Thunderbird - Best Email Client

Still using old way to get your email inbox?
Now get your email to your computer and read it whenever you want without have to open your web browser.

Mozilla Thunderbird 2 is reloaded and more powerful than ever. It’s now even easier to organize, secure and customize your mail.

Keep Your Vital Information Organized

Thunderbird 2 features many new enhancements to help you better manage your unruly inbox, and stay informed. Thunderbird 2 scales to the most sophisticated organizational needs while making it easy to find what you need.

Advanced Folder Views

Thunderbird 2 offers a variety of ways for you to organize and display your folders, whether by favorites, recently viewed or folders containing unread messages. As always, you can also set up RSS and newsgroup folders to stay on top of news and your interests. Thunderbird 2 also allows you to maximize your message view pane by opting for a folder drop down menu instead of the traditional sidebar.

Message Tagging

Thunderbird 2 allows you to “tag” messages with descriptors such as “To Do” or “Done” or even create your own tags that are specific to your needs. Tags can be combined with saved searches and mail views to make it easier to organize email.

Message History Navigation

Thunderbird 2 offers message history navigation that allows you to click “forward” and “back” much like in your Web browser. You can now quickly toggle between messages and folder views.

Improved Search

Thunderbird 2 features a find as you type pane that speeds up searches within displayed messages. Thunderbird also offers quick search, which starts showing search results as soon as you start typing in search terms.

Saved Searches

Do you find yourself searching for the same subject or message content over and over? Thunderbird 2 saves you time by allowing you to store this search as a folder. Rerunning the search is just a matter of clicking on the saved search folder in the folder pane.

Stay Informed

Thunderbird 2 has been updated to provide more informative and relevant message alerts containing sender, subject and message text for newly arrived messages. Folders provide a pop up summarizing new messages in that folder.

Easy Access to Popular Web Mail Services

Thunderbird 2 makes it even easier to integrate and use various Web mail accounts from one inbox. Gmail and .Mac users can access their accounts in Thunderbird by simply providing their user names and passwords.

Secure and Protect Your Mail

Mozilla has bolstered Thunderbird’s acclaimed security and privacy measures to ensure that your communications and identity remain safe. It’s like having your own security guard online.

Phishing Protection

Thunderbird protects you from email scams which try to trick users into handing over personal and confidential information by indicating when a message is a potential phishing attempt. As a second line of defense, Thunderbird warns you when you click on a link which appears to be taking you to a different Web site than the one indicated by the URL in the message.

Robust Privacy

Thunderbird 2 offers improved support for user privacy and remote image protection. To ensure a user’s privacy, Thunderbird 2 automatically blocks remote images in email messages.

Cutting Out the Junk

Mozilla has updated Thunderbird’s popular junk mail folders to stay ahead of spam. Each email you receive passes through Thunderbird's leading-edge junk mail filters. Each time you mark messages as spam, Thunderbird “learns” and improves its filtering so you can spend more time reading the mail that matters. Thunderbird can also use your mail provider's spam filters to keep junk mail out of your inbox.

Open Source, More Secure

At the heart of Thunderbird is an open source development process driven by thousands of passionate, experienced developers and security experts spread all over the world. Our openness and active community of experts helps to ensure our products are more secure and updated quickly, while also enabling us to take advantage of the best third party security scanning and evaluation tools to further bolster overall security.

Automated Update

Thunderbird’s update system checks to see if you’re running the latest version, and notifies you when a security update is available. These security updates are small (usually 200KB - 700KB), giving you only what you need and making the security update quick to download and install. The automated update system provides updates for Thunderbird on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux in over 30 different languages.

Get Your Mail, Your Way

Thunderbird allows you to customize your email to suit your specific needs whether it’s how you search and find messages or listening to music right out of your inbox.

Outfit Your Inbox

Thunderbird users can increase Thunderbird’s functionality and appearance using hundreds of add-ons. A Thunderbird add-on can let you manage contacts, place voice over IP calls, listen to music, and keep track of birthdates all from your inbox. You can even change the appearance of Thunderbird to suit your tastes.

Message Templates

Thunderbird 2 allows you to easily set up message templates to save you time – especially if you have to send the same mail message repeatedly.

Add-ons Manager for Extensions and Themes

The new Add-ons Manager improves the user interface for managing extensions and themes, making it even easier for you to customize Thunderbird 2. Install, uninstall, enable and disable your add-ons in a single place.

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Firefox - The Best Web Browser

With more than 15,000 improvements, Firefox 3 is faster, safer and smarter than ever before.

