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

Changing Windows Vista Icons easily (Customizations and Restoration)
Added "Browse" option in changing shortcut icons
additional performance tweaks (Speed up Shutdown and Network Connections)
more security features (complete UAC options and USB storage security)
IE tools
other miscellaneous tweaks
Other Features:

Windows Customizations:

Add/Edit OEM Logo and Information´s
Edit Owner Information
Context Menu Customizations: Move To, Copy To, Take Ownership, Pin To, Turn OFF/ON Aero, Disk Clean-up and
Winbubble launcher
Customize Screensaver (Bubbles, Ribbon and Mystify)
Customize and Remove the Arrow on Shortcut icons
Desktop Icons: Show IE, Computer, Network, Control Panel, Username folder and Public Folder to Desktop.
Hacking Windows Experience Score
Re-enable Hibernation
Enable Aurora Bootscreen guide
Launch WinSAT Aurora
Show Windows Vista Build on Desktop
Enable Slow-Down Animations
Enable/Disable Welcome Center
IE Customizations:

Internet Explorer Window Title
Start Pages
Enable/Disable Pop-up Blocker
Enable/Disable Phising Filter
Enable/Disable Download Complete Notification
Enable/Disable ClearType font
Remove Search Box
Hide Command Bar
Optimizations:

Speed-up Start menu search (Stops searching the File index, Favorites and History, and Communication files)
Clear Multiple Monitor Configuration
3 ways to turn off Windows Aero, Increases Performance for Gaming and Battery Usage
Security:

Remove "New" in Explorer´s Context Menu
Remove "Folder Options"
Disable Taskmanager
Disable AutoPlay in All type of media
Disable access to Display Property
Disable access to Control Panel
Increasing security by forcing to input the Username before entering the windows
Add Encrypt/Decrypt to Explorer´s Right-Click Menu (Context Menu)
Enable/Disable UAC
Disable RUN command in the Start Menu and Task manager
Hide ALL Fix Drives
Hide a specific Drive
Hide Shutdown button and options in the Start Menu
Internet Explorer Security settings 1: Disable File->New, File-> Open, Save As, View Source, Favorites, Right-Click, Download, Tools->Internet Options.
Internet Explorer Security settings 2: Internet Options Window, Hide General Tab, Security Tab, Privacy Tab, Content Tab, connections Tab, Programs Tab, Advanced Tab
System Requirements:

Author: UnlockForUs
Date: 2008-01-29
Size: 336 KB
License: Freeware
Requires: Vista



MajorGeeks

Portable Start Menu 1.3 Beta 1

Publisher's Description:

Portable Start Menu is a simple and free start menu application that can be installed on USB sticks or local PCs. Organize your programs in a simple menu system and launch them via a tray icon. If you close Portable Start Menu on an USB-Stick, running applications can be closed automatically, too.

Latest Changes:

* Faster startup speed due to icon caching
* Program icons with more than 256 colors supported
* Folders can be opened (eg. e:\data)
* Relative paths supported (eg. ..\editor\edit.exe)
* Variable %windir% supported (eg. %windir%notepad.exe to start Notepad on the host PC)
* Variable %ProgramFiles% supported (eg. %ProgramFiles%Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe to start IE on the host PC)
* Variable %AppData% supported (path to the Application Data folder)
* Variable %MyDocuments% supported
* PSMenu asks if you want to overwrite an existing autorun.inf file
* PSMenu creates bak files when saving an autorun.inf file

Released: January 28, 2008
Publisher: Martin Aignesberger
License: Freeware
OS Support: Windows (All)
Uninstaller?: Yes
Skin Support?: No; Supports XP Themes



BetaNews

Streamripper for Windows 1.63 Beta 3

Publisher's Description:

Streamripper is an open source application that lets you record streaming mp3 to your hard drive.

