Alertbear is a free RSS reader that aims to take the fuss out of your favourite feeds. Indeed, despite the simplicity of RSS, many readers on the market are cumbersome and clunky, deterring users from taking full advantage of the features on offer. Alertbear’s simple interface and colour coded categories makes reading a pleasure, whilst its technique of “stacking news” to produce a “river” of content is clever and straightforward. Unlike most readers that are built straight into your browser, Alertbear is stand alone program and includes Bearkey integration and more.

Download it here.

Last.FM has now added iPod support for its popular personal music player. Previously, users would create a profile of their music using the audioscrobbler plugin, which would send Last.FM details of your musical preferences and dually provide recommendations of similar artists and bands. Now you can “Scrobble your iPod", choosing from a variety of third-party products for differing operating systems. Once installed, you’ll be able to sync up your recently-played iPod tracks with Last.FM, effectively removing the need to use your computer at all.

Download the original player here.

Check out the iPod player here.

2020ok is a useful resource of self help books, available for free download. From Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator tutorials, to digital photography and scanning techniques; the guides may not cover it all but they can certainly deliver an ample grounding in the technical subject of your choice. Indeed, other areas may also grab your attention, be it Romance Literature, Science or Home and Garden, you could save yourself some pennies if you don’t mind the trawl.

Have a peek here.

Fresh Diagnose is a freeware application that aims to unveil the secrets hiding inside your PC, giving you detailed and clear information on everything from your CPU and virtual display drives, to the habits of your virtual and physical memory. Handy whether you’re a tech head or a novice (you can always read the stats to technical support down the phone) this should be your first port of call whenever your computer is throwing a fit and you can’t understand why.

Check it out here.

It seems that everyone is trying to create the holy grail of calendar apps, and now Mozilla has upped the stakes with the release of Lighting 0.1. Aimed to be an extension for Firefox, rather than a standalone app like Sunbird, Lighting will eventually integrate with Thunderbird to create an Outlook-like application. From the horses month:

Some of our future goals are (none of this is implemented right now):

• Better Thunderbird integration
  
  • email<->task linkage
  • Integration with the Thunderbird address book
  • iMIP support (meeting invitations)

• Improved CalDAV support
• Cached calendar support for offline calendar use
• Device synchronization

Despite minimum integration, the initial feel and potential is promising and could prove to be a versatile challenger to Google’s up and coming CL2, and the popular 30boxes.

Download and test it out here.

Following the exciting and successful conclusion of the $13,000 prize for getting WindowsXP and MacOSX to co-exist on Intel Macs, Narf2006 has made his solution available for anyone to try out. Initially deemed impossible by tech experts around the globe, Narf2006 proved his worth by producing video evidence (above) to eliminate any doubts. The solution will apparently work on any Intel based Apple, giving you the luxury of having both operating systems on one machine.

More info here.

Windows XP on Mac solution posted [engadget]

Download (777KB), mirrors: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Sheetmusicnotes.com is a handy index of free musical notation and information, ranging from free sheet music for children to aggregated news from the world of composing and arranging. Although still in its early stages, there is already a healthy amount of material to sort through. The children’s section is particularly impressive, displaying many of the classics that every child should grow up with, all available as PDF’s for quick and easy downloading. And, since it’s on the internet, your children will instantly think its cool and practice till the cows come home.

Get looking here.

With rumours rife that popular networking site Myspace is creating an instant messenger of its own, today was a good day as any for Microsoft to unveil their latest Messenger application to the public. Renamed to coincide with Microsoft’s push towards a fully integrated online service; Windows LiveTM Messenger Beta adds a few handy features that will surely be welcomed by its millions of users. As a result, the old and somewhat clunky interface has been replaced with a much slicker appearance. Users can now send messages to contacts even when they are offline, and when people update their details, they will automatically update for you too. Folder and file sharing has also been improved, whilst you can now rename your contact list even if your mates don’t approve. As ever, the annoying Ad’s are always a distraction and a drawback, yet it does keep it free.

All your contacts and settings will be transferred when you upgrade, but, as with all betas, caution is advised. Get it here.

