Make Invoices Easily with Zoho Invoice

I've been doing freelance graphic design work for the past several years. Initially I didn't have the need to prepare invoices. I was used to verbal agreements and getting cash on the spot. More recently, however, my clientele has expanded outside of my immediate circles, and I've needed a more professional system for handling my money matters. I began to use the Zoho Invoice software after it was recommended to me by a fellow freelancer. I am very pleased with how this software worked out for me. I will always view myself as more of an artist than a business man, but with this software, I don't really have to worry about that. It painlessly creates professional invoices for my clients. I've also found the ability to automate payment reminders to be very helpful. People mean well, but sometimes they simply forget, and my payment falls to the wayside. The reminders help me keep a steadier cash flow. Having the software on my iPhone is also extremely convenient for when I do a job in-house. I highly recommend Zoho Invoice for freelancers and small businesses. I found it to be extremely professional and hassle-free. It has definitely helped streamline things as my business grows.

TGI ERP Software Package

A manager's review of the TGI ERP software package:

"I work as a manager at a large manufacturing firm, and it seems like our market is constantly changing. The economy is challenging, and businesses have to keep up with all of the changes to stay competitive. Last year, it became apparent to myself and several other managers that we needed to update our ERP software. Due to the size of our company, we knew that purchasing a new software package would be a big investment. We want to stretch our budget dollars as far as possible, so it was important that we selected the right ERP software.

I began my search by contacting TGI because they had been highly recommended by other manufacturing businesses. TGI is a well-respected company within the manufacturing and distribution circles. I liked that their products are specifically developed for our specific type of industry. We had a long list of questions about ERP software, and our TGI representative was able to answer all of them. We experienced excellent customer service from the first time we contacted the business. Our representative patiently explained the software options to us, and he let us know which package would work best without being pushy. After several months of research, we purchased a comprehensive ERP software package from TGI. We have been using the software for almost six months, and we are pleased with our investment. The software has made our day to day business tasks easier, and it has also greatly improved our reporting and record keeping capabilities."

Prevent Applications From Running

If you need to prevent an application from running accidentally or would like to disable an application you can't uninstall, AppLocker provides a simple interface to do so.

Whether you'd like to prevent Internet Explorer from running because you can't uninstall it to get rid of it or because you'd like to disable web browsing on a computer used by a young child, AppLocker allows you to create a black list of applications that cannot be launched. The program isn't as robust as making a separate user account and setting security policies but for a simple fix to keep a group of applications from being launched it's more than adequate. AppLocker is a freeware and is available only on the Windows platform.

Download AppLocker ..

Jolicloud: The OS for your netbook

Jolicloud is an OS designed specifically for those miniaturized laptops that rely on underpowered CPUs and less RAM than any PC should be booted up with. In essence, Jolicloud is a modified flavor of Linux that promises faster boot times than other alternatives, and judging by the shot above, it's pretty heavily reliant on icon-based navigation.

Read more about the OS ..

Detects Wireless Networks with InSSIDer

inSSIDer scans networks within reach of your computer's Wi-Fi antenna, tracks signal strength over time, and determines their security settings (included whether or not they're password-protected). inSSIDer works like a charm on both Vista and 64-bit XP and is open-source to boot. This tool is a must-have for hunting down Wi-Fi networks on the road.

inSSIDer is available as a freeware only for the Windows platform and requires .NET 2.0.

Google Toolbar 5 for Firefox released

Google has recently updated it's toolbar for Firefox, and it integrates Google services with your browser chrome better than ever. If you're a dedicated Google Apps, Gmail, YouTube, Maps, Bookmarks, and Notebook user, the Google Toolbar can be really useful to you. Probably the most impressive feature is the ability to set up profiles—like "Personal" and "Professional"—and associate web form auto-fill information with them, like addresses, credit card numbers, and phone numbers. If you're willing to give the big G that info in your toolbar, filling in web forms becomes a one-click affair. You can also add Google Gadgets to your toolbar, like Wikipedia and YouTube.

