Free Download A Day

Lots of systems now ship with a webcam as standard equipment. It's pretty handy to be able to video conference from the convenience of your desktop. For that matter, there are lots of uses for that technology. Unfortunately, if you're using more than one of them at a time, you may be out of luck as far as your camera is concerned.

ManyCam lets you use your webcam with multiple applications at the same time. Whether you're chatting or streaming live, your single camera handles it all. In addition, ManyCam includes several fun features you can use, including adding text, including local date and time, to your video feed, and background effects. It's almost like having your own green screen backgrounds, but without all that tedious painting.

ManyCam is a free download. It's available for Windows (requires Win2k or later) and Mac (OS X 10.5+, Intel machines only).

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Back when the Internet was young and dinosaurs roamed the earth, Usenet was the place to be. Blogs and Twitter didn't exist yet, but you could carry on threaded conversations through newsgroup posts. File sharing apps like LimeWire weren't around, but you could still share executable files and media through binary newsgroups. Well, guess what? Usenet still exists out there, and folks still use it.

Ozum is an all-in-one newsreader app that you can use to prowl newsgroups. Not only can you read and post messages, but it also allows you to search for and find the binary files you're looking for. Once you find them, you can preview them and download what you want. After all, it doesn't make much sense to grab a whole bunch of pieces of a multi-part file if it turns out that it really isn't what you're looking for.

Ozum is a free Windows application.

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If you run a blog or have a website, you know all about FTP—File Transfer Protocol. These three simple letters can mean several different things: the language that computers use when talking to one another about moving files around; the tool you use to do that moving; and even as a verb, in describing what you're doing, as in "I'm going to FTP those files up to the server." The use of FTP is almost as complicated as talking about it.

If you FTP from the command prompt, then you're probably already confused. Between all the PUTs and the GETs, it's a wonder anything gets done. A graphical FTP tool can be a real time saver, as well as doing wonders for your sanity.

Classic FTP is a pretty straightforward GUI FTP client. It features drag-and-drop uploads and downloads between your local machine and the server. Add default local and remote directories, and you'll save even more time, since you don't have to manually reposition yourself every time you connect.

Classic FTP is a free download. It's available for Windows (Win 2000 and later), PocketPC, and Macs running OS X (10.2+).

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If you're prowling the web looking for images, audio files, or other tasty downloadable stuff, you know that finding a page you're interested in can be a mixed blessing. Sure, there's all those files you were looking for, but it also means that you have to download them, probably one at a time. That's going to take you all afternoon.

DownThemAll is an add-on for Firefox that lets you grab all the links or all the images on a web page. Just fire it up and you get a list of links on your page. Select the links you're interested in—maybe thumbnail images, maybe MP3 files—and download those items pronto! As a smart downloader, it lets you build filters to grab just the files you're looking for. It's easy to rename them as they're downloaded as well, so you can make sense out of that pile of files you just grabbed. It can even auto-increment numbered files so that you won't have to worry about downloading file "x" only to have it overwritten by file "y". And it splits files into multiple chunks as they're downloaded, so the process all goes much faster; in addition, you can interrupt and resume your downloads with no problem.

DownThemAll is a free Firefox extension. It should run on version 3 or later of Firefox.

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If you're a web designer, or just somebody with a very particular way you want to work, then you probably use several different web browsers. Between IE, Firefox, Opera, and more, it can be a lot of work to keep them straight. And then there's the whole question of the "default" browser—you know, the one that opens up when you click on a link in an email or document. It'd sure be handy to have more than one default browser.

Browser Chooser gives you that power. Once it's installed, it then functions as your default browser. Now when you double-click on that link, instead of opening a real web browser, you get Browser Chooser, and it offers you links for each of your installed browsers. Finally you can use the tool you really want without a bunch of extra twisting and turning.

Browser Chooser is a Windows app. It's designed for Vista and Windows 7.

