Have you ever seen those movie computers that could be controlled with single command
lines? Now you can make those fictional images come true with Ubiquity.

Ubiquity is an awesome Firefox add-on that opens a semi-transparent bar on top of your
screen every time you press its associated keyboard shortcut. From there you can run a
wide array of commands, from searching a selected text fragment in Wikipedia to checking
the weather on any city in the world.

The good thing about Ubiquity is that besides supporting quite a good amount of built-in
commands perfectly integrated with the browser, it also allows you to create new ones.
The command creation process though may be a little too difficult for non-techie users, as
it involves coding.

Ubiquity surprised us for its quick response, smart suggestions and nice interface. Taking
into account that this is only a prototype version, things can only get better.

Ubiquity lets you control a wide selection of commands and web tools with just a
single text of line.

Download Ubiquity 0.1.1 in Softonic

Wikipedia has to be one of the most widely checked resources on the internet but what happens if you don't have a connection to the net?

WikiTaxi is a useful little tool that allows you to do exactly that - download Wikipedia to your hard drive and consult it without even having to access the Internet. However there is a catch - you need a hell of a lot of spare drive space. Because Wikipedia is constantly growing, WikiTaxi uses compression to make sure that the database fits on an 8 GB memory stick - still pretty impressive.

On the plus side, Wikitaxi requires no installation. Just extract the WikiTaxi archive to any folder, and it's ready to go. The folder can be on a fixed hard drive, or a portable device like memory stick or flash card. WikiTaxi does also modify a small options *.ini file which it places right next to its own executable so it does modify your PC a little.

WikiTaxi is a brilliant innovation that makes reading Wikipedia without an internet connection a reality but it does require a lot of free disk space.

Download WikiTaxi 1.0.3 in Softonic

Wikipedia must surely be on of the greatest innovations on the internet since the advent of Google and YouTube in my opinion.

The secret of it's success was to harness the power of user general knowledge via an extremely easy to use and read interface - a wiki. MediaWiki is a small package which contains everything you need to create your own wiki on any subject you choose. MediaWiki is already being used by several other projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation including the MediaWiki developer site.

MediaWiki is basically a free server-based software which is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). If you're intent on creating a big or popular wiki don't worry - it's designed to be run on a large server farm for a website that gets millions of hits per day. MediaWiki uses PHP to process and display data stored in its MySQL database. However, it requires no SQL database knowledge on your part and pages use MediaWiki's wikitext format, so that users without knowledge of XHTML or CSS can edit them easily.

MediaWiki contains everything you need to get up and running with your own no matter how big or small your project.

Download MediaWiki 1.13.0 RC1 in Softonic

Cooliris Previews improves the way you browse through web search results by providing you with a visual preview of any link.

This means that you don't have to leave the webpage you're currently browsing or click back and forth a list of Internet addresses. Simply hover your mouse over the link and the webpage it refers to will open on a new window right on top of the Firefox browser.

This window is fully functional, that is, you can actually browse its content with your mouse just like you'd do in any regular tab. This functionality also applies to images, which makes browsing through Google Images search results much easier. What's more, you can customize the window's behavior and appearance through the extension's options menu.

The extension includes some other extra tools with which you can share links by email or save them in a temporary bookmarking system called "the stash". I personally found the latter to be a great idea, but not very well implemented.

Cooliris Previews makes web browsing faster, easier and more comfortable, especially when it comes to check search results one by one.

Download Cooliris Previews Extension 2.6.4 in Softonic

Firefox has a built-in search bar on the top right corner that makes web search quite easy, but you can make it even faster with Peers.

This Firefox extension provides real time results for any keywords you enter in that search field, so that you can directly open the webpage you're looking for without having to load Google (or whatever other search engine you're using) web results first. As soon as you type in the keywords, Peers will display a drop-down menu with the first results on the search engine, together with some search suggestions and other alternative search engines you may use.

The extension includes a quite complete configuration menu where you can select which search engines you want to use and how many search results you want to display, among other options. Apparently you can install additional search engines from the extension's settings as well, but this option didn’t work for me.

In all, Peers is a great extension to speed your web searches up, though it may need some polishing to fix some minor bugs.