Download it here.

IP Hider - Stay invisible while online

AllAnonymity's IP Hider is a software that keeps your internet IP address hidden while you're surfing the net. Since each user online has a unique IP address, there is this possibility of being tracked. Harmful websites can put tracking code on your PC through cookies which can reveal your online activity to others without you knowing about it. Thus, a software like IP Hider can prove to be very beneficial.

Basically, IP Hider secures the protocols on your PC by redirecting traffic through anonymous proxies. So all data traffic that you request comes to the proxy first, and only then it reaches you. As a result, the websites get the IP address of the proxy server instead of your own IP address. Besides that, it helps you clean all online traces that may harm or use inadvertently information on your computer.

IP Hider is also useful if you live in a country which has blocked access to certain internet resources. With IP Hider, you'll be visiting that website from a different IP address, so you'll be able to access that resource. Moreover, you can also use it if you want to post to a forum or blog from which you have been banned.

Thus IP Hider is a great tool to mantain your online privacy and cut other's chance of peeping into your work.

Try out IP Hider ..

Photosynth lets you create your own 3D images

Photosynth, a Microsoft Live Labs project previously available as a view-only tech preview, now lets those signed up with Windows Live to upload and create their own multi-photo walk-through panoramas. The webapp, which requires an 8MB software installation on the user's side, can stitch together dozens or hundreds of photos and then let viewers "walk" through them, altering perspective and creating entirely new views from the details of all those shots. That means you not only can show off your new workshop shed in your backyard garden, you can let viewers actually step into it and look around. Pretty cool stuff, although those uploads, and the software itself, can take up a bit of bandwidth and memory. Photosynth requires a free download and a Windows Live ID to use.

Photosynth .. [via Lifehacker]

ooVoo: Freeware Video Conferencing Tool

ooVoo is an iChat-like video conferencing and chat tool for Windows, loaded with useful, powerful tools that make it a viable alternative for small work groups using conference calls and screen-sharing applications. A recording feature lets users tape video chats with other participants. Since the video and audio are being recorded to the hard drive, the only time limit is how much free space the computer's hard drive has. In testing, a nearly 15-minute, four-way video conversation only took up 95MB, which ooVoo can convert into a workable FLV file.

A conference calling tool gives host and participants a phone number to call. Other ooVoo users who call this conference line get plugged right into the audio that's a part of the video chat, and just like the video recordings, this audio gets archived, too. Call-in lines support up to six people, meaning users can have up to a dozen participants--including those on the video side. Note that this service isn't free. An optional companion for ooVoo's video player can be used for screen sharing or file sharing, and fun facial overlay tool that applies digital masks either to users faces or to backgrounds.

One of the best features is support for high-quality video streams, but two qualms users have had with the service are the compressed-sounding audio quality and datastream delays. More than annoying, one or more seconds of lag can force a heated debate to grinding halt. Still, ooVoo makes for a strong alternative to other VoIP and conferencing software.

Download ..

Vista Firewall Control 1.3

Vista Firewall Control protects your applications from undesirable network incoming and outgoing activity, controls applications internet access. Allows you to control personal information leakage via controlling application network traffic.

Manages and synchronizes port forwarding provided by external network connection (firewall/router) box with applications requirements and activity.

Features:

• Designed for Windows Vista
• Zone based network permissions management
• Integration with Window Explorer for direct access permission management
• Integration with Windows Security Center
• Instant notifications of blocked activity
• Free versions available
• Special editions for portable devices (USB flash/HDD drives, iPod etc)
• Special editions for U3 smart devices
• Protection from incoming and outgoing threats
• External network connection (firewall/router) box support
• Automatic network connection box detection/management
• External/worldwide access to selected local application
• Port Forwarding management
• Automatic Port Forwarding-to-applications synchronization
• Simplicity of operation
• Per-application security settings

Download Vista Firewall Control 1.3 ..

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 8.0

Exceedingly popular, AVG Free offers rock-solid protection, but only the bare necessities. The security features include a real-time shield to prevent infections, antivirus and antimalware wrapped up in one engine, and a link scanner for Web surfing with care.

