Following the release of new versions of both Internet Explorer and Firefox, the infamous 'browser wars' are flaring up again. Despite both Firefox 1.5 and the Beta of IE7 making significant strides, it would be be foolish to think this was a two-horse race. While gaining a good reputation with geeks and power users, Opera has long been a bit-part player among the big boys of the browser world. However, if this preview release is anything to go by, the Norwegian-built browser could finally be ready to punch with the heavyweights.

Opera has been pioneering new ways of browsing the web for some time. It has had tabbed browsing since the days before tabbed browsing was cool and developed the innovative 'mouse gestures' control system, where you navigate through the web just by holding the mouse button and flicking your wrist. The developers even dabbled with a multi-pane interface for viewing several pages within one interface.

The good news is that Opera has lost none of its appetite for innovation, and version 9 is packed with new goodies that will have the programmers at Mozilla and Microsoft choking on their doughnuts. For starters the app runs much quicker than the previous release, making it arguably the quickest browser around (except perhaps for Safari) at rendering pages. Incredibly, despite this boost in performance, the program appears to use less memory than version 8.5, making it far less draining on system resources than Firefox and IE.

In terms of features Opera is the gift that keeps on giving. New to the program comes OSX Tiger-style 'widgets', allowing you to check news, convert currency, view the weather and so on through a series of draggable pop-ups which anchor themselves in front of the browser. Although there aren’t many widgets to choose from at present, this is sure to change once the tech-minded Opera fans start developing more.

Another great addition to Opera 9 is BitTorrent support, allowing you to download torrents directly within the browser – a feature that amazingly no one had thought of before. This system works very smoothly, which makes us wonder why RSS feed reading support in Opera is still so poor.

Among the other new treats within the program is a nifty new search feature which lets you add any search engine to the search bar in the main toolbar. This means you can instantly access searches within your favorite online destinations (Softonic, for instance).

Tabbed browsing remains, although some users may be annoyed to discover that Opera has added close tab buttons to the tabs themselves rather than as a separate button. Having said this, the new web page preview thumbnails that appear when you rollover a tab are a real masterstroke. Mouse gestures are still there too, along with the addition of Total Recall-style voice commands – another example of how cutting-edge this browser is.

Opera's developers have been keen to ramp up security features too, and although they aren't highly original, the new content blocking and pop-up blocking functions serve their purpose effectively. What's more, it's refreshing to see a browser that embraces the latest web standards so freely, with the latest release boasting support for CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 tags.

The browser is remarkably stable and is far better behaved than Internet Explorer 7. Combined with its speed, innovative features and standards support, Opera is undoubtedly web software's best-kept secret, and the final release may prove to be even better than Firefox. Don't say anything though, or everyone will want it.

Download Opera 9.60 in Softonic

Download Statusbar is a browser extension that allows you to keep track of ongoing and completed downloads in a hide-away statusbar.

Features:

• Auto-hides when not in use
• Pause all, Resume all, Cancel all, and Remove all finished - available from the context menu of the bar itself
• Run a completed file with a double click on its finished box. Open containing folder, remove, and rename from the context menu
• In-line view of percent done, speed in KB/sec, KB downloaded so far, and remaining time, can be customized in the options
• Updating tooltip provides a more detailed view of the current download, including source, destination, size of the download and the remaining time
• Option to automatically clear files after a specified number of seconds
• Stop downloads and save them for the next browser session
• Delete a file from your system from the context menu
• Localized strings for translation
• Download history can be viewed and configured to only keep the last download items
• Option to start virus scanner when a download completes
• On browser close, option to continue downloads in download manager

Download Download Statusbar Extension 0.9.6.3 in Softonic

Gizmo Central is a package of tools intended to make computer tasks easier and more comfortable to do. The program works as a main basic app to which you can add several plug-ins in order to obtain new functionalities. These plug-ins are chosen during the installation process and can be changed at any time by running the installation again.

According to the author, Gizmo is addressed to all kinds of users, but I think it's more suitable for advanced ones. Among the featured plug-ins you'll find a launch toolbar, a synchronization server, a database tool or a disc image manager, which are generally very useful but certainly not the kind of apps that beginners are looking for.

On top of that, Gizmo is not intuitive at all as regards program configuration, nor does it have support for dragging and dropping elements, which would have been especially useful for the toolbar plug-in.