Download Peers 0.5.6 in Softonic

He may be about 87 years old now but Indiana Jones still knows how to bust in a move in his quest for archaeological glory.

In his latest adventure our intrepid hero must recover a precious crystal skull. This official wallpaper of the movie proves that Harrison Ford has still got it, and looking at him standing ready for action in his classic get-up you wouldn't realize it's been more than 20 years since his last outing.

This hand-drawn image is classic Indy, and with the official logo of the film stamped on the picture you'll be the envy of all your friends. This 1024x768 pixel version is of good quality and the only thing I wasn't really keen on was the way he's been cut out and stuck onto the background looks a little crude.

Nevertheless, this is still a must-have download for all Indy fans.

Download Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Wallpaper in Softonic

OxygenOffice Professional is an office suite completely based on the famous open source package OpenOffice, but with more templates, cliparts, samples and fonts. All six applications included in OpenOffice are present, but if you click on File, New, Templates and Documents, you’ll find ten categories to choose from with dozens of pre-formatted documents, so you can save time and have more eye-catching works in minutes.

The categories go from Business Correspondence to Presentation and Education. In each one you can find templates for different type of files, like spreadsheet, presentation, andwriting documents.

Although it’s appreciable the effort of providing more materials to work with, OxygenOffice doesn’t add that much to OpenOffice. Having aimed to be more graphically efficient, the program could have improved the general GUI of the Open Office application. In this case it would have been a real plus and people would have had more reason to use it.

OxygenOffice offers many templates and cliparts for you to be more creative while creating personal or professional documents. It would have been nice if the program had improved the GUI also to differentiate the package from OpenOffice though.

Download OxygenOffice Professional 2.4 in Softonic

Being a massive football fan, I'm really looking forward to the forthcoming Euro 2008 Championships, which take place in Austria and Switzerland in June.

The tournament looks set to be a real cracker and what better way to prepare for the footy-fest than by downloading the official wallpaper of the championships? Its design is stylish yet conservative. It's basically a blue background with a couple of large but subtle icons on it. The Euro 2008 logo is displayed in the upper right-hand corner of the picture and there's an ad for the official website on the left of the screen.

It makes for a good background, as there's not too much going on and few colors used, meaning that your desktop items are still clearly visible. I guess the only thing that lets it down for me is the fact that there is no football imagery on it. Perhaps it would've been nice to see a photo of one of the stars of the tournament on there.

Nevertheless, if you're getting excited about the forthcoming tournament I'm sure you'll like this one.

Download UEFA Euro 2008 Wallpaper in Softonic

This powerful application
Might lead you into an ardent temptation
To spend hours and hours
Writing joyful poems, inspired, perhaps, by summer flowers.

The interface is well-designed, easy-to-use, pleasant and clear
And you have many powerful tools, to help turn you into the poet of the year
It gives you phrases, proper nouns and common rhymes for the words you need
And famous quotes that help you finish your poem with speed.

How interesting is the Hyperbolic Thesaurus, which is a kind of semantic chart
It can help you to discover deep connections between the feelings in your heart
Online dictionaries, thesaurus suggestions and Wikipedia files are just a click away
But one thing I feel I have to say: not all the rhymes suggested are phonetically ok.

Whether you are a poet, a song writer or you just want to have some fun
Try this useful application and give the poet within, freedom to run.

Download VersePerfect 2.0 in Softonic

I'm not going to get into my political views on this site, and not being American I'm not even eligible to vote for him. However, from what I've seen of the guy, Barack Obama seems like a decent chap.

If you're a fan of the junior US Senator then this wallpaper will help you get behind his campaign to be the Democratic candidate at the forthcoming US elections. It's a pretty formal background so don't expect anything raunchy.

Nevertheless, it's very smart and is divided into two halves - one with his campaign logo and the other with a picture of the politician looking all dapper. The image quality is good and the resolution is high enough for it to be displayed full screen at 800x600.

If you want to show your political colours on your desktop and are a fan of Obama then this wallpaper provides the perfect way to reveal which way you're swinging.

Download Barack Obama Wallpaper in Softonic

Everyone's wondering who will be the person to succeed George Bush as the next US President. If Senator John McCain ends up replacing Mr Popular he will become the oldest leader of the country ever.

