Smart CD Catalog Professional is a simple disc cataloging tool that can index all your CDs/DVDs and allows you to organize them into categories, locations and add personal comments. If you need to find a specific file on a disc, you can use the built-in search feature and locate the file without having to manually search through your CDs. The program can also keep track of discs that were lend to friends and produce a statistical report for your entire collection.

Whant's new:

• New: renaming files and folders in catalog.
• New: importing Audio CD information from CDDB/FreeDB online database.
• New: comment and description columns in the file list.
• New: disk capacity and free disk space columns.
• New: search in selected category, location or contact.
• Improved: list all files on all disks in alphabetical order without separation in reports.
• Fixed: drag and drop bug (during moving manually added disk to the other category).
• Fixed: multiline comments displaying in lists.

Download: Smart CD Catalog Professional 2.43 | 6.95 MB (Shareware $24.95)
Screenshot: Main window
Screenshot: Search window
View: Smart CD Catalog Website

WindowBlinds is the easiest, and safest way to change the complete look and feel of both Windows Vista and XP by applying one of thousands of visual styles that are available. The WindowBlinds 6.1 update is available to current customers as a free update, and users can upgrade either through Stardock Central or the Impulse preview.

DeskScapes 2.0 has been released by Stardock. No longer will animated wallpapers be only for people who invest in Windows Vista Ultimate. With DeskScapes 2.0, all users of Windows Vista can run animated wallpapers.

There are currently over 600 .dreams (animated wallpaper) available at the WinCustomize gallery, and more are added almost daily. There are a wide range of .dreams available such as subtle nature wallpapers, all the way to dramatic 3D rendered creations.

There is a free preview of DeskScapes available, and is available as part of the Object Desktop suite, or the stand-alone enhanced version for $19.95.

Link: DeskScapes 2.0
Download: DeskScapes 2.0 Preview
Screenshot: DeskScapes on Home Premium

Pictomio is Freeware and sets new standards for 3D accelerated browsing of your photo and video collection.
Pictomio requires a graphics card with ShaderModel 2.0 and a minimum of 128 MB video RAM.

From the site: After a period of intensive bug fixing and optimization we are proud to present today the final release of Pictomio 1.0. As promised this version is still freeware and you can download it and organize your photos, create fancy slide shows or just view your photos with it. Though we fixed a lot of bugs and improved the performace, there might be still a few flaws and for sure there are a lot of features you'd like us to add (also we have a lot of new features in mind). Therefore we are still happy to receive your comments, suggestions and bug reports. The best way to let us know is to post them in the forum under the appropriate topic.

Download: Pictomio 1.0 Final | 6.2 MB (Freeware)
View: Product Features

DivX Labs, our technology playground, has been very active over the last month. Just in case you missed it, here is a brief summary of updates:

• DivX Web Player 1.4.1 Beta 1 is now available and features improved support for Windows Vista, including better video quality and support for Internet Explorer 7 when running in Protected Mode. DivX Web Player can be used to play high-quality DivX (and XVID) video served from any regular web server with zero server-side configuration required.
• DivX Player 6.8.1 Beta 1 features support for large files, QuickTime videos, a Direct3D renderer, and the DivX 6.8 decoder, as well as enhancements to subtitle quality and fast-forwarding.
  
• DivX Converter 6.6.1 Beta 1 supports QuickTime 7.4 and better handles multilingual audio and subtitles.
  
• DivX Mobile Player 0.90 makes installation easier through signed packages, improves battery life with better power management, supports alternate screen orientations for the Motorola Q and Windows Mobile phones, and is now localized for Spanish and Portuguese. Windows Mobile 2003+ and Symbian OS 9+ downloads are available from the DivX Mobile Community homepage. Please note that you need to subscribe to the DivX Mobile Community group to access these downloads. Subscription is open and free.
  
• DivX Codec 6.8.2 has been officially released. This minor update improves support for PAR on systems with multiple monitors and also corrects problems with DivX 3.11 playback and loading certain MPEG quantization matrices in the encoder. We also ran a quick performance comparison with the DivX 6.7 decoder to illustrate significant improvements in decode performance in the 6.8 codec.

Notepad++ v4.9 fixed bugs and added features (from v4.8.5) :

1. Add smart highlighting feature (double click a word to highlight all the same word in the document).
2. Enhance visual effect of Mark all feature.
3. Enhance Incremental search dialog docking.
4. Enhance Incremental search : add Highlight all feature.
5. Add auto-hide menu feature (IE7 style menu - Alt or F10 to toggle).
6. Enhance tool bar GUI usability (display a chevron while some tool icons hidden).
7. Add style transparency feature, right click on color to enable.
8. Fix the files not opening by DnD bug.
9. Enhance Find Replace dialog : Add "Extended" option - search (and replace) for tabs(\t), newline(\n\r), and a characters by it's value (\o, \x, \b, \d, \t, \n, \r and \\).
10. Bug fixed : Find dialog always scrolls text into view now.
11. Add places bar in save as dialog.
12. Fix non-recognized relative path bug in command line mode (under Dos prompt).
13. Add 2 messages for doc monitor plugin.
14. Fix the transparency bug (in Styler Configurator).
15. Make search in hidden directory (for Find in files) optional.
16. Fix the replace bug while replacing nothing.
17. Fix the F3 searching direction bug.

