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More stuff worth checking out

Darius Goes West film: Darius Goes West is the documentary of Darius Weems (who has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy) and his trek from Athens, GA to California as he attempts to get MTV to "pimp" his broken-down wheelchair. The entire movie is now online for free. Get your tissues out, as this inspirational movie is quite the tear-jerker! There is also a link on the site to donate some money for research if you desire
iDump: Putting music on an iPod is easy, but getting it off in .mp3 format is a different story. iDump is here to help! Easily and quickly gets music off your iPod in a format that you can actually use outside of iTunes. Please note that this is now shareware, but you can still get the free version here
metacritic: Useful site that provides aggregates of ratings from a variety of sources on video games, movies, music, and more. Why waste time individually checking what others are saying about a particular medium when you can simply check them all at one place at the same time?
Internet Archive: A great time-waster, but also a goldmine of valuable information. This site has archived a tremendous amount of educational and research films, audio files, important historical texts, television shows, and much more for you to use as you see fit
MP3 Tag Tools: Versatile program for tagging .mp3 files. Allows one to quickly tag large numbers of .mp3s and specify artist, album, year, picture, lyrics, and more
Free Sound Recorder: Simply records any sound played through your computer's video card. Comes in handy from time to time
The Angry Black Woman: I'm not one to usually advocate blogs (my general feeling on the matter is that our lives are not interesting enough to warrant endless, online personal diaries) but this one is different. Lately, almost every time I've had a gripe about something racist, sexist, or homophobic occurring in the media, she's already blogging about it. Being able to find someone else who is just as frustrated with the current state of things is a blessing
SUPER: When it comes to video, there's not much that this program can't do. Seriously. Whether you're dealing with YouTube (.flv) files, Quicktime, Real player, etc., this program gives you a mind-boggling array of options for setting video quality, size, type, aspect ratio, bit rate, and many more options (way too many to list here). You'd be hard-pressed to find an expensive program to do all this, let alone a free one. Highly recommended
QuizFarm.com: Create custom-made quizzes for your friends, family, or whoever. And, of course, I invited you to take the bj quiz (shameless plug), which tests how well you know me
CutePDF: This cool program lets you create .pdf files without shelling out the money for Adobe Acrobat Pro. After installing, you just print your document (Web page, PowerPoint, Word doc, etc.) and select "CutePDF Writer" as the printer you want to use. A pop-up box will come up asking where you want to save your file and voila, you have a .pdf. It's as easy as that
InkJetSuperstore: This site has possibly the cheapest ink cartridges around, hands down. Plus, the shipping is reasonably priced and quick. Be sure to check out RetailMeNot for even more savings
Riva FLV Player: Riva plays .flv movies, which are the videos on YouTube. Simply use an online YouTube Downloader such as this one, save the file with the extension of .flv, and now you can use this program to play this file (which is now on your computer forever-- no more logging onto YouTube and hoping your video hasn't been deleted)
RetailMeNot.com: Great site for cheap, err, financially responsible people like myself. Simply type in the site you wish to shop at, and, if you're lucky, RetailMeNot will provided you with a discount code. Saving money is always a good thing
HYPE's Color Specifier: This is a simple but helpful site for Web designers that lists HTML codes for colors used for fonts and backgrounds. Sample swatches are provided and clicking on colors displays what a solid background of a particular color looks like. Invaluable site for those wanting a quick, smartly designed reference for Web colors
Inkscape: Admittedly, I haven't played around with Inkscape much yet, but what little interaction I have had with it has impressed me. This program allows you to do many of the functions of the highly prized Adobe Photoshop for free (for example, I created the vector image of me on my About Yours Truly section using this easy-to-follow tutorial). There are countless more tutorials online, and I plan to check out some more in the future
Zmatrix: Admittedly, this program has absolutely no practical uses, but hey-- it looks cool. With ZMatrix, Matrix-movie-style text scrolls along your desktop background without interfering with your programs. You can even configure the size, frequency, type, and color of the text and a screensaver is included. Very, very cool
Speakeasy.net: Allows you to check your Internet speed for free. Choose your nearest location and it shows you how fast your Internet is going (so you can see whether you're getting your bang for your buck from your Internet provider or if they're ripping you off)
