SMPlayer Vista Aero Integration - OpenGL

MPlayer is the best video player, ever. It's also open source, and more versatile than Video Lan Client (VLC). On Windows platforms, MPlayer for Windows - contains SMPlayer, MPUI, MPlayer and codecs in a convenient package.

The problem is it will revert to Aero basic when running on Vista. Here's how to fix that:

Open SMPlayer - go to Options - Preferences (Ctrl -P) - General - Output Drivers - Video - select GL:



Go to the Interface Tab and pick the "Windows Vista" style.



Go to the Advanced Tab - Check "Run MPlayer in it's own Window".



Enjoy:

Paint.NET - tiny free Photoshop alternative for Windows or Mono

Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.



The programming language used to create Paint.NET is C#, with a small amount of C++ for installation and shell-integration related functionality. The source code is available under the terms of the MIT License.

The system requirements are:

• .NET Framework 2.0
• 500 MHz processor (Recommended: 800 MHz or faster)
• 256 MB of RAM (Recommended: 512 MB or more)
• 1024 x 768 screen resolution

The program itself is packed into a stunning 1.5MB, and is surprisingly fast and easy to use.

The program also runs on Linux and such (Solaris, MacOS, etc.) via Mono and makes a great light weight MIT licensed alternative to GIMP.

Google Sketchup

Google SketchUp is a simple, fast and easy to use CAD-like 3D software. It's what they use for the models in Google Earth, so it integrates quite nicely. And best of all, the free version rocks and runs both on Windows and MacOS X.



It also comes with a vast library of objects (bonus packs) from street poles and cars to, well, the kitchen sink...

The software is very good, and it can integrate seamlessly with Graphisoft Archicad and very simple to learn (partly due to the vast collection of video tutorials and available resources).

SketchUp also comes with a Ruby framework for developing scripts, plugins and 3-rd party extensions. Once such extension exports scenes to be rendered to VRay. There is also a Maxwell Render plugin.