A while back I posted an entry about Simple Center, a media freeware that lets you share and sync your files between your devices, one of them being Xbox 360.
Now, I’ve got two great open source media centers: one lets you hook up your machines to your 360, just like Windows Media Center itself and the other just acts as a full media center.

Don’t know what a Media Center is? See Media Center Wikipedia.

XBMC aka XBMC Media Center – for Xbox 360

Attention! XBMC requires a modded Xbox or else won’t work.

XBMC can be installed on a flash drive and run from Windows, Linux and Mac.
It is available in 20 language and plays almost any video and audio format available today, while MS Media center has a limitation.
For a complete feature list, go to XMBC-Features.

From the page:

Currently XBMC can be used to play/view most common video/audio/picture formats such as MPEG-1/2/4, DivX, XviD, MP3, AAC, JPG, GIF plus many more less known formats directly from a CD/DVD in Xbox DVD-ROM drive or of Xbox hard-drive, XBMC can also stream files from a PC over a local network and even stream media streams directly from the Internet.

Because I haven’t got a modded 360 and I don’t intend to mod mine any time soon,I can’t vouch for it so  I am hoping that XBMC runs without problems and any major bugs.
There is a forum that you can turn to in case you get stuck or have problems.

The installation procedure and any other information have been documented on XBMC Online Manual.

If you’ve got any experience with this software, or any thoughts whatsoever, please share with it with us.

Platform: Windows, Linux, Mac.

MediaPortal II aka MediaPortal Infinity

Media Portal will transform your computer into an advanced media center.
From the page:

MediaPortal allows you to listen to your favorite music & radio, watch and store your videos and DVDs, view, schedule and record live TV as a digital video recorder and much much more

According to the FAQ’s, Media Portal II doesn’t support Xbox 360 or Playstation consoles, but I am sure they will soon make this happen.
I’ve installed Media Portal last year and I was quite happy with it.
It is very rich in features; some of those features cannot be found in any other media center I know.

For more documentation and download, go to the Media Portal web site. 
Platform: Windows XP and Vista

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Can you drop your hard drive in favor of online apps?
Having all these apps with you, wherever you go, means being able to be productive anywhere….and also spares you from spending lots of money on software.

Here are some of the best online apps, and I have been testing them all:

Online Office or all-in-one

Zoho
Online office+email (private beta)+CRM…Lots more

Zoho Business: Full online office

ContactOffice: Full online office Email+Contacts+Documents+Calendar+Bookmarks+Notes+Forums+tasks+Groups…..

ThinkFree Office: Basic online office
Docs+Excel+Presentations

Google
Email+Calendar+Docs+Photos+Notebook…+Youtube

File Storage

eSnips
Docs+Images+Mp3’s+Software+Images

Yuntaa
Community+Storage+Zoho+Sharing+backup

aDrive
Docs+Videos+MP3’s+Images

Other Free Online File Storage

Mindmapping

Mindomo
Bubbl.us
Mindmeister

Project and Time Tracking

1TimeTracking

E-Mail

Gmail
Live Mail
GMX
Inbox

Communication

Meebo: Chat from anywhere
gTalk+Msn+Yahoo+ICQ

Home Pages

Netvibes
Pageflakes
PageOnce

Online Image Editing

Splashup
Online Photo tool
Picnik
Picture2Life

Image Storage

Zooomr
Photobucket+Image editor
Flickr

Video Storage

Youtube
Veoh
Blip TV
DailyMotion

More categories to come…

If you have any more ideas to make this list complete, please don’t be shy to post your comment.

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Microsoft is trying to catch up with GoogleDocs and Zoho…and some other online office and document sharing providers, and so they’ve opened up to the public their Microsoft Office Live Workspaces, which is still in beta.

You can store more than 1000 documents, access then from anywhere, and share them with your colleagues or friends.

Creating workspaces is a nice feature and i kind of enjoy it.

At the moment there are 11 pre-made workspaces: budget, essay, jobs, meeting, and so on - but you can also start from scratch with a blank.

See some more workspace examples here.

You’re also offered the “Extended Microsoft Office Experience”:

-Open and save files directly from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint

-Synchronize contact, task, and event lists with Outlook

Now, if you’re into online office and documents sharing….and, if you’re also using Micorosft Office products, then you’ll skip over all the negative reviews this pack gets at the moment and give it a try, since both are working together.

Who knows…..You might like it.

Is not perfect yet and there are a bunch of improvements that can be done, but hey…it’s a beta!

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Freeware

TotalEdit - a powerful editor and notepad replacement with lots of features
Koma-Mail 3.645 - a light and simple portable email client
Mz Vista Force v1.7 b2 - free Vista system tweaker
Bee - a .air desktop blog editor
Drag’n Share - .air - manage your documents on Google Documents by dragging them to or from the desktop.
Quick Media Converter - convert between most audio and video formats
RegClean - clean corrupted reg keys

Online goodies

F-Secure Health Check - checks your system’s security and stability
FotoFlexer - online image editor 
Zoho Apps - Dashboard for all your Zoho applications
Form Logix - online form builder tool for creating web databases and web forms
ROR Sitemap Generator - crawls your website and generates a ROR Sitemap with up to 1,000 URLs for all search engines
RSS To PDF - free Online RSS, Atom or OPML to PDF Generator
MetaGlossary - find definitions of over 2,000,000 terms, phrases and acronyms
WebNary - free multilingual online translator

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