IrfanView: Great for beginners and experienced users, IrfanView is a freeware graphic viewer that has many unique and interesting features. This application supports a plethora of file types including Adobe Photoshop filters. For the incredible price of free, it’s hard to find a better option for the last majority of your photo needs (pictured above).

VirtuaWin: The vast majority of us no longer work in one application at a time. All too often we find ourselves switching between a few browser windows, an email client, photo editing software, and maybe even word processing documents. If this is the case using VirtuaWin to create virtual desktops is a great solution. Similar to Spaces on Mac, VirtuaWin gives you up to 9 virtual desktops to help reduce clutter on your screen.

Fences: On your PC the desktop tends to get cluttered rather quickly. While some go out of there way to keep their desktops clear, for most this isn’t practical. Instead of trying to remove everything from the desktop, use Fences to keep everything organized. Fences helps you create logical groups of the different icons floating around your desktop.

Force Empty Trash: If you use your computer long enough, you will inevitably run into the problem where you can’t empty your trash because a file is supposedly in use. If you have seen this then you know the frustration that it brings. Fortunately there a nifty little program called Force Empty Trash that overrides your system to empty the trash. Just make sure you know what is in there and that you are not trying to delete important system files.

Alfred: An incredibly useful productivity tool, Alfred allows for you to navigate and search your Mac as well as web apps within seconds. Alfred also allows for quick keyboard shortcuts to increase the speed at which you can navigate your machine. A great replacement for Quicksilver and Spotlight, Alfred is one of the best productivity tools available for Mac.

Laundry: Desktop backgrounds help set your computer apart and give it a unique style. Unfortunately, no matter how awesome your background image, after a while it becomes old and boring. Instead of letting this happen, liven up your desktop by using Laundry to rotate your desktop background in predetermined intervals. Laundry is able to pull from RSS feeds or even from Flickr to keep your desktop images lively and exciting.

Flickroom (Windows, Mac, Linux): Unlike GeeMail, Flickroom does not mimic the user interface of its web app counterpart. Instead, Flickroom takes an opportunity to enhance and redefine the user interface for Flickr. Just like Flickr, you can view and search for photos, but Flickroom adds a nifty and well designed photo stream for enhanced viewing. With Flickroom you have all of the functionality of Flickr on the web with an enhanced and redesigned interface.

GeeMail (Windows, Mac, Linux): Needless to say there are a lot of GMail users out there. And while having your email in the cloud is great when you are not at your own computer, its always nice to have a native client that doesn’t require sorting through multiple tabs just to find your email. GeeMail is a free application that gives Gmail a home one the desktop. With zero configuration and the same user interface as the web based version of Gmail, this desktop app is sure to be a hit for any avid email user. Also, with offline support, no need to remember to send that draft later. Hit send while offline and next time you have a connection, GeeMail will automatically send your email for you.

NoteSync (Windows, Mac Linux): Google Docs is great for storing documents in the cloud. But if you want to just take a quick note and save it to your Google Docs for later it s a pain. Typically you have to log in to open your browser, login to you Google Account, and go to Docs before uploading or typing what was supposed to be a quick note. With NoteSync you can now quickly open up your native app, type the note, and then it automatically syncs to your Google Docs for viewing and editing later.

Desktop apps that are extensions of your favorite web apps can be very useful and powerful. If you have a website that you would love to use as a desktop app then check out Fluid or Mozilla Prism for a quick and easy way to create native apps.

By Jesse Leikin.

The statistic/infographic geniuses over at Hunch polled their readers and discovered 72% of their readers keep their computer desktops tip-top and tidy, an impressive figure considering the average person’s desktop looks like someone spilled mahjong tiles. What was even more interesting was the conclusions they came to with their desktop organization findings, which may or may not apply to Unplggd readers, but gives insight about how we organize our virtual workspaces. Key findings include:

*Men are more likely to have neat desktops, but are also apt to have too many icons on their desktop (a no-no, since it slows down OS performance).

*The older you are, the more apt you are to have a messy desktop. 12% of those belonging to the 35-49 age category had a mess on their computer.

*The more education and more liberal you are, the more likely you are to have a messy desktop. Hunch’s readers tend to skew to the left, as noted in their findings, but it makes sense those who are more conservative and like order would have neater desktops.

*Those who live in urban areas have desktops that reflect their environment: “…users with messy desktops are 42% more likely than those with neat desktops to live in an urban environment.”

*No surprise, neat freaks like ourselves, have desktops that reflect their overall neat and organized tendencies. Neat types also tend to own and use external hard drives.

*Work for yourself? Your desktop is 5% more likely to be messier than the average.

*Math geeks and the scientifically minded have an irrational tendencies to chaos on their desktop, 12% more so!

*And finally, those with neater desktops place their personal priority of overall quality of life over the importance of professional work (well, maybe because the messy ones are still trying to find files while us neat freaks are quicker to find what we need!).

By Gregory Han

[Go over to Unplggd to do their desktop survey. I'd love to see Lifework reader's desktops. Mine is below. It's only this "neat" because my computer was running slow and I thought if I cleaned up it might run faster. Wrong. I think I will have to bite the bullet and get more RAM.]

Last Friday, developers were able to get their hands on the latest developer build of Apple’s upcoming operating system 10.7, aka OS X Lion. Along with updated features came some new desktop wallpapers. Apple has always been known for their beautiful and epic wallpapers. This bunch are nature-themed, featuring animals and scenic landscapes.

What’s interesting about these wallpapers is the actual size of them. At 3200 x 2000, these are larger than any display Apple currently ships today (the highest being the 27” iMac, topping out at 2560 x 1440). It’s nice to get such high quality wallpapers that are sure to be large enough to fit any screen you have, as well as span beautifully across two displays. ItsAllTech.com put together a bundle of these high quality wallpapers, which you can download here for free.

By Vivian Kim

[via cultofmac.com]