Gmail has been around for almost a decade now and millions of users around the world still use it today. Yet, despite being backed by Google, Gmail is still a service that’s rather skimpy on the features. Fortunately, if you still want to use Gmail in your browser, there are a number of great plugins that will transform your Gmail experience right away. If you use a third-party client like Thunderbird or Postbox, you may want to reconsider.

A confession: I’ve avoided ADW Launcher for the past two years and I don’t know why. Maybe it was the not-so-catchy name of the app. Maybe I just had a bad day once and decided to shun ADW forever. Nonetheless, I regret avoiding this launcher for so long because it’s absolutely fantastic and deserves a try no matter who you are. But sometimes, the mainstream solutions are mainstream for a reason.

The latest iteration of online communication may indeed be social media, but it seems that the most popular avenue is still the old-fashioned forum. It remains today as an excellent way to structure a community on the web. While social media can be somewhat amorphous at times, forums provide order and a sense of home.

Sometimes you just want to fix up a picture without all of the baggage and learning curves that come with powerhouse image editors like Photoshop and GIMP. Obviously, a program as primitive as Paint won’t do, and even middle-of-the-road programs like Paint.NET sometimes won’t cut it. Thankfully, Ashampoo’s Photo Commander 11 steps in to fill the gap. We’re giving away 10 copies of Photo Commander 11 worth a total of $500 for free!

OCRemix is one of many sites where you can legally get free music. The catch is that the songs on OCRemix are remixes of popular video game soundtracks. You won’t find Pink Floyd or Taylor Swift here; however, you might be surprised to find that there are still tons of professional quality tracks for you to enjoy – even if you don’t like video games! And they don’t necessarily sound like video game music. This list covers remixes for Chrono Trigger.

When using Firefox – or any web browser for that matter – one of the best practices you can develop is to always be mindful of your privacy and security. You never know when someone could be snooping on you or intercepting your data. Indeed, being vigilant about this could mean the difference between a blissful browsing experience and maliciously stolen accounts. Encryption is great but there are other considerations you need to make.

Over the past few years, you may have heard the term HTML5 every once in a while. Whether you know anything about web development or not, the concept can be somewhat nebulous and confusing. Obviously, it’s the next step in the line of HTML, but what exactly does it do? Why is there so much excitement around it? And why does it matter for you?

I’m always on the hunt for new music players. Nothing has completely satisfied me yet, though some programs have gotten close. Whatever is the next, newest, coolest, still-undiscovered music player – I want it. And I’m lucky that I found GOM Audio because, based on my impression so far, it fits the bill quite squarely. [...]

There are plenty of high quality music players that you can get for Android without paying a single cent. In fact, just a few weeks ago I wrote about Rocket Player, which is currently my favorite free music player available. But, you know, sometimes you have to pay a bit of cash in order to get something truly extraordinary – like n7player.

I’ve been through a lot of chat messenger programs in my time and, looking back, none of them have been very different from the others. Usually the main difference lies in the interface and performance, but fundamentally they’re all the same. But recently I stumbled across Phonon Voice Messenger, a mobile messenger that really offers something new. Phonon provides text chat functionality, but its main selling point is that it is also a voice messenger. Intrigued? You should be.

Online passwords are something of a double-edged sword. In order to be safe, you need to have multiple unique passwords that are complicated enough that they won’t be cracked or brute forced easily – but with every additional password, it becomes harder to track them all. The usual alternative is to use one password for everything, but this is not the path you want to take. Instead, use Sticky Password. We’re giving away 25 copies of Sticky Password Pro 6.0 worth a total of $750 for FREE!

Reading has a reputation for being an isolated activity. We often think of people in their pajamas or bathrobe, sunk into a massive armchair in front of a roaring fire, with a mug of hot cocoa in one hand and a page-turner in the other. Books have the unique ability to suck us into a whole new world where our imaginations are the only limit. So how can reading be social? Discussion, that’s how.

The more I use my computer, the more I realize how much I take search for granted. How many times have you lost a pair of socks or misplaced your keys only to wish you could search for them and have the location spit back out to you? Fortunately, Windows (and most other operating systems) comes with a handy search feature. But on top of the default search feature, there are a number of third-party tools that claim to be better and faster.

Fundraising is a difficult task. In the old days, you’d have to throw an event or go door-to-door in hopes of soliciting donations from people in person. That still happens today, but the magic of the Internet has taken the idea of fundraising and elevated it to the next level – crowdsourcing. Never before has fundraising been so easy. When used in a fundraising context, crowdsourcing is an online method where you set up a central location for your fundraising campaign and point people there

If you’ve ever done any sort of web management, then you’ve probably used FTP at some point or another. Most web hosts will have a primitive file uploader than you can use straight from your browser, but those are often a pain in the butt to use. The truly powerful FTP clients tend to be desktop-only, but FireFTP is a client that plugs into Firefox and makes the whole process easy. What is FTP?