To assist you in your quest for the most presentable and functional table for your site, feel free to take a look at our compilation of links below which contains a number of useful scripts and tools as a guide.

Alternate Row Colors (Zebra Table)

• Zebra Striping in 15 Steps
  Create alternative row colours in 15 steps with jQuery.

  

• jQuery Zebra Table Demo
  Making a Zebra Table by using jQuery.

Sort & Filter Table Data

• Using jQuery to Manipulate and Filter Data
  Setting up tables, creating zebra rows, applying hover effect, filtering data and sorting columns.

  

• HTML Table Filter
  A filter grid bar is added at the top of the desired HTML table. It provides a "filter by column" feature to allow filtering and limits the data displayed within a long table. Works on tables with uneven rows.

  

• Sorttable
  Sorting a table using the DOM (Document Object Model).

  

• Sort ‘n’ Scroll Table Javascript
  The script that allows sorting of tables by merely clicking on a column head.

  

• Tablesorter
  Turn a standard HTML table with THEAD and TBODY tags into a sortable table without refreshing the page. It supports multi-column sorting as well.

  

• TableFilter
  Sorts and filters multiple columns.

  

• TinyTable Javascript Table Sorter
  Alternate row highlighting, header class toggling, auto data type recognition and selective column sorting are available in this script. Other features included are column highlighting, optional pagination, support for links, and date/link parsing.

  

• Unobstrusive Table Sort Script
  Another sorting script for table that provides for multiple columns sorting as well as highlighting of columns.

  

Grid Listing

• Flexigrid – Web 2.0 Javscript Grid for jQuery
  Lightweight data grid that allows resizing of columns. It also features a scrolling data that matches the headers, and uses Ajax to connect to xml-based data source to load contents.

  

• dhtmlxGrid
  An Ajax-enabled JavaScript grid control that supports multiple datasources such as XML, JSON, CSV, JS array, and HTML table.

  

• Extjs Framework GridView3
  Affords standard panel features such as framing, buttons and toolbars.

  

More Useful Scripts

• TableKit
  TableKit is a collection of HTML table enhancements using the Prototype framework. TableKit currently implements row striping, column sorting, column resizing and cell editing using Ajax.

  

• Tablecloth
  By simply adding 2 lines of code to your html page you will have styled and active tables that your visitors will love.

  

• Tree Table
  Replicate a tree table using HTML.

  

Further Resources and Readings

Here’s a few more useful links about table styling.

• CSS Table Gallery – 98 CSS table styles you can download.
• Tutorial: Styling a Table for CSS- Some tricks for styling tables to make them appealing.
• Tables with Style – It might not seem like it but styling tabular data can be a lot of fun.
• Zebra Tables – Altering the appearance of a table to improve the ease of interpreting it.
• Zebra Table Showdown – How to create striped ("Zebra") background for tables.
• Top 10 CSS Table Designs – Ten most easily implemented CSS table designs.

Editing, enhancing or having fun with photos in your iPhone is not a dream anymore as the latest 3Gs iPhone is now furnished with an auto-focus mechanism taking 3 megapixel images. A look around the internet will show you rather decent photos taken by iPhone as people quit printing photos – who will when with a few taps, they can share theirs instantly.

Plenty of photography apps are available for that cause, be it subtle enhancements or quirky modifications – It’s time to put your new iPhone on play and show off to your friends! In this article, we put together 20 Free Photography Apps and recommendation of some good paid apps. On top of that, we’ve also included 10 best Free Video Applications. Free apps after jump.

Photography Apps

1. Free Photo Filters
   Free photo filters app provides filters include Lomography Filter, Poloarizing Filter, Black and White Filter, Retro Effect Filter and more.

   

2. SP Photo Fix Lite
   You can fix your photo (brightness, contrast, sharpness, hue, saturation) before sending it by email directly on your iPhone.

   

3. PhotoBox
   PhotoBox is the all in one solution for the weekend warrior photographer, giving you a large range of photo filters and effects.

   

4. iRetouch Lite
   iRetouch List is an advanced image retouching application for iPhone.

   

5. Photonasis 4.0 Lite
   Photonasis is the must have program for anyone who’s into photography and wants to add very nice touches into his/her photos.

   

6. PhotoCurves
   PhotoCurves enables you to create your own filers: tones and contrast.

   

7. Crop for Free
   Crop for Free is an utilities for your iPhone to crop your photos, retains image quality, rotate your photos and ability to crop multiple times before saving.

   

8. Photon
   Photon allows your entire photo and video collection securely stored in the cloud and available on your iphone with musical slide shows and editing tools.

   

9. Puri! Lite
   Puri! Lite is a photo sticker booth that you canbring with you everywhere. With the latest update, you can show off your great photos to your friends on Facebook with a click of a button!

   

10. Real Cam LE
    Control your iPhone camera with built-in screen touches. Everything you need to control and set up your camera is in the same live preview screen.

    

11. Polarize
    Want to add a funky retro look to your photos? Polarize will do the job for you!

    

12. AA+ Shake Pic Lite
    Shake your device to open Pandora’s box, in simply 2 steps and see what amazing outcome you’ll get.

    

13. iSwap Faces
    iSwap Faces morphs one person into another for everyone’s entertainment.

    

14. SP Photo Cal Lite
    The easy way to create a calendar for your iPhone wallpaper, using pictures from the Picture Library.

    

15. Comic Touch Lite
    Make your photos come alive by giving them the Comic Touch. Add balloon to give your subjects thoughts and words

    

16. iFunto Lite
    With your photograph, iFunto will merge it with fun and interesting background and you will not be able to stop laughing.

    

17. BeamCatcher
    BeamCatcher is the free app that lets your friends and family wirelessly share photos with you.

    

18. Private Pics
    The perfect application for anyone who wants to keep people from accidentally seeing their private pictures.

    

19. Rotzy Photo Sharing
    Rotzy helps you share and discuss everything around you through photos and send photos to Twitter, Facebook, Thumblr and your own website. You can even use it to create your own mobile photo blog!

    

20. AroundShare
    AroundShare integrates with your existing blogs, social networking sites and tools like RSS, Flickr, Twitter, WordPress blogs, Google maps and more.

    

Video Apps

1. Video Downloader iWoopie Lit
   iWoopie Lite can search global video portals (Youtube/DailyMotion and match more), watch and download videos to your iPhone.

   

2. Wiki Tap
   WikiTap uses special tools geared towards phone-centred community participation. Community members upload relevant videos, pictures and audio-commentaries into the larger knowledge community.

   

3. 12seconds.tv
   The 12seconds iPhone application allows you to create and post fun slideshows on the go!

   

4. Comcast Mobile App
   The Comcast Mobile App is an iPhone app from Comcast Cable Communications that lets you read your email, check your digital voice mail and get TV and Movie information on your iPhone.

   

5. Joost
   Watch over 46000 videos from Joost on your iPhone or iPod touch with this free app Store app download from Joost.

   

6. AppVee
   AppVee is the largest and most extensive resource for professional, high-quality video reviews of iPhone applications.

   

7. Air Video Free
   Air Video Free is a fully functional ad-supported application that allows you to stream videos to your iPhone over Wi-Fi. You don’t need to copy the videos to the device.

   

8. Air Cam Live Video (Lite)
   Air Cam Live Video for the iPhone is a great application for viewing your live webcam feeds over local, Wi-Fi or 3G and EDGE networks.

   

9. Pixelpipe
   Liberate your media with Pixelpipe and get your photos off of your iPhone and out to your favorite social network, micro-blog, photo/video and blog services. Video uploads from the 3GS at original resolution up to 200MB.

   

10. CNNMoney (News, Stock, Video)
    CNNMoney iPhone application delivers breaking business news and comprehensive market coverage from the leader in business and financial news. The application includes news, analysis, financial data and original video content.

    

More Photo and Video Apps

If you are feeling generous, here are some paid iPhone apps that really worth getting.

1. Photogene ($2.99)
   Photogene is about improving your digital photos and having fun while at it. It lets you rotate, mirror, crop, sharpen, adjust coloring and saturation, and add special effects.

   

2. TitlShift ($1.99)
   This application simulates a tilt-shift lens that tricks your mind into viewing a photo as a miniature scene like a model railroad for example.

   

3. ColorSplash ($1.99)
   Easily give photos a dramatic look by converting them to black and white, while keeping your chosen details in color using the ColorSplash iPhone app.

   

4. HDR Camera ($1.99)
   HDR Camera is an iPhone app that uses photo filters and effects found in PhotoShop and other desktop photo editing software to make your photos jump out.

