software

As the name implies one of its kind utility "PikyBasket" lets you cut,copy and paste files and folders the smarter and easier way by allowing you to collect your choice of files/folders from multiple locations in a basket and then performing the desired action, you simply right-click the file/folder and use PikyBasket Drop into the basket option to keep filling the basket with your selection and then perform the cut/copy at the target.

Direct Folders is yet another excellent free software from CodeSector, developers of fast file-copier TeraCopy, The small utility makes use of unused "double-click on empty space" action to pop-up an extensive, useful menu for quick and direct access to your favorite folders and applications directly from Desktop, Explorer or File Open/Save dialog box.

Direct Folders also allows you to automatically resize every standard file open/save dialog, letting you find what you looking for without much scrolling, another such useful feature is its ability to automatically switch the folder views of open dialogs to thumbnails, list or details depending on the application you are working with for example the application can be configured to automatically switch to Thumbnail view if you are working in Photoshop and to details view if working in Notepad, You can even select the preference of file sort order to be the default as well.

Managing online passwords across different computers, browsers and operating systems can be very tricky, the developers at LastPass Corportation seems to have heard our prayers and developed LastPass - a free cross-browser, multi-platform secure password manager, currently in BETA the service is simply amazing, far better then any free password manager out there.

Lastpass is pretty easy to install and provides plugins for Firefox (All platforms) and Internet Explorer (Safari support coming soon), LastPass allows importing from all major password managers including Firefox, Internet Explorer, RoboForm, Keepass, Password Safe, and MyPasswordSafe, Once imported all data is encrypted locally using one way salted hashes making using of strong AES encryption, this encrypted file is then stored on Lastpass servers allowing you to sync your password data on different computers using Windows, Mac, or Linux.

The most popular CD/DVD writing software - Nero Burning ROM has evolved a lot from being a simple CD/DVD burner application to a full-fledged all-in-one optical media authoring solution, resulting in adding a lot of bloat and lots of other applications and features that you’ll never really use, so if you are looking to get rid of Nero bloatware and looking for a free, fast and simple alternative to Nero - BurnAware Free is your answer, the free CD/DVD/Blu-ray burning application is pretty much similar to Nero and comes in three versions - Free, Home & Professional, the free version allows you to burn data, audio, and video CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs pretty much sufficing everything you’d ever need.

FosiX and SpaceMonger are pretty good free windows disk space usage analyzer's, but if you are looking for a simple and fast pie-chart of your disk usage, Give open-source utility "Scanner"a try.

The small (just 164 KB) free utility creates a concentric pie chart displaying disk space usage on your computer media, The chart shows all major files and folders from all directory levels at once, the utility also provides a simple explorer extension to perform quick analysis of a folder.

Drives Background Image 2.0 is a nice little free utility to set custom Windows Drives Icons and Windows explorer Background image, the software lets you easily select and set your favorite image as background image and Drives Icon at your will.

You can have different backgrounds and icons for each drive and get relived from the same old plain explorer white background and default Windows drive icons.

Banks and big companies always do their best efforts to secure end-user computer's from online threats and one such step is to offer free security software to ensure safe online transactions, In a similar attempt to secure consumers WestPac bank in partnership with online security specialist PC Tools is offering 12 months free access to latest versions of popular security softwares - Spyware Doctor with AntiVirus, Privacy Guardian and PC Tools Firewall Plus.

Apple iPhone and iPod Touch offer lots of storage space which can be utilized for storing files, backups or as an external disk drive, but unfortunately Apple removed the ability to use the device as an external storage, However as always software's have been developed to bypass this restriction.

DiskAid is one such free software for Windows and Mac enabling owners to use their iPhone or iPod touch as an external disk drive, With DiskAid you can transfer files and folders between your iPhone or iPod Touch and your Computer with ease, DiskAid auto-detects any plugged in supported device and offers an easy to use Files & Folders Browser with drag and drop support for fast and easy operations.

You don't need to jailbreak iPhone or iPod and the softwares works well with all the firmware versions including the latest iPhone Software Update 2.0.

"Sean Carving" is one of the coolest digital imaging trick you would have ever seen, the new content aware image-resizing method is used to resize images non-uniformly, removing only less important pixels. Developed by two Israeli professors, Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir the algorithm makes it possible to select important areas of an image that needs to be preserved and change the aspect ratio of an image without effecting the main content look. It's better to see the video presentation below to see what exactly this method can achieve.

IntuImage - is one of its kind free software to make use of this amazing technique on your desktop, this easy to use tool utilizes “seam carving” or “liquid rescaling” allowing significant change in image size and proportion while leaving the important image elements intact.

Paragon Hard Disk Manager 8 is a well known professional partition manager for windows, the software allows you to create, edit, merge, backup and restore partitions on your hard-disk.

The software costs $49 to buy, However, a British computer magazine "Computer Active" offered free legal license to the software using a special link which was supposes to expire on April 11, 2007 but is still active and allows you to register your copy of Paragon Hard Disk Manager 8 for free legally.