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Jamendo is an online music sharing community where users can stream and download a wide variety of music. What sets Jamendo apart from similar sites is that all of its music is licensed with Creative Commons or the Free Art License, making it legal to copy, share, and edit songs found there. Jamendo Radio is a Chrome extension that lets users control Jamendo from within their browser. It's not the most intuitive add-on we've ever seen, but once we figured it out we found that it worked well.

Jamendo Radio installs easily and appears as a small icon … Read more

Online videos used to be pretty rare, unless you were prepared to spend a big chunk of time waiting for video files to download. With the advent of high-speed Internet and Flash, it's now hard to imagine life on the Internet without video; it's become a pretty significant part of our online experience. OnLine TV Live is one of many programs that attempt to organize and provide quick access to online video content. Unfortunately, we didn't find much to like about this application.

OnLine TV Live's interface somehow manages to be both visually sleek and somewhat … Read more

I'm a big proponent of stereo home theater, but I'd quickly concede that most home theater buyers are looking for multichannel systems. Of all the available multichannel options--11.1, 9.1, 7.1, 6.1, and 5.1 --that last one is the most popular, but that hasn't stopped most manufacturers from only offering 7.1-channel models. Budget-priced models are the only 5.1 receivers you can buy.

And in 2009, Dolby Pro-Logic IIz, which featured two additional "height" channels, bumped the total for some receivers to 9.1 channels, even though our listening tests here at CNET … Read more

Digital Clock-7 is a very basic but attractive freeware screensaver that displays the current time on the user's desktop. Although some users might prefer screensavers with more features, we liked the sleek simplicity of this one very much.

The screensaver itself is very simple: it displays the time. The time doesn't move; you can't change its format, and there are no bells chiming the hour. There are four things about the display that you can customize: the color of the numbers--although the background is always black--the font, the size of the numbers, and whether you want the … Read more

The Wall Street barons of yesteryear are usually depicted standing next to a stock ticker, reading prices off ticker tape in what passed for real-time. Today, even small-time investors have access to an overwhelming amount of financial news and information, in real-time, all the time. Fortunately, there's software that can help you sort it all out, such as DTLink's Personal Stock Streamer. It delivers streaming stock quotes, multiple streaming charts containing a wide range of technical analysis indicators, automatic portfolio updating and recalculating, e-mail alerts with third-party software support, and more, all in real-time. It does a lot … Read more

TweakNow PowerPack 2009 is a free set of tools that give you the power to tweak, modify, and personalize just about every aspect of Windows and your PC. It features a fully integrated suite of modular utilities. There's a Registry Cleaner module, a nice touch in freeware since so many of them cost more than they're worth, but there's also a Registry Defragmenter that reorganizes things for speedier performance. The Windows Secrets module gives you access to more than 100 hidden Windows settings. The Virtual Desktop module lets you run as many as four different virtual desktops … Read more

ESBCalc is a free scientific calculator that performs trigonometric, hyperbolic, and logarithmic functions. It has a "Paper Trail" option that shows you your calculations on a virtual paper tape like an accounting calculator. You can change and customize the color of the calculator's buttons and background using the Options menu. ESBCalc also functions as an ordinary calculator.

ESBCalc's interface is basic, but it's designed to resemble a handheld scientific calculator, so it'll be familiar to many users with science and engineering backgrounds. Clicking the "I" button on the calculator brings up a … Read more

Leawo PowerPoint to Video provides a simple tool for converting slideshows to video. Its professional layout, focused functions and simplicity make this a great choice for those seeking to view their PowerPoint presentations in new ways.

The program's interface instantly impressed us with its professional design and its simple layout. We never felt compelled to seek out Help file instructions, because the entire process felt so intuitive. We were able to build a queue of PowerPoint files for conversion within a few minutes, which was nice but expected. The program's biggest surprise came from the variety of file … Read more