Three Distinct Firefox Advantages

1. Security
Main point:
• Firefox is the safest way to use the Internet.

Supporting points:
• We start with safety – We engage security experts before we even start development so we can identify and address potential problems before a single line of code is written.
• We build Firefox to be safe – Keeping people safe online is a big reason why Firefox exists. We take security very seriously, which is why we open our development process to allow security researchers to contribute at any point and on any topic. If a critical bug is discovered, we’ll make it public so it can be fixed as soon as possible.
• We actively work to keep Firefox safe – Security doesn’t stop once the product has shipped. We’re constantly monitoring threats and releasing new Firefox updates to stay ahead of the bad guys. Because we’re open source, we have an entire community of users around the world who help us make your web browsing safer.

Other Considerations:
• It’s important to give concrete examples of potential threats rather than just mentioning the abstract concept of “security”. People can easily relate to the ideas of identity theft, stolen credit cards, viruses, spyware and phishing, so explaining how Firefox helps prevent these things is key.
• Specific Firefox security features include anti-phishing and anti-malware protection, one click site ID, protection from spyware, automatic security updates and more.
• The reality is that there are people out there who want to steal your personal information. That’s why we’re constantly refining Firefox with security updates every 6-8 weeks (and more often if a fix is needed to address a critical issue) to stay one step ahead.
• The main reason Firefox is safer is because of our open process, which allows us to identify, acknowledge and fix bugs more quickly than the competition.

2. Customization
Main point:
• When it comes to web browsing, we believe that one size doesn’t fit all.

Supporting points:
• Firefox has the most ways to customize your online experience specifically for the way you use the web.
• Add-ons (small pieces of software that augment Firefox to meet your unique needs) enhance the browser so you can be more productive, have more fun and be more creative online. For example, you can use the 3000+ Firefox add-ons to:
- communicate and stay in touch
- find the best shopping deals
- listen to music
- protect your kids from inappropriate sites
- access the latest news and weather reports
- and much more…
• There are also many different themes that let you express yourself by decorating your browser in a variety of ways.

Other considerations:
• The key challenge is getting people to think about the browser in a new way…that it’s more than just a utility. The browser isn’t just a static window to the Internet, it can be an active part of the Internet itself.
• It’s important to demonstrate the specific benefits of add-ons…the message isn’t customization, it’s why customization makes people’s Internet experiences better.
• It’s also important to remember the audience here…for consumer messaging, we want to focus on add-ons that are easy to explain and have the broadest possible appeal. In other words, this means referencing ones like eBay, FotoFox, FoxyTunes, etc rather than the more developer-centric ones.
• Using a familiar, non-technical analogy to convey a fairly technical concept is a very effective way of communicating the role add-ons can play in your web experience. For example, using add-ons is like designing your living space at work or building with blocks.

3. 100% Organic Software
Main point:
• Firefox is good for you: it stands for openness, innovation and freedom on the Internet.

Supporting points:
• We’re a public benefit, not-for-profit organization devoted to enriching people’s lives by preserving choice and innovation on the Internet (as opposed to being motivated by profits, shareholder value, usage of proprietary technology, etc.)
• We’re a global, grassroots effort – Mozilla’s products are a result of a collaboration between employees, volunteers, universities, foundations and corporate partners. Firefox was created by an international movement of hundreds of thousands of people from wildly different backgrounds, all seeking to develop the world’s best browser.
• Open source means a better browser for the 200 million regular Firefox users. We open up our process to anyone and everyone in order to encourage the innovation and development of exciting new technologies that will keep pushing the web forward and making it a better place for all.

Other considerations:
• The “100% organic software” concept sums up a fairly complex situation using a metaphor people can easily recognize. Organic stands for something that’s better for you, something trusted, something of higher quality…all key ingredients of Mozilla and Firefox.
• We need to focus less on the technical aspects of open source, which is hard for people to understand, and concentrate more on the tangible user benefits – innovation, accessibility, freedom, a better web, etc – to reach more potential users.
• A great example of the power of open source is the fact that Mozilla only has roughly 175 employees, yet is able to compete with some of the biggest companies in the world because of our amazing international community.
• Although the 100% organic concept really applies to the Mozilla organization as a whole, for our consumer messaging we need to show how this process ties back in to Firefox…the organic nature of our software development has created a healthier, higher quality browser that makes the web better for you.

