EasyTag is a powerful audio file tag editor for GNU/Linux or Windows.

It has support for: mp3, mp4, mp2, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC and others. There are many features that make adding or changing tags in your audio files very easy. It can query the CDDB and compare track length to your files to identify music that you are unsure of the artist or album. If you have artist and album info in the filename, it can parse that info into tag entries. EasyTag is also able to change the filenames and directory structure of your collection with user-specified tag info. This will allow you to take a large group of assorted files that have artist and album information and relocate them to a more organized directory structure. The program uses the GTK+ interface, which provides for a simple and pleasant environment for working with your files. The browsing window lets you choose between a directory structure view, or an artist/album view. The tag entry editing window is clearly laid out and provides for many different fields, including album art. There are several shortcut buttons that allow you to quickly access commonly used features. EasyTag makes the task of keeping your music collection properly tagged and organized a simple process.

Apple’s Mail.app is the IMAP/POP email application included with every Mac.

This application is a simple to use and easy to set up alternative to less functional web interfaces and more complicated email applications such as Thunderbird or Entourage. On the whole I would give Mail.app a very positive review. The newest version, included in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, adds some great new features. Automatic setup means that if you use a popular service like Gmail or Hotmail or Yahoo, all you need to set it up is a username and password. Another excellent feature is basic RSS feed aggregation. It is a very simple implementation, less powerful than apps like NetNewsWire, but it is dead simple to use. The only negatives to Mail.app are these two things: it only runs on Mac and it’s shutdown behavior is not standard. What this means is that if Mail.app is busy (for example, trying to talk to a server that isn’t responding) it may block you from logging off or shutting down, requiring you to wait or force-quit the app. Despite this shortcoming, I fully recommend Mail.app to any Mac user looking to make the transition from web-based email clients.

Recolored Have you ever came across a black and white photo that you would like to add new life to?

This $29 software that I stumbled upon called Recolored does just that. The 30-day free trial is suitable for small personal projects if you’ll only be colorizing a single photograph or two. At $29 for a licensed copy, I think this application is a steal. Some folks take their photos to professionals who use similar software and charge hundreds of dollars to recolor photos. You could probably even run your own small business with this software. All you have to do is choose a few colors from a color palette, and put a few strokes around the edges that you to be that specific color. When you press the colorize button the image is colorized. Try it out!