There's been a lot of rumours for a long time that Microsoft would make a 3D map application, and they were apparently true. They just upgraded their Local Live portal with a 3D viewer.

Everytime I'm sitting down with a freshly installed PC, there is always one application I install before everything else (yeah even before antivirus software!): TotalCommander. It's my #1 application for navigating around the file system, running commands, opening/editing/zipping/unzipping/uploading/searching/multi-renaming files etc. etc. I use it so much that just using Windows Explorer to navigate to the install of TotalCommander is several agonizing seconds while thinking "God I wish I had TotalCmd to install TotalCmd" :-)

Today the first beta of the all new version 7 was released. Yepppiiiiiiii If you are new to TotalCmd, it's a great tool for quickly doing what else would require slow mouse navigation in Explorer and installing a bunch of additional applications. There's even a great set of plug-ins to make it even better! Below is a screenshot of TotalCmd configured as I like it.

Best of all: It's shareware and only $34, and you can install it on all your computers (as long as you only use one at a time, which most non-squid people do).

A little tip: In the install folder, there's a file called 'KEYBOARD.TXT'. This contains a list of keyboard shortcuts that will make your use of TotalCmd much more efficient, and discover a lot more of it's potential. I try to go through it once a month, and usually I learn some new ones everytime.

What's the first thing you install on a fresh PC?