Gizmo Central is a convenient pack of tools designed to help you perform very diverse tasks.

Download Gizmo Central 2.6.2 in Softonic

In case you don't know, the 'Places Bar' is that left-side menu that appears on every Windows File Explorer window and that includes shortcuts to the most frequently used folders.

The problem is that you may not agree with what Windows considers to be a frequently used folder. If so, simply load Findexer on your system and you'll be able to customize this menu with shortcuts to your actual favorite folders.

Using the program is a bit tricky, as it doesn't have a proper graphical interface. You need to run the register.bat in order to load it on your system and then restart Windows File Explorer. Open any folder, click on View > Explorer Bar > Findexer and you'll be ready to use it. You can customize Findexer in many aspects, from the menu's appearance to the number of links displayed, including number of shortcuts, the order they appear and the icon and text font. Plus, adding new shortcuts is as easy as dragging and dropping them onto the Places Bar.

Though the idea behind Findexer is very good, there's one big drawback to the program: apparently you need to activate it (that is, go to View > Explorer bar > Findexer) every time you open a new window, even if you already activated it before on that same window.

Findexer lets you customize the Places Bar on Windows File Explorer, though unfortunately you have to manually enable it on every single window.

Download FindeXer 1.1.0.3 in Softonic

Limewire, one of the world’s most popular peer-to-peer filesharing applications, has received a lawsuit from the RIAA, who are demanding $115 million in damages, claiming the application promotes the infringement of copyright. Similar applications like Grokster and Kazaa have been forced to go legal and there is speculation as to just how long LimeWire will resist until they have to buckle and pay up. The existence of the popular P2P application is not under threat, but if you haven’t given it a try yet, here’s just what makes it a standout program.

In terms of file sharing, LimeWire is the cream of the crop, offering the essential peer-to- peer tools in what is probably the friendliest interface of applications in its class. Beginners will appreciate the search bar, which allows you to select the type of file you’re looking for, video, image, audio, program or file. LimeWire has a “what’s new” button to check out what popular files users have recently exchanged. We also enjoyed the direct connect option. If you know the IP address of one of your friends, type it in the box and LimeWire will browse that user’s files. This is a quick way of sharing files with someone else and can come in handy when working on a project and exchanging documents. The only little snag we have with direct connect is that it doesn’t let you enter the username, much simpler than looking for your friend’s IP address.

Downloading with LimeWire is very intuitive. After you’ve searched and found the file you are looking for, double-click on it to start the downloading process. The speed of your download depends firstly on the quality of your connection (broadband is a minimum), if you’ve correctly opened your router’s ports and whether you’re downloading a popular file or not. We would like to point out the effort that Limewire takes to make itself accessible to beginners. Not only does a tip pop up every time you launch the application, the help option also leads you to LimeWire’s support centre, FAQs and a forum to get in contact with other users.

The lawsuit carried out by the RIAA is all the more surprising because of the measures LimeWire takes to keep you in the realms of legality. If you decide to download LimeWire from its website, you will first have to agree you will not use it for copyright infringement. When you’re configuring the application, you can set content filters, to avoid downloading files that copyright owners do not want you to share. To avoid embarrassing situations, make sure you tick the “block adult content” box, which will filter out any pornographic files from your searches.

The best way of checking the quality of the audio or video you’re downloading is via LimeWire’s mini player. It’s fairly basic and to par with the players you find in similar filesharing applications, but we appreciated the way it was integrated in the application.

If there’s one thing that we’re still expecting from the LimeWire team, it’s that it finally decides to jump on the BitTorrent bandwagon. Torrents are the way forward when it comes to peer to peer file sharing because of the speed, the security and freshness of downloads. Large files like movies or complete seasons of TV series are much easier to download via BitTorrent. We were also annoyed by the “buy the PRO version” window that popped up every time we started LimeWire.

For its wealth of possibilities and huge base of users, (more than 4 million simultaneously on the Gnutella network) we encourage you to give LimeWire a test drive. Because of the controversial nature of the application, you should always make sure that you aren’t using LimeWire for illegal activities like copyright infringement. However don’t be scared off by the legality issue. LimeWire, like most P2P applications is one of the most exciting possibilities that the internet gives us. It would be a shame not to give it a try. You should also check out Frostwire, the not-for-profit project of the LimeWire development team.