ObjectDock: Very customizable Mac-inspired dock for us Windows users who can't afford a Mac. Have fun experimenting with dock icons, opacity, size, shape, animations, and mouse-over effects. I don't know how I ever lived without mine. Only a trial version exists on ObjectDock's site now, but you can still get the free one here
Angry Alien: Hilarious Flash re-enactments of popular movies by cartoon bunnies. Hosted by the Starz! channel, the 30-second-or-so parodies humorously sum up films such as Napoleon Dynamite, King Kong, & Jaws. For the lighthearted, heed this warning: A few of the spoofs contain adult language
Windows Live Messenger: This is perhaps the best-kept secret in instant messaging. The web cam alone makes the other messengers' cams look like slideshows in comparison and other exclusive features make this messenger stand out from the pack. Though not without its flaws, every IMer (especially those with web cams) should give it a try
Whatismyipaddress.com: Know how to find out what your IP Address is? Me neither. Click here and this site'll tell you. It even tells you where you're logging on from. And your blood type
ExtractNow: This program is of great value to those of us who download a lot of .zip files. ExtractNow features drag-n-drop for archived files (.zip, .rar, .iso, .bin, .sit, and many others), allowing multiple extractions at once
Oldapps.com: Newer doesn't always mean better. Sometimes, you just wanna stick with what you got. Find old versions of software at this site. Also, you may want to check out Oldversion.com
StartScreenSaver: This program does exactly what the title infers-- it starts your default screensaver. I suggest using it as a shortcut on your desktop or as a quicklaunch icon. Alternatively, a system tray edition is available as well
MediaFire: Genuinely free file-hosting. No sign-up required. No storage limits. The site even provides you a URL for easy downloading for yourself or others. The only downside is the file size upload limit is 100 MB, but the pros by far outweigh this minor con
The Iconfactory: An impressive selection of highly detailed and diverse icons for use as folders, instant messaging, or docks. Very usesful for people (like me) who value aesthetic desktop customization
Google Earth: This is just fun to play with. Google Earth let's you type in an address or name of a place and zoom in with a combination of satellite imagery & Google's own maps. Creepy (in a Big Brother kinda way) but undeniably cool
Codecs.com: Wonderful site for those of us whose videos won't play because we don't have the correct codecs installed on our computers (No, I don't really know what codecs are-- I just know we need them to play certain videos). There are countless codecs available, including the highly versatile (and highly recommended) K-Lite Codec Pack
Firefox Web Browser: My favorite Web browser. I love especially its built-in customizable search engine toolbar (you can search with it using Google, eBay, Imdb.com, & more-- your choice) and add-ons that add a bevy of additional features
deviantART: Soup up your PC (or Mac) with icons, wallpapers, & more-- all original art
Opera Web Browser: Opera has tons of customizable features such as tabbed browsing & different skins, plus it's faster than Internet Explorer
Black People Love Us!: Hilarious (but controversial) site, it may offend some. I suggest you take it for what it is-- a satire
Yahoo! Instant Messenger: Ten times better than AOL Instant Messenger-- especially now that AIM is secretly bundled with spyware. Stick with Yahoo!
FastStone Image Viewer: The operative word here is fast. The amazingly versatile FastStone supports all popular graphic types and boasts an impressive list of features, including options to resize, rename, convert, and add watermarks to multiple files using "batch convert" & "batch rename," just to name a few
Busted Tees: Funny t-shirts for twisted minds
FastStone Capture: Also from FastStone and worth mentioning is their screen capture software. I use it to capture my Desktops and I love its features (including the option to hide/show the mouse cursor, capture only a particular window, & its timer). Unfortunately, this is now shareware, but you can still get there freeware version here
Download.com: If it's available to download off the internet, it's more than likely to be here (including most, if not all, of the software to your right)
mpTrim: Well the name says it all-- mpTrim trims MP3s. This lightweight program is very useful for removing excess silence and other unneccessary sounds from the beginnings and ends of MP3s. Also, it allows you to fade in and fade out
Audacity: For more involved audio editing, audacity provides a bevy of manipulation options. With Audacity, you can remove and add sounds, use a ton of effects, fade in and out, change the speed and pitch of sounds and more
VideoHelp.com: Provides beaucoup help for working with different video formats and converting, authoring, editing, and playing them
HijackThis!: Spyware remover for advanced users when absolutely nothing else seems to work. I suggest you read here and here before using
TMPGEnc: Great program for video editing