Fortunately on the OS X side, software developer metaquark has released an application by the name of AppFresh which aims to fill the gap of the need for a central application updater.

Currently, AppFresh is available as a Development Preview, so it is recommended that you back up all of your applications before using AppFresh if you intend to use the built-in update installer. If you’d rather stay on the safe side, AppFresh can still be used to check for and download updates excluding the automatic update installer process.

AppFresh also includes integration of iusethis.com. This allows AppFresh to also check for updates to applications that are not natively supported but are listed in the iusethis database. It also allows you to easily add new apps to your iusethis profile without having to search for each app beforehand.

Another interesting feature is the ability to take a “snapshot” of an application, which captures the current version of the application along with the application data and preferences. It’s basically Time Machine for your apps.

More information can be found at the AppFresh website.

PortableApps

This website offers a great selection of software that has been optimized to run from a USB drive. This is probably the premier place to find portable applications. At this point in time, PortableApps has 40 applications listed on their website. Another great thing about PortableApps is that they have their own suite that you can download which includes a fancy “PortableApps Menu” which acts more or less like a start menu for all the programs on your drive.

The Portable Freeware Collection

This resource has a large amount of software available and has over 1,000 applications available currently. You can find a lot of software here that you may not have even heard about before. Portable Freeware Collection is a great place to find great little tools to put in your “tune-up kit” when you go over to help grandma with her computer.

Pen Drive Apps

This blog links to a bunch of great portable software that has been created by others. Not all the applications on Pen Drive Apps are freeware. Here you may be able to find a portable version of a program you have paid for, which can come in handy if the developer doesn’t offer a portable version. Personally, this is probably the last place I’d go for portable applications.

Bluefish Editor (Windows/Linux/Mac)

If you’re looking for a great HTML editor, Bluefish is what to get. It is not only for editing HTML though. This application is capable of editing everything from PHP to Python and Javascript and even adds syntax highlighting.

Paint.NET (Windows only)

Good and free image editors are hard to come by, but Paint.NET is an exception. This image editor can be classified as somewhat of a Paint Shop Pro replacement as it doesn’t have as many features as Photoshop does.

FileZilla (Windows/Linux/Mac)

If there’s one essential web development tool, it’s the FTP client. Unfortunately, good free FTP clients aren’t very common. FileZilla is both free and very easy to use. The beta version is available for all platforms, whereas the stable version is only available on Windows.

Know of any other good web development freeware? Post your favorites!

You can create a private network of your own for free. If you’re friends are everywhere in the world, you can use Hamachi so it’s as if they’re right next to you on your local area network!

I think that this program’s great, but isn’t perfect yet. You can instant message on it to individuals, but you cannot have a chat room, or a lobby like in IRC. I sometimes experience problems when I use it with Vista, but it does the job on XP. These are simple updates that work on for their newer versions.

Nonetheless, this program can also be a major problem solver for some as well. Hamachi is freeware, but a paid premium version is also available.

This is a guest post by Charles Leclerc of soniccagedome.com

I recently found a great freeware defragmenter called JkDefrag which does a very good job at defragmenting. The application is very quick and extremely lightweight, so it has minimal impact on resources. If you’ve downloaded the program, you will notice that there is more than one “version” of JkDefrag. These versions include the GUI version (most people will use this), command line version, and two screensaver programs.

The GUI version is what most people will use. You can also schedule it to defragment by using the Windows Task Scheduler. The command line version is pretty obvious. It allows you to defragment using command line. The screensaver programs allow you to set your Windows screensaver to the JkDefrag screensaver program so your computer will be defragmented every time your screensaver initiates.

Let me know if you know of any other good freeware defragmenters.

After you’ve downloaded and installed FxVisor, launch it and you will immediately be given the choice of removing any arrow overlay from shortcuts or replacing the overlay with a different style which isn’t as much of an eye sore.