Download LimeWire Basic 4.18.8 in Softonic

Say you just came back from a long holiday trip and you have a ton of photos to show. Would you punish your friends and relatives with a two-hour photo album session or would you rather create something more special?

With Photo Slide Show you can create nice photo presentations in a snap. It doesn't include all the bells and whistles you find in other similar apps: the interface design is quite basic and the program basically lets you load photos, insert transition effects and add some background music. Also, the only accepted target format is AVI, and as the program lacks a progress bar, you have no clue about the progress of your presentation.

That said, the truth is that Photo Slide Show is a handy solution when all you need is a quick way to create a photo presentation without having to sit in front of the PC for two hours. It includes a varied selection of transition effects and can synchronize images and music automatically, so that they last exactly the same.

Photo Slide Show may be simpler than other similar tools, but it's also one of the easiest ones you can use to create a presentation with your photos.

Download Photo Slide Show 3.2 in Softonic

When I saw this defragmentation tool I thought "Well... I don't really need this, Windows already has one". But then I saw Defraggler has been developed by the same people as Recuva and the almighty CCleaner, so I decided to give it a try. After all, I use external apps for many tasks that Windows can do by itself, so why not using a third-party defragmenter?

Defraggler is easy to install and goes straight to the point. Its most outstanding feature is the possibility to defragment individual folders and files simply by putting a tick next to them. In fact, the option to defragment the whole hard drive is much more hidden (either right click on the drive or use the top menu bar).

However, there are things I didn't like about this program. First, I found it a bit slow. Also, it would have been nice to have it minimized to the system tray or similar. Finally, I'd appreciate it if the program included some means to automate tasks: you can't schedule defrags, nor set the program to turn off the PC when it's done.

Download Defraggler 1.03.093 in Softonic

Firefox, the world’s most significant web browser has finally unveiled its new version, and with it a slew of improvements. If you’re not already using it to browse this page, then read on to learn all about its new features before getting a hold of it.

Firefox 3 has undergone a significant makeover, with sleeker icons and a cleaner look. The ‘Go back one page’ button is bigger and elements in the location bar, like titles and URLs, are more easily recognizable. I was also impressed that it finally passes the Acid2 Test, so Firefox can be guaranteed to render any web page out there.

Mozilla have worked on improving the bookmarking system in Firefox. To add a new bookmark all you need to do is star a site from the address bar. Firefox also lets you search bookmarks and history straight from the bar itself. Places, the system for handling your bookmarks and history, now shows all sorts of information like recently starred pages, most used tags or most visited pages. I’m not sure everybody will make use of all that info, but it’s still nice to find it there.

The download manager in Firefox 3 is improved and not only will it remember your downloads even after quitting the browser, it will also allow you to pause/start/stop downloads at any time. Similarly, Firefox will automatically look for updates to your add-ons and features a built-in search box to browse the Mozilla add-ons site for new extensions. However you’ll find most add-ons still don’t support the latest version of Firefox.

In terms of performance you’ll find that Firefox loads pages much faster and seems to handle memory usage much better than before. This is a big improvement considering that that was the main concern in previous versions.

Security has also been improved in Firefox, with one-click site info and malware protection. You can also set specific permissions (like text size, image blocking or cookies) for each website you visit. You’ll find Firefox 3 also interacts with Windows CardSpace and OpenID, two services which unify your identity online, whilst securing it.

Firefox version 3 really feels like a big step up. It includes lots of improvements, notably in the design and in improving the whole user experience, with a better download manager and improved bookmarking system. I’m not sure everybody will use Places or tags that much, but they’re a welcome addition. True to its roots, Firefox has also bettered its security features. But for me the real highlight of this new release has to be the performance enhancements. We’ll have to see as soon as add-ons are supported, but this new version should fare much better than previous ones. If you’re a Firefox user, make sure you update now.

Download Firefox 3.0.3 in Softonic

Anyone who works with images on a regular basis will be familiar with the default image viewer of Windows, and also with its very limited scope for doing anything meaningful. There is a healthy selection of alternatives but FastStone Image Viewer has come to our attention as one that deserves to be singled out not only because it is free but also because it brings to the table a strong combination of speed, usability and versatility.

