Best Free Firewall

From TechSupportalert website:  No other freeware product causes as much angst to users, whether in installation or day-to-day use, as a firewall. To find a stable and high quality firewall for windows often involves a process of trial and error. Firewalls should protect while not being too intrusive or too complicated to handle. This article gives you a selection of the best free software firewalls available.

If you want to learn more about firewalls, visit these excellent sites: How Firewalls Work and Microsoft Security Firewalls FAQ. If you don't decide to use one of the firewall products in the article, at least remember to turn on the Windows firewall. Be sure to use only one software firewall at a time. But feel free to combine a hardware and a software firewall to improve protection. Additionally, most products highly recommend uninstalling other third-party software firewalls before installation (and disabling the Windows firewall if they don't).

Oh, and I always create a drive image or restore point before installing a new firewall since they are known to give your PC serious problems if they conflict with anything. I installed and uninstalled each firewall several times during testing and had no major problems, but I was careful to make sure each one uninstalled cleanly before installing another firewall (often with Revo/Zsoft Uninstaller and additional cleaning as needed with CCleaner/Autoruns, or with a fresh drive image or restore point).

Firewalls are increasingly useful to help you control the activities of Internet facing applications. Many users now leave their Internet on all the time, increasing their risk to malware. It's also becoming difficult to tell when applications connect online because they link so many of their features to Internet resources. Few programs stop to ask your permission. So I predict that firewalls will be ever more important for privacy and control.

The writer organized the article into two sections: (I) software firewalls for broad protection and greater user involvement; (II) software firewalls for basic protection and less user involvement. 

Continue reading his recommendations here http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-firewall.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+gizmosbest+%28Gizmo%27s+Best-ever+Freeware%29&utm_content=Yahoo!+Mail#Quick_Selection_Guide

Best Free Software to Cut, Split or Merge Audio Files

12/03/2009 - 20:25  Introduction  from gizmosbest blog
So, you've got some big mp3 or other audio files which you want to trim, splice, split or otherwise cut down to size, maybe for your mp3 player. Perhaps you want to extract one or more songs from a large audio file, or a particular part of a radio program you recorded (cut the commercials!). You want to split a wav file you've transferred from vinyl into its original tracks. Or you want to use a particular portion of an mp3 file to create a personalized ring tone for your smart phone.

You could use an all-round audio editing freeware program like Audacity, but that isn't the most convenient or efficient way. Your best bet is probably to use a smaller, more specific program for the job: a lightweight freeware splitter (or joiner). Perhaps something you can run even on an oldish laptop. And you'll be better off choosing a lossless splitter which — unlike Audacity, for example — will cut (or merge) your files without any loss of sound quality due to decompressing and recoding.

mp3DirectCut is likely to be top choice if your main need is simply to cut / split mp3 files. It's a lightweight, portable, lossless mp3 splitter which is a joy to use even on less powerful computers.
Like other top audio file splitters,  mp3DirectCut  incorporates an audio player with a volume unit (VU) meter which lets you see as well as hear the points where you want to cut. Mp3DirectCut offers a good range of handy features, including pause detection,  CUE sheet support, looping, volume gain, fading trimming, ID tagging, etc.

A particular strong point is the simplicity of its neatly arranged interface. It's a pleasure to get to know this no frills program and there's an excellent manual to help (and here's a tutorial on how to make a ring tone with mp3DirectCut).  Splendid, straightforward portable freeware.   

Read other program recommendations continue reading here http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-cut-split-merge-audio-files.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+gizmosbest+%28Gizmo%27s+Best-ever+Freeware%29&utm_content=Yahoo!+Mail

manual http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley-SanJose/2485/mp3DirectCut/mp3directcut_manual_old.html

how to make a ring tone with mp3DirectCut  http://www.mobile9.com/invboard/lofiversion/index.php/t33191.html

Five Best Antivirus Applications & Best Antivirus Application: AVG

READ INTERESTING HEADLINES BY CLICKING THE LINKS BELOW

 

Best Antivirus Application: AVG

Five Best Antivirus Applications

FREE Daniusoft Video to 3GP Converter for your cell phone video & Free Audio and Video Converter

Daniusoft Video to 3GP Converter can convert your videos in AVI, MP4, MPEG, WMV, XviD, H.264, DAT, MOV, ASF and FLV formats to 3GP (3gp), 3GP2 (3g2), MP4, XviD, H.264, DAT, MOV, ASF, FLV, M4A and MP3 formats.

Apart from basic video conversion you can also perform advanced tasks like splitting video into small files, cut off movie black edge and select aspect ratio to meet you mobile phone's need and preset encoding parameters to get an ideal output quality. Once converted you can enjoy your videos on all popular mobile phones such as Nokia, Motorola, iPhone, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, LG, Smart Phone, PDA and so on, Daniusoft Video to 3GP Converter is compatible with Windows 2000, 2003, XP, Vista OS platforms.

