VeohTV

VeohTV is a video player that works as an internet tv. With hundreds of channels and thousands of video sources to choose from, there is plenty of content to meet just about everyones tastes. Search and watch network television channels or your favorite video sources such as YouTube. Some of my favorite features of VeohTV is the ability to download and save all videos to your library. Search through your favorite music videos or check out an episode of your favorite TV show that you missed this week. With an an appealing and easy interface, it is easy to scan through the thousands of video sources to find what you are looking for. If you are looking for a specific video, use the search feature to bring up most of the instances of the video on the internet.

Link: VeohTV

Vista Transformation Pack 8.0

The ever so popular Vista Transformation Pack has been updated and released over at Windows X Shrine. It is a nice little GUI overhaul for XP users who want to get the look and feel of Vista. And for you VTP 7 users, the hotfix issue has been fixed in this new version. Along with that fix, there are a few more changes and upgrades in the 8.0 pack, including:

-The ability to save info for later uses and unattended transformations.

-The ability for it to read and detect the target machine for suggested setup.

-New 3rd party apps and upgrades to existing apps.

-Aero Glass without WindowBlinds and Flip 3D has been added to this version.

Here is the link to Windows X Shrine where you can download:

Link: Vista Transformation Pack 8.0

Make Windows Look Like Mac Leopard

Do you want to make your windows based desktop look like Mac Leopard? Or just don’t have the money to invest in a Mac? Here are a few suggestions to help achieve this.

First of all, however not necessary, but brings more of a Mac feel to your PC, you can install FlyakiteOSX v3.5 created by Chris Kite. As far as Transformation Packs go, Flyakite is the smoothest and most stable that I have ever tried. Surprisingly, my system ran smoother and faster and used little extra resources with this installed.

Next, you want to apply a visual style or Windowblinds skin that matches the Leopard GUI. There are a few out there as of now. My personal favorite is neodesktop’s Leopard Glass 3.0 theme for Windowblinds.

There are a few other Leopard Windowblinds themes as well as Visual Styles for Leopard that you can find at DeviantArt.

And just FYI; If you are installing a visual style and have installed Flyakite, the uxtheme.dll patch has already been included with the install. This allows you to install other themes besides the ones that come with XP or Vista.

An older version of RKLauncher comes with the Flyakite install to use as your dock. If you want to replace it, ObjectDock is a great dock program, and Yoni over at WindowsEdge has made a Leopard inspired dock using RKLauncher and KKMenu.

vsdigital over at DeviantArt has made some very nice reflective dock icons for your dock.

Also over at DeviantArt, kampongboy92 has some wonderful Leopard icons for use with Stardock’s IconPackager.

After that, you may want to install a finder type taskbar for your desktop. ObjectBar is probably the best and most skinned for this. Over at markraats.com you can find some awesome skins for the FinderBar, as well a great tutorial for FindeXer that matches up with Leopard’s sidebar finder.

Extras: These are are links to other applications and skins to further enhance your Leopard look on Windows:

MacSearch A spotlight clone for you PC.

iTunes, or a great alternative, Songbird, with an iBird skin.

Avedesk to give you the option to add large mac style icons to your desktop.

Hopefully this will give you a good starting base to converting your Windows based PC to look and feel like Leopard.

Miro

Miro is a free, open source, internet tv. Watch thousands of internet video podcasts and video rss feeds, as well as download each and every feed or video that you watch in Miro. It also works great with HD content.

Miro plays AVI, MPEG, MP3, Quicktime, ASF, Windows Media, DTS, Ogg, 3GP, 3G2, Flash, Nullsoft, PVA, Annondex, Xvid, Miro, Democracy, and mostly all major video formats. And it can even download and play Torrent files.

Create playlists of your favorite videos, and even insert an individual URL of a video file and automatically download the file. Miro is in it’s early stages, but looks to be very promising.

Link: Miro Video Player

Songbird with AlbumApplet

Songbird developers have incorporated a Coverflow like look into the application’s album art preview window called AlbumApplet. So far it seems to takes a little less memory than iTunes Coverflow, so that is good news for people that think iTunes is serious bloatware. I am already in love with this application and it looks like that it’s going to be a great program once they get to beta builds and better yet, final builds. Click here to read my earlier post about Songbird.

Link: Songbird

Link: Songbird AlbumApplet

Launchy

Launchy is a free program that can replace your start menu. Also, it indexes your files so you can get rid of desktop icons, and launch your applications, web bookmarks, documents, and folders straight from this application. It uses hotkeys to bring up on your desktop and disappears as soon as you find what you need. This is overall one of my favorite and most useful applications.

Link: SourceForge.net

nLite and vLite

Do you ever get frustrated with all the “junk” that is included in your install of XP and Vista. nLite and vLite is a great little app that gives you the choice to include only what you want when you install your OS. It creates a custom bootable install disc of your Operating System that installs only the files and components of your choosing.

Link: nLite Homepage

Visual Task Tips

Visual Task tips is a small utility that shows a thumbnail preview of your tasks in your Windows taskbar. It works much like the taskbar preview in Vista. This handy little app runs on XP as well as Vista. A simple but effective tool for productivity. Click on the link below to visit their site.

Link: Visual Task Tips

Songbird

Songbird is a new open source media application that plays all your music and mashes-up with the web at the same time. I have been using this for a few weeks now, and even though it is in early developers build I have found it to be very stable and very useable right now. It also features add-ons and extensions much the same way that Firefox does.

Link: songbirdnest.com

Windows Leopard Screenshot

This is a desk shot of my current Win Leopard desktop.  I wanted to achieve a mix between Windows and Mac Leopard with this one. This desktop was made with the following:

Windowblinds 6 by Stardock

ObjectDock by Stardock

Leopard Glass 3.0 by neodesktop

Yahoo Widgets

KKMenu 2.80 for ObjectDock

BSplayer – skin by liquidbrain

Miranda Chat  – skin by mercury21