OpenWengo

"OpenWengo is a community of enthusiasts and developers, creating free software products related to communication over IP. The flagship product of the OpenWengo project is a softphone which allows you to make free PC to PC video and voice calls, and to integrate all your IM contacts in one place."

WengoPhone is a communication tool based on the SIP protocol. "It is more than just VoIP software: it is a full-fledged communications tool that lets you enjoy free calls, video conferencing, SMS, chat over many existing protocols (MSN, AIM/ICQ, Yahoo!, Jabber)"

Screenshots

Jing

Jing is "the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere."

A simple to use program to capture screen shots and video, Jing allows you to distribute via:

• Screencast.com
• Local folder or network share
• Clipboard (images only)
• FTP server
• Flickr

It's currently free. :)

BackupPC

"BackupPC is a high-performance, enterprise-grade system for backing up Linux and WinXX PCs and laptops to a server's disk. BackupPC is highly configurable and easy to install and maintain.

Given the ever decreasing cost of disks and raid systems, it is now practical and cost effective to backup a large number of machines onto a server's local disk or network storage. This is what BackupPC does. For some sites, this might be the complete backup solution. For other sites, additional permanent archives could be created by periodically backing up the server to tape. A variety of Open Source systems are available for doing backup to tape.

BackupPC is written in Perl and extracts backup data via SMB using Samba, tar over ssh/rsh/nfs, or rsync. It is robust, reliable, well documented and freely available as Open Source on SourceForge."

SmartDraw

Visio competitor, SmartDraw allows you to draw:

• Flowcharts
• Org Charts
• Project Timelines
• Gantt Charts
• Marketing Charts
• Bar Graphs & Pie Charts
• Forms
• Floor Plans
• Scheduling Calendars
• and much more

Free trial available and then approx. $300.

SQL Server 2008 Books Online

Books Online for Microsoft SQL Server 2008, the primary documentation for SQL Server 2008. Books Online includes the following types of information:

• Setup and upgrade instructions.
• Information about new features and backward compatibility.
• Conceptual descriptions of the technologies and features in SQL Server 2008.
• Procedural topics describing how to use the various features in SQL Server 2008.
• Tutorials that guide you through common tasks.
• Reference documentation for the graphical tools, command prompt utilities, programming languages, and application programming interfaces (APIs) that are supported by SQL Server 2008.

Windows Search 4.0

From a recent TechNet Flash:

Windows Search just got better. Windows Search 4.0 is now available for download. With it you can expect better indexing performance, support for the remote query of shared index locations, per-user group policy settings, and more. To try it out, select from the following operating environments:

• Windows Search 4.0 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008
• Windows Search 4.0 for Windows Server 2003
• Windows Search 4.0 for Windows Vista x64 Edition
• Windows Search 4.0 for Windows XP
• Multilingual User Interface Pack for Windows Search 4.0 for Windows XP

I HATED how search was so broken in Outlook 2007 on Vista and this upgrade has made things so much better.

Sysinternals Live

From a recent TechNet Flash:

If you’re a fan of the Sysinternals tools, check out the beta of Sysinternals Live, a service that makes it easy for you to execute Sysinternals tools directly from the Web without hunting for and manually downloading them. Simply enter a tool’s Sysinternals Live path into Windows Explorer, or at the command prompt as \\live.sysinternals.com\tools\, or view the entire Sysinternals Live tools directory in a browser.

http://technet.microsoft.com/sysinternals

Info-ZIP

"Info-ZIP's purpose is to provide free, portable, high-quality versions of the Zip and UnZip compressor-archiver utilities that are compatible with the DOS-based PKZIP by PKWARE, Inc."

Tony uses zip32.dll and unzip32.dll in some of his applications - for DB backup and restore purposes.

USB Drive Speed Testing: HD Tach

From a PCWorld Article I read recently:

Test the speed of a flash USB drive with this freebie.

The faster your flash drive, the more smoothly programs will run. When shopping for a drive, look at the specs and try to find one with a read rate of 15 Mbps (megabits per second or 1.9 MB/sec) or faster. If you already have a flash drive, you can test its speed with a free utility like HDTach.

Description:

HD Tach is a low level hardware benchmark for random access read/write storage devices such as hard drives, removable drives (ZIP/JAZZ), flash devices, and RAID arrays. HD Tach uses custom device drivers and other low level Windows interfaces to bypass as many layers of software as possible and get as close to the physical performance of the device possible.

The trial version of HD Tach measures the sequential read speed (at various points on the device), the random access speed, interface burst speed and CPU utilization of the drive. The registered version adds sequential write testing.

U3 LaunchPad - Remove and Replace

Some flash drives (AKA USB memory sticks, thumb drives, pen drives, etc.) come with a utility called U3 LaunchPad. Many devices from SanDisk and others come with this software. Like PortableApps, U3 allows you to use both files and applications from your portable drive.

If you decide not to use U3, try the U3 Launchpad Removal Tool - for SanDisk drives and for non-SanDisk drives.

If you change your mind, you can use this free utility from SanDisk to re-install.