The Pidgin multi-platform messenger is something that has been indispensable for years. I use it, just that one messenger to chat with & be alerted about mail from several services, including Yahoo, MSN (Live/Hotmail), Google/Gmail, AOL/AIM and ICQ. You can can however use this one client to chat with lots of friends on many more clients all at once(!).
MP3, WMA and other compressed audio formats have been becoming more and more popular in the last couple of years for several reasons. These audio files can be played on mp3 players. Because of their small size, compared to their audio CD counterparts, you can get hundreds of songs on a CD, where normally 10 - 20 songs fit and so on.
How do you however get music on a normal audio CD into the mp3 format?
There are many free & not free programs for doing that. One program that can quickly do that for you is the CDex Open Source Digital Audio CD Extractor.
Do you work on different PCs, which do not necessarily have the software you need or on which you cannot always install that software?
There is an attractive solution to this. Simply get “portable” versions of that or similar software and install them on a USB (thumb) or other portable, external drive, which you can then carry along with you and use on multiple computers.
The VLC Media Player is an all-rounder. It plays just about any video & audio format there is, streams and converts media from one format to another. It is cross-platform, meaning it is available for not only different Windows versions, but for Linux, Mac & other platforms. Best of all, it is free.
This is how the official site describes it:
VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVD, Audio CD, VCD and various streaming protocols.
Opera web browser from http://www.opera.com/, compared to Internet explorer and Mozilla Firefox is not known to many internet users, although it has been there for quite a while and has often pioneered features other browsers have subsequently adapted.
It has always been one of the fastest and safest browsers around. Its features include:
From now on, we'll be talking about some free software that you might consider having on your PC. There are lots of free programs around that do various tasks as well or nearly as well as their paid counterparts. So check this corner now and then, or come and recommend something you have found.
The Pidgin multi-platform messenger is something that has been indispensable for years. I use it, just that one messenger to chat with & be alerted about mail from several services, including Yahoo, MSN (Live/Hotmail), Google/Gmail, AOL/AIM and ICQ. You can can however use this one client to chat with lots of friends on many more clients all at once(!).
