It probably sucks for non iPod users as they don’t have the convenience of being able to sync there non-Apple mp3 players with iTunes. iTunes is without doubt the best music application around, no doubt its way more intelligent than your average music player. But the worst thing is that you can’t sync your non iPod players with it. But what if we can sync our mobile phone or any other music device without any hassle. We got a solution, right for this problem.

iTunes Agent is a tiny application that sits in your system tray, allowing your to synchronize any music enable phone or mp3 players or any other media device that shows up under Windows Explorer with a drive letter.

The software is pretty straight forward, no interface whatsoever, all you got to do is install the application. First time it runs, it will automatically detect if you’re upgrading or installing a fresh version of iTunes agent. It will even detect your iTunes version on its first run letting you sync your devices without any trouble.

Open your iTunes and iTunes agent will display any new devices under “My Devices” in your iTunes main window.

Add a new device by right clicking on iTunes Agent in the system tray and select Preferences.

Then click on New Device button and add a new player.

Now you can name your device whatever you like, but be careful to choose the accurate Music folder on your device for iTunes to sync. Enter the synchronize pattern and Recognize by folder/file.

iTunes Agent supports Smart Playlists. It works with Windows 7, Vista and XP, and requires iTunes to be installed.

Download iTunes Agent

You probably have came across messenger clients like Trillian, Digsby that lets you  access all your instant messenger clients in one place. Recently another trend shows many applications, online and downloadable integrating Facebook and Twitter accounts or our accounts on other social media websites without us switching madly between each other. Part of this interesting trend led me to another cool application that integrates your Facebook account directly into your Gmail account.

Gmail Facebook Integration is a useful extension for Google Chrome. Unlike other extensions it won’t place a icon near your address bar but instead it directly into your Gmail interface. If you already accustomed to Greasemonkey scripts, you probably would know what have you come across. As you don’t need to open Facebook in a different window, its so much faster and less time consuming. Besides the Google Buzz style approach makes it plan and simple to work with. Gmail Facebook Integration is a pretty cool and new approach to convergence in social media and email services.

But as wonderful as it works, still the developer needs to fix lots of bugs and add new features. Hopefully in coming months it should be lot better.

Gmail Facebook Integration

Acronis True Image Home is a popular disk imaging software for both personal users that lets you create backup copy of the system and later lets you restore or recover to saved state whenever a data disaster occurs. The disk image can be created within Windows or offline by booting from CD/DVD, USB key, USB flash drive, PXE, removable hard disk or other bootable device. Another interesting feature lets you clone entire hard drives, replicating to a newer disk even if the capacities are different.

The current version of Acronis True Image Home edition is Acronis True Image Home 2010. Still Acronis True Image Home 11 packs with quite a lot of features such as:

Disk imaging – File backups, full, incremental and differential backups, and around the clock protection
Manage & Protect – One-click protection, set & forget backups, Try & Decide, encryption, and privacy tools
Recover – Quick restore, recover files and folders, recover to any point in the past and keep working during a restore

A genuine  license for Acronis True Image Home would cost you about $49.90. But if you don’t mind leaving with a little out of date software, the developers have partnered with German ComputerBild magazine to giveaway Acronis True Image Home 11 German version for free. The only catch is, it’s only available in German language and the free serial key won’t work with the English version.

OK, if you’re interested, just  follow these steps below to grab a free serial license key code:

Step 1

Head over to the following promo page http://www.acronis.de/mag/cobi/ati11h

Step 2

Enter the “Vorname” (First Name), “Nachname” (Last Name) and E-mail, tick the check box for “Ich habe die Datenschutzerklärung gelesen und akzeptiere sie” as shown in the image below,  then click on “Registrieren!” button.

Step 3

Now check your email inbox for an email from Acronis and click on the confirmation link. A personal Acronis account will be created.

Step 4.

Another email with the genuine serial key will come. Note down the serial key.

Step 5

Download the German setup installer of Acronis True Image Home 11 from one of the download links : Link 1 | Link 2 | Link 3

Now install the application and enjoy.

Agnitum Outpost Firewall Pro is a pretty well known firewall solution, advanced features included defense against PC infiltration by denying unauthorized access by remote hackers and protecting against data theft, denial-of-service attacks, privacy violation, Trojan horses, spyware and more.

Cool thing is that PC Authority are kind enough to setup a promotion offer which lets you use $20 worth 6 months Agnitum Outpost Firewall Pro 6.7.3 license for free. Follow the steps below and you will be able use it for free.

How to Get Outpost Firewall Pro 6.7.3 license for Free ?

Step 1.

Head over to the link http://www.agnitum.com/promo/pc-authority/

Step 2.

Enter this promo code E9NZR-XY3RW-WK8CS-WKW85-XKNC2 , with your email and name and click “Send” button.

Step 3.

You’ll now receive the email with the license code.

Step 4.

Now download the following installtion files whichever suits your system. Install and enter the license key you got in the email.

For 32 bit Windows:26.9 MB
For 64 bit Windows system: 33.2 MB

Step 5

Enjoy.

The latest update to the Norton 360, version 4.0 is finally available for consumers in need of an “all-in-one”  security suite. As you would probably know it comes with a personal firewall, anti phishing technology, spyware, malware detection, file backup and other PC maintenance utilities.