A fully-functional free copy of the free 3GP Video converter software can be downloaded from the links below:

File : daniu-video-3gp_full129.exe Size : 6779 KB

Direct Link

Rapidshare Mirror

Via megaleecher.net 
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Free Audio and Video Converter

A professional audio/video (AV) converter, iWisoft Free Video Converter, offers to users for free to convert AV files from one format to another suitable for playback on various digital devices.

This free program is ideally designed for ease of use with a clean user interface — just add a file, select an output profile and folder, click the Start button and the conversion begins right away for you.

Most popular AV input and output formats are supported. For output, you can choose common AV formats, or select a format suitable for playback on an MP3 or MP4 player, iPod, iPhone or any other digital devices listed in the menu from the program.
A default output profile does not suit your need? You can adjust it by selecting a suitable AV codec, bit rate, frame rate, video size, aspect ratio, audio channel, sample rate or volume level from a drop-down menu. Your setting can be saved as a user defined profile for subsequent uses.

What's more? Some basic editing functions, such as cropping, trimming, merging, adding watermark, capturing, etc., are included in the program, with a built-in player for a preview too.

Download: http://www.easy-video-converter.com/download.html
File Size: 8.9 MB
System: Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7.

 

Via  Gizmo's freeware blog

Eset Online scanner - free antivirus scan

 

One of the more trustworthy anti-virus out there is Eset.  I've been to Bitdefender, AVG and Avast and but i always come back to Eset. And now not only is it reliable it is also free the legal way. So scrap those warez anti-virus you have and  head on to get you started but before doing that here's the minimum requirement you need.

http://www.eset.com/onlinescan/index.php

System Requirements  

Operating Systems :

• Microsoft Windows 7
• Microsoft Windows Vista
• Microsoft Windows XP
• Microsoft Windows 2000
• Microsoft Windows NT

Internet Browser:

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or later
• Support for alternative web browsers (Firefox, Opera, Netscape, Safari and others)
• ActiveX Controls

Memory

• 32 MB

Disk Space:

• Minimum - 15 MB
• Optimum – 30 MB

Just follow the onscreen instruction, either you're using Firefox or IE or Safari, you'll be needing an administrator privileges to  make this work.  Depending on your IE, you may be prompted to install ActiveX control.

So who says great things in life are not free?

Online programs make personal budgeting easy - and even fun

They're the first words out of every financial planner's mouth: Create a budget and stick to it. That can be much easier said than done.  (From the Buffalo Evening News)  Read the complete review and photos at the Buffalo News site at the end of the article.

But if you want the help, there is more out there now than ever before. Web-based budgeting tools have come a long way from the bare bones spreadsheets of old. Visually stunning and full of digital tricks, today's financial software is no more difficult than and just as entertaining as a game of Bejeweled or Mafia Wars. Yet at the end of it all you'll actually have spent your time on something productive. And maybe you'll find a way to amass genuine riches rather than racking up points that are good only in the virtual world.

Best of all, several online budgeting programs are free.

 

Mint.com  http://www.mint.com/

Quicken Online  Try it at   www.quicken.intuit.com/personalfinance-software/free-online-moneymanagement.jsp

BudgetToolkit.com   http://www.budgettoolkit.com/

Wesabe.com  https://www.wesabe.com/

KEEPING SAFE

Does entering sensitive financial information into online budgeting software give you the willies? Good. It should.

But if you decide the free, online budgeting help is worth the risk, there are a few things you can do to help keep your information safe.. Be sure to change your passwords often, use a different password for every account and choose passwords consisting of difficult-to-guess combinations of letters and numbers.. Be sure your anti-virus and anti-spy-ware software is active and up to date.

. If you don't have protective software, ShopSmart magazine suggests you build your own suite using free programs available online. Try AntiVir Personal ( www.free-av.com ), Microsoft Windows Defender (www.microsoft.com/defender ) and Spamfighter ( www.spamfighter.com/ download_download. asp).

. Watch for security seals, such as VeriSign, to be sure your data is encrypted and cannot be viewed by others.  . Do your homework on budgeting software. Verify the Web site against trusted third-party reviews.

 Read the complete article here  http://www.buffalonews.com/185/story/839730.html

Alternatives to MS Word and Office Suite, Google Docs, OpenOffice, Lotus Symphony

Google Docs & Spreadsheets
OpenOffice
Lotus Symphony
SoftMaker Office 2008 for Free

Google Inc said more than 2 million businesses now use its online office software, and the Web search leader is going global on Monday with an advertising campaign to lure customers away from Microsoft Corp and IBM products.