While the viewing functionality is a no-brainer, FastStone comes with a range of methods with which to browse pics. First off, there is the standard file browser that displays thumbnails of your images with a preview window for the file that is currently selected. There is also an option to check out individual pictures at their original size in the “Windowed View”, which is along the same lines as the default image viewer in Windows. Finally you can see images in full-screen, switching between files using the keyboard, the middle mouse button or the slide-in toolbar at the bottom of the screen.

However, FastStone Image Viewer goes beyond simply displaying images. You can perform some quick edits to really bring out the best in your pics such as adding a stylish frame mark that acts as a mask to reduce the sharp edges or if you happen to be working with 3D there is also a very effective bump map option that will serve you well for texturing. There are of course the standard tools of brightness/darkness adjustment, sharpness/blur, grayscale, red-eye removal and more. For results better than those you get with FastStone, you would need to use a professional package like Photoshop.

Further great features come in the form of batch rename and batch convert options. These could prove invaluable to many web developers looking for a quick way to prepare their PSD files for the web. With the inclusion of these batch functions, it would have been good to push the boat out even further and have an option to apply batch effects, for example to brighten up a group of photos that were taken in a dark space but alas, it’s not there!

Looking for faults with FastStone Image Viewer is like looking for the corner of a circle although if you insist on nitpicking, you can say that in the thumbnail browser view dragging and dropping should be possible for moving files. However when you realize that it is possible to drag and drop with the left nav bar that argument looses its legs. As I mentioned, there is healthy competition in the image viewer arena, but thanks to the innovative features of FastStone Image Viewer the bar has been raised to new heights.

Download FastStone Image Viewer 3.6 in Softonic

If you want to know how much load is being put on your CPU or RAM, then you can always use Windows Task Manager.

However, this involves pressing ALT-Ctrl-Del and it doesn't exactly look great or give you much info. All CPU Meter on the other hand is a handy little gadget that shows on your desktop in graphical form, exactly how much work your CPU and RAM are doing. It's designed especially for Windows Vista and those PCs equipped with Quad Core or Dual Core processors.

All CPU Meter uses numerical values, percentages and status bars to display the memory consumption, processor load, along with a historical graph to show how your components are performing. There aren't many customization options although you can change the mode of presentation to bar graph format and change the background color.

All CPU Meter is a useful tool to monitor how your RAM and CPU are performing or to diagnose memory leaks and system slow downs.

Download All CPU Meter 1.0 in Softonic

If you don’t know much about web design or programming, creating your own web page might seem like a daunting task. You should probably start off with a good WYSIWYG editor, simple enough that you don’t need to code anything yet packing all the tools to create good web pages. Web Page Maker is a program that will allow anybody to create a good looking website in seconds.

We immediately felt at ease with the WYSIWYG features of the program. You can drag and drop pictures on your page and reshuffle them around the way you want. It’s also easy to insert text boxes to add information and titles to your web page. If you’re feeling lazy, you can also use one of the available templates and tweak it to your liking. The menu bar has a button to instantly clone pages and a preview button to see how your web page looks in your favourite browser. Ready-to-use Java Script and HTML code can also be inserted into your web page in seconds.

Web Page Maker is a WYSIWYG web editor with a quick hands-on approach and accessible features. Although it only offers three types of shapes and the navigation bar feels pretty basic, the program is a great solution for beginners who want to create their own HTML pages without getting lost in technical jargon and coding.

Download Web Page Maker 3.03 in Softonic

After having successfully launched their own webmail service, RSS reader, online suite and many other apps, having a Google web browser was only a question of time.

Google Chrome has joined the so called web browser battle with a neatly designed web browser which, in spite of being still at a development stage, already shows a lot of potential.

The first thing that caught my attention when launching Google Chrome for the first time was its minimalist design. Besides a couple of bars and a couple of buttons, there's nothing else on the interface to steal screen space from the websites you visit – not even a status bar, as it automatically shows and hides whenever it's necessary.

Another feature I loved is the fact that Google Chrome uses the same keyboard shortcuts and mousewheel combinations as Firefox. With a zero learning curve, you immediately feel at your element and there's no need to start testing new shortcuts or reading the documentation. Other similarities to Firefox in Google Chrome include a complete download manager (which reminded me a lot of the Download Statusbar extension) and a handy password manager.