Norton 360 4.0 claims to be the first to introduce new and cool features like Norton Insight, Norton Download Insight, SONAR 2 Behavioral Protection, Norton System Insight and Norton File Insight but as they claim we can also point out that the same features have arrive 5 months earlier when Nortion AV and IS 2010 were released. Only new features that we haven’t came across are “Reputation service” and “Web-based Access to Backup Files”. The reputation service adds an additional layer of security to detect viruses, Trojans, spyware, and other threats. The Web-based Access to Backup Files feature on the other hand lets you retrieve and restore files that you have backup-ed online from virtually any computer with Internet access.

If you want to give it a try, you’ll have to download Norton 360 v4 setup file which is 138MB in size and just install it. Download link can be found below. As a trial version Norton 360 c0mes with a complimentary 90days trial which lets you test you system for a reasonably long time so you can figure out stability.

Download Norton 360 v4

Dropbox is a pretty cool online backup solution and I have to say I’m pretty impressed by the ease of use and functionality. Dropbox desktop client is pretty impressive with automatic file syncing with any types and size of files, besides that it works with Mac, Windows and Linux.

Normally you can access your Dropbox files opening a regular tab in Chrome but that requires logging into Dropbox website which is quite a hassle and lazy guys like me don’t like to switch between tabs. Dropbox extension for Google Chrome is the answer!

Install the extension from Google Chrome Extensions Gallery.

Now click on the Dropbox icon in the top right corner of your Chrome browser, to sign into Dropbox.

The default view will provide you with the latest updates under the “Recent Events Tab”

If you click on the ‘Files Tab” you can access your files and folders or access the regular site.

If you click on “regular site” it will open dropbox website inside the tab itself.

You can now  access all your files without having to open dropbox site .

Hopefully this plugin will have more features with coming updates till then if you need quick access to your Dropbox files nothing beats DropBox Extension for Google Chrome.

Download the Drop Box extension for Google Chrome

Feeling unsafe about your computer, Secunia Online Software Inspector is a great way to know which software your computer needs to be up-to-date. Basically your usual antivirus or Internet security would never tell you anything about software vulnerabilities but with this web scanner your most common security problems should be history.

All you got to do is headover to the web scanner’s page and simple click on Start and let it scan your computer for known vulnerabilities of the softwares installed and gives you list of whom to patch. Only thing required is to have your browser enabled Java and the scanner works with almost all Windows system.

Thou the scanner won’t cover every application on your PC and only checks for the most common programs like Flash, Adobe Reader, QuickTime, Java and others, still its a great way to deter malware and spyware attacks as these common applications are the ones that most of the time lead to infections. Besides that everybody loves freeware stuff .

Secunia Online Software Inspector is free and works with any Windows web browser that supports Java.

One nasty thing about Windows Vista and Windows 7 is , Aero effects not being in the cheaper Home Basic and Starter Editions. But why the hell you would spend extra just for the sake of having some glitter effects. Seriously Microsoft needs to think why not just make a single version that works fine in almost all systems just like Apple does with their OSx. It’s not that hard guys you already did that with Windows XP. But never mind we are not here to comment on business strategies. If you really don’t wanna spend some extra just for the effects here is cool utility.

Aero Enabler is a freeware tool that lets you enable Aero without having to upgrade your Windows or go through the nasty registry tweaks. Furthermore it disables the internal hardware check which allows you to run Aero only it the tests are passed.All you got to do is download the application and click on Enable Aero. Aero Enabler is a freeware but make sure you have .Net Framework 3.5 or higher installed.

Download Aero Enabler

I find it very annoying when my friends come over my place to hang out and meticulously checks up my files and folders especially the photo albums and other stuffs . I hate it really especially when they copy all my music and movies without even asking me once. I’m sure even you guys have the same problem of sneaky friends and parents.

No Drives Manager is a simple tool that removes drives from the Windows Explorer so that casual users won’t see them and prey your private data’s. Thou the drive is still technically visible through your command line or run dialogue its still inaccessible to most non intrusive users. But believe me most of the people using this application would be guys who keep huge stash of porn or other NSW stuffs. Yet we still found one interesting feature, say you got a multiple-cardreader on your computer, depending on the hardware Windows will randomly assign each slot- one for SD Card, one for MicroSD. What NoDrives Manager does is, it helps declutter Windows Explorer so that only the drives that you really want to use shows up.

NoDrives Manager is freeware, Windows only.

NoDrives Manager

Windows 7 is probably Microsoft stablest OS in recent years but you never know when disasters strike. One of the coolest new feature Windows7 lets you create a System Repair Disc that can be use to boot up and recover your malfunctioned OS. Here’s how you can.

Creating System Repair Disc

Type system repair into the search box in the Start menu and click on Create a System Repair Disc.

Make sure you have a blank CD in your Drive. A dialog box should appear letting you selecting your drive, now click Create disc. A CD will take upto 142MB of space.

How to use the Disc

Now if for some reason if your OS become unbootable, all you got to do is insert the recovery disc in your drive and boot from it and enter into Windows Setup [EMS Enabled].

After it boots up you can access recovery options like Startup Repair, System Restore, System Image Recovery.

All you got to do is select the appropriate recovery option and your system should be back to normal.

Make sure you have a System Repair Disc as you never know when Operating System disaster occurs.