Munnin: Desktop Client for Ebay

Munnin is a desktop client for all eBay platforms, including USA, Canada, UK, Australia, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It keeps itself fully synced with the online database of Ebay.

It allows you to watch desired items using drag-and-drop, manage your search favorites and repeat them at the touch of a button, calculate shipping costs using the integrated shipping costs calculator, plus many more features.For example,’Hot Items’ searches for items with more than 25 bids.

Its available in several versions, Light, Advanced, Professional and Business, Light being free, but this version has some restrictions when compared to the paid version of course!

It’s worth checking out for anyone who takes their ebaying really seriously or who makes a living out of buying and selling on it! For the rest of us its not really necessary.

Check out the site here for more detailed info.

PhotoRec:Recover deleted files

PhotoRec is free software for recovering deleted files from your computer. Yes, even if you’ve emptied your recycle bin! This works because the files still exist on your computer,it’s just that all links to them are gone. It can recover lost files including video,documents and archives. It works with hard disks and removable media such as digital camera memory cards. It can even recover data from scratched cds in some cases! It recognizes more than 80 file types, the whole list is available here.

I know from experience that there’s nothing more annoying than losing photos from a digital camera memory card or from your hard drive, because they’re pretty much irreplacable! So if something like that happens to you its well worth checking this out! It’s freeware, so you have nothin’ to lose (and hopefully your files to gain), by going here for more info and the download!

YamiPod: Yet another iPod manager

YamiPod is a freeware standalone iPod manager which allows you to manage the content of your iPod without the need to have iTunes installed. It needs no installation and can be run directly from your iPod. So,for example, it doesn’t matter if it is not your computer where you want to run it, you still can!

It comes with many useful features such as iPod ‘notes’ editing features, exporting your song list to HTML, management for duplicate files, the ability to locate lost music files, AAC file support and of course PC to iPod synchronization! It can automatically download the latest version and includes a built in music player.

This is a worthwhile alternative to the official iPod client which many people think is bloated and overrated. Personally i think iPods are overrated anyway as mp3 players existed long before they claimed the market, but if you have an iPod, this alternative is definitely worth checking out!

It’s freeware and you can get more info and download it from here.

Pandora: Internet Radio to suit your tastes!

Pandora is an internet radio station site, but with a twist! It knows what you might like, before you’ve even heard it! You simply type in the name of a song or artist, and it generates a playlist of similiar sounding songs and artists! It bases its findings on musical similiarity, not popularity, only the music counts!

It’s part of the ‘Music Genome Project’ an attempt to group thousands of songs by musical similarity. Everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It’s not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it’s about what each individual song sounds like. You can even give a “Thumbs Up”, which makes that song and songs that sound like that song play more often or “Thumbs Down” bans that song from that station, and makes songs that sound like that song play less often.

It’s a great way to discover new music based on what you already know you like. I like how they even provide links to more info on each band or artist, so if you find something you like you can easily learn more info!

Start listening right now by going here!

Money Manager Ex: Find out why you’re broke!

Money Manager Ex is a free open-source money managing and budgeting program.
Usually you gotta pay for decent personal finance software, so if you’re tryin’ to manage your money, you’ll appreciate that this ones free.

But how good is it? Pretty good! - You can manage multiple accounts and checking, savings, credit card, or loan accounts. You can even create your own categories and easily organise where your money goes into these. You can also track your bills and deposits and be reminded of upcoming bills and deposits so you won’t forget and lose track of them.You can import files from excel, microsoft money, and quicken, and also export to excel format. It also supports printing with inbuilt print preview.

Other useful features include viewing spending by category over a date range or by single category over time and viewing income versus expenses and how you’re doing on a budget.

Overall this is definitely worth checking out for anyone trying to budget and manage their finances better, its even free, which helps!

You can get more info and download it by clicking the homepage here.

Democracy Player: Internet TV Platform

Despite the serious sounding name, Democracy Player is actually a very good video player. But it’s so much more too. Aside from the fact it claims to play virtually all video formats (Quicktime, WMV, MPEG, AVI, XVID, and more), you can also search for videos from inside it!

Your chosen video or videos then downloads to your computer where they are kept for a default of 5 days before being deleted, but you can choose to save them forever too. It even allows you to search YouTube, Yahoo Video, Google Video, and more, right from inside it!

I was a little confused by the interface at first until i realised how simple it was, the “My Collection” link to the left is everything you downloaded, “New Videos” is downloaded videos you haven’t watched yet, and “Downloading” is videos currently being downloaded. So it’s all pretty easy to use!

It has lots of channels built in and feeds from video sites, so you’ll never be lost for something to watch!

I have a feeling we’ll be hearing a lot more about this cool program! You can download it for free here.

EssentialPIM: Personal Information Manager

EssentialPIM is another PIM program (Personal Information Manager in case you were confused!) These things are very useful for not having to remember 100 different things such as birthdays, meetings, appointments, to-do lists etc. You can easily make a note of something you have to do in two months time that you might otherwise forget by then. It has color coded day, week, and month schedules.

You can import (and export) from a whole bunch of other software such as Outlook, Outlook Express, and Google Calendar. You can even sync it with Windows Mobile Pocket PC and Smartphone devices, if your lucky enough to have one of those!

It’s pretty detailed and feature packed with an easy to follow layout and some useful features such as to-do list, contacts manager etc. I’d recommend checking it out to anyone who wants to be more productive or simply has a bad memory!

There’s a free version and a paid version. What’s the difference? Click here to find out or go to the main homepage here for more info.

Naomi: Free Parental Internet Filter

Naomi is a free Internet parental control filter to help prevent your kids from viewing inappropriate material while online.

Naomi doesn’t rely on a simple list of banned sites like a lot of similiar programs do. Instead it examines in real time, all the data being transmitted and received through the Internet application, such as web browsers and chat programs. Monitoring is not limited to web sites, but covers the whole local Internet traffic. It also allows blocking of file-sharing applications and the whole thing can be password-protected. It’s also got some useful plug ins that may be of use, such as one to block Myspace access and one to hide the tray icon.

All in all its worth checking out if you’ve been looking for a free way of protecting your kids when they’re online! You can get more info and the free download from here.

aMSN: Don’t shoot the messenger!

This is a free open-source MSN Messenger clone called aMSN. If for any reason you want to use MSN messenger but without using the official MSN messenger client, then maybe its time to check this out.

It does just about everything the official MSN messenger program does, plus some more, such as being able to sign into more than one account at a time. It supports display pictures, custom emoticons, file transfer, even webcam support.

When you read the list of features, you’ll see its virtually identical to the official client in every way, but one potentially useful thing is that you can download plug-ins from the site, as well as this, its also skinnable.

You can check out all the features in full and download it by going here.

Hott Notes: Make a note of it!

Sticky note paper is a popular way of taking down reminders, shopping lists, to-do lists, etc. Some people even ‘borrow’ some from work and use them for posting notes on the fridge freezer. The bright yellow pad enables us to quickly see a reminder note.

Hott Notes is a free tool that enables you to write and place sticky-type notes on your desktop (ok, not the actual top of your desk, but on your screen,that thing you’re looking at now). You can use these notes in the usual manner – reminders, lists and more. The notes can be displayed in various translucent colors, so that you can use one color for reminders, another for business notes and one for home-related reminders.

You can even draw or write freehand on them!

Unlike the ‘borrowed’ from work sticky note paper, Hott Notes really is free and you can get it here with more info and here’s some screenshots.