Some years ago ICQ was one of the most popular IM applications among Internet users. But when Microsoft launched MSN Messenger, many of these users forgot about their original IM client and joined a network that was growing very quickly. In the meantime, ICQ continued to be upgraded until finally reaching version 6, which sets a new milestone in the history of this classic piece of software.

To begin with, the installation process is fast and easy, the only downside being the fact that you must set ICQ Search as your web browser's default search engine, as there's no way of getting around this option.

This new ICQ boasts a fresh-looking interface which has been completely redesigned. Also, you can customize it with skins, although you'll have to download them because there's not a single skin included in the program. It does include, however, a very complete personal profile which you can fill in with all your information, including name, location, interests, spoken languages and a personal avatar that ICQ oddly refers to as "devil".

Generally speaking, ICQ 6 offers all the functions that we find in other IM applications, namely instant written messages, voice calls and video calls. All of these are complemented with a very nice set of animated smilies and the so called "Tzers" which are the equivalent to Messenger's "Winks". Chat sessions can be grouped together under the same window, which prevents your taskbar getting cluttered. ICQ allows you to start text conversations right from the contact list using the Quick message feature. There's also the option to send SMS messages to your contacts, but this is not available in all countries yet.

This new version promises to give you complete control over configuration settings. However, we must admit that we had some trouble in finding them, until we happened to click on the "Main" button on the interface. The configuration options are quite complete indeed, allowing you to change every single detail regarding sounds, notifications, privacy and security, message history, appearance and the program's general behaviour.

In all, ICQ seems to have developed a new version with a fresh redesign only to measure up to its main competitors but without really offering any new functions. Again, choosing ICQ (or any other IM app) ends up being just a question of which IM your friends use.

Download ICQ 6.0.0.6063 in Softonic

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 9.52 in Softonic

Harmony Assistant is a all-in-one software product with digital audio capabilities. Its harmonizing capabilities enable the composer to build quickly and efficiently tunes that include accompaniment, multiple instruments and drum patterns. Its full page edit and engraver modes will ease editing and page setup of your scores.

A wide range of music symbols will enable to edit scores of great quality: notation capabilities are immense. Using the page mode, you will edit the score just as it will be printed on paper. The Engraver mode will make look it nice. Score input can be performed through the mouse, computer keyboard or an external MIDI keyboard.

Harmony Assistant comes with its own embedded software synthesizer (SoftSynth), which provides high quality output on basic sound cards, even without any external MIDI device, and includes hundreds of different instruments. Harmony Assistant can load and save in many formats (MIDI, WAV, AIFF, MP3, OGG, TAB, ABC...).

With MyrScript, the embedded programming language, you can add your own features to the program

More features:

• Complete score editor, with unlimited number of staves
• Page mode editing
• Automatic harmonizer
• Accompaniments & drum patterns in a few clicks
• Tablature calculation for miscellaneous string instrument
• Tablature calculation for Harmonica, diatonic accordion, wind instruments...
• Completely scriptable application. Many open-source scripts are available.
• Embedded softsynth : does not need any hardware other than a sound card.
• Midi, Kar, MOD, S3M... import
• Digital tracks (possible to import WAV, AIFF, MP3, OGG...)
• Wav-to-note pitch tracker, noise reduction, formant-compliant pitch change, ...
• Gregorian notation
• Chord diagram library for various instruments
• Enables to build custom instruments from digital recordings
• Lute tablatures
• Street organ card printing
• Karaoke and multi-voices lyrics are actually sung.
• Enable visitors of your Web site to view, transpose, play or print your scores

Download Harmony Assistant 9.4.6 in Softonic

Have you ever wanted to play a joke on someone in a chatroom by pretending to be someone completely different?

Unless you're a ventriloquist it's not easy but AV VoizGame allows you to do so specifically in online chatrooms. AV VoizGame allows you to change your voice as you speak through a microphone in realtime to confuse the hell out of your online buddies or opponents. If you're playing multiplayer online role playing games, then you can really have some fun confusing your opponents or just generally mucking about.

If you want to relive your favourite gags, AV VoizGame comes with an inbuilt recorder which records your voice for. If you want to keep it hidden on your desktop, you can also do that by making the skin transparent. However, at almost $30 to upgrade, it seems a bit of a steep cost for a simple voice modulation software.

There's not much point to AV VoizGame other than playing jokes on online opponents and while it is a lot of fun, it's questionable whether it's really worth $30 to upgrade.

Download AV VoizGame 4.0.77 in Softonic

Free Sound Recorder is a program designed for all your sound recording needs whether it be from the radio or your own voice.

