www.videolan.org

VLC is a free media player that will play almost any video or music file you want. It’s packed with other great features too and will run on Windows, Mac OS and Linux. VLC plays a massive amount of file formats, including MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3 and a whole bunch more, without the need to find and download extra codecs. Just download and install and you’re media is up and running. It will play your DVDs and VCDs plus various streaming media from the web (like online radio). VLC can also play most .iso files and even many incomplete files, so you can get a preview of what you are downloading before it’s finished.

In addition to simply playing your media files, VLC can also act as a streaming media server/client so you can use it as part of a home theatre setup and it even features multicast capabilities. The download is only 9MB and it comes in a portable package (without the installer) so you can carry VLC Media Player around with you on a USB stick or similar device and then you’ll always have a great media player handy.

www.dvdshrink.org/
Download page (and some extra info)

DVD Shrink is a Windows programs that lets users back up DVD movies. It also (as the name suggests) can “shrink” regular dual layer (8.5 GB) DVDs so that they will fit on a single layer (4.7 GB) disk. It can do this by reducing the quality of the movie or getting rid of extra stuff from the DVD you probably wont need, like foreign language tracks or special features you don’t want to see again. As usual, it’s also free.

You will need a burning program to burn DVDs, such as Nero or DVD Decrypter.

www.mustangpeak.net

Most users of Windows are used to browsing through their files using My Computer & Windows Explorer and while Vista has at least added a few new features, such as drop-downs and links in the breadcrumb bar, the features available are still limited. UltraExplorer is a Windows Explorer replacement that gives you a whole lot more to help you browse your files and folders faster and easier.

Browsing files will still feel familiar but the experience is greatly improved with numerous additional features including;

• Fast access to all your drives and viewing options with a click of a toolbar icon
• ‘Favorites’ window for fast access to all your most used folders and files
• Option to display folder sizes (similar to WinDirStat but not as advanced)
• Fast command line access (and folder syncing)
• The ‘Drop Stack‘ window which lets you drag files and folders and then move around into different folders with ease
• An FTP style dual window view, great for moving files around

There is a lot of other useful features in UltraExplorer other than what is listed above, plus you can select different browser themes and extra plug-ins are available too. Everyone, from the casual PC crowd right up to the power user should find something they like in UltraExplorer.

Ah, Windows Vista, how could we have left this off the list of Stuff To Get for so long? The new operating system from Microsoft is really..
Allow / Don’t Allow

Well if blog posts were like Windows Vista, that’s would you would get. Overly cautious security is just one of the great features that has been included in this new operating system.

Clearly concerned by the prospect of the operating system being too fast for people with powerful computers, Microsoft have also ensured that Vista requires a huge amount of memory before it gets too quick and starts to handle like a Ferrari on an ice rink. Luckily you can find plenty of places that will sell you a laptop with 512 MB of memory bundled with Vista, so you never have to worry about the computer waiting for you to catch up again, which is nice.

So while you might be used to seeing free software on this site, the hundreds of dollars you’ll spend so that only half of your programs will work is totally worth it…

April Fools!

OK seriously, one thing that can be said about Vista is that it’s not bad to look at. So here is something you might like for Windows XP, a great Vista-like theme, check it out here @ deviantART

Also, while we’re on the subject of April Fool’s Day, check out Google’s annual offering as well as the Google Australia Blog’s effort. Make sure you watch out for this one too!

Home Run - Get Home Drunk
www.wagenschenke.ch

Happy St Patrick’s Day everyone! Have a go of this game that celebrates the tradition of walking home drunk.

Don’t forget to wear something green (and drink lots as well)

windirstat.info

This software was suggested by a reader, Patrick, who commented on TreeSize Free. After checking out WinDirStat, it’s clearly a great utility. WinDirStat helps you manage your hard drive space. Packed with features, not only does this free software list the size & percentage of disk space used for all folders & sub-folders on your computer, it also gives you a graphical representation of your files, sorted by the type of file extension. There are also no limits on this software, this isn’t a trial version but genuine freeware, so you can scan specific folders, multiple local drives and even network drives without any restrictions (scanning network drives can be especially useful for network administrators trying to keep things lean and tidy). More handy features include user defined cleanup jobs, so you can run regular cleanups on different folders as well as shortcuts to command prompt and windows explorer for fast access to folders and files.

The main file view is also packed with information, not only do you get shown the size of folders but extra attributes as well such as total files, the number of sub-directories, last modified date and even details such as folders being read-only or hidden.

Tip: Just hit F9 to toggle the Treemap (graphical view) on/off for a clearer view of the scan results.

Here is a couple of cool flash games to have a go at (plus some scores to beat!)

Flight Sim X

Play paper aeroplanes around the office without the paper! Try to get the plane out the window for a huge score. My best is 101m.

Finger Fenzy

Think you can type fast? Easy as ABC? Can you find the missing R in frenzy? Well, in this game you must type the alphabet, A to Z, as quickly as you can. I got 4.172, can you crack 4 seconds?

alcohol-soft.com
Alcohol 52% download page

“To alcohol! The cause of… and solution to… all life’s problems” - Homer Simpson

Well, not quite. This Alcohol isn’t the booze variety but a virtual CD application. With it, you can create disk images of any CD/DVDs you have, so it’s great for backing up all your software, in case you lose the disks. More than that, Alcohol also let’s you create virtual drives, that let you mount your disk images and run the CD/DVD from your hard drive as though the actual disk was in a physical drive. Not only does this save you from having to search around for your disks, access speeds can be greatly increased because the information is coming straight from your hard drive, so it’s also great for gamers who are tired of changing game disks everytime they play something.

The paid version of Alcohol, called Alcohol 120%, adds the ability to burn your disk images as well and letting you create 31 virtual drives (instead of the 6 allowed with Alcohol 52%). The free version does come with a toolbar as part of the installer but you can just make sure to untick it as an option during setup.

Meebo.com

Meebo is a website that allows you to login to many popular instant messaging (IM) services at once, without the need to download software. With a slogan of instant messaging anywhere, Meebo offers just that - from any web browser in the world, you can login to your favourite IM and chat with your contacts. With a Meebo login, you can set up multiple IM accounts, so you can have your ICQ, MSN and Yahoo! contacts all in one list and chat with them all at the same time. It’s also handy for when you are away from your regular PC, using a public computer for example or maybe you want to check out your old ICQ account with installing the software. Meebo even includes advanced features such as file sharing and a widget called “meebo me” that you can put on your website so visitors can contact you when you are online.

Current IM services you can connect to include

• AIM
• Yahoo!
• MSN
• Google Talk
• ICQ
• Jabber

jam-software.com/freeware/

TreeSize Free is a handy little program that tells you where all your disk space has gone. This is great if you are running out of disk space or planning a format and want to know where all your data is on your hard drive. You can scan entire drives at once or a particular folder (and it’s sub-folders) just by right-clicking on the folder and picking TreeSize Free from the menu. Results can be sorted according to size or name and sizes can be listed by percentage or space-used (in KB, MB or GB). Folders can be expanded in the results view just like in Windows Explorer, so you get a full view of which folders are really taking up all that space.

This is the free version of TreeSize (the paid version includes extra features such as 3D graphs, last access dates and owners of files as well as scanning network drives) and works on Windows 9x/2000/XP/Vista. Using TreeSize Free is a great way to do some spring cleaning on your PC