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There are two types of people in the world: those who break the world down into two types of people and those who don't. Okay, old joke, right? But seriously, there are a lots of ways in which people can be broken down into two different groups based on their attitudes or behaviors. Take news feeds, for example. For some folks, it's all fun and games: keeping track of the comings and goings of friends, new music and video releases, and other general recreational stuff. For others, it's strictly business: vendors to watch, competitors to track, that soft of thing. This latter group usually has a whole bunch of stuff to try to keep track of; they need a tool that's as serious about it all as they are.

BlogBridge is an industrial-strength blog and newsfeeds aggregator. It supports all popular feed formats, and lets you keep track of what you've read and what's still waiting for you. With installs on multiple machines, you can keep your life synchronized between work, home, and even on the road. It's got heavy-duty search tools that let you find what you need fast, too.

BlogBridge is a free download. It's a Java app, so it'll run on systems that have the appropriate runtime installed, including many flavors of Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

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Everybody agrees that when it comes to passwords, bigger is better. After all, one of the best ways to frustrate a brute-force attack is to increase geometrically the number of combinations of characters that are necessary. Add to this all the other safeguards that are included in any robust password protection scheme—upper- and lower case alphabetic characters, numbers, and a few punctuation marks, no dictionary words, etc.—and you've gone a long way toward keeping your accounts secure. The flip side of that, of course, is the impossibility of remembering dozens of unique 40-character passwords for all of your financial- and other accounts.

LastPass is an online password manager. All you need to remember is your password to get into LastPass, and everything else can be as complicated—and safe—as you want. Along with passwords, it also remembers all that other fill-in-the-blank stuff you need to speed-up the process of entering your information into web forms: name, address, credit card numbers, the whole thing.

It's available as a desktop app for Windows, or as a plugin for your Windows, Mac, or Linux web browser.

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Time is money. When you stop and think about it, that probably makes sense. If it takes you an hour to perform a task on a good day, and two hours to finish the same job on a less-good day, then that doubling of time has got to increase your cost. You pay extra for overnight service, figuring that the extra money is worth the time saved. You may also pay extra for a high-powered broadband connection for your computer. Are you getting your money's worth?

DownTester is a tool that can help you figure out just how fast your connection is. Many ISPs have a download speed test for you to use in seeing just how quick your connection is. Find the URL for this page, enter it into DownTester, and get started. You can also use files from other locations to check your your download speed. After about 20 seconds of activity, this tool will spit out a number that fairly accurately describes the speed of your connection.

Along with Internet speed, you can use this tool to check the speed of your network as well. Point to a file on another node on your network and see how fast it transfers from that machine to yours.

DownTester is a free Windows application. It runs under any system from Win98 up through Vista, and beyond.

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Everybody's got an email client they swear by. Of course, there are other times where they've got a client they swear at. If you fall into that latter category, maybe you're in the market for a new mail program. This might be the time to check out Sylpheed.

Sylpheed uses a standard three-pane design, with a folder hierarchy on the left, and messages and individual message preview on the right. A small footprint means that system resources aren't taxed by this app. With powerful search and filter capabilities, you'll always be able to find just the message you're looking for. You can even save your results into a search folder, so you won't have to execute your query a second time. Smart junk mail control means that the more junk you receive, the less you'll actually see, as its filters improve with use.

Sylpheed is a free application. It runs on Windows (Win2k and later), Linux and other *NIX platforms, and Mac OS X (sorry, Intel processors only).

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If you run more than one blog, there's a good chance that they're on different platforms. Trying to keep track of "who's on first" when you're jumping back and forth between WordPress, Blogger, Moveable Type, and others, can make you crazy. What you need is a uniform way to write your posts so you can focus on their content, instead of getting bogged down with the mechanics of making it all work. You need a Swiss Army knife for your blog posts.

Qumana Blog Editor may give you a leg up on this. Using a single interface, you'll never have to remember what the difference is between how you post an image to WordPress as opposed to Blogger. Just type into the editor, and it handles all the heavy lifting. You can even post while you're offline—save your posts to your hard drive and upload them the next time you go online.

Qumana Blog Editor is available for Windows (SP and Vista), Mac (OS X Tiger and Leopard), as well as Linux.

Download Qumana Blog Editor