Programs you really should try

It goes without saying that not everyone uses the same programs*. People use their PCs for different things, and that’s fine. Even still, there are a great many wonderful programs out there that people simply don’t hear about, for whatever reason. Seeing as how technological enlightenment is one aim of this blog, I will, from time to time, put together a short list of programs which at the very least deserve a quick look**. I’ll try to stay away from the obvious ones, but a quick mention of Firefox and VLC can’t go amiss, can it?

So yeah, if you haven’t already, you should really go and install Firefox and VLC on your computer. Firefox because (even though I’m using Chrome at the moment) it’s the best browser out there, and VLC because if VLC can’t play a video or audio file, whoever made it was being a pretentious git in their format selection. It is without a library, however, which leads me to my first recomendation:

1)      Songbird (www.getsongbird.com) – Songbird shamelessly models itself on Firefox, from the URL (similarities to getfirefox.com, for anyone who’s just got out of bed...) to the walnut theme (see below). And you know what? I hope it can emulate Firefox’ success. As it stands it’s pretty good, which won’t cut it, but with sufficient support who knows how good it could be? And for die-hard winamp/foobar2000/whatever users, I will continue my hunt for the perfect media player, never you fear.

2)      TrueCrypt (www.truecrypt.org) – Basically for file encryption, but also so much more. Using truecrypt allows you to create a virtual encrypted disk within a file, which you then mount using the truecrypt tool. There’s more though – you can have two virtual disks in one, accessed depending on which password you put in. Just like if you were a spy, truecrypt gives you the opportunity to have a special “under duress” password. Quite who’s going to put you under duress to get a look at your dirty pictures is your own business (the mother-in-law, perhaps?) but it is a cool tool whether you need it or not. And free, because who pays for software these days?

3)      Openoffice.org – Is this too obvious for the list? Maybe, but seeing as how I’ve yet to profile my readers I really don’t know. Anyway, if you’re in need of Microsoft Office for free with only features you never use missing, this is it. If you already have Office, openoffice is better at opening corrupted files, for some very technical reason or other.

4)      Cooliris (www.cooliris.com) – A very (very) cool piece of software which can, under certain conditions, be of some very limited practical use.  Displays search results on a kind of interactive wall which you can zoom up and down and... you know, I can’t really explain it too well. Just check it out yourself, OK? OK.

And that’s it for this time. Please do share your own favourites, and any thoughts on these, when you get around to trying them. Oh, and if they make your PC implode I amn’t liable, so don’t even think about suing. I mean that.

 

*I know, I know, programme is how I really should be spelling this seeing as how I claim to speak Hiberno-English, but for the purposes of this blog I think some sort of hybrid internet speak will have to do. And I know nobody really cares how I spell program, but I do, so deal with it.

** All my recommended programs will be free, always. Unless I find something really really good, in which case I suppose I might make an exception. Maybe.