Backing up you USB memory sticks can be very important to preserve your data in case something goes wrong.

While all the backup programs out there can save data from USB drives, USB image tool unique feature is to make disk images out of them so you can store all the drive’s data in one file.

This can be useful for all audio players like iPods or Zunes, because you can store disk images for different occasions. When you want a particular images on the drive, just select restore and select the file.

Website & Download

AudioGuru is a program that lets you see all relevant information (and not so relevant too) about audio files. With it, you can open an audio file to see all the metadata, like covert art, text lyrics, bitrate on a per-frame basis and scan it for errors.

It can be useful to compare your encoded files for compression rates. Also, if you have some audio files that play weird in some players, you can scan them with AudioGuru to check them.

You can integrate it in the explorer shell menu for easier access to scan files.

Support all the major audio formats, such as MP3, AC3, MP4, WavPack, MPC, APE, among others.

Website Download

Another update for CCleaner.

This program is really into development, which is great because for time to time the author includes more applications to the cleaning process.

Remember that you can download a portable version as well an installer without the toolbar. Just click on Other Builds in the download page.

CCleaner 2.09.600 changelog:

• Added full support for Internet Explorer 8.0 beta
• Improved Opera 9.5 support to fix cache cleaning
• Improved interface for Startup tool
• Changed memory management routines to reduce footprint
• Fixed rare 64-bit performance issues
• Added splitter bar to interface
• Fixed repaint issues with certain themes
• Fixed Spybot cleaning detection
• Internal code optimizations
• Updated installer engine to fix icon bug
• Minor GUI tweaks

Website Download

I was looking for some Firefox extensions and i remembered that i wanted to make a post about some of the best IE7 add-ons i know for people that use Internet Explorer 7.

Well, i searched through my bookmarks and there were some links i saved a while back.

If you want to enhance IE7 and add some nice features to it, first try navigating through the official Add-Ons for Internet Explorer website. Almost 400 are listed there.

The official IEBlog has a post titled Must Have Add-Ons for IE7. That post is a little old but you can check it out.

There is also this article in Computer World that covers some of the best.

Personally, i think that IE7Pro is really great and covers some of the most needed features in IE7, like an ad-block program, tab history and inline searching. If you use IE7, you will love this one.

Sadly, the offering of add-on is nowhere near Firefox but at least there some great ones you can use everyday.

A few weeks ago i told you about this program here.

So, in short, Visual Task Tips adds thumbnail preview to the windows in the taskbar, just like Windows Vista does. The only difference is that this program doesn’t support live previews, at least not yet.

Visual Task Tips 3.4 latest changes:

• Text tooltips placement errors fixed
• No more hungs on “busy” applications
• Problem with tasks located outside of primary monitor bounds fixed
• Minor drawing performance optimizations
• Updates check removed from the program, RSS news added on the website

Website & Download

I just uploaded Launch 1.1.

This a minor revision of Launch because i did not receive any bug reports. The changes, while not too many, were introduced to provide more functionality and to improve what was already there.

The most important is that now the main window shows itself in the lower left of your screen, just like the standard Run box dialog of Windows.

Now you can run a file or exit the program by pressing ESC or ENTER, respectively.

The program page has been updated to reflect the new version and release date.

Version History Download

Driver Sweeper has a new version and a new website. Previously, it was developed and released by Guru 3D. I don’t know what happened betweem them, but the latest version now shows Published by Guru3D.com in the title bar.

The new author, Phyxion, changed the whole interface for the better, because now it is easier to view the logs and overall i like its simplistic look instead of the huge icons in earlier versions.

I use it everytime i want to install new drivers from Realtek, Nvidia, ATI or Creative. This way i narrow the chances of having issues with new drivers because of leftover files from previous versions.

All you have to do is reboot your computer after uninstalling drivers. Then, run Driver Sweeper and select which drivers you want to clean up and reboot again. Now you can install new versions of the drivers.

Website Download

Most applications today insert entries in the context menu of file and folders, making it display a little slow (specially on windows XP) and making useless entries sometimes.

What is really bad, is that many of them don’t provide options to enable or disable those entries.

Fast Explorer makes configuring your context menus really easy. It displays a huge list of entries organized by file types. When you select a file type, the program displays its actual entries in the right side of the window so you can uncheck the ones you don’t want to appear when you right-click on this kind of files.

This way, you can get rid of entries you don’t need and make your context menu display faster and make it smaller by displaying only the entries you want or need.

Website Download