By default, AVG is set to search for new virus definitions daily, but you can always use the scheduling tool to change this. Should a virus create serious system problems, AVG creates a rescue disk to scan your computer in MS-DOS mode. The program doesn't tax your system when scanning or when running in the background, and it always proved effective in our tests. The new interface is much easier to navigate than in previous version, with tabbed navigation on the left assisting users in drilling down to the tools they need.

Download AVG Free 8.0 ..

Turn your Webcam into a Surveillance Cam

Let your Webcam be your eyes and ears while you're away from home or the office. A simple Webcam costs about $20, and a good surveillance-software package can be downloaded for free or cheap.

I recommend NovoSun's free SurveillizCam Lite. This program can monitor your home and office by stably detecting motion and logging the surveillance video into an AVI file with MPEG1 or MPEG4 codecs. In SurveillizCam, you can define multiple regions in any channel for motion detection. By doing this, you can mask some unstabe areas on a video. Moreover, SurveillizCam uses an adaptive algorithm, which makes the detection more stable and reliable.

Everytime it will detects some abnormal motion in your place of monitoring, it will be notify you via sound alarm or live video. You can even configure the system to record the motion video into AVI on it's own. You can view all the logged videos with Windows Media Player or SurveillizCam's video management and playback system. Version 1.16.1 may include unspecified updates, enhancements, or bug fixes.

You can try it and then upgrade to one of their paid packages which include sound recording, remote connection, scheduled recordings, and recording up to 16 channels (webcams) simultaneously.

Download SurveillizCam Lite here.

Free Picture Resizer for Windows Vista

Nowadays, digital cameras are at your service and can capture beautiful multi-megapixel photos. The problem with the images is that they are a bit large in size. E-mailing such large photo files can clog up your recipient’s Inbox and even become impossible sometimes.

You can quickly resize photos before you e-mail them or transfer them to your Mobile devices with the free Image Resizer, which is one of the many handy tools that make up the Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP. Unfortunately, this PowerToys utility is no longer supported in Windows Vista and there is no easy way to do this task under Vista. Luckily, there exists a free utility from VSO Software called VSO Image Resizer that does exactly what the Microsoft's PowerToys Resizer does for you in XP.

Once installed, you can browse to the folder containing the photos; highlight one or several of them using standard Windows Shift, Ctrl; right mouse click and select resize. A copy of the newly resized will be created in the same folder.

Download the VSO Image Resizer ..

Firefox 3 beta 2 Out

Mozilla fans can now download Firefox 3 beta 2 for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.

The new version comes with a wide range of improvements over the first test version, most notably plugs for memory leaks, security fixes, and a download manager that includes improvements previously available only through plug-ins.

The security enhancements get fairly technical, but the Firefox developer's Web page states that the new version offers "protection from cross-site JSON data leaks, tighter restrictions on site-specific content using effective TLD service, better presentation of Web site identity and security, malware protection, stricter SSL error pages, antivirus integration in the download manager, (and) version checking for insecure plug-ins."

The updates made to the download manager are pretty good, and they're far easier to parse. The new download manager lets you resume stopped downloads, and it has the much needed built-in virus checker.

You can also zoom in on parts of a Web page, and the integration between bookmarks, the location bar, and bookmark folders has become tighter. There's now one-click bookmarking, smart folders for bookmarks, and the location bar checks against your bookmarks and history for page titles and URLs.

The Firefox developers also claim that Web site rendering is now faster than it was in Firefox 3 beta 1, but empirically, there is not much difference. Either way, it's definitely faster than it is in Firefox 2.

If you want to be in the safe run and don't want to accidentally damage your current installation of Firefox 2 by installing the beta, I recommend you to try out the the portable version. With the portable version, you can try both the versions simultaneously without affecting your current settings.

Download the version you need ..