Latest Changes:

* Fix problem when not ripping individual tracks
* Plugin: no longer saves unused sripper.ini to Winamp folder
* Plugin: once again default output directory is the desktop

Released: January 27, 2008
Publisher: Gregory Sharp
License: Open Source
OS Support: Windows (All)


BetaNews

AM-DeadLink 3.2 Beta 1

Publisher's Description:

AM-DeadLink detects dead links and duplicates in your Browser Bookmarks. If a Bookmark has become unavailable you can delete it from your Browser. It checks Bookmarks from Internet Explorer, Opera, and Netscape.

Latest Changes:

* AM-DeadLink can be installed as portable application
* Check *.URL files on your hard disk
* Changed shortcut to edit bookmark properties: F2
* AM-DeadLink no longer reports HTML redirections when they are placed in noscript areas
* NTLM proxy authentication improved
* Proxy support with user/password authentication improved
* AM-DeadLink reported an error if a bookmark had a valid 2xx status code
* Some servers reported an error when Accept-Language wasn't sent to the server
* AM-DeadLink could crash when copying a bookmark to clipboard
* File+Export always used the file extension ".txt"
* FTP addresses didn't work under certain circumstances
* Minor fixes and improvements

Released: January 28, 2008
Publisher: Martin Aignesberger
License: Freeware
OS Support: Windows 2000/2003/9x/XP



BetaNews

XAMPP for Windows 1.6.6 Beta 3

Publisher's Description:

XAMPP is an easy-to-install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. It is really very easy to install and to use: just download, extract and start.

Released: January 28, 2008
Publisher: Kai 'Oswald' Seidler
License: Freeware
OS Support: Windows 2000/9x/XP
Uninstaller?: Yes



BetaNews

Remove Toolbar Buddy 4.58

Remove Toolbar Buddy is a utility to delete unwanted toolbars and other Internet Explorer add-ons such as buttons, menus and browser helper objects. Remove Toolbar Buddy backups configuration data so you can roll back all changes at any time.

Author: Scorpio Software
Date: 2008-01-28
Size: 888 KB
License: Shareware $19.95
Requires: Win All



MajorGeeks

Soundbase 2008.01.28

Soundbase was created to fill a gap in the large amount of free and commercial players/taggers. We do not pretend to have the ultimate audio solution, but Soundbase will most likely fit somewhere into your playing or tagging experience - it will always give you a quick way of doing common tasks.

Latest Changes:
Added file only mode to view3 and 2 new columns
Fixed toolbar buttons in support file TAB
Added database migration functionality
Fixed skin loading routine at startup
Added refresh library function

Author: Eric de Heer
Date: 2008-01-28
Size: 3.94 MB
License: Freeware
Requires: Win All



MajorGeeks

PeaZip 1.1.1


PeaZip is an OS-portable archiver tool (released for Windows and Linux); it supports it´s native Pea archive format (featuring compression, splitting and flexible encryption and integrity check schemes) and other mainstream formats, with special focus on handling open formats.

Supports 7Z, 7-Zip sfx, ARJ, BZip2, CAB, CHM, CPIO, DEB, GZip, ISO, JAR, LHA, LZH, NSIS, OOo, PAQ, PEA, QUAD, RAR, RPM, split, TAR, Z, ZIP.

PeaZip doesn´t follow the Explorer-like interface paradigm; the interface is more similar to a CD/DVD-burner application, allowing the user to:

save and restore layout of archives (input files and folders list) to speed up definition of archiving and backup operations;
save job definition (as plain text, to be used in any script language);
have a detailed job log after each operation;

Author: PeaZip
Date: 2008-01-28
Size: 3.23 MB
License: Freeware
Requires: 98/ME/NT4/2000/XP/2003



MajorGeeks

AkelPad 3.4.7

AkelPad - is an open source editor for plain text. It is designed to be a small and fast.

Features

Single window mode (SDI), multi window mode (MDI);
Editing of files, which size is more than 64K (generally speaking, size isn't theoretically limited);
Full support of Unicode strings on Unicode systems (NT/2000/XP/2003);
Support of Unicode codepages (UTF-16 little endian, UTF-16 big endian, UTF-8);
Support of any code page installed in the system;
Support of DOS/Windows and Unix newline formats;
Preview file open;
Correct pseudographics displaying;
Editing of files with "Read Only" attribute;
Notice when trying to open binary file;
Multi-level undo;
Search/replace text strings, escape-sequences and also search/replace by hexadecimal code;
Remember file codepage;
Remember file caret position;
Remember last search/replace strings;
Remember last opened files;
Printing of a document;
Support of language modules;
Plugins support (syntax highlighting, auto-completion, scripts execution, keyboard macros and much more).