His official wallpaper is typically conservative, featuring a shot of the 72-year old looking all mean and moody (there is a slight whiff of a smile, actually). The whole affair is in black and white with a picture of big John super-imposed over the US flag. The image also sports his campaign logo, thrown in for good measure.

It's not the most imaginative wallpaper I've ever seen and I reckon if you're seen with this as your background you're going to look pretty boring.

Nevertheless if you're going with McCain for 2008 then it's one of the best wallpapers you'll find on him.

Download John McCain Wallpaper in Softonic

Urban Terror brings a very welcome dose of 'realism' to the Quake 3 engine. Taking place in realistic, urban settings, the mod pits SWAT or marines against terrorists in a blur of hi-octane cordite-reeking action.

Featuring actual weapons (with recoil!) and more realistic environments, Urban Terror combines the best of Quake 3 Arena with what was, for me, a much more enjoyable setting. The speed of play is impressively fast and the graphics held up fairly well. The quality of the sound effects leaves something to be desired (every shot sounds exactly like the last, never mind who fired it) but I found that the music added a welcome theatricality to events.

The download includes a number of default maps including Abbey, which is the one you can see in our screenshots. On this particular map, newcomers and rusty oldies alike can try out their skills by adding bots to the game for a sort of single player mode. It's also worth noting that the game no longer requires Quake 3 Arena to be installed (see the requirements section below for details).

Urban Terror is one of the best Quake 3 Arena mods available - highly recommended.

Download Urban Terror Quake 3 Mod 4.1 in Softonic

Trillian is an exciting and innovative Messenger application ideal for those who are connected to multiple IM networks and like to customize their programs.

The installation process is a bit lengthy, but once set up, Trillian loads quickly. A set-up wizard guides you through the installation process, like choosing your picture, typing an alias and selecting the different networks you will connect to. One of the most versatile IM clients out there, Trillian allows you to connect to Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, ICQ, AIM and mIRC. To manage your status on each different network you have little round icons at the bottom of the messenger. You can set different states of availability for different accounts. Your IM chats are made secure so you don’t have to worry about anybody eavesdropping on your conversations.

Like most IM clients out there, Trillian serves up videoconferencing, but it uses the QuickTime player to handle your videos. If you and your buddies have webcams, it’s a good way of communicating with each other. The time travel function allows you to replay parts of your webcam chats. Trillian separates contact lists according to the different IM networks you are connected to. You can also choose to create different identities for each of your IM services.

The program has server-less IM to connect with other people in your office or home and send quick messages. The “Instant Lookup” feature is really handy and something we hope to see more of in all IM clients. Right-click on any word in your chats to look up for its definition on the web or Wikipedia.

Trillian is part of the VoIP revolution and lets you make international calls to other VoIP services like AIM, MSN and Yahoo but you won’t be able to make PC-to-phone calls. You can send away messages and SMS to your friends and join a chat room in a click. The “global reconnect” function is useful to reload your connection settings on all of your networks. The “contact message history” function is extremely useful to catch up on what you said to your buddies.

One of the big strengths of Trillian is the wealth of customization tools on hand. You can personalize the interface, change the emoticons and even add new sound packs. With the “Biography” section you can even edit AIM profiles in html. We weren’t too impressed with the default selection of skins and other plug-ins and were furthermore disappointed to learn that you have go to the Trillian site to download new ones. However, there’s a large selection of extra customization tools available online and they’re sorted by popularity for easy browsing.

Versatility and customization are Trillian’s defining aspects. Packed with recent innovations such as videoconferencing and VoIP, and original add-ons like “Instant Lookup” or “global reconnect”, Trillian is a great choice for those of you who want to nest all your IM services into one solid application.

Download Trillian 3.1.9.0 in Softonic

Quero Toolbar is an address bar replacement with an integrated ad blocker for IE making your daily work on the Web more efficient. Choose from a number of predefined profiles each containing over a dozen of useful search engines and online services.

The entries are grouped by category and include such famous sites as Google, MSN Search, Wikipedia or Amazon. New profiles will be added in the future. If your favorite site is missing, let's make a suggestion.