Symantec announces Norton AntiVirus 11 for Leopard

Symantec has brought out Norton AntiVirus 11 for Mac, featuring support for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

The software furnishes vulnerability protection technology, which watches the web application layer. Norton AntiVirus automatically detects and removes viruses, scans and cleans downloaded files and email attachments, and protects against software vulnerabilities.

To address the growth of multi-platform PC and Mac environments, Norton AntiVirus 11 for Mac scans for both PC and Mac vulnerabilities, viruses and macro viruses.

Symantec promises performance and engine improvements to ensure better compatibility and less impact on system startup and resource usage. Product, virus definition, and vulnerability protection updates are automatic.

A new Norton AntiVirus dashboard widget gives a quick summary of system protection and status. This also offers a 'snooze button' scan, if a Mac user's engaged in another task on their computer they can reschedule the virus scan for a more convenient time.

For power users, Norton AntiVirus 11 for Mac can be accessed using the Terminal, bypassing the application completely and allowing such users to add antivirus scans and other capabilities to their own custom scripts.

Norton AntiVirus 11 costs £39.99.

Yahoo! Messenger for Vista finally launched

The long awaited Yahoo! messenger for Windows Vista is finally here. This new messenger has been made exclusively for Windows Vista users. The messenger has something new, especially it's cool looks.

The new features in Yahoo! Messenger include a complete change of layout, skin chooser, filter-as-you-type for easy searching, spell checker and a convenient tabbed conversation window that controls your desktop clutter. The rebuild also incorporates sidebar graphics that have the ability to show favorite contacts separated from conversation windows. Graphical elements in the new IM take Microsoft's graphic subsystem into play for vector based interfaces and enhanced emoticons. The overall look is very Vista-y. In terms of sharing items with your contacts, you can send files as large as 2 GB. There’s also the ability to send IMs to both your Yahoo! and Windows Live Messenger contacts. Yahoo Messenger for Vista also leverages the desktop search in Vista to let the user search for photos stored on the computer, and it includes new animated emoticons.


There are some things missing in this version of Yahoo! Messenger. What’s missing for this preview, however, is the voice, webcam, chat rooms, SMS, IMVironments, Audibles, plug-ins, photo-sharing (unless you send the photo as a file), and conferencing. These features will most probably appear in the next Vista update as they are in works now.

Grab a copy of Yahoo! Messenger for Vista ..

My 5 Most Useful Freeware Windows Utilities

I've decided to serve up a heaping helpful of my five "most useful" Freeware Windows utilities. Now, notice that I didn't use the word "favorite" or "best". These are simply the five PC utilities which I feed upon the most. Your list may of course vary, and if it does, then please be sure to tell me about your own "most useful" Windows utilities in the comments.

1. MOZILLA FIREFOX - This is one such browser of which I can't get my hands off. In many ways, Firefox is the ultimate Web utility, opening up the vast majority of content on the Internet to your personal desktop. With a huge amount of impressive add-ons, it can be customized by a user as he likes. Firefox is your own personalized browsing experience; ambitious users can fine-tune it to their hearts' content.

2. VLC MEDIA PLAYER - There was a time when you had to add a new codec nearly every time you downloaded a video because of the vast array of file formats available. Sometimes, you even had to download a separate application just to watch a specific movie file.

My favorite for a while has been VLC Media Player, a smallish program that doesn't look like much at first glance, but includes all of the playback options you need hidden under its surface.

3. PIDGIN - The battle of the multiservice instant-messaging clients is far from over. The popular app Trillian is currently the king of the hill for Windows, and the online client meebo is impressive too. Right now, however, I prefer the open-source program Pidgin, formerly known as Gaim.

There's not a huge difference in functionality--all three of the mentioned multiservice clients work well. However, Pidgin's open platform makes it very easy for third-party developers to provide plug-ins. Based on the limted amount of valuable plug-ins created so far, it's not a huge advantage for Pidgin. There are several features in Trillian that aren't available in Pidgin by default--docking buddies or transparent interface, for example--can be accomplished via plug-ins.

