The Google Desktop application allows users to search their desktop content quickly and easily. Praised for its ingenuity and criticised for its intrusiveness, Google Desktop brings the power of Google’s search engine technology to your PC.

After installing the application, you’ll have to give it some time to index the files on your PC, including emails, photos, chats, contacts and calendar events. Google Desktop will index the first 10,000 words in the first 100,000 documents on your PC. The application supports the majority of file types and you can decide which ones to index, or omit protected files, using the preferences menu.

In its latest version, which is compatible with Windows Vista, Google Desktop has been given a new transparent look, providing a pretty sleek feel to your PC. Your search results will appear in your browser (in the familiar Google web page format) and a small preview button allows you to view results without actually clicking on the corresponding link. Results are as precise as we’ve come to expect from Google searches, however we were slightly disappointed to learn that the application doesn’t offer logical 'OR' support or substring search. On another note, Google Desktop is not limited to your PC as you can cross index content from multiple machines and share some panel items with your friends.

Google Desktop is not only about search, though. Joining a marketplace already occupied by Apple’s Dashboard Widgets and Yahoo! Widgets, Google Desktop can be fitted with any number of little gadgets. These mini apps perform all kinds of functions, from fetching your mail to jotting down notes or checking up on your local weather. There are hundreds of gadgets to choose from to customize your desktop bar. Our personal favorites are: Google Translate, the Skype plug-in to check your credit and call your contacts, “Am I Blocked” to find out who’s blocked you on IM, Workspace to quickly move between tasks, System Stats to monitor your PC and Games, a selection of Flash games like Tetris and Moonlander.

When running, we found Google Desktop to use up around 30 MBs, but that can quickly increase if you add more gadgets to it. The application is also constantly re-indexing your files to incorporate your modifications and new elements. However you should rarely feel your PC slowing due to indexing.

When you’re dealing with Google, however, you know the main criticism will be about security. Because Google Desktop indexes all your documents, you’re basically opening up your PC and all your personal files to the Moutain View company. What some users fear is that Google could one day take advantage of that access or that a bug in the application would allow malicious users to infiltrate your PC and steal information.

While the intrusiveness of Google Desktop will give some users pause for thought on installing the app, Google Desktop is highly effective and simple to use. The gadgets you can add to its sidebar may not all be essential, but many of them are quite fun and original and let’s face it, the sidebar looks good. Give it a go if you think your PC is a mess and you need quick access to anything.

Download Google Desktop 5.8.809.8522 in Softonic

It seems that everyone is slowly starting to realise that the future of video broadcasting lies online rather than inside a television.

Following the success of Joost, Babelgum and VeohTV, Adobe decided to get in on the act with the release of the Adobe Media Player. The philosophy of the software giant is that if you use a browser to navigate web pages, why shouldn't you use one to view multimedia too?

The result is basically a version of Joost as seen through the eyes of Adobe. Now out of beta release, the app provides an interesting and immersive way of watching videos online. Navigation is very smooth and feels natural and there are a number of features and services that make it easier to eyeball TV more effectively. For instance, you can create a list of favorites, and keywords add ratings to Flash video, build playlists and use the Dashboard-style interface to check out the latest episodes of your top shows. You can also now subscribe to RSS feeds that tell you when new episodes are online.

Content is king though, of course, and version 1.1 of Adobe Media Player adds a lot more episodes and channels from a broad range of genres. At the time of writing, Adobe estimates that there are around 25,000 episodes available through its media player. Adobe has even partnered with Sony Pictures to offer some movies through the service, such as Jerry Maguire and Men in Black. I was also impressed by the speed and quality of the videos.

One of my main qualms with Adobe Media Player though, is that many of the episodes are not available outside the USA. Fine if you live there, of course, but for those of us in other lands it's so frustrating to see a show you want to watch only to discover it's not available (of course, you don't find this out until after an advert has played in the player).

Glossing over the unavailability of some programs and channels, Adobe Media Player is making all the right strides to becoming the best place to watch TV online.

Download Adobe Media Player 1.1 in Softonic

Ambereh is a basic drawing application with the advantage of having the possibility of sharing your work while chatting with your co-workers and applying changes that everybody can see.

It's surely not Photoshop, nor even a bad copy of it, but that's not its purpose. It is not a professional photo editor but a tool to share ideas on logos, for example, or simply a kind of dashboard for creative having to work from different locations. Define a local port and connect to a computer in the relative menu at the top of the program's page and start to work on a drawing with other people.

