Open Multiple Skype Accounts With MultiSkype Launcher

Many people have multiple Skype accounts. One may have a Skype account for interacting with people on a professional level such as colleagues and might prefer another account for more intimate purposes.MultiSkype Launcher allows opening of multiple Skype instances simultaneously on the same computer. This eliminates the need of using inconvenient methods such as  altering files from the Program Files directory for running Skype accounts at the same time. Another similar tool covered before isCalimSkypeLauncher.

Click Add and enter your Skype credentials to add an account. Added accounts can be edited and deleted from the respective buttons.

All accounts are added to Multi Skype Launcher from where you can login to any of your accounts by selecting the account name and clicking Launch.

Multiple Skype accounts can be launched simultaneously. MultiSkype Launcher does not require any advanced settings as it simply launches a Skype instance from the added credentials.

It works with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Download MultiSkpe Launcher

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Use Google Apps On Desktop With GMDesk

The most popular web app provider is Google and you can see yourself spending countless hours on Gmail, Google Calendear, Google Maps, Google Reader, and Picasa Web Albums every day. It is not uncommon to see opened windows with theses web apps everywhere as more and more people rely on the cloud.

GMDesk is an open source Adobe Air based application that opens Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Maps, Google Reader and Picasa Web Albums on the desktop. It therefore, eliminates the needs to use a browser to access numerous Google services. There are few reasons why it makes sense to use them on the desktop instead of the browser. Suppose you are working on a thesis in Google Docs or reading news items in Google Reader and your browser crashes immediately, what about your work? Also would you risk losing your work to restarting browser just because of one add-on? Saving work across multiple services can be a daunting task too. It makes more sense to place them permanently on the desktop, than to find them across multiple tabs inside a web browser.

After launching the app, it redirects you to a Google login page. All Google web applications can be accessed with a single click via the Google Applications menu. Selecting a Google app from this menu redirects the user to it.

To configure GMDesk options, go to GMDesk –> Preferences, from where, you can select a Google Service to login with when GMDesk starts and/or specify a Google apps Domain.

GMDesk is not a feature rich app, it is basically takes the web apps and put them on the desktop. If you are looking for accessing all Google apps from within a single application, you can give it a try. Being an Adobe Air app, it works on Windows, Mac and Linux.

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Tag Mp3 Music Tracks Automatically With MusicBrainz Picard

Do you have a huge music library where hundreds of audio tracks are untagged? Tagging music tracks is necessary especially if you listen to music on portable audio players, as many of them read tag information directly rather than original file name. MusicBrainz Picard claims to be the next generation audio tagging application, which is developed to help users tag huge music archive in a snap. The distinctive part is that it can scan through music files for Audio Fingerprints a.k.a PUIDs (Portable Unique IDentifier) in order to search and replace existing tag information with correct ones. It also comes with CD Lookup feature to extract information from optical music discs while Lookup function allows user to look for the meta tags of selected music file from MusicBrainz page.

First off, either add a music folder or manually select music files from different locations to populate the list. Once imported, select the track to view current tag information on the left side. The main interface is divided into two panes to view your music tracks with current tags, and albums with suggested tag information on the other side. The bottom pane holds two boxes for Original and Metadata at each end.

To begin tagging, select the audio file from left side. Now click Lookup to let MusicBrainz find out the best match. Tagging can be performed in batch mode by scanning multiple files for PUIDs. To scan the files, select those with incorrect correct tag information, and click Scan on toolbar. It will start listing down the albums from where tracks belong to and tag them with correct meta data. When all the selected music files have been tagged, it will remove them from the list, indicating that tagging has been performed. You can also verify the newly added / replaced meta information by selecting music file in Windows Explorer.

If you want to scan a single audio file, just select it from the list, click Scan to verify  the track information listed under corresponding album in right pane, and click Save on the toolbar. During testing, it tagged 30 songs in less than a minute by grabbing the correct tag information from online resources. The application is extensible. On the product page, you will find plugins to pull out tag information from last.fm, download album cover arts, and to capitalize first letter of tag information.

It is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

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J7Z Is 7-Zip With New GUI And Profiles Support

7Zip despite being an excellent tool for archiving data, does not include profiles and lists. By using archiving profiles and lists, you can lessen the overall effort to archive or extract files to a pre-selected directory. J7Z is an alternative open source GUI of 7Zip that enables users to create custom profiles for saving and extracting archives. By default, it comes with five different profiles, whereas users can create additional profiles as well. The pre-defined profiles include the Default profile, Flash (profile for saving archives to a flash drive), Local (for saving data to local drives), Remote (for saving archives to a remote location) and Storage (for saving archives to any kind of  storage device e.g. external drive).

To create an archive, right-click on a file or folder and select a profile to create the archive to, e.g. default, Flash, Remote, Storage, etc or click on Custom to create a custom profile from the GUI interface. You can also extract an archive in a similar way.

Alternatively, you can open the GUI and specify an algorithm type e.g. 7-Zip, G-Zip, Zip, etc. Moreover, the compression ratio can also be changed to fastest, fast, normal, maximum, or ultra. Optionally a password can also be specified for the archive that is to be created.

Now move to Locations tab and specify a directory to save the archive (if not compressing via right-click context menu) and click Create to create the archive.

Make sure that you save your profile from Profile –> Save. If you want to customize a profile first, then open it from Profile -> Load.

To summarize the process, you can either directly save the archive to a specified location by using profiles via right-click context menu or go to the GUI to specify additional details such as algorithm type, compression ratio, password, directory to save the data to, and click Create to create the archive. The same approach applies for extracting archive(s).