   

5. Pano ($2.99)
   Pano fir iPhone lets you take beautiful, seamless panoramic photos straight from your phone, no other software necessary.

   

6. iZoom Camera ($0.99)
   iZoom Camera helps you to take "zoomed in" photos using only standard iPhone camera.

   

7. Night Vision ($0.99)
   Night Vision for the iPhone takes photos in extremely low light and makes the subjects in those photos appear using various effects applied to the photos. There are 4 modes in Night Vision 2.1 including Night Vision the original, Heat Vision, Spectrum Vision (the Predator), and Greyscale.

   

8. Night Camera ($0.99)
   Night Camera helps you to take sharp photos at night or other low light conditions, by using the built-in accelerometer to trigger the shutter when it detects the camera being stable.

   

9. CameraBag ($1.99)
   Dramatically enhance your photos using the many classic camera and film simulations in CameraBag. It’s like having 10 unique cameras all in one tiny device!

   

10. WorldView Live ($0.99)
    WorldView brings the world into you pocket! Watch over 10,000 webcams from all over the world in fullscreen on your iphone when you’re connected to the Internet.

    

via Wikipedia

With all the less pleasant verdicts about Vista, Windows 7 is perhaps PC users’ next best news. Codenamed Blackcomb, this new Microsoft operating system is surely a successor over it’s predecessor Windows XP and definitely Vista. With Microsoft to end their support for Windows XP in 2014, we figured Windows 7 will be completely taking over things in the next year or so.

If you are a Windows users it’s probably time for a change, or at least tryout this new operating system. Here are some shortcut keys to help improve your productivity and user experience with Windows 7. Full list after jump.

General Windows 7 Shortcuts

Shortcuts for Ease of Access

For: Windows Explorer

For: Taskbar Modifiers

For: Dialog Box

For: Photo Gallery

Logging In And Out Windows 7

Google is the most powerful search engine available, but when it comes to searching for something specific, Google may churn out general results for some. For instance, a search for a song in Google may return the singer, the lyrics and even fan sites – depending on the keywords you entered.

This is when niche-specific search engines comes into the picture. These search engines allows you to search for the things you’re looking for, and because they are more focused, their results tend to be more accurate.

E-books & PDF files, audio & music, videos, etc. are probably the most commonly searched items everyday and with this list, you’ll be able to locate them easily from now on. Enjoy!

E-Book & PDF Search Engine

PDF Searcher

Pdf Searcher is a pdf and ebook search engine. You can search and download every ebook or pdf for free!

PDFGeni

PDFGeni is a dedicated pdf search engine for PDF ebooks, sheets, forms and documents.

Data-Sheet

Data-Sheet is a pdf ebook datasheet manual search engine where you can search any ebook datasheet pdf files and download.

PDFDatabase

PDF Database is a new search engine which uses a unique algorithm to search for pdf and doc files from all over the web quickly and efficiently.

PDF Search Engine

PDF Search Engine is a book search engine search on sites, forums, message boards for pdf files.

More

• AddAll – AddALL is a free service that searches for the best deal in books anywhere on-line.
• BookFinder – A one-stop ecommerce search engine that searches over 150 million books for sale—new, used, rare, out-of-print, and textbooks. .
• Boocu – Access thousands of eBooks and other digital products.
• Brupt – Brupt.com is based on Google Custom Search Engine, it uses Filetype parameters offered by Google to filter the information and show the pages according.
• CCEbook – A free ebook search engine, find rapidshare/mihd/ebooks by search.
• ComicSeeker – Search the Internet’s most popular online comic book stores and auctions.
• DocJax – DocJax.com is a search engine for documents, which allow you to search documents and e-book from everywhere, preview them and even download them for free.
• Docstoc – All documents on docstoc can be easily searched, previewed and downloaded for free.
• Ebook-Search-Engine – Ebook-Search-Engine.com was established to make finding an free ebook on the internet alot easier by providing visitors with the best quality free ebook sites and pages on the web.
• Ebookee – Free download ebooks search engine.
• Flazx – This is a well organized and searchable eBook Directory..
• FeedBooks – A universal e-reading platform compatible with all mobile devices where you can download thousands of free e-books.
• Gigle.ws – A PDF search engine with 1 150 000+ items indexed.
• Google Books – Find the perfect book for your purposes and discover new ones that interest you.
• Issuu – Collect, share and publish in a format designed to make your documents look their very best.
• LazyLibrary – LazyLibrary, where you can find books on any topic without having to worry about high page counts..
• Myplick – Myplick is a free service that lets you share, embed and discover presentations and slide shows online.
• Printfu – Search engine for free ebooks.
• PDFster – PDFster.net is a meta search engine for PDF documents.
• PDFSe – User can search for an ebook by entering a book title,author name or topic
• PDF-Search.org – A book search engine search on sites, forums, message boards for pdf, word, power point files.
• Scribd – Scribd is a social publishing site, where tens of millions of people share original writings and documents.
• Search-PDF-Books – PDF search engine for free PDF books.
• The-Manuals – Search engine for free manual online.
• TooDoc – Through this search engine, you’ll be able to search the web for PDF files, and nothing else. .
• Yudu – Explore the Library to find magazines, newspapers, eBooks and more. Over 1 million publications read each month..

Audio/Music Search Engine

BeeMp3

BeeMP3 is a music search engine for locating an mp3-audio files over the Internet. Today they have 800 000 mp3 files in our search database and approximately 10 000 files are added daily.

MP3Realm

Mp3Realm is an evolving search engine focused distinctively on audio in Mp3 format. Mp3Realm allows you to search for your favorite songs and clips, and filter them out by file duration. Your searches can be based on artist, title, genre or album. Mp3Realm also index’s lyrics, so you can sing along to your favorite songs.

WuZam

WuZAM’s powerful engine allows users to search for free music downloads from all over the internet. Unlike P2P programs, you don’t have to wait for users to upload the file to you. Many of the free music downloads found on WuZAM are stored on high speed servers so your free mp3 downloads are quick and flawless.

SKreemR

SkreemR is a search engine for locating audio files on the web. SkreemR currently indexes over 6 million mp3 files from over 100,000 web sites.

FindSounds

FindSounds.com, a free site where you can search the Web for sound effects and musical instrument samples.

More

• AirMP3 – AirMP3 is a music search engine. It searches for free mp3 downloads on several music sites, and lists all results on a single page.
• CaptainCrawl – A very massive music blog search engine.
• DesMP3 – Listens the music that you want all is in DesMp3! Search in 500 million results.
• Dilandau – In Dilandau.com you can listen and download all your MP3 music.
• Dorble – Dorble is another application that lets you search, listen and download music you like to your computer for free.
• Gig-Listing – Gig Listing is an independent web search engine for live music events. You can look for music events, bands or venues by typing a few keywords in a text box.
• HuntMyMusic – HuntMyMusic is primarily a music search engine that provides a convenient way for users to find, preview, and download songs.
• Liveplasma – Liveplasma is a new way to broaden your cultural horizons according to your taste in music.
• MP3Raid – Mp3Raid.com is dedicated to provide its visitors the best mp3 search engine on the net.
• Mix Turtle – Web-based music search tool Mix Turtle creates playlists of songs you find online.
• MP3-Search Engine – A comprehensive MP3 search engine.
• Muscorch – Music Score Search Engine, searching for free music score in various formats.
• MusicBiatch – MusicBiatch is a music search engine designed for locating an audio files in various file sharing and uploading sites.
• Musgle – To see Musgle in action just type a song title, or the artist name, or both in a search bar and hit ‘Enter’ – you will be redirected to the Google page with relevant search results
• Midomi – Midomi is the ultimate music search tool because it is powered by your voice.
• MP3Search.Mobi – Your free music search engine.
• MP3Fountain – Download Hip-Hop mp3. Download Hip-Hop music.
• MP3Series – The Ultimate Audio Search Engine
• OOnly – Free MP3 search engine.
• SharingMusics – Audio, mp3 and music search engine.
• Songza – Songza lets you listen to any song or band. Search for it.
• SeekMP3 – SeekMp3 is worth a try. SeekMp3 is an Mp3 search engine, pure and simple. Music is pulled from all over the web—blogs, music sites, personal websites, etc.
• SeekASong – Mp3s and lyrics search engine.
• Woonz – Woonz crawls the internet for audio tracks and then provides the information here for you to listen, download, or find out more about audio that you are interested in.

Video Search Engine

blinkx

blinkx is the world抯 largest and most advanced video search engine. blinkx pioneered video search on the Internet, developing an engine based on technology.

