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The purpose of this post is not to encourage the software piracy, but just spreading the knowledge.

Today there are many applications and software available on the Internet, which have great utility and are distributed as demo software. The developers of these demo versions usually disable some of the important features of these software. If you want to use these features, then you have to pay for buying the complete version.

Another method used by the developers is to allow users to use the software only for a limited period after which these software get expired an you have to again pay for continuing using that. The purpose of both these methods is to get you addicted to using that software and then ask you the money.

However there are certain methods by which you can extend trial period of these demo software and continue using them even after the expiry of the validity period.

My Digital life has written a few tips to reset trial period. You may like to check that out.

Scribefire is a nice Firefox addon, which acts as a free blog writer tool. You can add multiple blogs to Surefire and choose the one which you want to post. The best part of Surefire is that since it is a Firefox browser plugin, it gives you the opportunity to surf the net while posting.

There are few quick points, which I observed while using Surefire for a few minutes.

• It does not allow the option for the links to open in a new window. You have to manually add target=“_blank”.
• There seems to be no option to wrap the text around the inserted images.
• Nice features of changing the size and colors of the text.
• ScribeFire gives you the option of inserting Technorati tags and using the same tags for del.icio.us as well as inserting trackback URLs.

Overall a nice web tool for those who want to post quickly and cannot afford to open a separate application away from their browser window.

In today’s corporate world, although there are many fast methods of communications like IM, emails etc. but still the importance of the age old Facsimile, or FAX in short is not dead. Facsimile is still the preferred mode of communication, when you want to keep the records of the communication made.

But the spread of Internet has also affected the way we used to send and receive fax. Now, you no longer need a phone connection to send the fax. You can instead use Internet to send or receive FAX.

How to send or receive FAX over web

There are many easy online web applications. Most of them charge you a price but some of them are free and allow you to communicate over FAX to a limited set of destinations.

One of them is the Phone Company www.tpc.in, which allow you to send text messages and RTF files to most destinations in the world for free.

For it, you have to register an email address like

remote-printer.Line_1/Line_2 @1234.iddd.tpc.int

where “1234” is the destination fax number with the international code. You can insert the subject matter of your FAX in place of Line_1 and Line_2. This free Facsimile service is fast, easy and free and most importantly for me, covers many cities in India including Mumbai, Chennai and the NCR (Delhi, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon, Noida, Faridabad).

For US and Canada users, FAX Zero.com is a nice service, which is an ad supported web-based fax service and delivers fax message upto three pages in length for free.

I am a fan of free software Google Pack. Google Pack includes several independent softare like Google Desktop, Gtalk, Google Earth, Picasa, Google Screensavers as well other free ware software’s like PDF reader, anti-spyware etc. An interesting feature of Google Pack is its ability to automatically look for the updates and update itself. If you have not yet download Google Pack, just click the link in my side bar.

As a competition to it, Microsoft also has its own version with the name Windows Live Pack, which brings Windows Live services to your desktop. There are various services like Family Safety suite, web photo gallery, online storage service, Windows Live Writer blogging tool, and some more included in it. You can choose which services to get. The new ‘Mail’ program, which is also part of Windows Live pack, lets you connect to Hotmail and other email accounts.

I will here make a specific mention of Windows Live Writer, which is one of the most useful program, I have come across for writing my blog posts in an offline environment. There are also several useful plugins available for Live writer, which enhance your blogging experience.

Overall, a nice competition for Google Pack, but still, Google pack is a winner for me, specially with its unbeatable application like Google Earth.

Independent Thoughts:
The best web hosting service is the one that takes out time to review the particulars of the site. This is done in order to figure out if cheap web hosting would be enough for the site, or is the web design too complicated for it. Once done with deciding webhosting domain, one can proceed with other important matters like features suiting wireless internet service. Considering all of this is a part of search engine optimization and domain name registration.

Microsoft Power Toys is a set of tiny all-purpose applications, which are there for enhancing user experience with Windows. Ideally, they should ha ve been part of the OS itself, but for some reasons best known to Microsoft, they have not been part of Windows, but you can download them and use them for free.

Currently, the package counts 15 different programs as mentioned below. Some of them are really useful. But they are only for WIndows XP and do not work with Windows Vista.

Color Control Panel Applet: This web tool helps you to easily manage Windows color settings in one place. Ideal solutionn for those worrying about the changes in colors from screen to print.

SyncToy: It helps you copy, move, and synchronize different directories and files from different sources like digital cameras, e-mail, cell phones, portable media players, camcorders, PDAs, and laptops.

RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer: Organize and work on your digital RAW image files.

ClearType Tuner: It lets you read text on your screen.

HTML Slide Show Wizard: It helps you create a slide show of your digital pictures, which can easily be uploaded on a web site.

Open Command Window Here: A quick way to open the command window from the contextual menu.

Alt-Tab Replacement: You will also be able to see a preview of the page, which you will switch next.

Tweak UI: It gives you an instant access to system settings which remain unexposed by default, like including mouse settings, Explorer settings, taskbar settings, and more.

Other power toys include web tools like Power Calculator, Image Resizer, CD Slide Show Generator, Virtual Desktop Manager, Taskbar Magnifier, Webcam Timershot.

Overall, a nice collection of free web tools and utilities.
Independent Thoughts:
Mostly webhosting net is a rather compliant host. It offers useful software tips as an incentive too. The free web design templates are taken for granted. The uses of such cheap web hosting is that more capital can be invested in internet marketing. Particularly, certain fields like ecommerce hosting require more online backup.

Microsoft Office is the king of the Office Applications. There are no second thoughts about that.

But that doesn’t mean that they are the best on all parameters. They are the king because they were the first and therefore were able to quickly grab the market.

Today there are many free alternatives to the Microsoft Office suite, which are free also. Microsoft Office may be offering some really advanced features, which may not be utilized my most of the common users, but if you consider price also as a factor, then these free web tools will rank much higher than Microsoft Office. They offer almost all the features, which a common user may ever require. Some of them are mentioned below.

Online Office Applications

• Google Docs
• Zoho
• Thinkfree

Downloadable Office Applications

• StarOffice
• IBM Lotus Symphony
• OpenOffice

You can find a review of them at Makeuseof.com.

However, general users are always concerned about the compatibility issue; whether the documents created on the office suites will seemlessly be able to work with other popular office suite packs. This is the question asked by many and this is the prime reason why these excellent office suite applications have not been so popular.But, if such a suite is offered by Microsoft itself, then all such concerns should come to a halt. And lo… Microsoft is going to present the Windows Live (Office Suite), just for meeting that requirement. The service is yet to go public and you can register yourself now to get informed, when it is launched

If your online life is divided at different locations; like office and home, you may be wanting to synchronize different files and folders, which are located at your office computer, your home PC, your laptop and your USB drives.

There are many options. Simple copy and paste. But that is too crude.

A few freeware like Allway Sync etc. They are nice but, somehow, I am always skeptical of using third party software.

Now Microsoft has released latest version of SyncToy 2.0 beta for letting you synchronize your files. It is free and comes from a trustworthy source like Microsoft. And so, I like it. With this, you can easily copy, move, rename, and delete files between folders and computers so as to achieve perfect synchronization.
Independent Thoughts:
Getting domain registration is the first step of site hosting. A cheap web hosting service may be employed, in order to save more for wireless internet providers. But this fact should not effect the affiliate marketing. Installing internet phone services depends upon the host too and software tools are also available to check the affiliate.