Filehippo.com is a site that hosts free software. Its got a real simple setup and a real clean look. One of the most straightforward download sites I’ve seen. I like the fact that you can choose which version of which software you download as sometimes the newest version doesn’t mean the best version. Clicking a file name will take you to a page describing what the program does.By using the software on this site you can make a fully functional and secure computer for free.

I highly recommend the CCleaner to clean the crap off your computer, fix registry issues and manage your system start up.

I also recommend the  K-lite codec pack to make sure your media player can play the newest video and audio formats.

Final Word: Great compilation of free software. For free!

[ratings]

What can I say? Im a sucker for bunnies.

PLAY

Cute game with some nice music.

Make sure to keep your cursor in the game box.

Below is a screen of my best score, the game is funnest when played fast.

PostSecret is a blog that people can send their deepest darkest secrets to anonymously on a postcard. You can use all your artistic talents to share your sorrow, heartbreak, anger, love, despair, hurt or any other feeling with the world. This site can make you laugh or cry. Sometimes the mood is uplifting and other times it’s depressing, but whatever the feeling, it definitely gets you thinking. Postsecret is updated with new secrets every Sunday. They now have 3 published books for sale on Amazon.com

Final word: Once you’ve been touched by a secret or really relate to one that’s been sent in, you’re hooked!

[ratings]

Once a word reminiscent of kiwis and other strange exotic fruit, the term “wiki” has now widely become loosely synonymous with “mucho mas informaciones” in Spanish. One popular example of this type of online collaborative content gathering is wikipedia.org; anyone can contribute, and as such, information is collected and compiled at an astonishing rate (hence the term “wiki”, which actually means “rápido” in Spanish).

Now to get to the point. Similar to wikipedia in the wiki-esque sense, discogs.com presents arguably the most complete online music catalogue in existence. Primarily a knowledge database, it also serves as a music market place and online community for contributing members (vinyl records as well as cd’s and cassettes can be bought and sold, members can communicate directly to other members, happiness abounds). Membership is free and only required for contributors or for people who have so many vinyl records at home that their insurance company requires them to catalogue their entire volume (this is done very easily through the site as most titles have already been contributed and your list when completed can be easily converted to an excel spreadsheet, for the real pros). Otherwise, feel free to search for your favourite group or artist and see exactly when your favourite EP was released in Japan and even memorize the catalogue number for those Friday night trivia games with your friends and family.

Final Word: Fun stuff !

10/10

Vlite.net is by nuhi, the creator of the popular nlite which allows people to customize their Windows 2000, 2003, and XP installs. Vlite allows users to customize Vista by letting them decide which components to install and which to leave out. Theres a long list of parts which can be removed and consequently shrink Vista to beable to comfortably fit on a CD-R.

I’ve been experimenting with Vlite and managed to keep Vista’s prettiness with the functionaly I need while making the install CD under 700MB (under 4 gigs installed). Not only does Vlite make the install faster but it allows the Vista to be run well on lower end computer who dont have at least 1 gig of ram. Read the forums to see how some people are running vista on 256MB of ram.
I will provide a screen shot of what I removed a little bit later. I have 1 gig of ram and a dual core CPU, Vista flies.

Final Word: This rocks! There’s so much crap preinstalled on Vista. This lets you decide what stay and what goes.

Digg.com has been around for about 2 years. It has over 1 million users. The concept is user driven news. Someone submits an article, picture set or website and the community votes one what they like. The top stories end up on the homepage. People can browse the top stories in the past 24 hours, week, month or year.

I browse this site constantly at work to pass time. Articles tend to be very techie because the people who sign up to vote on stories are typically male IT geeks. The site founder and his close friend host a podcast called Diggnation which review the top stories of the week with humor.

Final Word: A great place to waste time. News voted by the people for the people. Something worth checking on a daily bases.

TheRegister.co.uk features up to date hardcore international IT news. Clean articles that get to the point. If your an IT junkie this site will keep you informed. Not for the average internet surfer.

I cant explain the bird head, I can only assume it makes it more hardcore.

Final Word: Up to date IT news. Loads of great content, useful if you’re tech savy.