4. PICASA - It's not just free, it's better than ever. Picasa is a free software download from Google that helps you:
* Locate and organise all the photos on your computer.
* Edit and add effects to your photos with a few simple clicks.
* Share your photos with others through email, prints and on the web.

With its latest release, Picasa stands toe to toe with Photoshop Album, and unlike ACDSee, it's intuitive enough for even the greenest of computer newbies. Novices may be intimidated by the breadth of tools on offer, but when they get over that hump, the app is wonderfully easy to use.

5. AUDACITY - If you like editing music and are searching for a Freeware to fulfil your needs, then here is something for you. Audacity can record and play sounds and import and export WAV, AIFF, MP3, and OGG files. Edit your sounds using cut, copy, and paste features (with unlimited undo functionality), mix tracks, or apply effects to your recordings. The program also has a built-in amplitude-envelope editor, a customizable spectrogram mode, and a frequency-analysis window for audio-analysis applications. Built-in effects include bass boost, wah wah, and noise removal, and the program also supports VST plug-in effects.

These are my top 5 Windows Utilities. Which tools do you like ? Tell us in your comments.

TeraCopy - Copy Files Faster

TeraCopy is a program designed to copy and move files at the maximum possible speed. It allows you to Pause and Resume file transfers. TeraCopy uses dynamically adjusted buffers to reduce seek times while Asynchronous copy speeds up file transfer between two physical hard drives. In case of copy error, TeraCopy will try several times and in the worse case just skips the file, not terminating the entire transfer. File list makes sure that all the files that are copied are listed and if any errors found during the process, it will be listed there. Also, it's seamless integration with Windows Explorer allows you to keep working with files as usual.

TeraCopy is available both as a Freeware and a Paid version, but the freeware contains all the features that are required by a Home user and can satisfy one's need.

Download TeraCopy ..

Get Mac like looks on your Windows PC

Want your Windows to look like Mac ? Then here is cool solution for you to transform your Windows look and make it feel like Mac.

Apple has long been admired for its sense of style and FlyakiteOSX is a complete pack for giving that look to Windows XP. FlyakiteOSX is a skinning program for Windows XP that will make Windows look and act like Mac OS X.

It will transform the look of an ordinary Windows XP+ system to resemble the look of Mac OS X. The installer simply automates the process of replacing critical system files, setting registry tweaks, and installing extras such as cursors, sounds, visual styles, etc.

It changes the icons in the Start Menu and Control Panel, and the boot screen for Windows is changed, which is quite hard to do manually. It includes the ObjectDock and WinRoll programs for extra elements of Mac OSX that it cannot recreate.

Note that FlyakiteOSX is not produced or affiliated by Apple Computer. It's purely a visual makeover for Windows and isn't a Mac OS X operating system for Windows.
It may sound a bit unsafe, but it can be easily removed if you don't like it.

According to me, FlayakiteOSX is great and does transform Windows looks into Mac pretty well.

It's totally free. Try it out.
FlayakiteOSX.

Yahoo! Messenger 9 is here

Yahoo! has released new version of the Yahoo! Messenger IM client. Yahoo Messenger 9 supports Windows XP and Windows Vista only and should be more or less bug free. Yahoo! Messenger 9 is a wonderful upgrade for users who regularly share web videos and photos with other IM friends.

The new Yahoo Messenger 9 introduces several new features that make the upgrade worthwhile. The whole software has a new look and feel with large avatar pictures of your contacts, new skins and emoticons. Flickr was integrated into the messenger making it possible to share pictures from your account with contacts or save pictures that have been send to you to your Flickr account. You can also view Youtube videos in your Yahoo! Messenger chat window just by pasting the URL of the video. In the new Messenger, you can configure Yahoo! Messenger 9 to forward all the Offline IM messages to a your mobile phone as SMS text messages.

Overall, Yahoo! Messenger 9 has a lot more in store now and the new features are cool and definitely worth trying.
A localized Hindi version of Yahoo! Messenger 9 is also available for Indian users.

Download Yahoo Messenger 9