This looks like a great way to organise your desktop and get away from the formality that windows insists on

Bumptop allows intuitive arrangements of icons, pictures and documents

If you have a digital camera and want to make better use of the photos you take, you might want to take advantage of some free software that is out there.

Picasa – Find and enjoy the pictures on your computer in seconds

Photo Story – zooming & sound slide show

Bubbleshare – online picture, photo and album sharing

and to help you resize your photos for easy uploading into Bubbleshare, use ImageResizer.exe

I think you’ll find these pieces of free software brilliant additions to your digital photo toolkit

Serratus

The key to making good digital panoramics is having the right photos and great stitching software. AutoStitch is just that – a free program which will take a multiple digital photos of an area and blend them together smoothly to create a panoramic photo automatically.

AutoStitch does an incredible job of aligning and blending photos, however, it does so without any user input so you can’t edit where Autostitch is putting what and make any adjustments. With a good set of photo pieces, the results are spectacular, like Lifehacker reader hufse’s AutoStitch’ed Panorama extravaganza Flickr set. AutoStitch is a free download, Windows only.

Visit AutoStitch website

thanks to Lifehacker blog

also check out

• Census data visualization
• Download of the Day: AutoStitch
• Make audio: Skype, Tiger and ringtones
• Download of the Day: Creative Element Power Tools
• How to turn a photo into a cartoon
• Less is more
• The repurposing roundup
• How to make a CSS photo gallery
• How to keep up with dozens of weblogs
• Download of the Day: Aardvark page layout editor
• Where to find desktop wallpaper
• Test your web site’s readability
• Test your internet connection speed
• Easier Amazon MP3 downloading
• Ask Lifehacker roundup
• Populicious links
• Free MP3s from Amazon
• Glassy button maker
• Color combination tester
• Download of the Day: Zoomifyer EZ
• Free sound
• Free CSS/HTML template roundup
• How to create panoramic photos
• Finetune Firefox
• On making decisions
• Download of the day: Paint.NET
• Create posters from any image
• Google satellite sight-seeing
• Look up acronyms
• More Windows keyboard shortcuts

plus lots more

You can guess from its name what 2 Minute Photoshop Tricks is. It’s a text, video, and audio blog that shows gives you tips, tricks, and tutorials for Photoshop, each in about two minutes.

Unfortunately it’s not updated especially frequently, but there’s a lot of good stuff there, from adding a dept of field effect to a photo to giving text a shiny Web 2.0 look.

They’ve got feeds for their videos, podcasts, and blog posts, so you never miss a tip.

Via the Download Squad…. & SVSD

Irfanview is a free Photoshop or Paintshop Pro alternative, allowing you to work with your pictures in something other than Microsoft Paint!

Multi language support, thumbnail option, preview option, slideshow, drag-and-drop support, fast directory view, batch conversion, e-mail option, audio CD player, print option, change color depth, scan support, cut/crop, IPTC edit, effects (sharpen, blur, Adobe Photoshop filters)

Runs on Win 98 onwards – thanks to Ambleside for the tip

Oh yes and this

Paintshop Pro is one of the most popular graphics programs for PC.  Version 4 is an evaluation copy that works without restriction, although if you find you are using the program a lot you are required to register it. In return you will receive Paintshop Pro 5 which has many more advanced features. The Paintshop Pro software is also available on the Internet or on magazine CD-Roms.

The next time you have an afternoon free, dig out that old box of cassette tapes you squirreled away in the basement. It’s time to resurrect your collection of Phil Collins albums, Stephen King audiobooks, and other treasures of the 80s.

With a few simple tools and your PC, you can turn these forgotten jewels into digital audio files that will live forever.