This is a new freeware editing software that makes it really easy to make changes to content within files without having to open up all the files. For my search engine optimization campaigns this is a really great tool.

Multiple Find And Replace finds and replaces batches of files. You don’t have to open all of your files and apply the find&replace operation one by one. Also, the program includes an advanced command system that can change the find and replace strings in run-time. This version is the first release on CNET Download.com.

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This is a great program that you don’t need to be in the web site design business to love. IrfanView is a fast and compact image viewer/converter. It is trying to be simple for beginners and powerful for professionals. Many supported file formats and features. Features include: multi-language support, Thumbnail option, Painting, slideshow, toolbar skins, fast directory browsing, batch conversion/editing, multipage editing, file search, change color depth, scanning, cut/crop, IPTC edit, capturing, lossless JPG operations, effects, ICC support, EXE/SCR creating, many hotkeys, command line options and plugins.

They’ve just released Irfanview Version 4.2 which you can download now and enjoy some new features which add Basic Unicode support and new options.

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If you have different accounts to manage your webcentric lifestyle, then you might like this new software in beta that unifies all of your communication channels voice, video, IM, text, social media, e-mail, fax and content sharing into a single, intuitive interface, giving you full control of your interconnected lifestyle. I know that I am constantly shifting between my web design persona, my ecommerce shopping cart software persona and my magazine subscription persona, that it’s hard to keep track of who I am at any given moment.

VoxOx by TelCentris is a unified application instant messenger enables you to manage all of your connections and contacts holistically, requires you to give up nothing and, at the same time, provides a sophisticated global phone service for free or at low cost options. By using VoxOx, you can easily participate in virtually every electronic form of communication one at a time, simultaneously and in different combinations. Greater ease of use, especially when accessing multiple channels, will result in an ever broader adoption of these technologies, not just by Millennials and Gen-Xers, but by friends and family of all ages who are becoming overwhelmed by today’s growing communications frenzy.

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Because we do a lot of traveling out of Los Angeles in regard to our web site design projects, it pays to have access to programs online. Ijust picked up this info which includes a 48 hour offer for a $55.00 discount for this online photo editing software. I am going to check the free download before deciding to purchase. It’s pretty cool looking so far at http://a.viary.com Online image editing suite Aviary is now open and available to all after serving out a lengthy private beta which lasted about a year and a half.

The suite is comprised of four Web-based image editing tools that aim to compete with traditional software solutions like Adobe’s Creative Suite by putting all of the applications right in your browser, making them accessible from anywhere.

The opening comes with the imminent launch of two new premium levels of service, which offer paying members more control over their creations than free users have. While all four Web applications are available to users at each of the three levels of service, the higher tiered plans let them save more items, remove and customize watermarks, and get access to professionally produced tutorial content.

The premium plans, which go live next week (November 3rd to be precise), cost $7.99 per month or $79.90 per year for the “green” plan, and $14.99 per month or $149.90 per year for the top-of-the-line “blue” plan. You can see a full sheet of the differences here, with the key one being both the number of creations you’re able to save, and the option of keeping them private.

We’ve got 100 subscription discounts available, which knock $55 off the yearly subscription price of either premium plan. To claim yours go here before signing up. Embedded below is a quick video to show you what you’re capable of doing with Aviary’s tools.

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Because I am involved so much with web site design projects out of my Los Angeles office, I constantly have to deal with playing around with photos and images for my clients’ websites. Most ecommerce software and content management solutions don’t include sophisticated editing tools. And I am constantly on the lookout for free software to do simple tasks like making color corrections, printing, managing photo albums, or any of 100 other routine image-editing tasks. If you have a budget to spend on your digital photography passions then a commercial program like Adobe Photoshop or Corel Paint Shop Pro is a great solution. But if you are low on a budget (hint think of the economy now) and you just need the basics like the ability to resize and crop images then you can find some good free software alternatives I’ve found below on a recent review from download.com.

When working on a recent web design project, I found a quick and easy download for doing some basic editing in a program called IrfanView, The tiny download weighs in at 1.24MB and literally can be installed in seconds. Once you’ve got it running, open the image that you want to edit and select Image > Resize/Resample to edit the size of your photo. To crop, click your cursor in the top left corner of the area you want to crop, then drag the cursor to create a rectangle. Select Edit > Crop Selection, and voila!

Another free application is Resizr, created by Matt Miller back in 2006. Resizr is a free online tool that lets you upload an image from your hard drive or via a URL. You can then rotate, crop, and resize your image, as well as make edits to brightness and contrast. You can even adjust levels and convert PNG files to JPEGs.

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There’s a new trend in the firefox plugin world where the original developers get so busy they don’t have the time to update their plugins as new releases of firefox are introduced. Leave it up to the technogeeks to fill in the gaps. One of the most noteworthy firefox plugins is something called SEO Open which is used to help with search engine optimization tracking right from your own firefox browser. You can quickly visit any web page and using this plugin, you can see yahoo backlinks, msn backlinks and the grandaddy of them all, google backlinks. plus a host of other SEO statistics.

In any event, since Firefox 3.0 was introduced this plugin was sitting there dormant waiting for someone with the time to update it. And Mike from emikey.net has stepped up to the plate with one of his most recent Firefox extensions postings. So if you have downloaded firefox 3.0 and you want a free copy of the updated seo open extension, drop by Emikey.net and pick it up.

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OK. Here’s the story behind this free windows software today. So I’m working on a new laptop with Microsoft’s Vista operating system. And 4 weeks into the new laptop I get the ACER black screen of death. It’s worse than the blue screen because the computer boots up, flashes the microsoft logo and then goes black. So you don’t even see a message to debug your system. So fortunately Acer has a recovery system to restore your system to the factory settings. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help you restore any files you saved to the hard drive before the BSOFD (black screen of death).

Today i present you with a free utility called Recover Files.

It is an award winning program that can undelete / recover deleted files after they have been deleted. Recover Files is a professional file recovery software that allows it’s user to recover accidentally deleted files. Even files removed from the Recycle Bin, network drive, compact flash card, portable devices, in a DOS window, or from Windows Explorer with the SHIFT key held down. Recover Files is a small, fast, useful, practical and powerful. It has a clean, simple interface. Recover Files will work with Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista operating systems.

It can be used to recover deleted files from all NTFS and FAT partitions. The program supports all Windows file systems for hard and floppy drives including FAT12/16/32, NTFS/NTFS5 and image recovery from CompactFlash, SmartMedia, MultiMedia and Secure Digital cards. Recover Files quickly and effectively restore all those files that you may have deleted by mistake.

Wish me luck because I’m going to test it on my laptop. I doubt it will work though because restoring a clean system is not on the list above. Otherwise though this looks like a great program. For more info, check out http://downloads.zdnet.com/abstract.aspx?&compid=64992&docid=308479&tag=nl.e550.

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Today’s software tip is geared to web design individuals and companies. Have you ever looked at a web page - especially when you are debugging code - and you see a hexadecimal value and you want to know what color it represents?

Well, this nifty little html color generator type of calculator is just the best little Web-based wizard to come my way in a long time. You just type in the 6 digit color value and hit a button and it shows you a whole web page filled with that color.

Drop me a note if you like the tool. I sure do. It would have saved us a lot of time when we were designing some skins for our shopping cart platform.

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