PC World has compiled a list of free, but powerful applications for Windows users.

Aneesoft 3D Flash Gallery 2.0 is a simple flash gallery creating application that displays your digital photos in an interactive and elegant 3D photo gallery. Make a 3D photo gallery to share on a website, blog, social network, or computer.  No Flash skills are needed.

With the new year coming many of us get the organization bug. No matter what size drive or memory card, they seem to fill up. Here are two utilities to help you analyze and manage what is hogging your disk space. One for Windows and one for OSX. For now they are both free.

Paramount Pictures this morning unveiled an online video clip service using technology developed by Morrisville-based Digitalsmiths.

The company's VideoSense system allows films to be searched by actor, line of dialogue, location, genre or product, the New York Times reports. Paramount, like other film studios, is looking for new ways to turn old movies into cash and plans to sell video clips to business customers such as advertising agencies or foreign broadcasters. Eventually, the studio expects to open the site (Paramountclips.com) to consumers, the newspaper reported.

For Digitalsmiths, founded in 1998 by CEO Ben Weinberger and chief technology officer Matthew Berry, the deal elevates the company's presence in the important Hollywood market. In September, the company hired three new employees for a Los Angeles office.

Mozilla has released Thunderbird 3. The best email client ever?

North Carolina's Democrat in the U.S. Senate gave Cary software maker SAS a plug in a speech to lawmakers Tuesday.

U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan said SAS software could save billions in wasted and fraudulent health-care expenses, our sister blog Under the Dome reports. SAS makes software that government agencies and corporations use to mine vast amounts of data to spot trends and make predictions.

Campaign finance records show that Hagan received $4,000 from SAS CEO Jim Goodnight or his wife, Ann Goodnight, for her Senate campaign.

Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst attended the White House jobs summit with "modest expectations," but came away optimistic that the Obama administration will take action to help businesses start hiring again.

"I didn't hear any new, brilliant ideas that haven't been brought up before, but we focused on taking those ideas to reality," Whitehurst said by phone from the Washington airport.

Participants broke into groups, and Whitehurst's team discussed proposals such as research and hiring tax credits, and how much would be needed to spur companies to expand.

"A lot of this is bailing water," he said. The administration "wants to bring unemployment down fast."

Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Raleigh-based software company Red Hat, is among the executives who will attend President Barack Obama's jobs summit Thursday at the White House.

The group is expected to include about 130 business leaders, union chiefs, academics, mayors and representatives of nonprofit groups. The participants are scheduled to break into groups to discuss issues such as green jobs, small business incentives, long-range infrastructure plans and training for the jobs of the future.

Other corporate bosses invited by Obama include Google CEO Eric E. Schmidt, Nucor CEO Dan DiMicco and FedEx CEO Fred Smith.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday that Obama plans to give a speech next week that will lay out ideas, including some already under discussion by White House economic advisers and others that might arise out of the jobs summit. But both Gibbs and Democratic leaders in Congress caution that most new steps will have to wait until next year.

Whitehurst couldn't be reached for comment about what he hopes to achieve at the summit. Whitehurst took over as Red Hat CEO in January 2008. He previously was a top executive at Delta Air Lines.

The summit's opening session, closing session and several of the discussion groups on jobs will be streamed live here.

When SAS co-founder and CEO Jim Goodnight visited Silicon Valley last month, he spoke to business leaders about serious matters, including increasing competition in the software market during the recession.

But he also warmed up the crowd with a slightly off-color joke involving Bill Clinton, the Pope and the Virgin Mary. You can read a version of the joke here, but Goodnight told it better, says Aaron Ricadela, the Business Week reporter who wrote about Goodnight's visit and SAS.

Some other highlights of the Business Week story:
-- Goodnight says that Cary-based SAS, founded in 1976, is worth $10 billion to $12 billion today.
-- But he's reluctant to sell the company, despite consolidation in the market for data-analysis software. He's been asked to sell by two major companies and said he would for $20 billion. But he doesn't want to see SAS workers get laid off in an acquisition.
-- He expects this year's sales will be unchanged from $2.26 billion in 2008. Goodnight warned of flat sales last month, but said SAS "might eke out a little growth" if the dollar weakens.
-- Recent deals by rivals such as IBM, SAP and Oracle aimed at attacking SAS' turf will keep them distracted, allowing SAS to continue winning new customers and selling more products, Goodnight said.

Read the full Business Week story here.

It's the second recent write-up on SAS by a national business publication. The New York Times wrote a major profile last month, with an online slideshow highlighting the company's famed headquarters campus in Cary.

Raleigh software company Red Hat will soon require its top executives to own more of its shares, creating added financial incentive for them to help the stock rise.

Since 2006, the company has required officers and directors to own shares. The revised stock-ownership policy, which takes effect March 1, increases the minimum ownership levels, said Brandon Asbill, vice president and assistant general counsel.

For example, an executive vice president will have to own and retain at least 33,000 shares, while an outside director will have to hold 10,000 shares, Red Hat reported in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

"Stock ownership guidelines can be a compelling way to ensure that the interests of executives and directors are more strongly aligned with the interests of stockholders," Asbill said in a prepared statement.

Still, most top executives and directors already own much more than the minimum levels, according to SEC filings.