The campaign, which starts Monday in countries including France, Japan and Britain, represents a rare foray by Google into mass-market advertising and underscores increasing competition to provide businesses with email and other office software.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets beta gracefully merges word processing, spreadsheets and basic presentations within an online service that lets you collaborate with other users.
A overview of Google docs can be found here http://www.google.com/google-d-s/tour1.html

I remember when I used to use internet cafes and trying to find a copy of Word on a internet computer was very difficult to print out a document or to work on.  I can not understand today why internet cafes now don't make it convenient for customers now with OpenOffice or Lotus Symphony on every computer FREE and save money. A comment I saw on a blog recently MS stops you if your old computer has malfunctioned and you had to go out and purchase a new one in a hurry. That happened to my daughter. She had to have a computer, couldn't wait for an online purchase, so purchased a Vista machine on which the pre-installed MSOffice is a trial version. The trial version is about to run out, and, to get a full license with the functionality that she needs will run her nearly $500. I think it is highway robbery.

OpenOffice
Most people need to use office packages in order to work or to write and organize something. The most popular office package is currently Microsoft Office of course, and according to their standards, the de facto format for word processing is .doc, spreadsheets is .xls and presentations as .ppt files. Of course, any competitor to OpenOffice would need the ability to open, edit and save in these file formats in order to blend in with the world, but it would also newed some other advantages if it wanted some of the market share.

OpenOffice has now become a major competitor of MS Office, having about 8% of the market share, and MS looping up 90% of the rest of the users. This figure is steadily rising, and the main reason is that it’s FREE and OPEN SOURCE! This means that improvements to the suite is always in progress, almost inevitably from it’s users who are free to modify the source code of the suite.

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-You can open, edit and save as the defacto Ms Office formats. OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.
So if you are short of cash or just plain stingy, you can have this document software absolutely free.
Download: http://download.openoffice.org/other.html

An alternative to OpenOffice and Microsoft Office

Many times, when organizations do not have the budget to invest in Microsoft Office, they would go for an open source alternative such as OpenOffice.

However, some users said they still preferred Microsoft Office after trying out OpenOffice for a couple of days.

Since cost was an issue, they asked if there are any other office productivity software besides OpenOffice which is free to use.

Well, if you ask me, I’ll say YES! It’s called Lotus Symphony by IBM. Image by cote.
A free office productivity software by IBM? Really? Are you sure? Yes it’s true.
Lotus Symphony by IBM is a business productivity software that is intuitive and easy to use. Best of all, you can download and use it at no cost.

With Lotus Symphony, you have a:
Document Editor
Spreadsheet Editor
Presentation Editor
Application Integrator
And it can be installed on the following OSes:
Windows XP
Windows Vista
Linux SLED 10
RHEL5
Ubuntu 8.04
Mac OS X

A strong feature of Lotus Symphony is its support for industry standard OpenDocument Format (ODF). This ensures that documents created via Lotus Symphony can be supported now and in the future as well. Besides that, it  also supports interoperability with Microsoft Office file formats as well as most Lotus Suite applications. It even allows you to export to PDF directly without having to install any 3rd party components.

From the Lotus Symphony’s website, you can view the gallery link to download new cliparts, plugins, templates, etc. Whenever you need any help, the community will be there for you to ask questions, share and collaborate with other users.  The original complete article is here http://www.wareprise.com/2009/05/28/an-alternative-to-openoffice-and-microsoft-office/

Get the software here free http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.nsf/home

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And check out my how to use instructions blog under development with valuable articles for computer users to understand how to use the computer programs like Openoffice, Word, Yahoo mail basics, (Excel, Power Point, XP, Windows, Realplayer, Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop are coming) giving you links to easily learn the programs on your computer.   http://computerhelpbasics.blogspot.com/

SoftMaker Office 2008 for Free

From techsupportalert website..Posted: 17 Dec 2009 This is a pretty impressive office suite comprising a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program and scripting utility. To the eye it looks very like Office XP and it works very well indeed. In fact Infoworld rated it as superior to Open Office 3.1.

 

Overall this is a pretty decent freebie. No it's not got the extraordinary feature set of Office 2007 but it has just about everything normal users need.  The only major component missing is a replacement for Outlook but there are plenty of other free alternatives you can use instead. See here: Best Free PIM  Best Free Email Client

How does it compare to Open Office? Well Infoworld consider it to be better the Open Office V3.1. 

A pretty impressive freebie.  http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/softmaker-office-2008-free.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+gizmosbest+%28Gizmo%27s+Best-ever+Freeware%29&utm_content=Yahoo!+Mail