Friskyradio.com has been around since 2001 and seems to be quite well known by dance music fans. I found out about this site though the Soulseek “house” chat room. I ask a room of 300 people for a good online house radio station, Frisky was the overwhelming response. I listened I liked.

Final Word: Popular, easy to navigate, reliable for bumpin beats.

Soulseek is a ad-free, spyware free, file sharing application. Mainly for music.

Strong community and virtual rooms lets you to meet people, share information, find new music and chat freely using real-time messages in public or private.

What can I say? Soulseek rocks. I always find the rarest music with it that I cant find anywhere else. One of my favorite features is the wishlist. If you cant find what your looking for type the name in the wishlist and you’ll be notified as soon as someone with the file logs in.

Remember to leave your searches going, it never stops searching.

Final Word: Not the fastest p2p network but one of the finest ive seen.

Pronton radio plays house and electro and lets you buy the cool songs you just heard. They’ve been around for a while and have a great style sound and layout. Kinda hard to figure out how to play the music tho :/

I’ve had a very good experience with them. I signed up recently to find out the track listing for a set but never got the confirmation email to my yahoo account. I wrote the admin a quick email and within 15 mins he got back to mee and fixed my account. I really like the style of music they play (personal taste). I also like the fact that they link to Beatport.com so you can (in most cases) buy the songs you really like.

Final Word: Nice to look at, nice to listen too. Not so nice to navigate.

Digitally Imported (or DI.FM) has been around for a long time and has got to be one of the best know online radio stations to date. They have over 30 stations each playing a different style of music. Theres literally something here for everyone. They play 128kbps and lower for free but ask for a fee of $4.95 USD to stream at 192kbps. If you don’t pay the $4.95 USD you are subject to ads ever 30 mins or so. Not the biggest deal unless your a stickler for quality and continuous playback.

I listen to this at work sometimes just for the variety. Kind of annoying at times tho because of the commercials.

Final Word: One of the most popular radio stations around and for good reason unless you dont wanna pay and are a stickler for quality playback.

ThePirateBay.org is well known by the torrent community. They’re based in Sweden and have a reputation of conflict with big companies like Microsoft and Apple. They even have a section you can read all the nasty emails they receive threatening them. Sweden doesn’t have the same laws as the US so they don’t seem too worried. If fact, they hold so much power that when a Swedish internet service provider started blocking access to their site tones of people switch providers forcing that provider to unblock The Pirate Bay. Their latest ploy was raising money so they could buy their own island and become their own country to they could pirate to their hearts content.

I browse The Pirate Bay on occasion to see their top 100 download section. They have big community and lots of great content but I find there to be a few too many Swedish and German comments. I only speak English.

Final Word: Another big player on the torrent scene with a clean look and strong community.

Torrentz.com searches many different torrent sites to find you what you need. Its got a simple user interface and provides many options for each search. The homepage has a search cloud which tells you what the most popular searches are at the moment based on how big the text of each word is (bigger=more popular).

I use this site when I’m feeling lazy and just wanna find something without reading comments. Usually comes up with multiple trackers to choose from. Helps if you know how to add individual trackers to your torrent client to maximize your speed.

Final Word: Easy to search, not so easy to connect to all the trackers. Great for finding new torrent sites.

Demonoid.com is a private torrent site that hosts some of the rarer pirated files floating around. Because its private the administrators are able to more or less control the content and check it for malware and/or viruses. The community is one of the best I’ve seen so you can always find out additional information about the download by reading the comment section. The catch is you need to register and keep a decent ratio to remain a member… meaning your encouraged to upload as much as you download or run the risk of losing your account. Newest torrents don’t require an account to download but newest torrents also have higher risk of not being checked for viruses by the administrators and community.

I use this site for any rare or older torrents that I cant find anywhere else. I also use it to research which downloads are safe and which I should keep away from. I don’t download from it so much because I don’t want leave my computer on for days uploading after downloading a big file.

Final Word: Either the first or last place to look for that special file you want real bad.Private torrent sites are less likely to be sniffed by the powers that try to bring file sharing to an end.