Author: Shengalts A.A.
Date: 2008-01-28
Size: 167 KB
License: Freeware
Requires: Win All



MajorGeeks

Firefox 3 beta 3 code freeze tomorrow
By Dana Blankenhorn & Paula Rooney
January 28th, 2008

Beta 3 of Firefox 3 will be code complete on January 29 as planned. That’s the news coming out of a meeting of Mozilla developers on Monday, who noted that there are just two fixes left to do before freezing the code. With that, Mozilla will start the final builds of Beta 3 on February 4.

The code freeze was expected earlier in the month but developers opted on January 15 to push it to January 29. Beta 3 incorporates the much anticipated “Proto” for OSX Macintosh interface, which was previously being tested as an add-on to the browser.

ZDNET Blogs

Pictomio 0.3.25 Alpha

Publisher's Description:

Pictomio is an application to manage, organize, and archive your photo collection and to create elaborate animated slideshows. Utilizing the processing power of the latest 3D graphics cards, Pictomio offers techniques and effects only used in 3D games before. Pictomio's use of 3D-accelerated user interfaces incorporating dynamically calculated animations and effects provides you with a completely new user experience.

Latest Changes:

* True animated 3D-folder support with skimming (stepping through the pictures in the folder)
* Support of file operations (move and copy) by drag and drop added
* Auto-Rotation of images according to EXIF orientation attributes
* Batch saving of all changes in a directory (rotation and EXIF)
* Added Explode-transition to slideshow
* Tab switch when hovering in drag mode
* Fixed dead lock when switching through thumbnails
* Fixed crash when decoding corrupt JPEGs
* Database upgrade mechanism
* A few minor bug fixes

Released: January 25, 2008
Publisher: Pictomio GmbH
License: Freeware
OS Support: Windows Vista/XP
Uninstaller?: Yes
Skin Support?: Yes



BetaNews

Video Card Stability Test 1.0.0.3 Beta

Publisher's Description:

Video Card Stability Test includes free video card stress testing, benchmarks, and a 3D Screensaver.

Latest Changes:

* More hot GPU

Released: January 26, 2008
Publisher: FreeStone Group
License: Freeware
OS Support: Windows 2000/9x/XP
Requirements: DirectX 9



BetaNews

deVault 2008 (S4)

deVault is an easy to use and powerful utility that helps you to backup, organize, categorize, compress, encrypt and share your important files in clever and secure digital vaults.

Author: EK Inc.
Date: 2008-01-28
Size: 1.24 MB
License: Freeware
Requires: Win 2K/03/XP/Vista



MajorGeeks

Vista Codec x64 Components 1.3.8 Final

Do you want to watch your favorite video in MediaCenter?
These components are tested on Vista Ultimate x64. This release is fully compatible with the 32bit codecs installed by the Vista Codec Package. It is fully uninstallable through the Windows interface. Windows Vista x64 is required. This release will not install on a x86 systems.

Changelog:
- add full FLV support for all players
- update ffdshow to rev 1817
- update several splitters

Author: Shark007
Date: 2008-01-28
Size: 5.40 MB
License: Freeware
Requires: Vista64



MajorGeeks

PCPal 1.8.1270 Beta

Publisher's Description:

PCPal is a free easy-to-use tool that helps you maintain your PC optimized and secured by detecting and solving problems. It continuously monitors your PC, notifies you about important issues, and suggests fix solutions. Additionally, it provides you with a 1-click checkup function, which enables you to check your PC whenever you like. It provides support for a wide range of areas, such as security, performance, network, and printing.

Released: January 25, 2008
Publisher: Gteko Ltd.
License: Freeware
OS Support: Windows XP
Skin Support?: No



BetaNews