Download: Notepad++ 4.9 Workers' Day Edition | ~ 2.0 MB (Freeware)
View: Product Overview

Paint.NET is free image editing and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. It started development as an undergraduate college senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the MS Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple tool for photo and image editing.

Download: Paint.NET v3.31 | 1.6 MB (Freeware)
Screenshots: >> Click here <<
View: Product Features
Link: Neowin Forum Discussion

CCleaner is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool. It removes unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. But the best part is that it's fast (normally taking less than a second to run) and contains NO Spyware or Adware

This release adds Firefox 3.0 support including history and cookies which had been moved into a more complex database structure. Additionally we've add a good range of performance tweaks and bug fixes for foreign language versions.

Backup Platinum makes a reserve copy of your critical data virtually to any type of storage media: hard or USB drives, CD, DVD and Blu Ray media, FTP servers or Local Area Network. It uses "Wizard" approach to define the backup set: what, where, how and when to backup. 128-bit encryption and multichoice ZIP compression on the fly are available to keep your backups small and secure. Built-in CD/DVD engine allows you to erase the rewritable disk before burning and automatically split large backups to several parts using disk spanning. Backup Platinum is based on multi-threaded file-processing engine and creates detailed logs of all operations. The program can also run in service mode under 2000/XP/2003/Vista to execute scheduled tasks even when nobody is logged in.

ActiveWin reports that Messenger for Mac 7 has been made available to Mac users, Messenger for Mac 7 is an integrated communications client that enables you to communicate with contacts within and outside your organization. Messenger for Mac 7 is a Universal application that is built to run on both PowerPC-based and Intel-based Macs and makes it easy to take advantage of the full power of real-time communications.

Download: Messenger for Mac 7 (.dmg file) 21 MB
Link: Messenger for Mac 7 Overview

KeepSafe is the ultimate real-time data protection technology that is as simple as set-and-forget it. It's designed to work in the background and be as seamless as possible.

Anyone who has ever lost that all important document due to a drive crash, corrupt save, overwritten, etc., then users will appreciate what KeepSafe can do. This new version of KeepSafe features several new features:

• Improved User Interface to make more user friendly and intuitive.
• Secondary backup location can be an external hard drive or USB drive.
• Configure KeepSafe to save to local storage temporarily, and copy to secondary drive when connected. Very useful for when working mobile.
• New statistics view to show file counts and disk space usage.

KeepSafe is available as a stand-alone application, or part of the ThinkDesk suite of utilities. A free download is available for evaluation, and the registered version is $29.95.

Link: KeepSafe 2.0
Screenshot: KeepSafe Configuration

The guys over at ActiveWin noticed that NVIDIA have released an updated beta driver for Windows Vista 32 and 64 bit flavors yesterday, now at version 175.12 these drivers no longer offer a 30% improvement like older versions, just general "improvements". One being the new Dual-Stream decode acceleration and Aero support for Blu-ray and HD DVD playback on newer GPU's mentioned in the changelog.

View changelog and download the beta driver after the jump.

The CodeLite team has released revision 1457. This revision is one of the final released before going into beta.

What is CodeLite?
CodeLite is a powerful open-source, cross platform code editor for the C/C++ programming languages (regulary tested on Windows XP sp2, Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon, Fedora Core 6 and Debian lenny/sid). CodeLite is distributed under the terms of the GPL license.

CodeLite uses a sophisticated, yet intuitive interface which allows user to easy create and build complex projects.

Search Commands helps you find commands, options, wizards, and galleries in Microsoft Office 2007 Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Just type what you’re looking for in your own words and click the command you need. Search Commands also includes Guided Help, which acts as a tour guide for specific tasks.

Even if the ribbon interface is great...sometimes we search for some feature & tats the time this helps!

Please note, this is only supported on English 32 & 64 bit versions of Microsoft Office 2007 Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Download: Office 2007 Search Command ) @ Microsoft Office Labs

In just two clicks, WinBubbles will help you to customize and tweak your Windows Vista easily. Its features cover Customization, Security and Optimization.

What's NEW? WinBubble 1.72

• Enable/Disable Multiple Monitor Configuration was updated
• Search Button Restoration was removed
• Help Links was added
• Icon Customization was updated
• Anti-Bug feature was added

"it's hard to find something that this remarkable tweaking program can't do. Whether you're a dedicated Vista tweaker, or just getting started, there's something here for you. - PCWORLD.com"

Link: Read more here at Neowin.Net