If you don't want Google Chrome to track down your browsing movements, try the incognito window. This special window won't save anything about your session (no browsing history, no cookies, etc.), so no breadcrumbs will be left after you close it.

But if there's a feature that makes Google Chrome really stand out, that's having separate processes for each one of the tabs you open. That means that you can check the amount of system resources used up by each tab, and close any of them in case of trouble without having to shut down the whole browser.

That said, I don't think Google Chrome is perfect yet. Like I said before, it's still in development so there's still plenty of room for it to grow and improve. I must say I had some stability issues when trying to install the Flash plug-in, and that I was totally unable to make the Java Virtual Machine work – which eventually prevented me from using certain web services. Despite these flaws, I really liked Google Chrome and I think it may become a serious option when choosing your web browser. Only time will tell.

Google Chrome, Google's web browser, mixes a clean, minimalist interface with a variety of powerful tools that can easily turn it into a great web browser.

Download Google Chrome 0.2.149.30 in Softonic

Flock is a browser for blogging and social network addicts. Based on the Mozilla infrastructure, it offers many features found in Firefox like tabbed browsing, quick RSS feed aggregation and customizable toolbars. Thanks to the web clipboard, you can copy any image or text you find on the net. Favorite links can be saved with tags and you can customize your own world, where you showcase your favorite sites, feeds and media. This brings us to one of the main features of Flock, the media bar, placed at the top of the browser. This tool lets you search and view any sort of media from sites like YouTube, Facebook or Flickr.

However the real strength of Flock comes in its social networking integration. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Xanga, Magnolia and more can be opened up from the "accounts and services" sidebar. Thanks to the people sidebar, you'll be able to quickly see all your friends from your different networks. Flock also offers up a blog editor, from which you can write up all your posts. News junkies will also like the RSS reader, also accessible from the sidebar.

While we were impressed with all the major improvements found in this new release of Flock, we felt that the sidebar was probably a bit overused. RSS feeds, social networks, favorites, and the web clipboard all open up in the sidebar, meaning you can't have them on all at once. The blog editor is a nice touch, but it's a shame that it doesn't allow you to upload images to your blog.

If your high on social networks, Flock is definitely the browser for you.

Download Flock 1.2.5 in Softonic

With Last.fm, music fans have found a place to congregate and share musical tastes. The Last.fm player places the “social music revolution” onto your desktop, giving you access to thousands of tracks from all musical genres.

The beauty of the application is that it encourages you to find similar artists to the ones you’re accustomed to and also pushes you to interact with users who share the same tastes. Search results appear as a tag cloud, with the biggest elements being the most popular. With thousands of songs available on Last.fm, it’s pretty unlikely that you’ll listen to the same thing twice. The player is streaming and you’ll have to be connected to the internet and have a Last.fm account for it to work.

Although slightly bulky, the Last.fm player interface is sleek and accessible. We like the shiny control icons and the “now playing” window. This is where you’ll find all artist information like album cover, a small description of the artist, related tags and artists and top listeners. The menu bar on the left includes your recently played tracks, recently loved and recently banned, although to listen to these you’ll need to upgrade your Last.fm account (€2.50/month). The last 10 stations you’ve listened to are automatically saved in your history file.

The social experience is central to Last.fm and becomes pretty addictive. By listening to tracks you create a profile of yourself, the music you listen to and the artists you like. Last.fm then connects you to other users that have similar tastes, whom it calls neighbours. In the Last.fm player, you can connect to neighbours' stations and listen to their tunes. The lists of the friends you made on Last.fm will also appear in your player. If you have the Audioscrobbler plug-in installed, Last.fm can also track all the songs you play in your favourite desktop music app (like iTunes) and connect you with even more neighbours.

Most of us here at Softonic have Last.fm connected all day, simply because it doesn’t require you to have your own music library, it’s free and provides an endless flow of new tunes. In line with modern evolutions in online music, this web music application mixes streaming and social tools to give you an exciting music player. No music fan with access to Internet should be caught dead without it.

Download Last.fm Player 1.5.2.38918 in Softonic

High speed Internet connections are quite common now but that doesn’t mean we don’t sometimes need some help when it comes to downloading game demos, videos, MP3 collections and other big files. So, even if you’re enjoying the fastest router in the neighborhood, take a look at Internet Download Manager, because it really has a lot to offer.