The application can only work with bitmaps and this is really a big limitation considering that this format is not so widely used anymore. The features are just the basic ones you can find in all the other drawing editors such as anti-aliased brush, custom bitmap brushes, opacity control, smudge and blur. Furthermore this program is free and open source.

Ambreh's simplicity makes it an interesting tool for brain-storming sessions with your colleagues as you can make changes to an image that everybody can see live and chat at the same time.

Download Ambereh 1.0 in Softonic

For those who don't know Tumblr yet, let me explain: it's a basic blogging service, half way between an actual blog and Twitter, which enables you to share small bits of information, links, quotes and images in a really simple way. And now it can be even easier with Tumblweed.

Tumblweed is an AIR-based desktop client that enables you to review your tumbleblog and publish new posts without having to open the web browser. You can publish any kind of content (short post, image, quote, link, audio or video) but oddly enough, you can't view photos on the Tumblweed interface they have been published to the tumbleblog.

Also, while Tumblweed includes a link in each element in order to edit it, if you click it the Tumblr webpage will open on your web browser so that you can edit it online – instead of doing it from the program itself as I would have expected.

With Tumblweed you can comfortably write on your tumbleblog from the Windows desktop, but you won't be able to see photos or edit posts once they're online.

Download Tumblweed 1.0 in Softonic

Use one centralized system dashboard to automatically perform all vital PC maintenance by diagnosing, reporting, and resolving computer problems and performance bottlenecks.

This award-winning utility suite is trusted by millions worldwide to secure, optimize, repair, and tune-up their systems.

System Mechanic® 7 provides a wealth of tools to keep PCs running in peak condition. This versatile and easy-to-use product allows you to:

Run system analyses to stay informed about your PC’s condition. View any system problems detected by System Mechanic and decide which ones you want to repair. Enable ActiveCare™ to perform the automated housekeeping tasks that you specify.

Select the exact repair and optimization tools that suit your needs, and run them when you want and how you want. One-click Power Tools and guided wizards allow you to eliminate performance drains and adapt settings to boost PC and Web speed, repair hard drive errors that cause computer crashes and lock-ups, and recover from disaster if your computer ever becomes severely damaged.

Erase temporary and other junk files to reduce clutter and increase drive capacity. Eliminate dangerous spyware, block hidden malware from altering your system settings, and repair security vulnerabilities that leave your system open to attack.

Monitor, control, and fine-tune settings so that your PC is tailored to your specifications. Diagnostic tools provide detailed system reporting and allow for advanced troubleshooting.

Download System Mechanic 7.5.8 in Softonic

TweakVista is an all in one control panel for your Vista computer. We were slightly put off by the cluttered interface, especially the welcome screen with its lists of news and recommendations. Annoyingly, the program window can't be resized and you can't scroll down a list.

Despite this cosmetic drawback, TweakVista does offer some pretty useful tools. You can set a user profile according to what use you will make of your PC, like if you'll be playing games a lot. The program also allows you to tweak internet and power performances depending on your habits, although we suggest you leave it to default. Setting your PC to a mode which is too aggressive may cause your PC to crash.

We were well impressed by the assessment tool to benchmark your PCs capabilities against others but much less by the resources section, which all in all, equals to what you find in your PC's task manager. Many of the functions in TweakVista also link to some of your PCs default tools like the Disk Cleaner and in some ways the application those turn into some sort of dashboard for all your Vista optimization.

TweakVista is a mix of effective optimization tools and other more basic, run-of-the-mill functions that you'll find in your Control Panel. If used well, it should improve your Vista PC's performance.

Download TweakVista 1.10 in Softonic

Zune™ software is your one stop for music and entertainment. Manage and view your songs, videos, and pictures. Rip and burn CDs. Create playlists. Edit track and album information. And Zune software can automatically import your existing files, including your music and video from iTunes® and Windows Media® Player.

Browse Zune Marketplace to discover new tunes and find old favorites. Plus, Zune works with Xbox™ 360! Access media right in the Xbox dashboard, or listen to music while playing games. And don't forget, Zune works with...Zune!

Download Zune software 2.3 in Softonic

The term ‘widget’ has traditionally been used to describe some kind of contraption or piece of technology that improves the overall functionality of a particular product. Mac OSX and Microsoft Vista users will be all too aware of how software widgets can bring more power to your desktop, as they now come as standard on these operating systems. For the benefit of the uninitiated, a widget is basically a small application that provides you with easy access to a particular function. These applications are docked on a ‘dashboard’, and you can add as many widgets as you like, giving you instant access to anything from a simple clock to a weather forecasting tool.

