News

Audacity (tested Windows v1.3.5 beta)
Multi-track audio recorder/editor
Developer: Audacity team
OS: Windows/Mac/Linux
Price: Free
Site: http://audacity.sourceforge.net /

It's rare for an open-source application to become so popular that it eclipses even veteran proprietary software. But Audacity, an open-source sound editor, has done just that. There are other sound editors that do what Audacity can and more, like Digidesign's Pro Tools LE and Adobe's Audition. But for the vast majority of users, who don't need the power of a professional editing suite, Audacity is the first and last word in audio recording and editing.

Audacity's success lies in its relatively simple yet deep functionality, all at the right price. At its most basic level, it acts like any sound recording application. Plug in a microphone, hit the big record button, and you've got audio that can then be saved in a variety of formats. Dig a little deeper, and you'll discover Audacity's ability to record multiple audio tracks, and mix them much like a multi-track recorder. This means you can combine several recorded pieces to make more complex audio—for example, combining several people's commentary tracks to create a podcast.

Though it has some basic audio manipulation features like normalization, high/low pass filters and noise removal, Audacity may seem a bit limited to experienced audio slingers. But if you're just getting started with your first podcast, or want to record a song you wrote, Audacity will get you there—and quite a bit further, if you invest the time to learn how it works.

NetSetMan (tested v2.4.2)
Network connections manager
Developer: Ilja Herlein
OS: Windows
Price: Free for non-commercial use, 12 Euros for commercial use/Pro version
Site: http://www.netsetman.com /

Several weeks ago, Apps we love looked into a Linux network manager named wicd. Easy to use yet highly configurable, wicd is a great solution for novices and power users alike who want more control over their network settings. It's also better than Windows' own wireless network manager, which can't cope with different network configurations as gracefully as wicd. With wicd available only for Linux operating systems, this left Windows users out in the cold. One alternative is NetSetMan, a system tray application that lets you switch between network configuration profiles with two mouse clicks.

The free version of NetSetMan, available for non-commercial and personal use, stores up to six different network profiles. Each profile can store a different set of IPs and DNS servers. NetSetMan can also connect to a specific Windows workgroup, run connection scripts before and after connecting to a network, and connect to network printers and drives automatically. Six profiles should be enough for most users, but NetSetMan Pro eliminates the limit on profiles if you need more.

The biggest downside to NetSetMan is it can't automatically assign a profile based on which wireless network you're connected to, like wicd can. You still have to manually select the right profile if you're connecting to a network that needs special settings. Still, two mouse clicks isn't too much to ask, considering the amount of time and effort you'll save digging around in the network configuration dialogue.

Read It Later (tested v0.9811)
Firefox reading list manager
Developer: Nate Weiner
OS: Windows/Mac/Linux (via Firefox)
Price: Free
Site: http://www.ideashower.com/ideas/launched/read-it-later and http://readitlaterlist.com /

The Internet is full of interesting content that you never get around to reading. Oh sure, you might save a juicy article to your bookmarks and say you'll read it later. But despite best intentions, those saved links often end up lost and forgotten in your pile of bookmarks. Read It Later is a Firefox extension that will hopefully see fewer internet links lost to the depths of your bookmarks.

Read It Later acts as a temporary bookmarks list that lets you easily add items for later reading, and remove them when you no longer need them. Adding a link to your reading list is just like adding a bookmark, but Read It Later adds the link to a reading list instead. When you've got the time for some leisurely reading, you simply bring up an item from the list. Read it Later can be set to automatically remove items once they've been read, or leave you to manually remove items at your leisure.

Recent versions of Read It Later also allow you to synchronize your reading list with other computers and mobile devices with web browsers. This means you can save an article you run across at the office for further reading at home, and vice-versa. You can even have Read It Later save all the links in your reading list to your computer for offline reading—handy for laptops that can't rely on always having an internet connection.