VideoSurf

VideoSurf has created a better way for users to search, discover and watch online videos. VideoSurf抯 computer vision video search engine provides more relevant results and a better experience to let users find and discover the videos they really want to watch.

HelloMovies

HelloMovies helps you find a movie to watch. See what’s playing on Hulu, iTunes, Netflix, and more. Narrow your choices. Watch movies.

MetaTube

MetaTube is an easy way to browse 100 of the most popular video sharing sites around the world. The phenomenal benefit of MetaTube: You need to enter your search term just once for all 100 sites!

ClipBlast

ClipBlast! technology helps Viewers search, navigate, watch and personalize their experience with the Video Web, and helps Video Content Providers, Advertisers and Marketers monetize their investments.

More

• Cleepr – Cleepr, the music video search engine.
• ChizMax – A music video search engine.
• Google Videos – Search and watch millions of videos. Includes forum and personalized recommendations.
• IsInvideo – IsInVideo.com is a search engine that provides real-time results as links to videos, developed by Javier Guillen from Malaga.
• myMovo – The myMovo server provides it with the addresses of the media matching your search.
• Nanocrowd – Nanocrowd has magical search algorithms that interpret comments people like you have written about movies.
• Pixsy – The Pixsy Index is a massive library of video and image content that can be integrated into approved premium websites and applications.
• Podscope – Podscope lets you search the spoken word for audio and video that interests you.
• SearchForVideo – Searchforvideo.com is a leading video search engine that indexes online video clips from over 10,000 sources.
• ScoopVid – Track down the most popular videos by the hour, day or even month. You can also search the web for video results.
• Truveo – Truveo video search lets you search and find videos from across the Web.
• Truveo – Search video across the Web.
• VidSea – VidSea, short for Video Search is a vertical search engine specifically for searching Video clips on the Internet.
• Vdoogle – This search engine will search for videos from popular video sharing websites like YouTube and Google Videos.

RapidShare Search Engine

Rapidshare-Search-Engine

Rapidshare-search-engine.com – Find any file on rapidshare.

RapidShare1

Rapidshare1.com is a Rapidshare search engine search on sites, forums, message boards for Rapidshare file links.

FilesPump

FilesPump.com is a search engine designed to search files in various file sharing and uploading sites. FilesPump is a "multi-hoster" search engine, and currently lists 16 different popular file hosters. As a file sharing search engine FilesPump.com finds files matching your search criteria among the files that has been seen recently in uploading sites by their search spider.

FileCrop

Search RapidShare and Megaupload files easy and fast. Over 3 millions files stored in database.

RSFind

RSFind.com, a powerful free rapidshare search engine, and one of the best search engines for rapid share.

• Front Address – Search softwares, ebooks, games, photos, documents, audio and videos etc located on RapidShare.
• FilesTube – FilesTube.com is a search engine designed to search files
  in various file sharing and uploading sites,like rapidshare, megaupload, mediafire.
• FileOnFire – This site gives users the chance to get a rapid share and mega upload search engine that has more than 19,000,000 files.
• MegaDownload – MegaDownload.net – megaupload.com and rapidshare.com search engine.
• MegaRapidSearch – MegaRapidSearch helps you to find anything on RapidShare.
• Rapidsharesearch – Search Rapidshare with their Fast Online Search Engine. All files are automatically checked to insure what you’re looking for is there
• Rapid4Shared – Rapid4shared.com search engine that provides results from a hand-selected list of sites.
• RSearch – Rapidshare search engine with simple interface.
• RapidShareData – RapidshareData.com is a test files search project objected to rapidshare.com.
• RapidShareSearcher – A massive RapidShare search engine! With thousands of links, theres nothing you won’t be able to find!
• RapidAll – RapidAll Rapidshare Download Search is a website that search files on the website hosts which have been upload by Rapidshare members for sharing with their friends, family or at forum sites.
• RapidSearch.In – Free Search Engine for Rapidshare, Badongo, Sendspace, MediaFire and 4Shared Files.
• RapidZearch – RapidZearch.com is a search engine to search on sites, forums, message boards for shared file links.
• Rapidshare-Provider – Rapidshare search engine.
• RarDir – A powerful RapidShare search engine.
• Rapid TvPHP – A Rapidshare library with 1069578 files in their database.
• ShareMiner – Using ShareMiner.com you can search Rapidshare, Megaupload and many other uploading sites and file hosting services.
• ShareMiner – Using ShareMiner.com you can search Rapidshare with an easy to use interface.
• TotMe – World’s Best Rapidshare Search Engine! 1,256,339 Rapidshare Link Available To Search!

Thumb drives were once used to store files and make data portable, but due to the rapid increase in storage capacity over the pass few years these gadgets now have a bigger role. Some even run the entire operating system on a thumb drive.

The more we rely on thumb drives, the more demands we have in terms of tools and applications to facilitate the transfer and security of files. If your thumb drive plays an important role in your daily job, here are some you might be interested.

Synchronization And Backup

Microsoft USB Flash Drive Manager – Backup and Restore USB Thumb Drive Data

Microsoft USB Flash Drive Manager allows you to backup and restore presentation, pictures, songs and applications from and to USB Flash Drive devices and take them with you. Use USB Flash Drives to store personal data, to keep your network configuration and to share information with your friends. Microsoft USB Flash Drive .

xPortClone – Backup Removable Devices

xPortClone is a simple but effective tool that allows you to backup files from a removable device to your hard drive. It can be used with iPods, USB drives or even CDs or DVDs.

Toucan – Sync, Backup & Secure

Toucan is a small utility allowing you to synchronise, backup and secure your data with more options than the built in suite utilities. It is split up into 7 tabs, allowing you to easily find the function that you want.

SyncToy – Synchronizing Files and Folders

SyncToy, a free PowerToy for Microsoft Windows, is an easy to use, highly customizable program that helps users to do the heavy lifting involved with the copying, moving, and synchronization of different directories. Most common operations can be performed with just a few clicks of the mouse, and additional customization is available without additional complexity.

Recovery Tools

Roadkil’s Unstoppable Copier – Recovers Files from Disks

Unstoppable Copier is useful to copy files from any damaged media sources, like portable thumb drive as it recovers files from disks with physical damage. The program will attempt to recover every readable piece of a file and put the pieces together.

Undelete Plus – Data Recovery

Undelete Plus is a quick and effective way to restore accidentally deleted files. It can also recover files that have been emptied from the Recycle Bin, permanently deleted files within Windows using the Shift + Delete, and files that have been deleted from within a Command Prompt.

Recuva – File Recovery

Recuva is a freeware Windows utility to restore files that have been accidentally deleted from your computer. This includes files emptied from the Recycle bin as well as images and other files that have been deleted by user error from digital camera memory cards or thumb drive. It will even bring back files that have been deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses!

SoftPerfect File Recovery – Recover Accidentally Deleted Files

SoftPerfect File Recovery is a tool to recover accidentally deleted files from hard disks, USB flash drives, CF and SD cards and other storage media.

Portable Platforms

PortableApps.com Suite and Platform

The PortableApps.com Suite and Platform lets you carry your favorite computer programs along with all of your bookmarks, settings, email and more with you. Use them on any Windows computer. All without leaving any personal data behind. As soon as you connect your thumb drive into a computer, Portable Apps will open up automatically.

U3 Smart Drive – Store Data & Carry Software Applications

U3 smart drive allows you to carry your software on the same flash drive that carries your files. You can plug it into any PC and work, play a game, message friends, send email, edit photos and more. When you unplug it, it leaves no personal data behind.

PStart

PStart is a simple tray tool to start user defined applications. Designed to run portable applications (like portable Firefox & Thunderbird), you can start anything runnable from USB key devices or removable disks.

CodySafe – A Simple Data Carrier

CodySafe is a software tool that turns any portable drive from a simple data carrier to a computer-on-stick. Carry your computer programs with you, manage them, launch them on any PC, and leave no footprint behind. The management of your portable documents, multimedia files and pictures has never being that easy.

Mojopac – Turn USB Thumb Drive into A Portable Computing Environment

MojoPac, a friendly technology that allows you to take you entire PC on any storage device. MojoPac turns any USB 2.0 storage device, such as iPods, USB flash drives, portable hard drives, USB-enabled cell phones, and USB-enabled digital cameras, into a portable computing environment.

XAMPP – Portable Web Server

XAMPP is a Web Server package that contains Apache, MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP enables it’s user to host a Website, Blog, CMS or try out PHP code and test MySQL database structures all from a testing or production environment.

Security Tools

Dr.Web CureIt

Dr.Web CureIt is a standalone anti-virus and anti-spyware scanner that scans your PC for viruses, trojans, adware, spyware, hack tools, rootkits, and other malware. The program does not require an installation and can be run from a USB drive.

