Ever noticed how your computer screen looks perfect during the day but kinda hurts your eyes at night? This is because computer monitors are designed to look better during the day time. At night, even the lowest brightness level may put strain on your eyes. Today I have an amazing tool for you that’ll make sure your computer screen doesn’t blind you.

F.lux is the tool I’m talking about (yes it’s a name, not a file extension :P). What F.lux does is that it changes the colour of your monitor or display as per the time of the day. It simply makes your display’s colour adapt to the day time,  ie. bright during the day and warm at night. In the morning it makes everything look like sunlight and when the sun sets, it makes your display look like your indoor lights.

Upon installation, F.lux shows up as an icon in the system tray. Clicking the icon will open up the settings menu, like the one above. From here you can tweak it as per your convenience. You can add your location to F.lux and it will automatically adjust the colour settings according to your area. You can also manually adjust your lighting for day and night, meaning can you set the colour values (Halogen, Flouroscent and Daylight) as you want. F.lux also gives you an option to  disable it for an hour in case you’re doing some colour sensitive work.

F.lux is a freeware tool available for Windows, Linux and Mac. It’s even available for the iPhone and iPad (Jailbreak only). I’ve myself been using this brilliant piece of software for a long time now. If you’re someone who sits in front of a display for a long time at a stretch (especially at night), then F.lux is a must have. Download it this very instance.

Words for conclusion: as long as you can watch a video, you can download it, no matter from what site! 

Wondershare vDownloader may be not as popular as the YouTube download tool, but it’s a freemium video downloader which is more practical and effective software to drag videos from aplenty sites like YouTube, Hulu, Dailymotion, Vimeo, Metacafe, Facebook, Vevo, Blip.tv, WouTube, Viddler, Twitvid and so on. Moreover, you can get videos with Full HD (1080p) quality.

When installing this program, you are informed to install plug-ins on browsers. If you miss that step, you can also set it in the “Setting”  -> “Plugin”.

What is that plug-ins for? They are a shortcut for you to get videos downloaded more conveniently. Just hover the mouse curser over the video which you are viewing to click the “download” button. Choose whatever format you want to download. You can download videos as MP4 or FLV. If you are not sure which video quality you want, you can click “Download All Videos” to get all.

Let’s return to the program after you install it. The grey interface is clean which just contains 2 tags on the left side: “Downloading” and “Library”.

How to download videos with it? First, you should turn to any site to copy a URL which is a video you want to get into computer. Then, click the button “Paste URL” to add it for analysis.

Whilst you may desire the convenience of a Facebook program for chatting, it’s not always desirable to install a software application on your computer. Particularly, when using older computers, installing additional software is likely to slow them down. Indeed, having an application that you rarely use installed on your computer running at start up may cause more grief than solution.

Alternatively, you could for example, find yourself at an internet cafe or be on a work computer where you are unable to install software applications.

Enter Athena IT Limited. Makers of Facebook chatting programs for Windows, Blackberry and iPhone, their latest manifestation of Facebook chat software is Chit Chat for Facebook (web).

Chit Chat for Facebook (web) is a portable Facebook chat program for your web-browser. Compatible with Safari, Opera, Firefox and Chrome – as well as a variety of other web-browsers. Chit Chat for Facebook can now be used on your Linux, Mac or Tablet computer – in addition to Windows – with this web based solution.

You will probably be aware that Facebook already allows Facebook chat instant messaging through Facebook.com. In fact, recently, Facebook integrated it’s Facebook chat and Facebook messaging system such that they are now the same – a message sent via Facebook chat can be received using Facebook messages and vice versa. As such, in order for Chit Chat (web) to be useful it needs to offer benefits over and above Facebook.com.

Why Use Chit Chat (Web) Over Facebook.com For Facebook Chat?

In short, Chit Chat provides a plethora of benefits over Facebook.com when using it for your Facebook messaging.

For example:

• Attractive Interface – Chit Chat provides a much more stylish interface with which you can engage in Facebook chatting, handy if you spend a long time instant messaging.
• Insert Emoticons – At a click of a button, you can select the emoticon(s) that you wish to insert into your online Facebook chat messages. No need to remember (or lookup) Facebook’s emoticon short codes!
• Text Formatting – Format your instant messages like you would in Microsoft Word, or your email. Select text to make it bold or italic.
• Speech Bubble Messaging – Your instant messages are easier to read with Chit Chat with the use of speech bubbles.
• Searchable Buddy List – Find your friends quickly and easily in the buddy list by searching for their names.
• Contacts Grouped – Your friends are automatically grouped by user groups.
• Status Alerts – Lets you know when your friends login or out, as well as when you’ve received messages from your Facebook buddies.

Check out the Chit Chat Facebook web messenger now.  I’m sure you’ll agree with me, it’s pretty darn good.

Wanna have a 3-D desktop? Wanna make your desktop look like your real-world desk? Well if  you wish so then why not try BumpTop.