This excellent app will take care of all your downloads from the moment you install it on your PC. You can add new download tasks from the program’s interface but the usual thing is to let it capture the links. This means that every time you click on a certain file type (which can be specified through configuration options), IDM will handle the download for itself rather than letting the browser do the job. It’s a really handy option because everything is automatic: no changing from one app to another, no copying and pasting links, just no hassle at all. Also, it works with all major web browsers, such as Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera.

Once IDM captures the link, you can either start to download the file right away or add it to a download list for later, which can be a good alternative if you need all of your bandwidth for the moment and plan to leave the computer on during the night. Downloads can be classified into custom categories right before starting them and can also be resumed if the connection is lost or broken for some reason.

As regards download speeds, Internet Download Manager does meet expectations, although it all depends on your Internet access. That is, don’t expect to download at the speed of light if you’re still using one of those old-fashioned 56K modems. Anyhow, IDM achieves quite satisfying download rates as a result of establishing multiple thread connections to servers. Also, it displays a small window with some interesting information about the download process: transfer rate, data downloaded so far, time left and a neat progress bar for each thread.

The program’s configuration menu displays a wide range of functions and tools devoted to handling your downloads, such as checking files for viruses directly from IDM with your own antivirus system or limiting the amount of bandwidth used by the program. There’s also support for server authentication and proxy, FTP and HTTPS servers.

The fact of the matter is, we couldn’t really find anything wrong with Internet Download Manager. It does its job and does it pretty well, so even if your Internet connection speed is far beyond the usual limits, you should definitely give it a try.

Download Internet Download Manager 5.14.5 in Softonic

Windows Live Messenger, previously known as MSN Messenger, was renamed as part of Microsoft's move towards the Live online community. So far, the most popular IM app in the world had already gone through a bunch of updates, but this new name also meant important changes that would somehow start a new period in Messenger's history.

Windows Live Messenger includes some outstanding characteristics that are well worth a mention. Firstly, its all-new interface features a completely different design from traditional Windows applications, which you can also customize by choosing your own color scheme. In order to maintain this neatness, the menu bar has been hidden under a single top right corner button but this makes it a bit uncomfortable to browse through options. Luckily, the most common actions (send email, call a contact, access MSN Spaces and view shared folders) have been implemented as nice little buttons right under your username, so they're easy to access. Another thing we liked is that you can hide side tabs in the main interface window (right click on any of them and check the "Hide tabs" checkbox). However, there's apparently no way to hide the bottom ad.

Windows Live Messenger offers plenty of emoticons and winks to cheer up your conversations with. You can expand both collections by easily adding new sets which you'll find by the hundred on the Internet. Customization possibilities include changing the chat window background or even adding a personal message to your nickname, but not creating custom status messages. At least this new version features the longed-for offline messaging tool, enabling you to leave a message to any of your contacts even if they're not online.

The two most important features in this new Windows Live Messenger are the ability of sharing folders and making free PC-to-phone calls. As for the first one, it proves as a very handy way to share pictures, while the second feature allows you to save some pennies on your phone bill. However, this service is currently only available in certain countries (United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Ireland, Finland, Belgium, Spain and Italy) and requires a subscription to the Verizon Web Calling system.

In any case, you can always make use of the PC-to-PC call feature, which provides excellent sound quality. In fact, we must say this feature has been pretty well implemented in Windows Live Messenger. Its ease of use makes it a great alternative to written conversations: just click on the phone icon and your friend will instantly receive an invitation to answer the phone call on the chat window itself. A simple wizard will guide you through audio configuration and a couple of sliders enable you control the volume of your speakers (or headphones) and mic. You can still use the chat window while you talk, for instance to send a web link or a handwritten message.

Summing up, the main issue with Windows Live Messenger is that it has taken it too much time to offer tools that were already found in other IM apps, such as the VoIP calls mentioned above. However, its attractive design plus the huge number of people who are already MSN Messenger users (and who will eventually upgrade their client) will probably help this Live version reach the top.

Download Windows Live Messenger 2009 14.0.5027.908 Beta in Softonic

When I was younger I used to spend hours hanging around in chat rooms and meeting new people from all over the world.