Portable Antivirus

Portable Antivirus is a FREE portable antivirus application that is capable to remove certain variants of virus, Trojans, ad-ware and spy ware from your computer.

ClamWin Portable – Antivirus

ClamWin Portable is the popular ClamWin antivirus packaged as a portable app, so you can take your antivirus with you to scan files on the go.

PC Repair System – Assemble a PC repair kit

PC Repair System provides a variety of free and/or open-source tools for file recovery, anti-virus, anti-spyware, system info and system maint. There are 37 applications in total.

Eraser Portable – Scurely Erase Data

Eraser Portable is a secure data removal tool that runs directly from your iPod, USB thumbdrive, portable hard drive or any other portable media.

TrueCrypt – USB Encrytion Tool

TrueCrypt encrypts an entire partition or storage device such as USB flash drive or hard drive.

FreeOTFE – USB Thumb Drive Encryption Tool

FreeOTFE is a free, open source, “on-the-fly” transparent disk encryption program for USB thumb drive and PC. These disks operate exactly like a normal disk, with the exception that anything written to one of them is transparently, and securely, encrypted.

KeePass – Secure USB Thumb Drive Data

KeePass Portable is the popular KeePass Password Safe packaged as a portable app, so you can securely carry your email, internet and other passwords with you. You can place it on your USB flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive or a CD and use it on any computer, without leaving any personal information behind.

Crypto Anywhere – Encryptor

Crypto Anywhere is small enough to fit on a single floppy or USB key chain drive and is very easy to use. If you run Crypto Anywhere from a floppy disk or USB drive, you can encrypt your email without even installing software on your workstation.

File & Folder Unlocker – Lock Your Thumbdrive

File & Folder Unlocker is a powerful yet easy-to-use system utility that gives you complete control over the locked files and folders on your computer.

Blue Micro USB Flash Drive – PC Logon Admin

Blue Micro USB Flash Drive turns your existing pendrive or flash drive into a key to logon to your pc. This makes it easier for users to manage their computer account passwords. This software creates a encrypted code on your pendrive, only understood by this software. This software can be installed on windows xp or 2000 only.

Operating Systems

Damn Small Linux

DSL was originally developed as an experiment to see how many usable desktop applications can fit inside an USB thumb drive. DSL has a nearly complete desktop, and a tiny core of command line tools. All applications are chosen with the best balance of functionality, size and speed.

Puppy Linux

With Puupy Linux you’re able to install and run the OS off of a USB flash drive. Applications such as SeaMonkey, AbiWord, Gnumeric, and Gxine/xine are included.

Slax – Your Pocket Operating System

Slax is a modern, portable, small and fast Linux operating system with a modular approach and outstanding design. Slax provides a wide collection of pre-installed software for daily use, including a well organized graphical user interface and useful recovery tools for system administrators.

Crunchbang Linux

CrunchBang Linux is an Ubuntu based distribution featuring the lightweight Openbox window manager and GTK+ applications. The distribution has been built and customised from a minimal Ubuntu install.

Mac-on-Stick

Mac-on-Stick is a project that explains how to load Mac OS Classic 7.0.1 onto a portable device using the minivmac emulator. It takes a few steps and is more appropriate for the technically-minded, but is quite an interesting experiment.

Office Tools

OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org Portable is a complete office suite — including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, drawing package and database.

Tiny USB Office

Tiny USB Office lets you to create rich-text word processing documents, share files across multiple computers, transfer files, create MS Excel compatible spreadsheets, comma-delimited database files, email your contacts, talk to your friends or co-workers on MSN, create pdf files, or securely encrypt or delete files.

Darik’s Boot And Nuke

Darik’s Boot and Nuke (”DBAN”) is a self-contained boot disk that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction.

Mazzick – Mouse Gestures on Your Thumb Drive

Mazzick is a simple mouse gesture utility that you can carry on your USB thumb drive. Using Mazzick is simple: just invoke it using one of the default shortcuts (like holding Shift, for example), then draw the gesture you want.

VLC Media Player Portable

VLC Media Player Portable is the popular VLC media player packaged as a portable app, so you can take your audio and video files along with everything you need to play them on the go.

TiddlyWiki – Non-linear Personal Web Notebook

TiddlyWiki is a single html file which has all the characteristics of a wiki – including all of the content, the functionality (including editing, saving, tagging and searching) and the style sheet. Because it’s a single file, it’s very portable – you can email it, put it on a web server or share it via a USB stick.

More Tools

USB AutoRunner

With USB AutoRunner you can have applications or documents autorun when you insert your USB device. When you insert your USB device into a computer, your chosen application or file will automatically open.

DCoT Menu System – Create USB Shortcuts Folder

A system to create a shortcuts folder at the root of my USB drive.

Flash Drive Reminder – Never Forget Your Thumb Drive

Flash Drive Reminder is an utility that pops up a reminder if you try and log off Windows without removing your flash drive. This program adds an entry to the AutoPlay dialog that pops up when you insert a flash drive into a computer.

USBDeview – Lists All USB Devices

USBDeview is a small utility that lists all USB devices that are currently connected to your PC or have been connected to it in the past. Along with the device name and description, it displays the the serial number (if available), date the device was added and last connected, VendorID and other information.

Help! I’m Lost! Autorun Script

A program called “Help! I’m Lost!” on the drive, that a finder just can’t get around opening. The program opens a message box with your personal “I’m lost” message.

EjectUSB

EjectUSB is designed to be a simple utility to close all programs running from a specified drive or folder and then attempt ejection if a drive was specified.

USB Disk Ejector

USB Disk Ejector allows you to quickly remove USB devices in Windows. It was originally designed to remove only USB pen drives but will now eject any USB device. It can be run as a non-visual command line program or a normal gui program.

Disable USB Drive

Disable USB Drive keeps people from walking up to a PC and copying data off with a USB key, but allows you to keep your scanner, keyboard, and mouse working.

BootIt – Flip Removable Bit

BootIt flip the flashdrive removable media bit so flashdrive can be detected by Windows as a fixed disk.

Adobe Photoshop has always been one of the greatest (if not the best) software when it comes to manipulating and editing image. It all started off in 1987 with a Mac application call Display, created by Thomas Knoll. With almost two decades worth of changes and improvements, you almost can’t imagine how the first version of Photoshop would look like by looking at the Photoshop you have on your desktop.

In this post, we attempt to bring you back in time to look at how the very first Photoshop look like, then we scan through each evolution of Photoshop to the latest Adobe Photoshop CS4 in market today.

Application Icon

	Adobe Photoshop .63 (1988)
	Adobe Photoshop .87 (1989)
	Adobe Photoshop 1.0 (1990)
	Adobe Photoshop 2.0 (1993)
	Adobe Photoshop 2.5 (1993)
	Adobe Photoshop 3.0 (1995)
	Adobe Photoshop 4.0 (1996)
	Adobe Photoshop 5.0 (1998)
	Adobe Photoshop 5.5 (1998)
	Adobe Photoshop 6.0 (2000)
	Adobe Photoshop 7.0 (2002)
	Creative Suite 1 (2003)
	Creative Suite 2 (2005)
	Creative Suite 3 (2007)
	Creative Suite 4 (2009)

Welcome Splash / About Screen

Adobe Photoshop .07 (1988)

Adobe Photoshop .63 (1988)

Adobe Photoshop .87 (1989)

Adobe Photoshop 1.0 (1990)

Adobe Photoshop 2.0 (1993)

Adobe Photoshop 2.5 (1993)

Adobe Photoshop 3.0 (1995)

Adobe Photoshop 4.0 (1996)

Adobe Photoshop 5.0 (1998)

Adobe Photoshop 5.5 (1998)

Adobe Photoshop 6.0 (2000)

Adobe Photoshop 7.0 (2002)

Creative Suite 1 (2003)

Creative Suite 2 (2005)

Creative Suite 3 (2007)

Creative Suite 4 (2009)

Toolbars

Adobe Photoshop .63 (1988)	Adobe Photoshop .87 (1989)	Adobe Photoshop 1.0 (1990)	Adobe Photoshop 2.0 (1993)	Adobe Photoshop 2.5 (1993)
Adobe Photoshop 3.0(1995)	Adobe Photoshop 4.0(1998)	Adobe Photoshop 5.0(1998)	Adobe Photoshop 5.5(1998)	Adobe Photoshop 6.0 (2000)
Adobe Photoshop 7.0(2002)	Creative Suite 1(2003)	Creative Suite 2(2005)	Creative Suite 3(2007)	Creative Suite 4 (2009)

Workspace

Adobe Photoshop 0.63 (1988)

Adobe Photoshop 1.0 (1990)

Adobe Photoshop 2.5 (1993)

Adobe Photoshop 3.0 (1995)

Adobe Photoshop 4.0 (1996)

Adobe Photoshop 5.0 (1998)

Adobe Photoshop 5.5 (1998)

Adobe Photoshop 6.0 (2000)

Adobe Photoshop 7.0 (2002)

Creative Suite 1 (2003)

Creative Suite 2 (2005)

Creative Suite 3 (2007)

Creative Suite 4 (2009)

Content gathered via about Photoshop (Wikipedia), Photoshop release history (Wikipedia), Photoshop News,
Guidebook Gallery, and a lot of researching and Googling.

