Productivity Software: Best of 2010

Get productive with our picks for powerhouse software, including Microsoft Office 2010, PC Tools Internet Security 2011, and Adobe Creative Suite 5.

Microsoft Security Essentials

Antivirus software; free When Microsoft jumps into a category, it's time to pay attention. And when the product is this solid, it redefines the category. This antivirus tool gives you everything you need, offering malware detection in an easy-to-use package with a well-designed interface--and it doesn't nag unnecessarily.

Google Chrome

Web browser; free The top pick in our tests is fast and well designed, has a clean and functional interface, supports plenty of add-ons, and provides strong security features. Chrome also offers extensive customization options for power users.

Microsoft Office 2010

Office suite; starts at $280 After years of ceding the online productivity world to Google Docs, Microsoft finally builds Web apps into the latest Office Suite Office suite. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint all have new features for collaborating online. In addition, PowerPoint gains built-in video editing and playback, smooth new transitions, and an easy-to-use tool for broadcasting slideshows across the Web.

Adobe Creative Suite 5

Design software; starts at $1899 For design professionals, this suite of tools remains a class act. Adobe's CS5 introduces fresh refinements alongside Web-friendly features.

Norton Antivirus 2011

Antivirus software; $40 one-year, single-PC license In our tests, Norton's software posted consistently high malware detection scores. Its well-designed interface is easy to work with, as well.

XMind

Productivity software; free and $49 versions If you're interested in mind mapping -- a visual way of recording your great ideas--you can pay $349 for the gold standard, Mindjet's Mindmanager, or you can pay nothing for the free edition of XMind. The free version has all the basics, and it works on Windows, Mac, or Linux computers.

PC Tools Internet Security 2011

Security suite; $50 one-year, three-PC license This suite's pricing makes it a great value, and it put up strong all-around malware detection scores in our tests.

Genieo

Browser add-on; free This downloadable add-on for Firefox or Internet Explorer keeps track of where you go and what you read on the Web, and then creates a newsy home page with stories you'll actually want to see. And don't worry: The index stays on your local machine.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3

Image software; $300 In addition to offering tools that sort, organize, develop and publish photos version 3 enhances Lightroom's flexibility with a new noise-reduction engine and improved RAW processing, as well as a streamlined workflow.

Ubuntu 10.10

Operating system; free Ubuntu Linux is a great way to breathe new life into an aging PC or just break free from the world of commercial software. Better still, Linux is arguably the most secure PC platform you can choose.

Read More......

Download Accelerator Plus (DAP)

Download Accelerator Plus (DAP)

is the world's most popular download manager, with over 170 million users worldwide. DAP accelerates your download speed so you can get all your favorite files, applications, and videos as fast as possible. Additionally, DAP features powerful privacy, security, and file management tools letting you download with confidence and flexibility. DAP is easy to use, working automatically with your web browser to provide the fastest download speed possible.

DAP 9.1 has been enhanced with the most requested features to provide an even better download experience. Downloading is safer in DAP 9.1 with innovative new download security powered by SpeedBit's Multi Antivirus (MAV) Analysis. In DAP 9.1 you can now choose your Download Style, with Internet Explorer style downloading, that lets you get files with Download Windows, and Firefox style downloading, that presents all your downloads in a Download list.

DAP is also being translated into multiple languages by users working on the DAP Wiki project, and support for Internet Explorer 8 and Windows 7 has been added. Additionally, expansions are available for DAP that provide for downloading and acceleration of your favorite videos from YouTube and other popular video sites.

Download Here

Read More......

ReNamer

ReNamer is a small, yet very flexible file renaming tool, that offers all the standard renaming procedures, including prefixes, suffixes, replacements, case changes and more. In addition, it can also remove brackets, add number sequences, remove digits or symbols and change file extensions.

The program allows you to combine multiple renaming actions as a rule set, applying each action in logical sequence, which can be saved, loaded and managed within the program.

Download Here

Read More......

Ecofont

The Ecofont is developed by SPRANQ, based on a hunch of Colin Willems.
With the Ecofont, SPRANQ hopes to increase environmental awareness. Some ideas are:

• End-users: print only when necessary, use a modern, efficient printer and use unbleached paper.
• Graphic designers: use modern colour separation techniques to avoid unnecessary wastage in ink. In paper choice, take the environment into account.
• (Offset) printers: avoid modern laser techniques that make ink indivisible from the paper. Keep an eye on innovations, such as plant-based ink.
• Printer manufacturers: invest in environment-conscious innovation.

Download Here

Read More......

Sothink FLV Player

Sothink FLV Player, is a 100% free FLV Player. This Flash video player can play all files with an FLV extension(*.flv). The powerful FLV Player can play FLV video files encoded by different codecs, including Screen Video, Sorenson H. 263 and H.264, on2 vp6, etc.
It's a small-sized & easy-to-use FLV Player. By double-clicking FLV files or dragging and dropping them to FLV Player window, you can enjoy Flash videos offline at any time you like.

Download Here

Read More......

Microsoft Excel 2007 Patch for Math Bug Fixed

Recently there was an issue with Microsoft Office Excel 2007 that showed a strange symptom during the multiplication calculation. The multiplication formula will show the wrong value when the resultant’s range fall around 65535 and 65536.

I wonder how these were discovered as the chance of seeing the problem is like hitting a lottery. Now the new patch has just been released officially by Microsoft to resolve the issue. However, the effect may not be ‘visible’ since most of the users are not really aware of such bugs when using Excel worksheet in daily work.

Not much information was disclosed on the actual root cause but it is suspected to be due to formatting and floating point calculation bug around 65535 and 65566. But why specifically only on these numbers is still unknown. You can try to experiment yourself by multiplying 850*77.1 using excel worksheet. Funny thing is that you won’t get the correct value of 65535 but instead, it will yield 100000.

The patch is downloadable at Microsoft. If you are not sure of the current Microsoft Excel version in your PC, try to follow the simple steps below to check it out. Go to Help Menu, then select “About Microsoft Office Excel” and click on it, you will able to see the version of the Microsoft Excel. There is a plan to put this hotfix into the first service pack of Office 2007 as well as Microsoft Update for future update automatically.

Download Patch Here

Read More......

World of Goo

World of Goo is a physics based puzzle / construction game.

The millions of Goo Balls who live in the beautiful World of Goo don't know that they are in a game, or that they are extremely delicious.

Installation

Run World Of Goo Setup.exe and follow the instructions. World of Goo requires Windows XP or Vista, a 1GHz or faster processor, 512MB or more of RAM, a 3D graphics accelerator, and DirectX 9.

Controls
Everything is controlled by mouse and the left mouse button.

Creators
The two-person studio called 2D Boy (http://2dboy.com)

Kyle Gabler - design, story, art, music
Ron Carmel - programming, production

Download Demo
More Review

Read More......