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Open Office - open source replacement for Microsoft Office

OpenOffice.org, now released in its long-awaited 3.0 version, is a free, open-source replacement for Microsoft Office—and the first and only application suite that can be seriously considered to be a substitute for the massive power and flexibility of Microsoft's suite. OpenOffice.org used to look clunky and work slowly, but the 3.0 version, which I tested in its final Release Candidate version (RC4), is sleek and fast. It still retains the essential look and feel of Microsoft Office 2003 and earlier versions, instead of imitating the new ribbon interface of Office 2007, but that's a plus for many users who want as much continuity as possible when switching to a new application. OpenOffice.org doesn't include all of Office's features, but it adds some conveniences that Office can't provide, such as built-in PDF export and a single interface for opening and editing word-processing documents, HTML files, worksheets, presentations, and drawings.

For governments and corporations that don't want to be dependent on Microsoft's formats and don't want to continue paying Microsoft's prices, OpenOffice.org 3.0 is a serious contender. If you're a private individual or small business already using Microsoft's product, I doubt you'll want to switch, but if your company or agency has been buying Office for thousands of desktops, or if you work for or with a government that requires open-source formats, download OpenOffice.org and don't look back.

OpenOffice.org 3.0 has six basic components: Writer, a word processor and HTML editor; Calc, a spreadsheet; Draw, a graphics editor; Impress, a presentations program; Math, an equation editor; and Base, a database application. When evaluating the product, though, I wasn't really aware of six separate programs, because all document types open in the same window, just with slightly different menus on the top line. The only exception is the Base application, where the form and query designer has created a separate interface—you work with the actual database forms, however, in the same window that you use for the other applications.

I like the way the interface hews closely to the familiar Microsoft Office 2003 standard, and it places some features more logically, so that, for example, headers and footers are on the Insert menu instead of the View menu. I'm less impressed with the word processor's view options. These are limited to a Web view (in which the text fills the window and there's no indication of what the text will look like on a printed page) and a full-page view, complete with top and bottom margins and a quarter-inch-thick gray bar between each page. There's no equivalent of a Word option that that preserves page layout on screen but doesn't waste space or add distractions by showing top and bottom margins. Nor will you find a matching capability for a powerful and little-known feature in Word that lets you view different parts of a document in two panes of the same window.

In OpenOffice.org's spreadsheet, I missed the graphic flexibility of Excel's conditional formatting, but I managed well enough with the low-frills, 20th-century conditional-formatting features. And I liked the simple elegance of the charting—it's almost as elegant as the charting in Google Docs—but got frustrated by uninformative error messages that told me nothing more than "This function cannot be completed with the selected objects." I was also disappointed that the charting feature was a lot less clever than Excel's in figuring out which columns to use as labels and which to use as data, but the resulting problems were easy enough to fix.

Compared with earlier versions, OpenOffice.org 3.0 marks an impressive, though uneven advance in features and performance—with some features potentially far in advance of the corresponding features in Microsoft Office. For example, when you insert a graphic in a word-processing document or HTML, you can attach automated actions to specific events that are related to the graphic. Clicking on the graphic will cause some programmed action, such as typing some text or opening a new window, to be performed automatically. In the Release Candidate version I couldn't get this feature to work reliably: Some of the supplied macros and some of my own recorded macros would run correctly, while others wouldn't, and I couldn't see any pattern to the success or failure.

Overall, I found performance to be impressively fast, on a par with that of Microsoft Office but with some limitations. On a Vista system with 4GB of RAM and a fast dual-core processor, I had to wait a surprisingly long time for the charting module to update a simple chart when I changed a display option. But file loading and saving, in all parts of the application, was almost instantaneous.

One attractive feature of OpenOffice.org is that it's the only major application suite that runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux with almost exactly the same feature set on all platforms. Microsoft stripped out support for Visual Basic macros when it created Microsoft Office 2008 for the Macintosh, but OpenOffice.org now offers limited Basic support in all versions, including a shiny new Macintosh one that runs natively as an OS X application. Earlier versions of OpenOffice.org for the Mac required the user-unfriendly X11 environment. A third-party OS X port called NeoOffice is also available, but it's always a few minor versions behind.

Earlier releases of OpenOffice.org used annoyingly cramped and uninformative dialog boxes better suited to the limited screen real-estate of nineties-era computers than today's generous screens. Version 3.0 tends to use more spacious and informative dialogs, but they're still not informative enough. For example, I had to dig deep into the help file to figure out what "Register-True" means in the Paragraph Format dialog (it means that the bottom of each line of type will be aligned to an invisible page grid).