Quero Toolbar will help you to find the information you are looking for once you have arrived at a promising Web page. You can use highlighting to instantly recognize the search term occurencies of your last query or alternativley click on the magnifying glass icon to start your page-wide search.

Download Quero Toolbar 4.0.10 in Softonic

MakaGiga was originally created as an RSS reader but this open source has grown so much that it now includes a whole lot more. The latest version includes everything from a tasks manager, notebook, photo viewer and photo editor to search engine tools, backup tool and widget creator.

However, in the early days it was simply an RSS reader and that's what it still performs best. The reader is very easy to use mainly thanks to the intuitive and well organised interface. Just add the RSS feeds to the favorites folder and the program does the rest including previews of posts and pictures in blog posts. The photo viewer is not particularly sophisticated and the backup function is very limited. However, the widget creator is an interesting innovation although I found it crashed when trying to save them on more than one occasion.

As far as RSS readers go, this program should have stuck to that because it does it well although you can take or leave the other little goodies.

Download MakaGiga 1.9.2 Beta in Softonic

I've always been a big fan of post-impressionist painting, and aside from Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin is one of the best exponants of the style, in my humble opinion. His unique way of using colour is something that's always amazed me. This screensaver provides an ideal way to pay homage to the great man, and includes a selection of some of his best work.

Among the inclusions are 'The Swineherd', 'Tahitian Women on the Beach', and 'The Yellow Christ', all of which are represented in the form of high quality, high resolution images. The package delivers a very generous 35 paintings and you have the option to apply a soundtrack to them.

Unfortunately there aren't many options for customising the screensaver, but nevertheless this is an essential download for fans of Gauguin.

Download Gauguin Screensaver 1.0 in Softonic

Googlepedia is a nice Firefox add-on for those who always need to know more about everything. Every time you perform a Google search it will display Wikipedia articles related to the keywords you entered.

The articles are shown along a column on the right side of the web browser. This can sometimes break Google's layout, but unfortunately you can't customize its width. There's a link to optionally shrink or expand the results so that you can read the article in a more comfortable way.

On the downside, displayed articles can sometimes be a bit redundant, as Wikipedia itself is often among the first places in Google's results. In any case it's an easy way to obtain more information about a given topic without having to type in anything.

Download Googlepedia Extension 0.4.3 in Softonic

One of the most eye-catching features in Vista is its all-new Start menu with an embedded search function, which enables you to quickly find and open programs or files. Start++ goes a little beyond and takes advantage of this functionality, creating new useful features that are seamlessly integrated into Vista's Start menu.

I must say I had some stability issues when testing this app, but nothing that could be easily solved by restarting it. Besides the included gadgets and startlets, you can download more from the author's website, although it's not clear how to install them.

In any case, it's a nice idea that can save you time and lots of clicks. It only needs a bit more polishing.

Download Start++ 0.7.5 in Softonic

This application allows you to make online searches from any Windows application. Simply select the word or text string you want to use and launch your favorite Internet search engine with a customizable hotkey. You can select which search engine to use, including not only the most popular ones such as Google and Yahoo! but also online dictionaries and the Wikipedia, to name a few of the available resources. Transfz features other functions like a powerful clipboard holder and manager, quick extensions to modify texts and support for basic statistics.

Lean and Feature Filled

Quickly launch a lookup in any online search engine or dictionary through the Global Menu. Searches can be performed from all applications - you are no longer bound to the browser.

Allowing you to work faster

Basic statistics allows you to keep a track of how much faster you work when using Transfz. workload.

Extendable

Use Extensions to do any type of text or code manipulation, a number of extensions are already available in the default Transfz installation.

Download Transfz 1.11 Beta in Softonic

As Wikipedia becomes an increasingly popular reference tool, this program saves you time and trouble in looking up facts and figures.

If you regularly read articles from WikiPedia, WikiReader is just the ticket for you. WikiReader allows you to open WikiPedia articles from any Windows application. Just select the name of the relevant article using the mouse or keyboard, press the corresponding key combination and the text of the article is opened in a small window.

The icon of the program is easily located in the taskbar so you can click it at any moment. It is possible to manually open a specific article in the window of the program just by entering its name in the input field

Download WikiReader 1.2 in Softonic