Payton Place

Microsofts’ Image Composite Editor is a free application for stitching several pictures together into one panoramic photograph. We’ve already shown you how to stitch photos into panoramas with free software or with Photoshop’s Photomerge tool, but the dedicated Image Composite Editor won’t cost you a dime, is dead simple to use, and works really well. I tested its chops with a quick panorama of my (messy) desk, and it stitched everything together quickly, with no effort on my part. For a one-off tool with very specific goals, Microsoft’s done this one right. The Image Composite Editor is freeware, Windows only, requires .NET 2.0.

Courtesy Lifehacker

Windows only: Free media file converter FormatFactory is a handy all-in-one utility for taking one kind of audio, video, or picture file and converting it to another. The interface is a dead-simple drag-and-drop affair, and it’s meant for running batches of files through converters?FLVs to Windows Media, MPEGs to iPod-friendly video, DVDs to DivX files, etc. You won’t get a lot of options for quality control, compression rate, or other tweaks, but for some folks, that’s really a benefit. FormatFactory is a free download for Windows systems only.

Courtesy Lifehacker