This article is a sequel of last week’s 100 Useful Free Mac Applications. As a part II of the article, we continue to showcase you some of the free and useful applications you can install for your Mac, concentrating on:

• Audio and Video,,
• Security Tools,
• Graphics and Image,
• Internet and Utilities

If you have not read the Part I, here’s where you can get them. Full list after jump.

More from Part I..

Before we take a look into what Part II has in store, we’d like to first featured some useful Mac application and tools recommended by readers.

System tool: iFreeMem

Recovers memory for your applications to use and helps avoid the performance hit you get when running low on Free memory.

System tool: Silver Keeper

Mac’s free backup application with scheduling ability.

Productivity: The Unarchiver

Think of it as WinZIP for Mac. Supported file formats include Zip, Tar-GZip, Tar-BZip2, Rar, 7-zip, LhA, StuffIt and many other more or less obscure formats.

Productivity: Name Mangler

If you need to rename several files at once every now and then, this is the application you have always been looking for.

Reader: Skim

PDF reader for Mac.

Editor: Nvu

‘WYSIWYG’ HTML editor based on Gecko, Mozilla’s rendering engine.

Editor: Smultron

Yet another free text editor for Mac OS X.

Security

ClamXav main screen ClamXav

Free open source virus checker for Mac OS X.

Flame

Application that shows you what’s going on behind the scenes on your network.

IP Securitas

IPsec based VPN allowing you to transfer secure data remotely.

Rookit Hunter

Searches for popular UNIX and Mac rootkits and removes them.

Server Admin Tools

Provides information about the Mac OS X Server administration software applications.

Tiger Envelopes

Tiger Envelopes is a little program that lets you read and write email privately.

WireShark

Network protocol analyzer

Audio and Video

Audacity

Free Mac sound editing and recording tool.

Centerstage Project

Play audio, video and photo on your Mac or connect it to a TV.

Handbrake

Open-source DVD to MPEG-4 converter.

iPodDisk

Copy your music from iPod to your Mac, via Finder.

Miro

HD video player, podcast player, torrent downloader, Youtube viewer that can play almost any video file and offers over 6,000 free internet TV shows and video podcasts.

MPlayer

It might not have that appealing interface, but you should know that it actually play more file formats than VNC player.

VLC Player

A favourite Mac video player that supports almost all video formats!

Graphics and Image Publishing

GIMP

You probably won’t need Photoshop if you have this.

Inkscape

Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

iStrip

An application to view and archive comic strips available onlin

Paparazzi!

Makes screenshots of webpages.

PhotoBook

A Facebook photo browser for Mac. It makes it easy and fun to manage, share, and view your friends’ Facebook photos in one intuitive interface.

Xee

Lightweight, fast and convenient image viewer and browser.

Internet and Network Utilities

Cyberduck

Open source FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Mosso Cloud Files and Amazon S3 browser for the Mac.

Classic FTP

Mac program to upload, download, delete and manage files on a remote server or website using the file transfer protocol.

Camino Browser

Powerful brower that combines the awesome visual and behavioral experience that has been central to the Macintosh philosophy with the powerful web-browsing capabilities of the Gecko rendering engine.

Chicken of the VNC

Yet another VNC client for Mac OS X.

FileZilla

Perhaps one of the most famouse FTP/SFTP around.

Firefox Browser

A no brainer must-have for those who enjoys surfing web with open standards.

Flock

A Social Web Browser

iStumbler

Wireless discovery tool for Mac OS X, providing plugins for finding AirPort networks, Bluetooth devices and Bonjour services with your Mac.

JollysFastVNC

Secure ARD and VNC client.

Juice

Podcast receiver that lets you create your own custom online audio anytime, anywhere.

KissMac

Open-source and free stumbler/scanner application for Mac OS X

MAMP

MAMP stands for Mac, Apache, MySQL and PHP. It’s a one-click-install application to setup a PHP webserver.

Remote Desktop Connection

Mac application to quickly, simply and securely connect to Windows-based PCs to access Windows-based files, applications, devices, and networks from your Mac.

Serverskine

Have instant access to all of your web server, domain name, and hosting accounts. Serverskine allows you to keep everything straight in a way that’s intuitive, easy and useful.

SvnX

Allows you to browse your working copies, spot changes and operate on them but also to browse logs and revisions of your repositories !

Transmission

Transmission is a fast, easy, and free multi-platform BitTorrent client.

Vuze (Azureus)

Powerful torrent meta-search with login support for private trackers.

If you’ve just got yourself a new Mac and totally clueless what to install, this article is for you. If you are looking for alternatives for some applications you are currently using in your Mac, the following list might come in handy too. This week, we’d like to showcase you a list of useful yet free applications you can install for your Mac. Full list after jump.

Productivity

Anxiety

Provides a streamlined, easily accessible interface to add and check off your tasks, while remaining poised to melt into the background at a moments notice.

Appointments

Keep record of customers, contact persons and important events related to them.

BackBoard

A Mac app to collect notes and tasks.

Camouflage

Hides all the icons and leaves nothing but the pure wallpaper

Evernote

Easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere.

EventSync

Allows you to sync your Facebook events with iCal.

HimmelBar

HimmelBar provides an icon in the menu bar to quickly access your installed applications by scanning standard locations such as local, user, network and developer applications.

iClockr

Simple way to track your time.

MindNode

Simple-to-use mindmapping applications for the Macintosh that help to visually collect, classify and structure ideas as well as organize, study and solve problems.

NameChanger

Designed for the sole purpose of renaming a list of files.

Namely

Fast way to open applications.

Punakea

Allows you to tag your files and bookmarks, freeing you of the strict hierarchy of the Finder’s folder structure.

Quicksilver

A unified, extensible interface for working with applications, contacts, music, and other data.

SketchBox

Sticky Notes Manager for your Mac Desktop.

Slife

Time and activity analytics application that automatically keeps track of where you spend your time on your computer.

SyncMate

Help you keep all your documents, text messages, contacts, calendar entries and events and other stuff well organized.

TaskMate

Simple Mac to-do list application.

Think

Helps you to concentrate on your current task and activity.

Todos

Todos shows you all your applications in a complete dock.

Tools and Utilities

AppFresh

Helps you to keep all applications, widgets, preference panes and application plugins installed on your Mac up to date.

Burn

Mac’s application to burn discs, with a lot of advanced options.

Font Explorer X

Font management tool.

Garagebuy

Help you find and purchase items on eBay.

Set Icon

Small application that lets you quickly and easily set a custom icon for one your drives either from an ICNS file or any old image file that Mac OS supports.

TextWrangler

Powerful general purpose text editor, and Unix and server administrator’s tool.

NeoOffice

Full-featured set of office applications (including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, and database programs) for Mac OS X.

Emacs

An Editor for Text, HTML, LaTeX, C++, Java, Python, Perl, Ruby, PHP, and more…

Readers

Adobe Reader

Read PDF files with this Adobe Acrobat reader.

NetNewsWire

RSS reader for Mac by NewsGator

NewsFire

A great RSS reader for Mac whom recently made free.

ThunderBird

Powerful email application from Mozilla.

System

AppCleaner

AppCleaner is a small application which allows you to thoroughly uninstall unwanted apps.

Caffeine

Caffeine is a tiny program that puts an icon in the right side of your menu bar. Click it to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers. Click it again to go back. Hold down the Command key while clicking to show the menu.

Carbon Copy Cloner

Clone, synchronize, backup. Schedule and forget it.

Deeper

Allows you to enable and disable the hidden functions of Finder, Dock, Dashboard, Exposé, Safari, Login window and many Apple’s applications.

EverSave

Allows you to save all of your documents in a specific time interval or by changing the frontmost application.