Free Sound Recorder records voices, streaming audio broadcasts, sound effects, music and pretty much any audio device that's attached to your PC. Unfortunately, you only have a limited number of output formats to choose from in Free Sound Recorder - namely MP3, WAV or WMA) although that's enough for most people's needs.

There aren't many editing options in Free Sound Recorder after you've finished recording so bear in mind you'll need a decent editor afterwards if you plan to do further work with your recordings. You can however add some moderate effects to voice recordings although these add up to nothing more than a bit of distortion. The Free Sound Recorder editor features simple tools for cutting and pasting clips together which is easy to use although after 30 days, this aspect expires.

Free Sound Recorder is a very easy to use audio recorder and simple editor that will suffice for most people's audio capturing needs.

Download Free Sound Recorder 7.3.1 in Softonic

A little game of pool is always good fun and MacPool makes it possible.

We liked the sleek graphics, the way the balls roll, the semi transparent interface window and the colors used in the game. Hitting balls is all done by dragging your mouse to add force to your shot and calculate the angle. You use the arrow arrow keys to adjust the hitting point on the ball and add effects like top spin.

The game offers detailed instructions for anybody who might not know the rules of pool and the advanced settings, available from the top menu, allow you to set table cloth color or table quality (traction and cushions). You can supposedly play online against competitors from anywhere in the world, but we never managed to connect with anyone when we tried out MacPool. There's more than a dozen narrator voices to comment your play, some of them rather annoying and others amusing.

MacPool is an entertaining pool game. Although the controls are a bit tricky at first, once you get used to it it should prove loads of fun.

Download MacPool 10.5 in Softonic

WavePad is a full featured professional sound editor for Windows. It lets you make and edit voice and other audio recordings. When editing audio files you can cut, copy and paste parts of recordings and, if required, add effects like echo, amplification and noise reduction. WavePad works as a wav editor or mp3 editor but it also supports a number of other file formats including vox, gsm, real audio, au, aif, flac, ogg and more.

The program is designed to be a very easy and intuitive to use for audio editing. Within minutes you will be able to open or record a file and edit it. But if you take time to explore the other features you will find many powerful tools for editing audio designed with the professional sound engineer in mind.

Key features:

• Supports a number of file formats including wav (multiple codecs), mp3, vox, gsm, real audio, au, aif, flac, ogg and many more
• Sound editing functions include cut, copy, caste, delete, insert, silence, autotrim and much more
• Audio effects include, amplify, normalize, equaliser, envelope, reverb, echo, reverse, sample rate conversion and more
• Tools include spectral analysis (FFT) and speech synthesis
• Audio restoration features including noise reduction and click pop removal
• Supports sample rates from 6000 to 96000Hz, stereo or mono, 8, 16, 24 or 32 bits
• Ability to work with multiple files at the same time in seperate screens
• Includes its own CD ripper with 'ultrafast 'rip mode and cddb music database lookup
• Links directly to the Express Burn CD Recorder to burn your sound files to CD.
• Recorder supports autotrim and voice activated recording

Download WavePad 3.12 in Softonic

go1984 turns your PC into a video surveillance system that is comparable with any of the more expensive systems currently on the market. View your hall door, your warehouse or your summer home. Keep an eye on what's happening in your absence.

The app contains a variety of professional video monitoring tools such as:

• Live-Monitoring
• Recording (timer controlled, motion triggered or permanent)
• Controlling of PTZ cameras
• Alarm function (acoustic, via e-mail or voice-call via ISDN)
• Remote control via network or internet
• Scheduler for automatic recording

Download go1984 3.7.2.5 in Softonic

Some anti-virus programs cause more problems than they solve. Avast! Home Edition anti-virus is thankfully not one of those as it exceeds expectations while remaining free. Lightweight, vigilant and most importantly, effective, this could be the answer to your prayers if you’ve had no luck finding a virus checker you like.

The developers make a point of stressing that this program is strictly not for institutional use – it is designed specifically for the threats most home users face daily. Their philosophy is that efficient home virus protection is essential in preventing users one day being struck by a serious global virus. What impresses you immediately with Avast! is its vigilance. It’s likely that within minutes of installation, you’ll receive a pop up alert due to a Trojan or virus that had been incubating on your PC. If not, rest assured that it won’t be long before Avast! sets off its trademark siren and alerts you that something has been detected. The latest version of

Avast’s antivirus kernel promises 100% detection of ‘In-the-Wild’ viruses (viruses already spreading between users) and excellent detection of Trojan horses. Avast! provides 24 hour protection via its ‘On-Access’ scanner but you can initiate manual scans via the fairly simple user interface. You can start additional modules from here, such as the Virus Chest, Updater or Log Viewer. Another great feature of Avast! is the option to change the skin of this interface. The developer website features practically hundreds of distinctive designs made by aficionados and even offers a guide to designing your own.