Actually BumpTop is a desktop organizer with a physics engine that renders the UI. The software enables you to toss and bump weighted objects across the desktop and organize them into folders or piles just as you would on your real-world desk. You can also zoom and pan on images with all the gesture support you’d expect. While BumpTop works more naturally with a touchscreen display, it also works with a mouse. BumpTop is currently available only on the Windows platform but these guys are working on the Mac and Linux versions too.

Download BumpTop ..

Did you accidentally delete that document of yours? Do you want to recover deleted files? But how? Well it’s not that hard as it seems to be.

Actually when you delete a file, even from the recycle bin, it still lurks in your hard drive and can be recovered through a file recovery tool. Nowadays there are a lot of good recovery tools available in the market and one of them comes by the name Easy File Undelete.

Easy File Undelete will help you recover files if you have accidentally deleted them, emptied them from the Recycle Bin or even formatted a disk. Recovering files is simple and you just need to select the folders or disks from where the files have been deleted and leave the rest to Easy File Undelete.

Easy File Undelete comes with Raw Search technology which helps determine file types as per the known data structures. This technology lets you discover deleted files even if their size and location is not stored in the file system structures.

This recovery tool supports NTFS, FAT32 and FAT16 file systems. Apart from local hard drives, it can also recover data from USB hard drives, MemoryStick, SmartMedia, Compact Flash, Secure Digital, ZIP or other media. It is available for Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista operating systems.

So if you want to recover some deleted files, be sure to give this tool a try.

Download trial | Purchase the full version

A Russian site named Wzor has leaked out a few screenshots of the Microsoft Office 14 alpha build that was given out to certain select testers this week.

The screenshots show an array of applications, including Excel, Access, Groove, InfoPath, OneNote, InterConnect, Powerpoint, Publisher, Project, Outlook, Word, Vizio, and SharePoint Designer.

Office 14’s UI looks pretty similar to that of Office 2007 and has not been overhauled yet.

According to the alpha testers, Office 14 will most probably have a 2009 release and will maybe named as Office System 2009.

Screenshot 1 | Screenshot 2 | Screenshot 3

I’m always a little wary of free applications that do low-level chores like partitioning, but darned if I could find any problem with Easeus Partition Manager. It created, deleted, formatted, moved and resized partitions with aplomb in my rather-more-rigorous-than-usual testing. All operations are virtual until you click the apply button so you can do complex partitioning chores in relative safety. Even so, if you haven’t been warned at least a hundred times–always back up before you edit your partition table.

Besides the pretty charming interface, it is extremely easy to use. People consider Partition Magic the precursor of partition management software. The interface of EASEUS PM looks like Partition Magic to make similar faces to PC users. No jargon to trouble you. And the simple words on the interface show everything clearly.

EASEUS Partition Manager Home Edition supports Windows 2000, XP and Vista. These three operating systems occupied more than 80% market. I guess this freeware will be a must have for computers.

Download EASEUS Partition Manager.

TrayEverything is small portable program that minimizes windows to the system tray even when the application lacks the support for being put in the tray. Besides simply minimizing, TrayEverything can add a button to the title bar of windows for easy minimizing to the tray. You can also assign hotkeys to minimize and also send a windows to the tray if it shows inactivity. In addition to this, TrayEverything can minimize a window without a visible icon in the tray and can even password protect it. This can be useful if you want to keep a program running but don’t want anyone to notice it.

TrayEverything is available as a free download only for the Windows platform.

Tagged as:
Freeware,
Softwares

GIMP, the free, open source graphics editor, just got it’s latest 2.6 version. The 2.6 release brings with it some important features like changes into the editor’s interface and most importantly, 32 bit support. Other features include a new GEGL-based backend, sectional and polygonal selection with the Free Select Tool, better control over windows, menus, toolbars and docked tools. There is also a “brush dynamics” sub-menu that provides editors good control over their pixel-pushing tools. There are some more small changes in this release too.

GIMP 2.6 is available as a free download.

Platforms: Windows/Mac/Linux (all platforms)

Download GIMP.

Tagged as:
Freeware,
Softwares

Nowadays, surfing the web can be dangerous if you do not take necessary steps to protect yourself. Privacy is the biggest worry while you are online. Websites can secretly gather information about you and there is this fear of being hacked. All this is possible because of your I.P. address, which is your machine’s online identity. Each user connected to the net has a unique I.P address and thus can be traced through it easily.

So how do you mantain your online privacy? A simple and effective solution can be the use of a software like IP Hider which masks your I.P. address and prevents your surfing habits and your browsing activity from being tracked.

Actually, IP Hider is a privacy protection tool that lets you surf the web anonymously. It can come handy if you live in a country which restricts access to certain websites and internet resources. In such a case, IP Hider will mask your I.P. address and you will be able to access those websites without any difficulty. In another situation, you might be banned from posting to some online forum or community. This tool can help you here also as your I.P will be masked and you will be visiting that forum from another address. It can also hide your I.P. while you are chatting.

IP Hider is available only for the Windows platform. It’s easy to install and requires minimum system requirements. It works with IE, Firefox and also with Google Chrome.

Try the fully functional version of IP Hider now. Try it at your own risk cause once you use it, you’ll die to buy the full version!

Tagged as:
Softwares