May 2006

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I love this application. It does one job and it does it very simply and very well. It has an excellent directory allowing you to discover new podcasts, some of which you’d probably never think of looking for in the first place (for me, Slacker Astronomy was a terrific “random” find).

You can leave the program running on your task bar and it will regularly download your favourites as and when they become available, or you can catch-up with all your downloads whenever you decide to run the application.

Their web site quotes more than 1,800,000 downloads so far, and I can quite see why. Juice is Donationware. You can also (for a modest fee) buy yourself a “Branded Juice” receiver.

Juice is available for Windows (the version reviewed here), OSX 10.3 or higher and soon for Linux.

 
Subscriptions page

 
Podcast Directory - there are some real gems here

 
Downloads page shows your current download progress

[Homepage and Download]

I don’t know how I’d cope without this one! PSPad really is the Swiss Army Knife of text editors. I use it for everything from taking simple notes, to building entire web sites (and previewing them).

It has a terrific search facility, both within the file being editied, and for entire directories. It has block editing (wonderful for removing chunks of text after importing from various sources). It has spell checking, in a number of different languages. It has code colouring for almost every language (including many I’ve never even heard of!)

In short, if you ever work with plain text files, including coding, you’ll love this editor.

 
Editing an html file

 
That same html in preview mode - note you can set different resolutions to view it in

 
The Search/Replace in Files dialog

[Homepage and Download]

System cleansing is an absolute necessity. After a session at the computer, you’re left with countless temporary files, internet cookies etc that all take space up on your pc and, in some cases, leave a history of what you’ve been up to during that session.

CCleaner (or Crap Cleaner, to give it its full name!) is designed to erase all of that temporary data for you, in addition to a number of other functions, as follows:

 
The Cleaner

This is used to clear out your browser cache, temporary files (*.tmp etc), log files, clipboard etc. I use this every time I shut down my browser and after a days work to clear out all the temp stuff. You can select various levels of deletion, from a straight forward “normal” delete, to a 7-pass DOD strength delete.

 
The uninstaller

I prefer this over the default Windows one, primarily because it populates the application list in an instant. Other than that, it serves the same purpose as Windows own uninstaller.

 
Fix issues

This is the best bit This is what I consider to be the best regsitry cleaner I’ve ever used. There are many applications available that serve a similar purpose, both payware, shareware and commercial. I’ve tried a great many of them, but what I love about CCleaner (Crap Cleaner!) is that it’s the only one I’ve used that hasn’t damaged my system in any way. You can scan for items in specific sections (i.e. Applications, Fonts etc), or scan the entire registry. You’re provided with the data relating to the entry (normally the full path to it, so you can determine what it is) and the registry key. Once you’ve selected the items you want to remove, you have the option of backing up the changes first, so if things do ever go wrong, you can re-insert the keys if need be.

The application also checks for updates on start-up, so you can make sure you have the latest version. Updates are very regular and simply install over the top of the existing version.

Installation, by default, will also install the Yahoo toolbar, but you have the option of not installing it if you wish.

This application is Donationware, but still falls into my “free” criteria, as any donations are voluntary.

In summary, one of my must-have applications.