As April's end approaches, there is much software to thrill over. During the past week, the number of exciting releases covered seemingly every category imaginable. Whether you want to keep your computer running smoothly or have photos you want to edit, there’s something here for everyone.

Hard drive maintenance is an essential part of computer ownership and TweakNow HD-Analyzer 1.0 is a handy tool that can be used to free up disk space by identifying large files and folders. Once you have deleted unnecessary files, O&O Defrag 15.5 32-bit is on hand to help you to keep your hard drive defragmented, including remote computers on your network. There is also a 64-bit version of the program available, O&O Defrag 15.5 64-bit.

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Streaming music content is too restrictive, believes hacktivists Anonymous. Six members of the group have released Anontune, a web-based application that aims to aggregate streaming music online and place it in a central location. AnonTune currently accesses the catalogs of YouTube and SoundCloud, although the developers plan to add content from other services including Yahoo Music, Myspace Music, Bandcamp and others in the future.

True to the groups name, users will be able to listen to tracks anonymously, and Anonymous itself will not store the tracks. Instead it depends on the catalogs of the services it aggregates, thus leaving the sticky copyright issues to those sites. Recording Industry Association of America's Waterloo, indeed. The next one, if Napster wasn't enough a computing generation ago.

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German software developer Ashampoo has released Ashampoo Photo Commander 10, a major new build of its photo management and editing tool for Windows. Version 10 introduces a number of new tools, features as well as performance improvements.

Ashampoo Photo Commander 10 adds two new photo tools, Repair Pen and Focus Effect Tool, alongside an Effect preview browser, plus adds support for directly uploading photos to three popular social networks.

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If you’re a PC user looking for a free tool to both download and convert video between a large number of different formats, you’re well covered, with the likes of Freemake Video Converter offering all the tools you need. But what if you’re a Mac user?

Free video downloading and converting tools, such as MacTubes and Handbrake exist, but you end up mixing and matching to get the functionality you want. Not any more: now Mac users can get all these features in a single free tool, called Adapter 1.4.

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My daughter watched him sing last night on YouTube, so it must be true.

The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Annual Festival is underway here in California. Weekend 1 just finished, with another three days of performances coming April 20-22. Third night's bang-up headliner: Rapper Tupac Shakur. He died in 1996.

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Yesterday, Facebook announced that it acquired Instagram for $1 Billion. The company is less than two years old, has no revenue, and about a dozen employees. Remember, acquisitions are about what the acquirer can do with the company in the future, not some multiple of revenues or profits today. Why is Instagram worth $1 billion?

Facebook acquired Instagram for about $30 per user, or $1B. ($30/user X 33M users = $1 billion) Facebook is valued at about $100 per user or $80 billion ($100/user X 800M users = $80 billion). Other popular social apps are valued around $20 to $50 per user. The monetization models need to work out about the same to justify the valuations.

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We now find ourselves well into Spring, so what better excuse is needed to start spring cleaning your computer? You can set about doing this manually, but it’s easier if you turn to a dedicated tool to take care of system maintenance.

iolo System Mechanic Free 10.8.3.51 is a free tool that can be used to delete unnecessary files, defrag your hard drive, clean out the registry and much more. If you’re someone that takes a keen interest in the smooth running of your computer, you probably have some form of application monitoring software installed, and Bad Application 1.0 is a simple little utility that will enable you to test these out, checking what happens with crashed and hung applications.

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With a host of free media organizers around, selling commercial equivalents can be something of a challenge. CyberLink isn’t giving up just yet, though, and its latest release, MediaShow 6, has some interesting new features to help it stand out from the crowd.

Top of the list must be the program’s new 3D support. MediaShow can now display 3D MPO pictures and videos, for instance. Or, if you don’t have any, it can convert your 2D photos or videos to 3D. MediaShow 6 can edit them, too, and when you’re happy is able to export the finished results as a 3D movie, or by burning your files to a 3D DVD or Blu-ray disc.

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When you need to convert, resize or otherwise process a set of images then of course you could work with them all individually. And that will probably deliver the best results as you can tailor your tweaks to whatever each image requires. But if you’ve not just 4 or 5 photos, but 20, 50, 100 or more than you may want to look for a little batch processing assistance from a tool like ImBatch.

Getting started is as easy as dragging and dropping your preferred images onto the program. ImBatch imports all the usual formats -- PNG, JPG, GIF, BMP and so on -- as well as many other file types which you might not expect (PSD, TGA, PCX, TIFF, WDP, HDP and more).

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If you’re unhappy with the composition of a photo then your first instinct may be to crop it, removing areas without important visual content to help the viewer concentrate on whatever is left. But this can only go so far. And if there’s plenty of content at the edge of the photo then you may hardly be able to crop the image at all.

Content-aware image resizing (CAIR) provides another, more intelligent way to reframe your shot. Essentially it allows you to define content you’d like to remove from a photo, wherever it might be, and can then strip it out (hopefully without leaving any trace). And as a result the image will shrink in size, sometimes dramatically, but you still retain the core content. (If you’re not sure what we mean then the relevant Wikipedia page has some sample images which should make everything clear.)

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Some people see WYSIWYG web builders as basic, limited, strictly for novice home users who’ll be satisfied with the poor quality templates and limited customisation options they usually offer.

Xara Web Designer MX 8 Premium, fortunately, has a very different philosophy.

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These days, more and more of us watch video in a variety of different ways. The ease and versatility of modern media can leave you looking at your old collection of videos and DVDs with some annoyance. While you can play DVDs on your notebook or desktop, you can’t insert them into your smartphone or tablet, and what happens if they get scratched or damaged?

Never fear, because we’ve put together a list of useful tools, many of which are completely free to use, to help you not just rip and capture video from archaic sources, but to access it from other devices, too. You should carefully check your own country’s copyright laws before following this tutorial because even with Blu-rays, DVDs and videos you legally own, you may find you’re prohibited from making personal copies, even for backup purposes.

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If you own a computer, there’s a pretty high chance that you also own a digital camera, and this means that you probably have a large number of photos on your hard drive. Unless you have been particularly fastidious in renaming all of your images as you copy them from memory cards, your photo collection may well be a disorganized mess.

Now you can stop hunting for a solution as we’re giving away a free copy of Ashampoo Photo Commander 9 worth $49.99! It’s worth noting that this is a full current product.

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Another busy week of software releases is behind us and, in case you managed to miss some of them, we’ve collected some of the most-compelling titles together into this week’s roundup.

If you spend time installing a lot of the programs we highlight here, you’re going to need a suitable launcher to help you manage them. Winstep Nexus 12.20 is a stylish dock for Windows that provides easy access to all of your apps. The software is perfectly complimented by Winstep Xtreme 12.20, which enables you to completely customize the appearance of your desktop with skins and widgets that can be as adventurous as you like.

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If you’re looking for a video-editing suite that combines a powerful feature set with user-friendly features while taking full advantage of your computer’s hardware to deliver blistering performance, then Cyberlink PowerDirector 9 Ultra64 fits the bill perfectly. While it’s been superseded to some extent by version 10, it’s still an excellent video-editing tool in its own right.

If you’re looking for a fast, powerful and reliable video editor for a price that won’t break the bank, you’ve come to the right place. You can pick up a full version of Cyberlink PowerDirector9 Ultra64 for just $29.95 -- that’s less than a third of its MSRP! But hurry the offer ends at 23:59 Central European Time tonight. That's 6:59 pm EDT, Americans.

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