GOM Media Player - Best Free Media Player

I've tried lots of media players, from BsPlayer to VLC and Windows Media Player. All of these have nice features but they have also annoying flaws. GOM Media Player has been a revelation for me: I'm still trying to find a media file format that this freeware can't play! It even plays .ts files!GOM Media Player has reached version 2.1.9.3753.

If you have an older version just open the player and hit the F1 key, you'll be downloading the latest version in no time. Some of the players I've used don't offer the possibility to tweak everything you'd want. GOM Player lets you tweak your heart out: video adjustments, audio, subtitles.The list of nice features in this freeware is impressive.

It includes many codecs (XviD, DivX, FLV1, AC3, OGG, MP4, H263 and more) so you won't need to install separate codecs for most videos. For those videos that require a separate codec, GOM Player will find one and direct you to a place where you can download open source version of the codec. That way, you won't get stuck with unnecessary codecs on your system.- It plays broken AVI files- It supports SMI, SRT, RT, SUB(with IDX) files for subtitle. You can specify margin, location, size, resolution, font and others. You can also enable shadow, view ASF files with subtitle, karaoke subtitle mode.

You can even synchronize subtitle and video if there's any mismatch.- It supports probably any time of media file format you can think of- You can capture screenshots from the movie you play, up to 999 successive frames!- Fast forward/rewind a few seconds using left/right keys.And there are more features, it's simply overwhelming. I don't say "this is the best" too often. But this piece of software really convinced me: it's the best free media player.

You can download it from here, it's free!

Firefox 3 Beta 5 Available!

We're getting closer to the new Firefox release! Beta 5 is now available, and here are some of the new features: Anti-virus integration: Firefox will infrom anti-virus software when downloading executables.- Easier password management: an information bar replaces the old password dialog so you can now save passwords after a successful login.- Smart Bookmarks Folder: quickly access your recently bookmarked and tagged pages, as well as your more frequently visited pages with the new smart bookmarks folder on your bookmark toolbar.- Speed: improvements to the JavaScript engine as well as profile guided optimizations have resulted in continued improvements in performance. Compared to Firefox 2, web applications like Google Mail and Zoho Office run twice as fast in Firefox 3 Beta 5, and the popular SunSpider test from Apple shows improvements over previous releases.

You can read the full list of improvements here, and you can download the Firefox 3 beta 5 here. It's free and it's good!

GIMP 2.4.5 - Free Photo Editing & Graphics Software

I've tried Adobe Photoshop and I found it to be too expensive and too much of a resource eater. Today I decided to try GIMP, or if you want to call it the long way, "The GNU Image Manipulation Program". It's free as the air and might be enough for my photo editing needs. Let's try it. Cropping the image works like a breeze, it takes only a few seconds. I found the interface very intuitive and logical, and the whole program seems user friendly. Of course, this open source program has many more features. Let's try to make a list: Photo Enhancement - Numerous digital photo imperfections can be easily compensated for using GIMP. Fix perspective distortion caused by lens tilt simply choosing the corrective mode in the transform tools. Eliminate lens' barrel distortion and vignetting with a powerful filter but a simple interface.Digital Retouching - GIMP is ideal for advanced photo retouching techniques. Get rid of unneeded details using the clone tool, or touch up minor details easily with the new healing tool. With the perspective clone tool, it's not difficult to clone objects with perspective in mind just as easily as with the orthogonal clone.Supported File Formats - The file format support ranges from the common likes of JPEG (JFIF), GIF, PNG, TIFF to special use formats such as the multi-resolution and multi-color-depth Windows icon files. The architecture allows to extend GIMP's format capabilities with a plug-in. You can find some rare format support in the GIMP plugin registry. To save disk space, any format can be saved with an archive extension such as ZIP, GZ or BZ2 and GIMP will transparently compress the file without you needing to do any extra steps.Overall I found it to be a very good freeware that suits my needs. I think that even professional photo editors can find it very useful, instead of paying loads of money for fancy software.

You can download this little gem from here, it's free!