Today I've had the chance to chat again, but in a slightly different way. I've used Weblin, a very original software app that works together with your web browser, enabling you to chat with the people who are visiting the same webpage as you. Also, your chat personality is more than just a plain nickname: it's a fully animated avatar that walks around the bottom bar of your browser window.

At the beginning it may be difficult to find people to chat with, but you can start by the program's "topcloud": a list of the most populated webpages that you can access from Weblin's icon in the system tray. Following this method I soon met some nice people on Youtube and had a short chat with them. Conversations can be held via text balloons or standard chat window, but I wasn't sure which one to use. On the one hand balloons behave in a strange way, as the text you send is not erased and you have to delete it before writing again; on the other hand, the chat window takes way too much space and it doesn't let me read webpages properly.

After chatting for a while, I started browsing Weblin's website and I was surprised to discover a highly detailed customization menu for your personal profile and avatar, which can't be found on the program's settings. So once you've registered your account, be sure to visit the site and explore it for yourself.

Generally speaking, I found Weblin a very original chat app where you can have fun and make friends. On the downside, having a dozen avatars sitting on a certain webpage really disturbs your web browsing.

An original way to chat with other people in your web browser, although certainly difficult to combine with actual web browsing.

Download Weblin 2.8.2.1 in Softonic

NoScript provides extra protection for your Mozilla/Firefox or Flock browser: this extension allows JavaScript and Java execution only for trusted domains of your choice (e.g. your home-banking web site).

This whitelist based pre-emptive script blocking approach prevents exploitation of security vulnerabilities (known and even not known yet!) with no loss of functionality.

You can enable JavaScript/Java execution for sites you trust with a simple left-click on the NoScript status bar icon (look at the picture), or using the contextual menu, for easier operation in popup statusbar-less windows.

Download NoScript Extension 1.8.1 in Softonic

This Firefox extension enables you to view online photos in a full screen slideshow with a single click. It displays images in a neat interface without having to browse multiple pages or click on several links to get to the photo itself. It's particularly useful when browsing images from a search query, online photo albums or specialized photo websites such as Flickr or Picasa Web Albums.

However this apparent utility is quickly pushed into the background due to the program's slowness. PicLens loads quite fast but takes ages to move along the thumbnail strip and show pictures in full screen. Besides it seems to use a generous portion of system resources, so in the end it may not be the most useful way to view web photos.

Download PicLens 1.8.2.4869 in Softonic

Nothing helps you get through a tough day at the office than a good old-fashioned viral email. Whether it’s funny, stupid, interesting or just plain sick, receiving a forwarded video, picture or text document is the highlight of the day for many a tortured office drone. Now, thanks to the rather unique MetaCafe, you don’t even need to wait for your pals to throw this spirit-lifting material your way.

The basic premise of the software is that it automatically trawls the web for popular viral items including movies, images, games and other time-wasting files. Within just a few minutes of firing up the app (or allowing it to load automatically on start-up) you’ll be presented with a series of the hottest files doing the rounds on email at the moment. Each item comes with a preview thumbnail and a brief description of what it’s about. You can then choose to download and play any movies, or view images within the MetaCafe interface.

The simplicity of this program is quite staggering and it makes it as easy as possible to siphon the stuff that’s likely to appeal to you. The categories (video, images, games, and other) can be customized so you only receive items that are of interest to you, such as funnies, news-related, sports-related etc. There’s a very helpful idiot’s guide that appears when you launch the program and the online help is particularly useful.

Other useful features include a ‘TV mode’ for viewing videos in full-screen with movie player controls, and the ability to forward links to the items to your buddies from within the program. You can even submit your own files to MetaCafe if you’ve been forwarded a particularly good file that you want to share with the rest of the user base.

Generally, the operation and performance of MetaCafe is very slick but there are a couple of things that bugged us a bit. For instance, it can take a while for the program to find new items when you start and this is made more confusing by the fact that there is no progress bar to show you that it's actually doing something. You should also be careful to ensure that the adult content filter is checked, as some of the material can be a little risqué for youngsters or the faint of heart.

Despite these minor glitches, this is a very original software concept that will help brighten up your day and amuse your friends and family to boot. Just don't let the boss catch you playing around with it.

Download MetaCafe Pro 1.2.28 in Softonic