Something often overlooked by major virus checking packages is P2P applications installed on your PC but Avast! covers this with a P2P and Instant Messenger shield. Whilst chat applications themselves do not impose any serious security risks in terms of viruses, their less sophisticated file sharing methods can easily lead to virus infections if not properly monitored. With so many infected files on P2P networks such as Kazaa and eMule too, it’s also good to know that Avast! won’t let you open them without quietly checking them first.

The program also features both a Web and Network shield that constantly monitors traffic. The Web Shield acts as a transparent HTTP proxy and is compatible with all major web browsers. One of the truly outstanding features of Avast! is that unlike heavyweights such as Kaspersky or Norton, you hardly notice it working in the background. This is because of a unique feature the developers call ‘Intelligent Stream Scan’ that scans objects on-the-fly, without needing to cache them locally. Even the virus updates are unobtrusive. Avast! downloads the updates gradually and only those that are absolutely essential instead of the whole database. You receive a ‘Virus database has been updated’ voice message every time this has been completed along with a small popup which you can turn off if it annoys you.

There really is little to fault Avast! on in a market that is saturated with too many ineffective virus checkers. Although it doesn’t guzzle resources, if you’re running it on an older machine, you might find it slows you down. Some new users also complain that conducting a simple manual scan is more complicated than it should be but if you’ve spent anytime with virus checkers, you’ll realise that its more than worth your while getting to know this excellent program.

Download Avast! Home 4.8.1229 in Softonic

Blubster claims to not only offer you the ability to find just about any Mp3 song out there, but it also offers you the possibility to find professional quality streaming files. Once your client program connects to a gateway, you can search and download Mp3 music files from the MANOLITO protocol community. The secret behind the huge amount of Mp3's is that it allows an unlimited number of peers to connect. You've also got the option of “voice chat” to get in touch with other music lovers with the same tastes which you can keep track of in a "Hot List".

The interface is clean and simple with clear buttons and a navigation toolbar on top which makes it very simple to access your shared folder, searches and file transfers. The media player is located at the bottom and you have full control of how your music sounds without much complexity. The download speeds are quite impressive too which again, is partly due to the large number of users connected at one time. Probably the coolest feature is the ability to post web links of your music files which can be sent by email to be shared via Blubster. A fresh new way to share Mp3's.

Download Blubster 3.0.2 in Softonic

PrettyMay is your personal voice assistant for Skype. You can record and replay any Skype call easily and simply as an add-on (or plug-in) for Skype. PrettyMay also auto answers calls and chats for you when you are away or don't want to be disturbed. It makes it simple to share your recordings with your friends.

PrettyMay saves calls in mp3 audio format instead of the standard large wav file. PrettyMay Offer the feature that allow you to remote access Skype voicemails and PrettyMay voicemessages from regular phone or another Skype account. Furthermore, you can forward voicemails via emails, or call back the contact who leave the message for you directly from regular phone whether he or she has Skype in number or not.

PrettyMay also support you to use Skypeout credit to dial internatinal call from regular telephone/mobile. If you want to chat with your friend abroad when you are outside, you can dial your Skype in number firstly, then enter PrettyMay IVR system, dial international long number according to the voice indication, input your friend's number, PrettyMay will use Skypeout to dial your wanted number. This will help you to avoid the expensive call fees.

Download PrettyMay for Skype 3.0.5.18 in Softonic

It's useful to have the weather forecasts always available in a desktop application. WeatherMate is simple but effective and lets you choose different cities for which you would like to know the weather forecasts. They can all be present at the same time in different tabs, and an icon with a short description will tell you whether the next day it will be better to have an umbrella or not.

The program uses the information provided by The Weather Channel, which has been monitoring the World's weather since 1982. In the option menu, you can choose to display a radar image of the places you have selected and to have a detailed description of the current conditions. Switch between Fahrenheit or Celsius or select the 'speak the weather' tool to have the near-term forecast read by a voice of which you can select volume, pitch and speed. The design is sufficiently clear, although no effort has been made to render the application particularly pleasant.

With WeatherMate you can monitor the weather of cities of your interest and get predictions for the coming days, up to a week. It's not possible to have information about the pollution level and the UV index though, which would have been very useful information.

