What if you wanted to try out a particular software application, but didn’t want it to damage your computer?

Or if you wanted to play that legacy game sitting on your desk, but it doesn’t currently work on your desktop? Maybe you want to try other operating systems, but don’t want to go through the hassle of partitioning or reformatting? Microsoft Virtual PC, available for free download here can help you solve all three problems. With Virtual PC, you can install different operating systems in your very own virtual PC, without even touching or harming your computer! Imagine surfing the Web, without worrying about all the spyware and viruses that plague it. Although there are many virtualization solutions available, I found Virtual PC the best product for me.

Recently, a business partner and myself were discussing various methods of sharing and brainstorming business models and ideas in real time.

We knocked around several ideas and products including Visio and Omnigraffle. Both of us had used these products in the past and while happy with them they didn’t meet our exact needs. Enter Mindomo.com, an online mind-mapping application that allows users to create and post mind maps with your friends and colleagues. Within minutes of creating my free account (premium account is just $6 per month) I was knee deep into my first map entitled “Fractionalized Project Funding.”

The tools are very easy to use and the layout and design is very crisp and clean. The intuitive tool palate was so well thought out that I didn’t need to ever look at the directions. I was ready to start collaborating with my partners in less than fifteen minutes. One drawback that I didn’t like, however it’s to be expected with the free account, is that by publishing my mind map it would be visible to the public. The only way I could save and privately view the map would be to sign up for the reasonably priced premium account. Well worth the money and I’m sure that as the company upgrades the software, the features will out perform the fees by a long shot.

I highly recommend this site for anyone needing easy to use, high quality mind-mapping software that can be accessed anywhere and anytime with no downloads.

Uniblue Registry Booster software is very useful in keeping your computer clean, fast and protected from the errors which may slow down the computer.

It improves the health and increases the performance of your computer. URB is available free to download from web. It scans faster than any antivirus and keeps the PC updated. It has many features like automatic scanning on the startup of computer, restoring data, and more.

Uniblue Registry Booster is very easy to operate. It has overview, registry scan and restore settings. This software provides the detailed information right on the fist screen of software. On the left side there will be health meter option which shows to what extents your pc is performing. In the middle there will be start scan button and last registry scanned. On the right side there will be a summary about the errors which shows how many errors have been found including invalid errors and how many defrags have been performed up to the date. The best part is that it automatically backups the data before scanning.

GRRR, Getting PNG graphics to display correctly in IE!

This article is for those HTML/CSS guru’s out there who are frustrated with IE. Particularly the minor problem of displaying PNG’s correctly. PNG is an image format that combines the best features of GIF and JPG/JPEG, the traditional and most common image formats used on the World Wide Web. PNG is supported by virtually all major and minor browsers that are in use today. Although all major browsers display alpha and transparent properties correctly, Internet Explorer has fallen behind. To implement PNG alpha and transparent properties correctly in IE, there are a few steps one must take. Nothing is wrong with the PNG format itself. PNG format compresses images in a similar way to GIF, but images can have up to 280 thousand billion unique colors (normally, a maximum of 16 million colors are used). PNG also supports binary transparency, as well as full Alpha, meaning that each pixel of the image can also have one of 256 different levels of transparency (or 65 thousand levels if you really want to). PNG format produces files with approximately the same file size as the equivalent GIF image, assuming they have the same number of colors. PNG does not support multiple image layers to allow animation, but its related format – MNG – does.

Here’s some sample code to get started:

<span style="width:400px;height:32px;display:inline-block; /* the height and width should match those of the image */ filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src='varyAlpha.png'); /* apply the background image with Alpha in IE5.5/Win. The src should match that of the image */ "><img style=" filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(opacity=0); /* make the real image fully transparent in IE5.5/Win, so the Alpha image can show through */ " src="varyAlpha.png" width="400" height="32" border="0" alt=""/></span>

You will notice the largest key is using the AlphaImageLoader class (DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader). That’s the trick! Happy Coding!

Because of the availability of high-bandwidth networks at so many colleges and universities, and because college students are a notoriously poor and thrifty group of people, the number of college students charged with illegally downloading music is high.

More importantly, the RIAA has been serving schools with John Doe requests to force them to reveal the names of their students who are infringing on their copyright. Besides decrying the RIAA as a bully and a monopoly that anachronistically can’t fathom new business models, what’s a school to do? Many schools have begun to offer their students free subscriptions to subscriber services like Napster. Napster in particular was adopted by Penn State University, among others. However, students didn’t particularly like the service, and because tracks downloaded through it are impossible to burn to CD or transfer to say, an iPod, illegal peer-to-peer file sharing continued. Moreover, schools were paying vast sums of money for a service their students really didn’t use.

Enter Ruckus. The Ruckus Player is an actual download, but it alone is useless. However, once a user signs up (with a valid *.edu email address), s/he can download *.ruckusdownload files from ruckus.com, which the Player uses to track and download files. The service is ad-supported, but free to any student. Schools can optionally pay to have a server put on campus, which significantly boosts download speeds for students without straining the Internet bandwidth of the school. Win-win! Ruckus tracks are still encumbered with prohibited DRM (“digital rights management”) courtesy of Microsoft’s PlaysForSure initiative. Fortunately for the enterprising student, there are is an easy-to-use program that strips the DRM from these files, which can then be imported into iTunes/burnt to CD/put on an MP3/etc. Even for those unwilling to chart into the legal gray area of DRM strippers, Ruckus is an excellent source of completely free audio. Just watch out, because once you graduate…. your tunes expire!

This software product quickly and accurately converts all written texts in to spoken words.

Text Aloud uses voice synthesis to convert text in to spoken audio. It can read Email, web pages and documents etc using your computer’s voice. By using this you can listen to email, online news or other documents while you are engaged in some other activities. Texts having MP3 or WMA conversion can be saved in audio format and can be easily downloaded.

Text Aloud is a simple and easy to use text to speech utility software that offers text editing, pronunciation and voice changing facilities. In brief, Text Aloud is the best audio reader suited for Windows.