Developed by two students of the DigiPen Institute of Technology, this freeware game certainly gets top marks in the ingenuity category. The premise is simple enough; defeat as many enemies as you can to proceed to the next level. However, slight variations mark this beat-em-up out for special attention. Characters are comprised solely of simple geometric shapes; your goal being to smash up as many fellow block-heads as it takes to scramble out of the fighting ring. The action comes thick and fast and your combat skills will soon be tested as the fighting box becomes deeper and your enemies nimbler. With a clean interface, intuitive controls, and a 3D fighting environment to die for, this beat-em-up is streets ahead in the originality stakes.

Get it here.

The US National Archives have thoughtfully provided free high-res images of the Charters of Freedom documents, available for our inspection and enjoyment. However, don’t expect to be reading these with any comfort; early upkeep of the documents was very poor so you’re going to have to adjust the contrast settings to get the most out of them. Despite this, the images are of extremely high quality and will print to publication quality (300dpi), going up to approximately 24" wide by 29" high. Each file also contains “clipping paths” so graphic designers can easily create masks with professional image editing software. In any case, it’s not every day you can say you downloaded something that helped shaped the Western world. Oh, and feel free to forward these on to Mr. Bush if you get the chance.

Here.

The release of Google’s long awaited Calendar app, codenamed CL2, came a little closer today  when screenshots were leaked onto the web. If reports are to be believed, the calendar will be very closely integrated with Gmail and adhere to standard web 2.0 features, such as Ajax and subscription feeds for integration with other desktop calendars. Other likely (and to some extent obvious) features include event creation, search, sharing and notifications (including SMS). However, rumour also has it that Google is going to attempt to aggregate events like eventful and zvents do, which would give users a large and integrated events database at their finger tips. No news yet on a release date but I wouldn’t expect to see this anytime soon.

More screenshots are available at the link below.

Exclusive Screenshots: Google Calendar [Techcrunch]

In this age of ultra-realistic graphics, the issue of gameplay can sometimes feel somewhat overlooked. This handy list of the best freeware games, courtesy of blogger Gnome, helps reinvigorate some old classics that we had almost forgotten about. Whether it’s the cult sci-fi role playing greatness of Beneath a Steel Sky, the hilarious and engrossing text adventures of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, or the breakthrough violence of the first two Grand Theft Auto titles; you’ll be surprised by how much fun you can have with outdated graphics and a few clicks of a mouse. So, rather than selling your arm or leg for an Xbox 360, why not download these and spend your money on something really special.

Have gander here.

Remember those distant days of taping your favourite songs off the radio? Well, with Stationripper, you'll no longer have carefully edit out the DJ's voice to get your free if slightly poor recordings. This program will scour internet radio, slice songs into individual mp3's, name them and even find corresponding artwork for them. It also claims that, with a broadband connection, you could feasibly download up to 3,000 tracks a day. Can't say this is the most legal thing we've ever found so we remind you to be good.

Check it out here.

Download thousands of songs a day, legally - now with album art goodness [via Digg]

Rumours are growing that Apple are developing a paid for movie service through thier hugely successful iTunes store. The service would work much in the same way as it does for songs, with users downloading full length films to their ipod’s, and watching it through a computer or connected television. However, similar to Napster’s own music service, users would pay a monthly description fee of $9.99, giving access to over 1,000 movies at any one time. If stories are to be believed, Apple are currently halfway through developing the service, so don’t be surprised if you hear about this at the next Mac expo in April. Indeed, with portable and downloaded media becoming increasingly popular, a foothold in the film industry would surely give Apple an unassailable lead in the digital downloads market.

Apple researching iTunes feature film movie service? [Appleinsider]

Internet Archive is a vast and free media library, mostly comprising of out-of-copywrite texts, audio, video, and software for the general public to use at their leisure. It’s a library in the true educational sense, with much of it aiming to “preserve society’s cultural artifacts and to provide access to them”. So, in amoungst the old cartoons and recordings you can often find the odd gem; be it a grainy Bob Dylan recording or Edison’s first attempts to synchronise moving images with sound, these are not only fun but important as well.

Get downloading here.