Download WeatherMate 3.3.4 in Softonic

AC3Filter is a filter for the reproduction of AVI video codecs with AC3 sound tracks AC3 and MPEG2 (DVD). It provides numerous options to configure the audio using the equalizer to change settings such as voice or subwoofer gain. Compatible with DolbySurround, Dolby ProLogic and Dolby ProLogic II.

Download AC3Filter 1.50a in Softonic

You can make a certain song become unrecognizable by changing the singer’s voice to male, female, kid, girly, manly, warm…. Singer’s voice can be altered in pitch, timbre, frequency, and then audio effects can be added to produce a wide range of different voices. You can make the song’s speed faster or slower by changing tempo value, thus changing its style and genre. Now you can clone CDs to make brand new ones; you can use Cover Editor to design CD cover and CD label for you clone CD.

Your recorded music can be enhanced by setting equalizer values and applying audio enhancing effects then saving to new file. AV MP3 Player-Morpher supports 10-bar equalizer and a great deal of mixable and editable effects. You can modify or combine the following effects for better music quality: Noise Reduction, AutoLoudness, Normalize, 2 Order Equalizer, 4 Order Equalizer, Volume, Surround…

Download AV Music Morpher 4.0.66 Gold in Softonic

Command and control your Window's computer through your voice. Operate your computer using a minimum of keystrokes or mouse clicks. If you want to move the cursor down one line, simply say: Down One. Want to check your emails? Simply say: Open Email. Add commands to open any Window's document or program.

Utilizing Microsoft's Speech Application Program Interface (SAPI) and Microsoft's .NET Framework, we have developed a very small and efficient voice command and recognition application. SAPI and .NET are both required to use this software.

Download e-Speaking 3.8.16 in Softonic

Power Sound Editor is one in a long line of similar audio editing programs that gives you everything you need to edit, cut and splice your music but nothing particularly original.

The program is mainly useful for those that need to add sound effects or special effects to music and sounds. It's also useful for equalising sounds although not a great deal more than that. The good aspect is that it's a very GUI based program - i.e. it presents everything in graphical form usually via icons. These graphics represent the various actions you might wish to carry out such as ripping tracks, equalising sounds and cutting tracks. For novices, the cutting and editing is particularly easy as it allows you to do everything in visual form. In terms of editing, this means Delete, Cut, Copy, Paste, Paste From File, Mix, Mix From File and apply different effects i.e. Amplify, Delay, Equalizer, Fade, Flanger, Invert, Normalize, Reverse, MultiTapDelay, Silence, Stretch, Vibrato, Echo and Chorus.

This is hardly the most original music editor you'll ever use but it will have some limited appeal for beginners.

Download Power Sound Editor 5.96 in Softonic

Mapping your photos doesn't require a digital camera with built-in GPS thanks to RoboGEO. The program offers a "software only" solution for geocoding photos with latitude and longitude information. It provides the same functionality as a GPS camera, but without the bulk, expense, inconvenience, and hassle of wiring the two together.

Write to the EXIF headers

Write the latitude, longitude, altitude and photo direction to the image's EXIF headers to permanently embed the location data within the actual image. The writing is lossless, so there's no loss of image quality. You can also read and write IPTC data. It's lossless too.

Stamp the images

Stamp the local time, UTC offset, latitude, longitude, altitude, photo direction and datum at the bottom of each image. You can specify numerous options for the watermarks, including the latitude and longitude formats. Click on the thumbnail to the right to view an example.

Create Google Maps

Create Google Map web pages (sample) with icons that show where each picture was taken. When these icons are clicked, additional info about the picture is displayed along with the option of viewing the full size image. You can even include the GPS tracklog on the map (sample), automatically use the EXIF and IPTC information for the image title and description or merge individual EXIF/IPTC fields for whatever use you require.

Create Google Earth KML or KMZ files

Export KML or KMZ files for display in Google Earth (sample). RoboGEO's "KMZ for the Web" format creates very small KMZ files with embedded images that you can share with others by e-mail. Like with Google Maps, you can make full use of your EXIF and IPTC information in the image titles and descriptions. Since there's no requirement for loading images, you can also use this feature as your normal GPX tracklog viewer and you probably will once you see the results.

Upload geotagged photos to Flickr

Upload your photos to Flickr, the internet's best photo-sharing service. RoboGEO creates the Flickr geotags that allow you to link your photos to various types of maps (sample) using the Flickr2Map service. The SmartSet feature can automatically categorize your Flickr photos based on the keywords. You can also merge the photo's EXIF or IPTC information directly into the titles and descriptions.

