I like taking photos when I go on holiday, especially if I have the chance to see beautiful places and landscapes. And I like taking pictures at parties where there are so many people that they don't seem to notice me and this gives me the opportunity to have some wonderful snapshots and the funniest photos.

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The problem is that I use very high resolution because I want my photos to be very clear and detailed, so , of course, they are very large files that take up a lot of space on my hard disk. And, as I have used only digital cameras for about ten years now, you can imagine what a huge amount of photos I gathered during all this time. And I am not willing to give up any of them. That is why I thought of a way of making them occupy less space somehow ( I know I can make a backup copy on DVDs - I did that, too - but what if the DVDs get damaged and I end up with nothing?).Not to mention the nerves and anger when I want to send an email to my sister with photos from my last birthday and I get the message :"The file you are trying to send is too large".



So I found these free zip software applications that make wonders. They compress the files appointed by you and shrink them somehow, so they will be take less space from your hard drive and you will be able to send them via email or instant messages anytime and anywhere. All these software applications are very easy to download, install and use on your computer and the fact that they are completely free comes as a bonus.



Once you have installed the software just pick the file you want to ZIP , right click on it and select "add to archive" and this is it. your file will be shrunk and will have a new extension: .zip, .rar, .cab, etc. If you send these zipped files to somebody else, they will be able to open the file and decompress it only if they have a similar software installed on their computer. However, some of the free zip software applications have an additional option , allowing you to make autorun or autoexecutable files that can unzip themselves and come back to their original dimension and form as soon as you double click them. These autorun files do not need the same software to be installed on the computer where they were sent.

Here are some examples of free zip software: CoffeeCup Free Zip Wizard, 7-Zip - Free File Compressors/Archiving Utility, Bzip2 - Free File Compressors/Archiving Utility, Freebyte ZIP - Free File Compressors/Archiving Utility, IZArc - Free File Compressors/Archiving Utility, Info-ZIP - Free File Compressors/Archiving Utility, StuffIt LITE - Free File Compressors/Archiving Utility, TUGZip - Free File Compressors/Archiving Utility, UHARC Media Compressor, QuickZip - Free File Compressors/Archiving Utility, ZipGenius - Free File Compressors/Archiving Utility, Petite - Free Executable Compressor and UPX - Free Executable Compressor.

Thunderbird email software is meant to be used for Mozilla Firefox internet browser. It is both a fully featured, secured and functional email provider, but also a RSS feed reader. Besides, Mozilla Thunderbird s a free email provider than offers you an increased security of your emails, protecting you and your email account from spam, scam emails or any other kind of harmful email messages.
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So your email account is totally free from email viruses. So it is very secure, but at the same time very easy to use and it also offers many features. So why is Thunderbird email so efficient against email worms and viruses? First of all it identifies the potential threat and does not allow the email attachments run automatically as they were programmed. Your computer will get infected only if you deliberately save the attachment to your computer and then run it from there.

Even in the case of remote links to graphics stored on the sender's web site, you will be asked first if you want to see those links or not , if you trust the sender and the email will be viewed only after your formal consent. Once you install Thunderbird email software your email account will be protected against spam messages and junk mail, too, as this software uses a lot of sophisticated filters to be able to identify them from the normal email messages.

Mozilla Thunderbird manages multiple POP and IMAP email accounts. It is a valuable tool in organizing your "good" emails easily. You can sort the emails you received or sent very quickly by date, sender or other criteria. You get the chance to a quick search and save your searches in a virtual folder that you can access later. It also allows you to encrypt or sign your mail messages, giving them a personal note.

You can open as many tabs as you want, getting the chance to read various emails at the same time or even look for a specific email. In this case, when you have opened more emails in different tabs, you are offered first a shorter summarized version of the email message so that you can get an idea what this is about and only after you decide to read it entirely it will actually open the message.

Another important feature is the fact that you can find your contacts easily and that the Thunderbird email software fills in the entire address of the people you want to send emails to just as simple as typing the first few letters of their name. Of course the name and contact email address must be in the address book first so you can do that. But once you've done that, it will be easier afterwards.

Besides the perfect HTML support offered by Mozilla thunderbird, I should also mention its very fine and plain text editing. You get the chance to use their basic functions like to save, edit and use any of their message templates. These and more are only a few of the many features that Mozilla Thunderbird is offering. So, if you are interested to download this software's latest version for free, just follow this link.

Big-O software Incorporated is a software company that only has two significant software applications developed: Hksfv software and AIM+. They are offered for free on the internet and can be used by anybody who cares to download the software and install it on their computer.
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HkSFV 2.01 is an utility tool that allows you to check the validity of the files you have downloaded on your computer. It makes a quick comparison of these files with a check-sum that was generated before that. It has a very simple interface with two panes. You have the possibility to search the file or folder that you want to be validated and you can do this in a very simple manner: just enter the name of the file in the little window and press enter to find what you need.

When you use this software application and want to find out if a certain file is valid or not, just point it to the Simple File Verification file on your computer. This SFV offers you a list with the checksum of each file that has been downloaded. Many people who write software programmes use this software - this SVF file to make sure the recipients get the right files. HkSFV software computes the checksum for a certain file very fast and after that it compares that number to the sum it expected to result.

This software is very easy to use and this feature is very important for any software. It verifies all the files that you pointed and quickly identifies them as being ok, bad or not found. You can also use this application to work in reverse and instead of checking the validity to generate SFV files for a folder or even a compressed file. Usually this Big-O software application is used  with CRC-32 and MD5 technology for validating the integrity of files after a download was performed on your computer or after the file was moved through a potentially unstable environment.

AIM+ 2.2.1 is known as being an add on for the AOL Instant Messenger for Windows. This one is integrated with AIM+ in an automatic way and adds instant messaging and chat (together with the history) . It can do a lot of other things like removing ads, clone, customize the friends list and others. However you should know this software had its blooming time back in the 2001-2003.

I haven't heard of any improvements being done or any new improved versions being released ever since. Besides, you don't have the possibility to apply parent control over the messages being sent and received, so I am a bit reticent as a parent. Any way, you may find it useful as it allows you to have as many friends as you want being on and at the same time you can have two AIMs being open at the same time. Even though there are only these two software applications being produced by Big-O software it has attained its purpose.