A lot of people today have experienced the usefulness of running the OS directly from the CD-ROM. With the speed of today’s CD-ROM’s the start up time is compatible with most hard disks. Only user data and settings are stored on the computer, which makes more space available on the drive. These settings can off course be kept on a USB drive for easy access/backup.

There’s also a few other benefits worth mentioning. If you do not need to store data, you can run your PC without a hard disk. And since you can’t overwrite normal CD-R discs the chances that someone should mess with your OS data is non-existent. Furthermore you will save a lot of time as the OS and all your favourite applications are already installed wherever you boot up your CD.

The CD-based Linux distributions comes in all kinds of versions depending on your needs.

The Live CD List is a web based overview of more than 300 Live CD distros including links, size, names, votes etc…

gDocsBar is a sidebar extension for Firefox, a perfect companion for all of you using Google® Docs.

With gDocsBar, you can drag and drop multiple files into the sidebar to upload documents.

You can search and filter documents right from the sidebar.

Your Gmail credentials are sent to Google directly over SSL and your passwords are safely stored in Firefox Password Manager.

[Download]

Google Docs - A brief introduction

Create documents, spreadsheets and presentations online

You can easily do all the basics, including making bulleted lists, sorting by columns, adding tables, images, comments, formulas, changing fonts and more. And it’s free.
Google Docs accepts most popular file formats, including DOC, XLS, ODT, ODS, RTF, CSV, PPT, etc.

Share and collaborate in real time

Just enter the email addresses of the people with whom you want to share a given document and send them an invitation.
Multiple people can view and make changes at the same time. There’s an on-screen chat window for spreadsheets, and document revisions show you exactly who changed what, and when.

Safely store and organize your work

There’s nothing to download; you access your documents, spreadsheets and presentations from any computer with an Internet connection and a standard browser. Easily find your documents by organizing them into folders. Drag and drop your documents into as many folders as you want. You can also save copies to your own PC.

Control who can see your documents

You can make your documents available as a web page, blog post or only to the peoples you have invited. Fast convenient and free.

Mozy comes in 2 flavours, one for home users (MozyHome) and one for business users (MozyPro). The first is free as long as you don’t need to backup more than 2GB of personal stuff. To get started simply sign up, download and install the setup files. Then pick your backup folders and files and you are all set, the rest is automatic.

Features

• Open/locked file support: Mozy will back up your documents whether they’re open or closed.
• 128-bit SSL encryption: The same technology used by banks secures your data during the backup process.
• 448-bit Blowfish encryption: Secures your files while in storage, providing peace of mind that your private data is safe from hackers.
• Automatic: Schedule the times to back up and MozyHome does the rest.
• New and changed file detection: MozyHome finds and saves the smallest changes.
• Backs up Outlook files: Disaster-proof email protection.
• Block-level incremental backup: After the initial backup, MozyHome only backs up files that have been added or changed, making subsequent backups lightning fast.

Even if you already have an external disk storing all your valuable information, it could come in handy to have it on-line as well in case your house burns down or any other strange happening occurs…

It’s all automatic so why not go straight to registration?

HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 converter, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.

Supported sources:

• Any DVD-like source: VIDEO_TS folder, DVD image or real DVD (encrypted or unencrypted, but protection methods other than CSS are not supported and must be handled externally with third-party software), and some .VOB and .TS files
• PAL or NTSC
• AC-3, DTS, LPCM or MPEG audio tracks

Outputs:

• File format: MP4, MKV, AVI or OGM
• Video: MPEG-4 or H.264 (1 or 2 passes or constant quantizer/rate encoding)
• Audio: AAC, MP3, Vorbis or AC-3 pass-through (supports encoding of several audio tracks)

Misc features:

• Chapter selection
• Basic subtitle support (burned into the picture)
• Integrated bitrate calculator
• Picture deinterlacing, cropping and scaling
• Grayscale encoding

Visit their website for more information, screenshots and to download the latest version of Handbrake.

Note! In order to convert encrypted DVD’s you will need something like AnyDVD or DVD43 in addition to the converter itself.

Photomatix Pro merges differently exposed photos into one image with details in both highlights and shadows:

• Exposure blending
• Creation of 32-bit HDR images
• Powerful Tone Mapping tool [Examples]
• Automation with easy-to-use Batch Processing [Tutorial] [Features list]

The trial is fully functional and never expires, but applies a watermark to images produced with one of the two Tone Mapping methods and four of the six exposure blending modes.

Download page: Photomatix Pro for Windows

Download page: Photomatix Pro for Mac OS X (Universal Binary)

The examples are very professional looking but I thought I’d give it a go myself as well. The only problem is that I’m not really a very good photographer. Also my camera is way to old and simple and doesn’t include the possibilities to take photos with different exposures.

So in my first experiment I simply took one of my photos (Andalucia, Spain - overlooking the Mediterranean and the city of Fuengirola) and made 2 more versions using Photoshop. One copy where I darkened the photo and one where I brightened it. Then I simply followed the tutorial and made my first HDR image. The original and the end result are displayed below.

Photomatix Pro also comes as a Photoshop plugin, and I must admit I’m very impressed with the possibilities this application seams to offer. As you can see (I hope) the end result is almost like a painting, and could be hanging above the fireplace anywhere.