Yahoo! was one of the early pioneers of widgets, and this application is likely to intrigue anyone who hasn’t come across the technology before. The package sits on your desktop and allows you to download and install widgets from the Yahoo! site. There’s a healthy range of widgets available here (almost 4,000), each of which are installed automatically as soon as they’re downloaded. Although this helps to keep things simple, it’s frustrating that you cannot change the destination folderwhich folder the widgets are stored in here.

While it all runs from the same package, each widget is actually its own application. In previous releases of the Widget Engine, this had a tendency to tie up your system rescoursces when using multiple widgets. However, tThis issue has been better addressed in this version, and it seems much less memory-intensive than before. Having said this, it’s not a good idea to keep more than about 10 running at once, as you do start to notice it then.

In terms of the widgets themselves, it would obviously be impractical (and quite frankly, boring) for us to review all 4,000 here, but needless to say there are some very useful ones, along with some downright pointless ones. For instance, we can’t really see the benefit of having a dancing skeleton on your desktop , yet there are tools for checking stock quotes, accessing iTunes, organizing your Flickr images, checking your WiFi signal and getting the latest travel news, all directly from your desktop. Graphically, the widgets are very impressive and each of them floats over the screen without the constraints of traditional window borders, ensuring they don’t intrude on your other activities.

We like the fact that you don’t need to register a Yahoo! account in order to use widgets but Yahoo! still doesn’t allow Desktop Widgets to be included on My Yahoo! pages, overlooking something both Microsoft and Google already allow. Although the program doesn’t really add anything you won’t find in Vista’s built-in widgets system, it’s perfect for XP users who want a taste of what they can expect when they get around to upgrading to the new version of Windows.

Download Yahoo! Widgets 4.5 in Softonic

Macromedia Flex presentation server provides a familiar, standards-based programming framework for delivering the presentation tier of Rich Internet Applications (RIA). Flex boosts ROI by improving the end-user experience, delivers enterprise-class capabilities, and embraces existing tools, workflows, and infrastructure.

The Flex presentation server is designed to help enterprise development teams deliver solutions in scenarios where traditional page-based HTML applications often fail. Examples include online product selection, e-commerce checkout, visual data dashboards, or business process automation applications (i.e.: order processing) that streamline operations. Flex is an enterprise server product and includes Flex Builder, Macromedia’s IDE for Flex application development.

Download Adobe Flex 3.0 Beta 2 in Softonic

There are many screensavers that work as clocks, displaying time on your screen in a variety of ways whenever your PC is not being used. However, I must admit hadn't seen such an original clock before.

PolarClock shows the time in colorful concentric circles that are slowly closing as time goes by. The screensaver includes a complete configuration menu that enables you to choose language, luminance, size and other options. You can also select the hue range to use, although I would have preferred to be able to choose the exact color for each circle.

In all, PolarClock is a light, discreet screensaver that gives your PC a new utility as clock... at least when you're not using it.

Download PixelBreaker PolarClock Screensaver 3.0 in Softonic

TracePlus Ethernet is a powerful performance and capture tool. Real-time statistics include bandwidth by node, protocol, and address pair. A Network dashboard displays network performance updated each second. A history view chronicles the occurrence of specific IP events on your network.

Capture packets based on type, address, size, TCP/UDP port, or data pattern. Decodes SNMP packets (all versions). Intelligent data view formats IP user data for easy viewing. Imports capture files from other packet analyzers including UNIX and Linux OS's. Supports VLAN features of the 802.1Q/802.1P protocols.

Download TracePlus Ethernet 5.51 in Softonic

Riding on the back of the popularity of the Dashboard widgets in Apple's OS, Yahoo! Widgets have become a popular way for people to bring Internet functionality to their desktop, whether it's checking sports scores, forecasting the weather or simply finding out what's on TV tonight. As you'd imagine, there are plenty of developers who want a piece of this action, and Widget Maker is designed to make the process of creating these handy little apps a little easier.

I say "a little easier" because you still need to know what you're doing. The app will help you to generate the XML by responding to a series of questions in a form, but you'll still need to take care of image placement and produce the necessary JavaScript yourself. These means that the program isn't suitable for any old numpty who wants to make a cool widget, although with a bit of practice you can learn to develop widgets.

Download Widget Maker 2.3 in Softonic

Tracking and managing the issues and bugs that emerge during a project is a critically important task, but one that few teams do effectively.