Growl

Growl lets Mac OS X applications unintrusively tell you when things happen.

iStat pro

Highly configurable widget that lets you monitor every aspect of your Mac, including CPU, memory, disks, network, battery, temperatures, fans, load & uptime and processes.

Loginox

Easily customize your Mac’s login screen.

MacLoc

After clicking on MacLoc, it will appear that you’ve logged out, however upon entering your username and password, all open documents and applications will be right where you left them.

Mactracker

Provides detailed information on every Apple Macintosh computer ever made, including items such as processor speed, memory, optical drives, graphic cards, supported Mac OS versions, and expansion options.

OnyX

Allows you to verify the Startup Disk and the structure of its System files, run miscellaneous tasks of system maintenance, configure some hidden parameters of the Finder, Dock, Dashboard, Exposé, Safari, Login window.

Monolingual

A program for removing unnecessary language resources from Mac OS X, in order to reclaim several hundred megabytes of disk space.

PresentYourApps

Lets you hide the Dock and menu bar for every Cocoa application you choose.

SMARTReporter

Application that can warn you of some hard disk drive failures before they actually happen.

SuperDocker

Tweak your Mac’s dock.

Chat Clients

Adium

Free instant messaging application for Mac OS X that can connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, and more.

Colloquy

Advanced IRC, SILC & ICB client.

Gabtastik

Gabtastik lets you keep chat sessions open on your OS X desktop outside of your regular web browser, using minimal screen real estate and system memory.

Messenger

Think of it as Mac’s MSN Messenger.

Skype

Skype for Mac.

Stay tuned for Part II

Be sure to keep an eye on next week’s Part II where we’ll cover more free Mac applications categories of:

• Internet & Network Utilities
• Audio and Video
• Imaging
• More tools

We’ve missed out something or you’ve got some Mac applications to suggest? Feel free to contact us.

Updates: We’ve got Part 2!

Sound effects are used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media. These trick of sound are mostly achieved by combining technology, ingenuity and creativity. Sound effects are important for digital media because an appropriate sound effect can easily resemble a real occurrence for a situation.

We understand it’s kind of fussy to record and process sound effects on one’s own. Thus, we’ve crawled into Internet and search for free sound effects which are available for download. Here’s 55 websites for free sound effects download. Full list after jump!

Note: Some of these sound effects have limited rights. That means they are not allowed for commercial usage. We urge that you check the rights before using them for business purposes.

More: You might also be interested in 25 Free Digital Audio Editors You Should Know

1. Flash Kit

   Flash Kit has an ever growing list of shareware and freeware SoundFX for download. It provides a powerful searching, excellent organisation and easy real time previews make this the most advanced Sound FX download site on the net! mp3 and flashtrak versions of all effects as well!

   

2. Audio Micro

   AudioMicro is a revolutionary collection of user-generated micro stock music, sound effects, production music, production elements and music cues. Finally, high quality audio content is available at unbelievable prices with no hidden costs or fees.

   

3. Sound-Effect

   Search for, preview and download royalty free sound effects for immediate use in your multimedia project. These high quality royalty free sound effects are hand-picked from only the best sound designers.

   

4. SoundSnap

   Soundsnap is the best platform to find and share free sound effects and loops- legally. It is a collection of original sounds made or recorded by its users, and not songs or sound FX found on commercial libraries or sample CD’s.
   

   

5. FindSounds

   FindSounds.com is a free site for finding sound effects and musical instrument samples on the Web. It is a Web search engine, like Google and AltaVista, but with a focus on sounds. It provides powerful features, yet is simple and easy to use, and suitable for all ages.

   

6. Soungle

   Soungle is a free site, developed by Southern Codes, for finding all kind of sound FX and musical instruments samples on our mega online library. As different from most of similar sites, Soungle is NOT a Web search engine. It only searches in our growing monster database. Our goals are to keep it simple to use (search, preview and download) and to keep it free.

   

7. SFX Source

   In SFX Source you’ll find cutting-edge and imaginative sound samples crafted with passionate expertise for use in all levels of production, from professional to amateur, for use in Film, TV, Games, and New Media.

   

8. A1 Free Sound Effects

   A1 Free Sound Effects wants to provide the internet with our Free Sound Effects that you can download to your computer and use for church, school, home or for any non-profit project. Commercial Sounds Available.

   

9. Soundrangers

   Soundrangers specializes in generating state-of-the-art royalty free sound effects and music for interactive media, such as virtual user-interfaces, games, online entertainment, web sites and communication devices.

   

10. Partners In Rhyme

    Partners In Rhyme provide free resources, help and advice to amateur and professional multimedia producers, film makers, musicians and students in their search for music, sound effects and audio tools to complete their projects inexpensively and quickly.

    

11. Soundboard

    Soundboard.com puts all your audio clips, as well as millions from other users in one, easy to manage location. Its mission is to invite everyone to help us create a central site for audio clips in a format that anyone with a connection and a browser can enjoy.

    

12. FreeSound.org

    The Freesound Project aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, … released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License. The Freesound Project provides new and interesting ways of accessing these samples, allowing users to browse the sounds in new ways using keywords, a “sounds-like” type of browsing and download sounds to and from the database, under the same creative commons license.

    

13. Acoustica

    Acoustica has a great database and will help you find that ever so elusive sound effect!

    

14. Ljudo

    Ljudo gives free access to more than 1200 sound effects. The sounds are available in two formats: RealAudio and Mp3. Audition with RealAudioplayer or download as an MP3. Ljudo includes multilingual access, which translates the word you are searching for from your language into English.

    

15. Nature Sounds

    Nature Sounds.ca includes free online samples and as well as full-length (usually CD-length or longer!) downloads of quality nature sound mp3s. Some are mixed and edited field recordings, others are free of intervention.

    

16. Pac DV

    PacDV allows you to use the sound effects on their web site free of charge in your video, film, audio and multimedia productions.

    

17. Alc Ljudprod

    Alc Ljudprod have assembled their sound effects in MP3 format and they are free to download and use.

    

18. Hollywood Edge

    The Hollywood Edge is the leading Hollywood Sound Effects Library. These are the Sound Efx used in the big award winning Hollywood movies. From explosions to a pin drop.

    

19. Download Sound Effects

    Free Sound Effects to download will send your great specials for Sound-Effects products after you sign up their free newsletter. Also they will keep you updated with the best new SoundFX products from all over the world.

    

20. SNDBRD

    A very simple page which displays all the downloadable sound effects on its main page with a well-arranged list.

    

21. Brandens

    Many people make a living as Foley Artists adding sound f/x to movies and the like. Brandens has a large collection of sound f/x here in a few categories.

    

22. Animal Sounds

    Over 280 animal sounds available for free download. You can even read the provided description to know better about the particular animal sound.

    

23. I Love Waves

    ILovesWaves is your ultimate categorized .wav source. You can download sound effects from categories like animals, beeps and clicks, birds, cartoons, halloween, around the home, around the work place, insects, music, nature, people, vehicles and war.

    

24. Simply The Best Sound

    The sound files featured in SimplytheBest Sounds were gathered from various collections on the Internet, were created by our editors or submitted by their visitors.

    

25. Zero 1 Media

    Free wav sound samples from zero 1media. All sounds are in wav format. You can download sound inkickdrums, snaredrums, toms, highhats, loops, beat phrases, noises, voices, synth phrases, keyboards and synth sounds and effects.

    

26. Boogie Jack

    Funny, weird, annoying…you’ll find all kinds of sound effects at Boogie Jack.

    

27. AutoSpeak

    AutoSpeak Library of Sounds features the sounds of race cars, dragsters, motorcycles and other auto-related sounds.

    

28. Special Operations

    Special Operations offers free military sound effects for explosion sounds, battle sounds, machine gun sounds, rifle sounds, shortgun sounds, artillery sounds and others.

    

29. Little Music Club

    Littlemusicclub.com where you will find SERIOUS BIG sfx wavs that “rocks”and some other useful music links. For copyright purposes you should contact their respective owners by checking the properties section of each file where applicable.

    

30. Guide to Animal Sounds on the Net

    There are many samples of animal sounds on the World Wide Web and FTP sites, but finding them takes some patience and a bit of luck. This website provides a guide that much more convenient to have an index specifically for animal sounds.

    

31. Stoutman’s Sounds

    Sounds of all kinds for your listening and downloading pleasure! Stoutman’s Sounds is going to be putting up more sounds as time permits.

    

32. Cool Wavs

    Cool wavs is the place where you can look for some cool, funny, sexy wavs.

    

33. Free Audio Clips

    FreeAudioClips.com is loaded with tons of wav, midi and au files for your listening and downloading pleasure!
    Select a category on the right and easily find what you’re looking for. Or, use the quick "audio clip keyword search" to search through the database for that special sound clip!