If you have removed the arrow overlay, FxVisor will also allow you to re-enable the default overlay. All in all, FxVisor is a great little application which will be of much help to any users who use desktop shortcuts to launch their applications, though I still recommend using differents methods for application launching.

Update
Apparently this will only work on Windows Vista. For those of you using Windows XP, the TweakXP Tweaking Utility will allow you to remove the arrow overlays, supposedly.

After you’ve installed MP3Gain, open it. Click the Add Folder button and point it to the folder which contains all your music. MP3Gain will then proceed to scan for all your music.

Once it’s finished scanning all your music, press the Track Analysis button. MP3Gain will now analyze the volume levels of each track. Any tracks that are highlighted in red have a volume level that is too high and may cause distortion when you try to use the equalizer on your MP3 player.

After that’s done, click on Track Gain. The DB of all your songs will be altered to the value in the “Normal Volume” field. Any changes made in MP3Gain can be reversed. To do this, select Undo Gain changes from the “Modify Gain” menu.

That’s all there is to it! Now all your tracks will have a consistent volume level.

Thanks to Binary Fortress Software, syncing your MP3 player with iTunes is now possible with iTunes Sync. This application is only available for Windows. If you’re a Mac OS X user, check out SyncTunes.

To date, iTunes Sync will work with most players by Cowon, Creative Labs, Dell, iRiver, JVC, Samsung, and Sandisk. A full list of known working MP3 players can be found here. Sorry Zune owners. The developer says it will be next to impossible to add support for the Zune.

Launchy

Launchy is my personal favorite application launcher out of the bunch. The basic idea behind Launchy is to use your keyboard to access your applications instead of your mouse. Using Launchy is as easy as typing the first few letters of the application you’d like to launch and pressing Enter. Launchy is not just limited to applications either. It is capable of finding files and even performing search queries on Google for you.

RocketDock

RocketDock is an application launcher which is very reminiscent of the dock in Mac OS X. Instead of using keyboard access, RocketDock allows you to launch applications in just a single click and in a visually appealing manner at that. Surprisingly, you can also choose to minimize your programs to RocketDock, eliminating the need to manage your open applications using the Windows taskbar.

There are many other application launchers available for Windows besides the two I’ve mentioned. A couple others I’d recommend are Enso Launcher($19.95) and ObjectDock(free).

Are you already using an application launcher? If so, which one are you using and why?

I quickly find that I am not the only one with this problem. The problem happens if you have a large amount of fonts installed on Windows. After hours of digging through comments on blogs of people having the same problem with no solution, I decided to try my hand at fixing it myself. Eventually I found a way to fix the issue, so here’s how to do it.

First, navigate to the following directory. You should see a file named Fonts.plist, though it may not exist in every case.

• C:\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%\Local Settings\Application Data\Apple Computer\Safari (Windows XP)
• C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Apple Computer\Safari (Windows Vista)

Download this Fonts.plist and replace your old one with the one you just downloaded. Now, open the Properties for the Fonts.plist file and set it to “Read-only”.

If some fonts still don’t show up correctly, open your Fonts.plist in Wordpad (uncheck Read-only in the properties first) and edit the locations of the fonts to match the location of the fonts on your computer. Make sure to set the file to “Read-only” when you’re finished editing, otherwise Safari will overwrite it the next time you launch it.

If you followed this tutorial closely and edited everything correctly, Safari should look something like this.

If you’re still having problems with fonts showing, navigate to C:\Program Files\Safari\Safari.resources and make sure there are two fonts files named Lucida Grande.ttf and Lucida Grande Bold.ttf. If they do not exist, download this ZIP of the fonts and place them in the Safari.resources directory.

Update (06/14/2007):
If you have updated Safari to version 3.0.1 you may need to replace your Fonts.plist file again and set it to read-only.

Update (06/22/2007):
Apple has just released Safari version 3.0.2 which fixes the font issues. Please make sure the read-only option on your Fonts.plist file is unset. Go download the new version!