JIRA is a bug tracking, issue tracking, and project management application developed to make this process easier for your team. JIRA has been designed with a focus on task achievement, is instantly usable and is flexible to work with.

Features:

• Manage bugs, features, tasks, improvements or any issue
• A clean and powerful user interface that is easy to understand for both business and technical users
• Map your business processes to custom workflows
• Track attachments, changes, components and versions
• Full text searching and powerful filtering (customisable, saveable, shareable and subscribeable!)
• Customisable dashboards and real-time statistics
• Enterprise permissioning and security
• Easily extended to and integrated with other systems (including email, RSS, Excel, XML and source control)
• Highly configurable notification options
• Runs on almost any hardware, OS and database platform
• Web service enabled for programmatic control (SOAP, XML-RPC and REST interfaces)

Download Atlassian JIRA 3.7.4 Standard in Softonic

KlipFolio is an information awareness and notification application for Windows. It allows you to easily monitor a wide variety of real-time information services right on your desktop. These information services are called Klips.

Serence KlipFolio is a personal dashboard for Windows that saves you time and effort by using Klips to intelligently monitor remote data sources--like weather, stocks, Hotmail, news, RSS feeds and even auctions--right on your desktop.

Download Klipfolio 4 Beta 3 in Softonic

Aras Innovator® suite of enterprise software solutions are for performance driven companies. Aras solutions drive a process-oriented approach to manage, measure, and improve new product introduction and quality compliance from concept through development, launch, and operations.

Companies achieve customer alignment, attain greater profit margins, and shorten development cycles with Aras solutions. Phase-gate project dashboards, change management workflows, risk analysis, closed-loop quality processes, and regulatory & environmental compliance are integrated in highly flexible software solutions to deliver bottom line business results.

Download Aras Innovator 8.1.0 in Softonic

Chirp is a group task management and communications tool. It helps you keep your finger on the pulse of work being done by teammates in one or many projects. Enter task assignments both big and small, then use the dashboard to identify trouble areas, or create reports to provide to your managers. The more information that goes into Chirp, the better you can see the whole picture.

Chirp automatically synchronizes task assignments and status updates between everyone on your team using your Plum Canary Sync Service subscription. As you assign tasks in a project to new users, they automatically get added to the project team list, and immediately gain visibility into all team information.

Each project team is distinct, so project information remains restricted to your intended team members. And Chirp can synchronize with team members anywhere. It works just as well on the road as it does in your office. Plus, you can fully integrate team members outside your organization. Suddenly it is a snap to keep informed of the progress of external team members.

Download Chirp 2.2.0 in Softonic

Unless you’ve been living in a hut in the Gobi desert for the last few months, you’ll know that Microsoft Windows XP is no more, having being replaced by Vista. The new Operating System brings about a bevy of changes, including a revamped desktop environment, designed not only to look good, but also to improve your productivity. One of the key new features is the Sidebar, which replicates the Dashboard in OS X and allows you easy access to certain tools, such as news, web searching and your digital photos.

If you haven’t got the money (or indeed, the inclination) to upgrade to Vista, then you can recreate the Sidebar with this popular application. Despite a rather strange installation process, which fails to provide an auto-run function, the app can be set up and configured pretty quickly and comes with four useful preset ‘widgets’. The tools are a search function, image preview window, RSS feed and a rather elegant analogue clock.

Visually, all these widgets are pretty faithful to the Vista sidebar, although they lack they customisation options that you get with the new OS. For instance, the image tool doesn’t allow you to set the folder from which to display pictures, merely picking photos at random from your hard drive . All the tools are locked within a transparent bar that runs down the right-hand side of your desktop, which gets annoying after a while as there’s no way to minimize it and it ends up squashing any application window you open. Nevertheless, it represents an accurate taste of the instant-access functions you can expect in Vista.

Download Vista Sidebar XP 1.0 in Softonic

dashLicious is optimised for Safari and NetNewsWire users. When you enter into the dashboard dashLicious will automatically populate the url and description fields from either Safari or NetNewsWire (and will allow you to toggle between the two inputs).

The main feature in this release is the autocomplete. When you first launch the widget, it connects to your del.icio.us account and retrieves all your tags. Then when you start typing in the tag field of the widget, it will make suggestions based on what you are typing. You can navigate these choices by using the arrow up/down keys on your keyboard then press return to select. this should speed up your tagging.

Download dashLicious 1.0 in Softonic