    

34. Event Sounds

    Event sounds lets you download wavs so you can change the sounds your computer makes such as startup sounds, mail sounds, shut down sounds, error sounds, movie sounds and tv sounds.

    

35. WavCentral

    All of WavCentral’s audio files have been databased and categorized — to make searching and accessing EASY. Over 504 sound effects are available for free download.

    

36. WavPlanet

    Wavplanet, the only audio page that lets users upload to its collection and has become one of the largest on the Internet with thousands of movie and TV files, hundreds of sound effects and MIDI files.

    

37. Movie Sound Clips

    More sound effects categories are currently being worked on Movie Sound Clips. That includes more updates for the current categories, especially weapon sound effects, as well as new object sound effects, answering machine messages and lots more.

    

38. Wav-Sounds

    Wav-Sounds.com is the family friendly wav site. The place to find some of the best free wav sound files around like Answering Machine Wav Sounds, Cartoon Wav Sounds, E-mail Wav Sounds, Funny Wav Sounds, Movie Wav Sounds, Parody Wav Sounds, Various Wav Sounds and Vehicle Wav Sounds.

    

39. TalkingWav

    Talkingwav.com offers thousands of free wav sound files to download, including answering machine messages, cartoon, comedy, music, movie and tv wav sounds, all fully categorized with descriptions. Plus loads of free mobile cell phone ringtones and videos.

    

40. Tintagel’s Free Sound File Archive

    Sound files at Tintagel are provided free of charge, without any representation or warranty whatsoever. To the best of our knowledge, all wave, midi, and audio files presented here are in the public domain and are available for use without restriction.

    

41. Pachd

    Over 80 free sound effects are available for download at Pachd.

    

42. Amazing Sounds

    Amazing sounds is where you will find all kinds of WAV files. Their database has more than 1.000 WAV Sounds for you to download, FREE!! Their content is made basically for multimedia developers or creators that want to use these files; so you won’t find a lot of movie, serial, or other sounds here.

    

43. Wav Sound Files

    A complete archive for wav sound files download.

    

44. The Recordist

    The Recordist presents a collection of free sound effects in MP3 format. These effects are from The Recordist SFX Library and the “Special Edition”. The MP3 stereo versions are high quality 44.1 192k compressed.

    

45. Sound Jay

    Sound Jay allows you to use the sounds on our website free of charge and royalty free in your projects but you are NOT allowed to post the sounds on any web site for others to download, link directly to individual sound files, or sell the sounds to anyone else.

    

46. FreeSFX

    The free sound effects found within the categories on the site are royalty-free and free to download and use within your audio/visual productions. You do not have to declare the useage of these sounds to any performing rights organizations.

    

47. Sounds FX Page

    Sounds FX Page has a small collection of Sounds FX files saved in WAV format. Instead of creating a rather humongous plethora of sound directories, they thought you would get more use out of a fairly small selection of really good sound files.

    

48. Free Sound Effects

    Free Sound Effects has converted our Stage Sounds Series so you can pick and choose your effects to create your own customized CD. The sound effects are available in a smaller MP3 format and a larger WAV file-self-extracting zip file.

    

49. Water Sounds

    A mini collection of water sounds for ocean surf, rain sounds, stream, water sounds and waterfall.

    

50. 3dmm Studio

    The best movies always have great sound effects, and realistic background noises. So, to help you in your quest for better sounds, 3dmm Studio has compiled and categorised several sound packs. Rubin’s ‘3dmm Sound’ packs require you to import the .3mm file into your movie, where-as the packs complied by Will Cheyney are standard zips with categorised .wav files.

    

51. Media College

    MediaCollege.com is a free educational and resource website for all forms of electronic media. Topics include video & television production, audio work, photography, graphics, web design and more.They have hundreds of exclusive tutorials with supporting illustrations, videos, sound bytes and interactive features.

    

52. Free Sound Effects Collections

    Music for video provides different categories of sound effects and music clips. You can download and use these sounds for free on your video/multimedia productions. The sounds in this part of the website are mainly dedicated to people involved in video production , video montage ,multimedia projects and etc.

    

53. Wav Surfer

    Wav surfer provides free sound effects in wav files for movies, animals, musical, television and misc.

    

54. A1 Prank Calls

    A1 Prank Calls – The best free sounds, April Fools’ prank items and the funniest prank call humor.

    

55. Sounds & Noise

    Sounds & Noise provides free sound effects for animal sounds, human sounds, trains, planes and automobiles, weapons, horns, bells and whistles, sound of nature and household sounds.

    

Screen capture, or print screen is perhaps the most efficient way to share whatever appears on your desktop. They help tech users like us to share and communicate better with friends and peers. Major operating systems today comes with basic screen capture and print screen function, but if these can’t fulfill what you need from a screen capture then you are probably looking for a screen capturing tool.

Screen capturing tools do what the basic tool don’t. What these tools could do varies, including the ability to include sketches and text, instantly upload image online, audio capturing, dimension-specific capturing and more. Make your screen capture and sharing experience more interesting, here’s a showcase of 40+ Free Screen Capturing Tools and Related Techniques. Full list after jump.

Cross Platform

We love cross platform tools. No more worries when you are all too familiar with one tool and needs to get the job done on a different operating system.

• Jing Project

  A project of Techsmith, Jing has the ability to do instance image and video capturing. Aside from that, you can also do sketches on the image and share them online. Speaking from functionality point of view, being free tool is definetely a steal. [Download: Windows, Mac]

  

• Evernote

  Saying Evernote has cross platform supporting ability seems to be slightly inaccurate, instead it’s multi-platform. This awesome tool not only runs on Windows and Mac, it also supports iPhone, Windows Mobile and even websites. You’ve got to check out the video to see how great it is. [Download: Windows, Mac, more]

  

• WebKut

  Capture web pages in whole or parts. And because it’s developed with Adobe AIR, you bet it’s cross-platform. It captures web screenshots, the only problem is – it’s not attached to the browser. [Download]

  

• Websnapshot

  Yet another Adobe AIR application to take website snap shots. [Downloads]

  

Windows Only

By default, you can only do a full page and active window print screen on Windows. The following tools give you much more flexibility.

• ZScreen

  Open-source screen capture program that allows for region/window/full-screen screenshots. It can FTP screenshots and put the URL in your clipboard in a single keystroke. It supports automatic custom naming conventions with variables. [Download]

  

• Screenshot Captor

  Behave like most screen capture software. The most interesting part is – you can run it from a USB thumbdrive. Talking about print screen portability. [Download]

• Cropper

  Cropper is a screen capture utility written in C# on the Microsoft .Net platform. [Download]

• Capture

  Capture is a quick-and-easy screen capture utility for Windows (and NT), which allows you to capture the entire screen, at any color depth and resolution, and save it into a Bitmap file for editing. [Download]

• MWSnap

  Small yet powerful Windows program for snapping (capturing) images from selected parts of the screen. [Download]

  

• ScreenPrint32

  Free windows tool to print and/or capture to disk or clipboard, the full desktop, active window, predefined area, or user selected area of the screen. [Download]

• Snippy

  Useful free tool to copy webpage screenshot for sharing purposes. Interesting thing is that, when you cutting out a portion of an Internet Explorer window, the URL will also be copied to the clipboard; this makes it very convenient to select something interesting on a Web site and send it out in an email message. [Download]

• SWBCapture

  Screen capture utility that allows you to quickly and easily capture an image of any window on your desktop, or the entire desktop. [Download]

• Screen Grab Pro

  Screen Grab Pro features one-click grab of any screen for ease of use, Timer operation, Current window selection list and more. [Download]

  

• Wisdom-Soft ScreenHunter

  Wisdom-Soft ScreenHunter is a free screen-capture tool for you to easily take screenshots. ScreenHunter can capture a full screen, an active window, the client window, or a rectangular area. [Download]

• Gadwin PrintScreen

  Capture screenshots with ease. [Download]

  

• FastStone Capture

  Light and powerful screen capture application with whole screen, object-selective and region screencapture ability. Save files in various formats, BMP, GIF, JPEG, PCX, PNG, TGA, TIFF and PDF. [Download]

  

Mac Only

Here are some of the most commonly used screen capturing tools for the Mac enthusiast.