Create ESRI shapefiles

Export ESRI shapefiles for viewing in programs such as ArcView. You can export point shapefiles that correspond to the geocoded photos, line shapefiles that represent the GPS tracklog, or both. RoboGEO can automatically create a custom URL attribute for each photo. These allow you to share shapefiles without also having to distribute the photos.

Export AutoCAD DXF Files

Export DXF files for most popular vector based drawing programs such as AutoCAD and IntelliCAD. The DXF files are AutoCAD 2000 format and contain clickable entities that allow you to easily view the photos. You can even include a GPS tracklog and represent it as a lightweight polyline on the drawing. The images can be located either on the local computer or on a web server. The latter allows you to easily share DWG files with others.

Associate dictation with each photo

Using any modern digital voice recorder, associate audio files with the photos. Simply record the dictation after taking each photo and the program will automatically equate the two. This functionality is independent of the program's geocoding capabilities, but you can still include the audio files in the Google Maps or Google Earth output if your choose.

Export GPX files

Export GPX files for use in other 3rd party GPS utility programs. The photo locations can be exported as either a list of waypoints or as the basis for a route. You can also include the GPS Tracklog. The program writes the image file path to the waypoint's comment field, which allows for easy viewing.

Download RoboGEO 5.4 in Softonic

AV Voice Changer Software modifies the sound, tone and the intensity of your voice until it is virtually unrecognizable from your own. It can vary from the high pitched tone of a child to the deathly tones of Darth Vader. Between both tones, there are a multitude of variants with which to amuse yourself and your friends on the telephone, online games, Messenger, etc.

The program has several predefined voices of politicians and actors who you can parody including George Bush, Brad Pitt or Samuel L. Jackson. Also the preferences of the sounds can be tweaked until they resemble the voice and profile of other famous people.

The program also incorporates a voice comparison tool that allows you to analyse the sound waves of various voices. You can also add a ton of special effects and manually alter the pitch and sound of your voice until it sounds exactly how you want it.

AV Voice Changer Software is great fun although it's not really useful for anything that playing practical jokes or morphing someones voice to protect their identity.

Download AV Voice Changer Software 6.0.27 Diamond in Softonic

This powerful app has the ability to record and change your voice, either for fun or to use for music production purposes. The program also includes a built-in phone recorder, plus a high-quality MP3 recorder.

These are the program's top features:

Change your voice from the microphone

Does "voice masquerading" sound exciting to you? Adjust the Pitch and Timbre table to change your voice pitch and voice timbre to the desired level. You can also choose among the preset "nickvoices" to sound like a man, woman, baby, etc. Ideal for voice chat and online gaming.

Change singer's voice in songs and narrations

Get bored of listening to the same old singers? Looking for something fresh? AV Voice Changer Software helps you liven up your CD collection by changing the voice of the songs in any way you wish.

Record and edit your own voice

Use the built-in voice recorder as a phone, MP3, and digital recorder. You can save sound files then morph them and add effects. Thanks to the huge libraries of preset "nickvoices", effects and settings, this can be accomplished in next to no time.

Download Voice Changer Software Basic 6.0.27 in Softonic

The VoIP protocol has caused a total revolution in the way people communicate on the Internet, and Skype is undoubtedly one of the most widely used VoIP clients you can find.

With Skype you can not only have voice chats on your computer – just like telephone, only for free – but also make real phone calls at much lower rates, using the so called SkypeOut service and paying with Skype credit. Besides voice chats, Skype also includes the standard IM functionalities (written conversations, emoticons, user avatars and so on) and also lets you have video conferences.

These video calls are precisely the main focus on Skype's latest beta version. The program's interface has been completely redesigned with video conferences on mind. This means it's been made wider (full screen, really) so that video fits in perfectly with your written chat, your contact list and a toolbar to manage conversation. Honestly, I'm not sure this is a big improvement; my guess is that most people still use Skype only for voice calls and will find the new interface too obtrusive.

The sound quality during our testing was perfect: loud and clear. Unfortunately we can't say the same from the video image quality. The fact that it was displayed at quite a big size made it look too pixelated. There was though one nice detail, and that's the ability to see your own video image built-in on your contact's video. Also, though this is still a beta version, I must say I didn't have any problems while testing it.

Other improvements in this beta are, among others, a call quality feedback indicator, the ability to turn alerts off, the possibility to group contacts and a new feature called Video in mood, which lets you embed online videos from Metacafe and Dailymotion in your status message.

Skype 4.0 Beta features a complete interface overhaul that now focuses more on video chats, and also adds some handy improvements to the way you communicate online.

Download Skype 4.0.0.145 Beta 1 in Softonic