App 12: Audacity

I have a love for multi-platform applications here at AppADD. I've got another great application which is available over many operating system, and has not sacrificed quality to meet the demands of being an application for Windows, Mac or Linux.

Audacity is a free audio editor and recorder. One of the great features of it, is it's compatibility with tons and TONS of file formats. .WAV .MP3 .Ogg, all of these have such devoted following, and audacity supports all of them.

In terms of audio editing, I use it for cutting and modifying audio for a radio station. When working in that context quality is very important. When working on my audio in GarageBand, in the lab, I end up with compressed formats, and consequently bad quality audio.

However when I use audacity, I consistently get good audio samples, and they sound great on radio.

Audacity also has plenty of great effects to help create good sounding audio everytime.

Lastly it has lots of exporting tools, to allow your audio to be converted into a wider range of file formats.

I recommend Audacity to anyone who needs to make quick edits of their audio, and to give it a shot.

Besides, it won the Best Project for Multimedia award at sourceforge.net, and the developer has been employed at Google! (Good for him!)

Lastly remember, it's available for Windows, Mac and Linux!

App 11: Microsoft Security Essentials

Ever since computers have started using the internet, we have been worried about malware and viruses. It's always recommended to keep your computer protected with some sort of anti-virus program. However, with so much involved with virus-scanning (like real-time protection, attachment scanning, updates and registry scanning) some programs can end up slowing down your computer considerably.

Thats why I recommend Microsoft Security Essentials, when it comes to protecting your computer.
No I haven't bumped my head, Microsoft made a great, free program here.
Not only is it great and free, its un-obtrusive, and uses considerably less resources than other free (or even paid) anti-virus programs.

MSE is also updated daily, and offers a wide range of scanning options.
If you don't have much time, you can use the quick-scan to weed out the obvious issues. This tends to take about 10-20 minutes.
For a more thorough scan you can use the full scan option.
Additionally, when paired with Windows Defender in Windows 7, I've yet to run into any problems with my computer.

App 10: Launchy

When using Ubuntu, I'm often asked "What's that?" when using certain applications. The one I'm asked most often about is Gnome-Do. I've talked about Gnome-Do and it's awesomeness in Linux. Now its time to talk about it's Windows alternative; Launchy. While the two applications aren't based off each other, you will notice many similarities between them.

Just like Gnome-Do, Launchy is "designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager.
How? 
Just by pressing the designated hotkey (alt+spacebar) you get a dialog box to type in whatever you need. Need to launch an application? Just start typing! Launchy will even auto-complete, or suggest what it thinks your typing to make things easier.

Additionally, Launchy is very customizable, allowing not only to change the location of where it shows up, or it's hotkeys, but with plugins, and multiple skins. Plugins will allow you to launch a specific website just by typing in it's URL in Launchy, or even search Google without opening up your web-browser first.


Launchy, in the end, aims to make life more intuitive for the user, with less mouse-movements and clicking. Additionally, because it's an open source application, anyone can develop for it, making their own plugins or skins!