• Capture Me

  Flexible screen capture and recording utility for Mac OS X which features a floating capture window, several saving options, and resize ability. [Download]

  

• Backdrop

  Simple utility to fill your screen with a giant blank window. Fill the window with a solid color or a custom image, your choice so you can take clean nice printscreen. [Download]

  

• Skitch

  Skitch is not solely a screen capture tool. It allows you to capture screen shots of any application, chat moments and the ability to sketch on the screen shots. You can then upload it to share with friends. A printscreen tool injected with some fun. [Download]

  

• InstantShot!

  InstantShot! offers classical screenshot functionality for capturing the whole screen, a portion of it or a window and also the option to make timed screenshots or to make delayed captures over time. It offers a wide range of preferences and options to fit everyone’s needs. [Download]

  

• Paparazzi!

  Written in Objective-C and the WebKit framework, this small utility is suitable for those who wants to do simple screen shots in their Mac. [Download]

  

• Screenshot Helper

  Screenshot Helper shows a full screen window with a solid color or a desktop picture so that you can take clean screenshots without having irrelevant windows and desktop icons in the background. [Download]

  

• SnapNDrag

  SnapNDrag lets you take a screenshot by just clicking a button and dragging the resulting screenshot off, perhaps one of the simplest and easiet to use Mac printscreen tool we’ve seen. [Download]

  

• About Timed Screenshot 1.1

  A light screen capturing tool that runs in background until you kill the process (in Terminal) or logout. [Download]

• Copernicus

  Mac application for speed screenshot taking and video capturing (no audio). It’s also a virtual photo gallery. [Download]

  

Linux

Screen capturing tools for Linux users.

• XscreenCapture

  XscreenCapture allows you to capture an X11 dump from any Linux client with X11 port open. It will also convert and save automatically the result picture in the desidered compress format (default PNG). [Download]

• Xvidcap

  Screen capture enabling you to capture videos off your X-Window desktop for illustration or documentation purposes. [Download]

Web Tools

These web tools go beyond screen capturing of your desktop. It allows you to print screen any website, all the way from header to footer.

• Browsershot

  Free web service that shows you how your website looks like in different browser of different version. A must tool for web developers on a browser compatibility check.

  

• ScreenShots.jp

  Similar to Browsershots, this free web services is for those who understand Japanese.

  

• Super Screenshot

  Simple web service for those who wants quick print screens. No compatibility check of different browser or versions available.

• Clip2Net

  Clip2Net allows you to capture, sketch and share screencaptures online instantly. Good tool to communicate ideas with peers. [Download]

  

• Websnapr

  As the name suggest, it snaps thumbnail screenshot of any webites. All you need to do is enter the URL and hit capture. Comes with plugins you to facilitate blogging and web publishing.

• Thumbalizr

  Yet another online web thumbnail generator. Comes with API.

• Browsrcamp

  Test the compatibility of your design with Mac OS X browsers. Free web screenshot tool build on Mac OSX Leopard.

Firefox Plugins

Screen capturing plugin for Firefox browser. They prints the lower fold screens you don’t see.

• Screengrab!

  Firefox plugin with the ability to printscreen entire upper-fold and lower-fold of any browsing websites. Instead of saving the screenshot to a file, you can copy it to clipboard. [Install]

• FireShot

  Firefox extension that creates screenshots of web pages. Comes with sets of editing and annotation tools, which let users quickly modify web captures and insert text annotations and graphical annotations. Somehow it’s nota available for Firefox on Mac OSX [Install]

  

Further Readings

• Screen Shot Tips & Tricks!

  Five simple things you can do to make your screen shots look better on-screen.

• How to Create a Perfect Screenshot Painlessly

  How to create a screenshot of any web page or capture any screen event. Step by step instructions are given for Photoshop, but you could also use this tutorial with Corel PhotoPaint or Paint Shop Pro or even MS Paint.

• How To Capture a Screen Shot with the Snipping Tool

  Learn how to make screenshots in Vista with the build-in Snipping Tool.

Image editing encompasses the processes of altering images. We use raster graphics editor as primary tool to edit a digital image in terms of manipulating, enhancing, transforming, applying effects and filters, and file formats converting.

Due to the popularity of digital cameras, image editing programs are readily available. At this moment, we believe Adobe Photoshop is still the most powerful program on market which perform a large variety of advanced image manipulations. However, not everyone will afford to get a copy for popular raster-based digital image editors like Adobe Photoshop if all one need to do is just basic image editing.

While you’re at it..

We’ve previously published 11 Free Adobe Photoshop Alternatives, and we encourage that you check it out too. And with no duplication between this, we got you 25 (in total) Photoshop alternatives here in hongkiat.com.

Full list after jump.

1. Photobie

   Photobie is image editing software that combines features amateurs can use with advanced tools professionals will appreciate. Photobie is free for personal use with no Pro upgrade to pay for — all features are free.

   

2. Photo! Editor

   Photo! Editor is powerful multifunctional software offering a complete set of image editing tools. It contains anything a digital camera owner might need to correct or enhance their photos. You will enjoy the ultimate convenience and professional approach provided by each of the tools. With Photo! Editor, you can remove red eye instantly, enhance the color of the image, make funny caricatures, add astonishing lighting effects, straighten, resample and crop images. The Denoise tool is one of the world’s best to effectively remove luminance and color noise from digital images made under poor lighting conditions. You will also appreciate the Make Up tool that offers a complete set of retouching filters to make the best of your portrait photos.

   

3. Phantasmagoria

   Phantasmagoria is a fun, light-weight image editing application. The main focus is to apply effects to images, along with the basic editing that might be required after a sub-par shoot. In other words, what most of us actually need.

   

4. Image Analyzer

   Image Analyzer is an advanced image editing, enhancement and analysis software. The program contains both most image enhancement features found in conventional image editors plus a number of advanced features not even available in professional photo suites.

   

5. Artweaver

   Artweaver is a Windows Freeware program to simulate natural brush tools. It is therefore suitable to leave your creativity free run. Artweaver offers you a clear program window, which can be used without training immediately.

   

6. Active Pixels

   Active Pixels resembles Photoshop in many aspects, from the way menus and windows are laid out on its interface to the keyboard shortcuts used for many actions. It also includes similar tools, like the magic wand, the gradient, the polygonal lasso and others. What’s more, it supports working with layers. Active Pixels also includes some extra embedded apps, such as a red-eye fixer, a picture browser and a screen capture tool – although it only grabs full-screen images.

   

7. Photoscape

   Photoscape is the fun and easy photo editing software that enables you to fix and enhance photos. Photoscape has a very powerful editor for you to perform resizing, brightness and color adjustment, white balance, backlight correction, frames, balloons, mosaic mode, adding text, drawing pictures, cropping, filters, red eye removal and blooming.

   

8. VCW VicMan’s Photo Editor

   VCW VicMan’s Photo Editor is a versatile image editor with an intuitive interface and a wide variety of features. This powerful application is user friendly, offering simple image editing, high productivity and easy customization.

   

9. PaintStar

   PaintStar is a versatile digital image processing software suitable for such tasks as retouching of photographs, composing and authoring images, image morphing, screen capture, and displaying image thumbnail in Windows Explorer context menu. It supports alpha, layer, path ,and the most common editing techniques.

   

10. Helicon Filter

    Helicon Filter is a complete image editing solution for the digital photographer. Its easy and intuitive interface, live preview feature, and in context help ensure an easy start for beginners. The program is built as step by step workflow guiding you through all post processing stages.

    

11. Evan’s Image Editor

    Evan’s Image Editor (EIE) is a free image editor that allows for editing and creation of animated or still images. It contains several GPU-powered image modifiers that take advantage of modern graphics hardware, giving you an instant preview of the effect while you adjust parameters.

    

12. Free Image Editor

    Free Image Editor is a bitmap image-editing application that lets you retouch existing photos or create original graphics. Free Image Editor provides a rich graphics toolset for digital photography, print production and Web design.

    

13. Photo Pos Lite

    Photo Pos Lite is a free lite version of the award-wining photo editor Photo Pos Pro. Using the Lite version you can edit, enhance and manipulate your pictures easily. You can edit and optimize your pictures, print it, resize it, convert it to another format and much more. The editor also includes some great drawing and painting tools for creating computer graphics. Support of scanners and digital cameras, Various of Image Enhancing and editing tools and functions, Paint Brush Tool, Shapes Tool, Clone Brush Tool, Rich Text Tools, Special Effects, Selection Tools, Simple Gradients and more.

    

14. MAGIX Xtreme Photo Designer

    In MAGIX Xtreme Graphic Designer your photos will be edited quickly and precisely. Its comprehensive set of features gives your less successful shots a helping hand and assists in transforming your photo ideas into reality. An intelligent Task Wizard explains simple and complex editing steps, resulting in successful image editing, fast!