The Help system looks as if it's rich in details, but in fact, some cross-references lead nowhere. The help page about the new version's very limited support for Office-style Visual Basic for Applications programming has a promising-looking link to a page on the "Basic IDE" (Integrated Development Environment)—but when I clicked on the link, it took me to a page containing a few sentences about programming OpenOffice.org and nothing at all about the Basic IDE. No doubt some of this will be fixed in the shipping version or in future updates.

For anyone thinking of switching from Office to OpenOffice.org, the biggest question is, How well will OpenOffice.org handle your old Office documents and worksheets? The answer is, astonishingly well, even with the new Office 2007 formats—but only when the original document includes no features that OpenOffice.org doesn't support. For example, I was deeply impressed by the way OpenOffice.org retained all the complex formatting and embedded images of a newsletter that I had originally created in Word. Every page break and column break was exactly where it belonged—a feat I hadn't seen in any other Office alternative. Inserted graphics in formats like JPEG and BMP imported perfectly. But OpenOffice.org ignores any Office 2007 Smart Art or any of the scalable line-art created by Office's drawing feature.

Similarly, OpenOffice.org managed to open most—but not all—the features in my spreadsheet-killer worksheet, a prize-winning monster created by former PC Magazine technical editor Ben Gottesman. OpenOffice.org displayed the complex chart and data without a hiccup, although it choked on the complex Excel pivot table in the original, and it didn't even try to convert it into the OpenOffice.org equivalent, called DataPilot.

PowerPoint presentations opened equally well if the original files were in the Office 2003 file format. OpenOffice.org could open presentations in the Office 2007 format, but Office 2007 presentations aren't officially supported, and the Office 2007–format presentations that I imported into OpenOffice.org had defective formatting and missing data. When I exported the same 2007-format presentations from PowerPoint 2007 into the Office 2003 format, OpenOffice.org opened them perfectly.

I don't plan on switching to OpenOffice.org 3.0 anytime soon, if ever. But for the first time, I'm ready to recommend this new version as a viable alternative to Microsoft's offering. It still has rough edges, but it has an impressive feature set, a generally lucid interface, pure open-source credentials, and—in the current economic climate—the decisive advantage of being absolutely free.

By Edward Mendelson

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Audacity

About Audacity

Audacity is a free, easy-to-use audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to:

Recording

Audacity can record live audio through a microphone or mixer, or digitize recordings from cassette tapes, vinyl records, or minidiscs. With some sound cards, it can also capture streaming audio.

• Record from microphone, line input, or other sources.
• Dub over existing tracks to create multi-track recordings.
• Record up to 16 channels at once (requires multi-channel hardware).
• Level meters can monitor volume levels before, during, and after recording.

Import and Export

Import sound files, edit them, and combine them with other files or new recordings. Export your recordings in several common file formats.

• Import and export WAV, AIFF, AU, and Ogg Vorbis files.
• Import MPEG audio (including MP2 and MP3 files) with libmad.
• Export MP3s with the optional LAME encoder library.
• Create WAV or AIFF files suitable for burning to CD.
• Import and export all file formats supported by libsndfile.
• Open raw (headerless) audio files using the “Import Raw” command.
• Note: Audacity does not currently support WMA, AAC, or most other proprietary or restricted file formats.

Editing

• Easy editing with Cut, Copy, Paste, and Delete.
• Use unlimited Undo (and Redo) to go back any number of steps.
• Very fast editing of large files.
• Edit and mix an unlimited number of tracks.
• Use the Drawing tool to alter individual sample points.
• Fade the volume up or down smoothly with the Envelope tool.

Effects

• Change the pitch without altering the tempo, or vice-versa.
• Remove static, hiss, hum, or other constant background noises.
• Alter frequencies with Equalization, FFT Filter, and Bass Boost effects.
• Adjust volumes with Compressor, Amplify, and Normalize effects.
• Other built-in effects include:
  • Echo
  • Phaser
  • Wahwah
  • Reverse

Sound Quality

• Record and edit 16-bit, 24-bit, and 32-bit (floating point) samples.
• Record at up to 96 kHz.
• Sample rates and formats are converted using high-quality resampling and dithering.
• Mix tracks with different sample rates or formats, and Audacity will convert them automatically in realtime.

Plug-Ins

• Add new effects with LADSPA plug-ins.
• Audacity includes some sample plug-ins by Steve Harris.
• Load VST plug-ins for Windows and Mac, with the optional VST Enabler.
• Write new effects with the built-in Nyquist programming language.

Analysis

• Spectrogram mode for visualizing frequencies.
• “Plot Spectrum” command for detailed frequency analysis.

Free and Cross-Platform

• Licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
• Runs on Mac OS X, Windows, and GNU/Linux.

Screenshot



source: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

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