While the archives are extracted to a pre-defined location, the directory tree is preserved.

J7Z is a Java app, therefore the default skin is not appealing. Make sure you change the skin to ‘Windows’ from Options. It works on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

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Change Intel Core 2 & Core i3, i5, i7 Default CPU Throttling Scheme With ThrottleStop

You might have heard about CPU overclocking which is, generally, referred to as using full CPU speed and resources to boost CPU processing time up to the highest level attainable. Overclocking is something which has been both lauded and discouraged. The reason being that it increases CPU processing time but consumes more power than normal, which means your system can quickly heat up, causing some serious damage to CPU, Motherboard, and other hardware components. CPU throttling is opposite of overclocking. It makes CPU conserve power and can be applied on laptops. CPU manufacturers apply some throttling schemes in CPUs which are to be used in laptop PCs, so they can consume less battery power.

ThrottleStop is developed to modify and monitor performance of Intel Core 2, Core i3, i5, and i7 processing units. It allows you to tweak with default CPU throttle scheme, so you can make use of CPU resources according to your requirements.

Important Note: It is highly advisable that you should not tweak with CPU throttling schemes without having complete knowledge, as doing so may cause some serious system havoc.

For user’s convenience, it offers 4 profiles to quickly jump between different throttle settings, such as, Performance, Game, Internet, and Battery. You can change the default profile settings according to your CPU and hardware specs.

To begin, just launch the application and configure settings for Clock Modulation, Chipset Clock Mod, and Multiplier. Moreover, you can toggle CPU Turbo, C States, More Data, Power Saver options On/Off. The current CPU state is shown in the main window. Before clicking Turn On button to run customized CPU throttle scheme, choose the profile which best suits your work needs.

The application can be minimized to system tray, letting you enable and disable ThrottleStop active scheme and switch between available profiles.

We recommend going through detailed guide available on product page to understand different situations where you can use ThrottleStop along with all the risks involved. It works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

ThrottleStop Guide



Download ThrottleStop 2.99.6 

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Check Data Fragmentation Level And Defrag Drives With My Defragmenter

It is always advised to analyze system drives for data fragmentation before starting off with defragmentation process. Unfortunately, both Windows Vista and Windows 7 native defrag tools can’t recommend drives which have to go through defragmentation process for gaining quicker access. To quickly check drives and perform data defragmentation, try My Defragmenter – an application with dead simple usage. It is however not comparable with previously covered Defraggler by Piriform in terms of features but can be used to quickly check which drives need defragmentation. It analyzes your auxiliary storage drives to check whether data defragmentation will do any good or not. If you don’t not sure what is data defragmentation, it is a process of arranging data contiguously in order to increase the access time. With My Defragmenter, you can schedule defragmentation to run the process at defined intervals.

The main interface presents all the system drives with general information about the disk space and last defrag results. Before performing defragmentation of selected drive(s), click Analyze to check whether disk defragmentation is required or not.

We recommend analyzing all the system drives to find current fragmentation status. After the disk analysis is finished, it will show you the data fragmentation percentage while showing which drives need defragmentation. Now select the suggested drive(s) and click Defragment to begin the process.

After defragmentation is complete, check the drives again to view the level of data fragmentation. To schedule the defrag process, click Scheduler and set time to defrag disk at defined time. It works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

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6 Small And Useful Portable Applications That You Should Always Carry Around

Are you always carrying a USB Flash Drive around? If yes then you can get a lot of useful applications on your USB drive instead of just carrying them around with backup files. I have gathered 6 applications that will transform your USB drive into a power device for doing tasks ultra quickly on the go.

Note: If you don’t like carrying software on your USB because they will mix with other files, just like I worry. Then make a folder named “Power Tools” in your USB and move all these software there. You can later hide this folder and work with your USB like you normally would.

….And if you are an uber geek like me and always carry your iPod around, then it is better to carry these software in your iPod.

 

Miranda IM – Instant Messenger

Miranda IM is a small, fast instant messaging client with support for almost all popular protocols. It’s designed to be resource efficient. It supports AIM, Jabber, ICQ, IRC, MSN, Yahoo, and other instant messengers.

IrfanView –  Image Viewer

IrfanView is one of the best graphics programs I’ve ever used, and you can even use it to create slideshows. It’s very fast to get into for tasks like working with screen captures and even more. It is an excellent tool to replace your Windows Photo Gallery

SG TCP Optimizer – Internet Optimizer

TCP Optimizer is a great little program for tuning and optimizing your Internet connection. It doesn’t require installation—just run it and optimize. It tweaks TCP/IP parameters in the Windows Registry and many other parameters so that you get the best performance possible on every internet connection.

 

Foxit Reader – PDF Viewer

Foxit PDF Reader is an alternative to Adobe Reader, that allows you to view and print PDF files. Unlike Adobe Reader, it opens PDF files very fast, without any delay. It supports all the standard features, as well as browser integration, and also an option select/copy of text from the documents. Furthermore, you can create a snapshot from a selected portion of the page, fill interactive forms and more.

Jarte – Word Processer

Jarte is a free word processor based on the Microsoft WordPad word processing engine and is fully compatible with Word and WordPad formats.It is an easy to use and lighting fast word processor.

7Zip – Zip Achiever

7-Zip Portable is the popular 7-Zip packaged as a portable app, you can carry it around and work with your compressed ZIP, RAR, and more formats on the go. You can place it either on your USB flash drive, iPod, or a portable hard drive and use it on any computer anytime, anywhere.

  

If you can’t find your favorite software from the list, do let us know which one is missing in the comments.

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