Monthly Disk December 2008 |
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Cost is $5.00 per disk plus $1.00 postage (for up to three disks) You can get the Order Form here or ring the office at 03 9567 8000 See here for a List of All Previous Monthly
Disks still available on order.
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Audio1by1 - Ver: 1.65Windows Media Player and iTunes are great programs, but they do a lot more than simply play audio. That results in heavy disk footprints and - especially with iTunes - slow loading. If you're looking to do a 180 and go with the quickest-booting, least resource-hungry application you can find, that would be 1by1. This audio player is a mere 115KB download and imposes an only slightly larger 120KB disk footprint. Simplicity personified, 1by1's interface is the familiar Explorer-type window with a directory tree and viewing pane. The background colour is blue, and there's a toolbar with small icons that let you play, pause, search, etc. -but otherwise it's that with which all Windows users should be familiar. Basically, you browse to the folder with the tunes you want to play, press play, and 1by1 will render all the tunes in the folder/directory (hence its secondary "The Directory Player" title). It's great for people who have a well-organized collection and like to play entire albums. 1by1 lacks the library functions for sorting by artist, album, etc. that makes programs like iTunes so appealing to many users who don't know how to organise files on disk. There are, however, playlist functions so you can play tunes from multiple directories. Surprisingly for program so lightweight, there's also a three-band EQ with adjustable centre frequencies as well as an audio enhancer (think WMP's SRS WOW) on hand. As installed, the player handles only MP3 files using Windows XP/Vista's built-in codec, or the mpglib.dll if present. But you can BackupsKaren's Replicator - Ver: 3.6.2Automatically backup files, directories, even entire drives! Karen's Replicator copies selected files from one drive/folder to another. Source and Destination folders can reside anywhere on your network. Files larger than 2 GB are supported. Options include repeated copies at intervals as short as a few minutes, or as long as several months, copy only files that have changed, and the replication of file deletions. New features allow you to specify which files should not be copied, and also which days a file should be skipped. Minimum requirements: Windows all DesktopAcer Gridvista - Ver: 2.60.1211This application makes more effective use of large monitors by dividing them into sections where you can place your windows. Acer Gridvista divides your screen into two, three or four sections in which you can drag & drop windows. The windows will then be automatically resized. You can also set a window to be always on top or semi-transparent. Minimum requirements: Windows all AltMove Manager - Ver: 2.1.4It adds new functionality to your mouse, there's little to learn, and it's free. AltMove Manager is a mouse and desktop enhancement manager that can move and resize windows that are locked, grab a screenshot, and magnify a window under the mouse. You can easily add a few others through the Actions menu. As an executable, the application doesn't need to be installed - just run the executable for the shortcuts to be in place. The regular settings include some standard program options for running the executable at start-up and keeping it on top. Advanced settings let you move back and forth with a combination of left and right mouse buttons, limiting shortcuts to within a certain range or certain time interval. Tool tips will help you stay on top of what this powerful little application can do. Minimum requirements: windows NT/ 2000/ XP/ 2003/ Vista Desktops - Ver: 1.0Desktops allows you to organise your applications on up to four virtual desktops. Read email on one, browse the web on the second, and do work in your productivity software on the third, without the clutter of the windows you’re not using. After you configure hotkeys for switching desktops, you can create and switch desktops either by clicking on the tray icon to open a desktop preview and switching window, or by using the hotkeys. Using Desktops Desktops reliance on Windows desktop objects means that it cannot provide some of the functionality of other virtual desktop utilities, however. For example, Windows doesn't provide a way to move a window from one desktop object to another, and because a separate Explorer process must run on each desktop to provide a taskbar and start menu, most tray applications are only visible on the first desktop. Further, there is no way to delete a desktop object, so Desktops does not provide a way to close a desktop, because that would result in orphaned windows and processes. The recommended way to exit Desktops is therefore to logoff. Minimum requirements: Windows XP/ Vista Greenfish Icon Editor Pro - Ver: 1.6Greenfish Icon Editor Pro has a simple, straightforward interface, and it's free. These are two big points in its favour. With all the typical paint tools (like Wand and Eyedropper) and the ability to pull icons from executable files, Greenfish Icon Editor Pro is a fast, easy way to edit or create custom icons. Icon Editor Pro also supports animated icons, such as moving cursors. The way Icon Editor Pro goes about animation is a little non-intuitive. It's page-based, meaning you have to create a new page for each frame of the animation. A quick trip through the Help file and a few minutes of practice, and anyone can get the hang of this feature, though. Icon Editor Pro also has several advanced image filters, a wonderful bonus for a free program. The ability to perform simple image tasks like blurring and sharpen means that your custom icons can look professional. If you're unsatisfied with the stock icons in your favourite software, or want a custom overhaul of your Windows desktop, give this one a spin. It won't cost you anything to try it. Minimum requirements: Windows 9x/ NT/ 2000/ XP/ VistaReminderCube - Ver: 3.5ReminderCube is a desktop calendar with many functions. You can set day's events and tasks with optional alarm and write your notes in the all day panel. There is a RSS reader, a launcher of applications and document and a gmail checker. There is a password manager, a widget where you can save your username and password in a secure way.All your passwords are locked by one master key.You can change everything about how the application looks and feels. Minimum requirements: Windows NT/ 2000/ XP/ 2003/ Vista sPrint - Ver: 2.0sPrint is a screen capture utility. It allows you to capture all or any part of the screen display on your PC. The captured image can then be printed, saved to disk or copied to the clipboard.Minimum requirements: Windows all TimeSync - Ver: 2.10TimeSync gets the current time from a NIST server, and adjusts the PC clock if necessary. Accuracy is usually within a second. Time and date are displayed according to the user's regional settings. Option /auto is provided to run TimeSync from the StartUp folder. In this mode the TimeSync window will not show if the clock offset is under a given minimum. Settings (click on arrow):
TrayEverything - Ver: 1.2Have you ever found your toolbar full of programs, and asked yourself why a program doesn't disappear into the tray? Or, have you ever wanted a program to disappear, becoming invisible to everyone except you? Thanks to TrayEverything this can be done with two simple clicks! The main window shows a list of the currently opened programs with their associated windows, from which you can minimise to tray every window. You can also choose not to show any icon in the system tray, and to hide the selected window with a password, to keep your "work" secret! Features
You can choose an hotkey to minimise windows with a single key press. Or you can let the application go by itself in the tray with the Autominimise feature - inactive windows will be autominimised by TrayEverything. Minimum requirements: Windows 9x/ Me/ 2000/ XP Digital ImagingImage Composite Editor - Ver: 1.0Microsoft Image Composite Editor is an advanced panoramic image stitcher. You shoot a set of overlapping photographs of a scene from a single location, and Image Composite Editor creates a high-resolution panorama incorporating all your images at full resolution.Then save your stitched panorama in a wide variety of formats, from common formats like JPEG and TIFF to multi-resolution tiled formats like HD View and Silverlight Deep Zoom. Features:-
ShiftN - Ver: 3.3ShiftN is a useful little freebie that does exactly as it's advertised to do: It swiftly corrects architectural perspective distortion. This sort of distortion is common in photos of buildings, when your perspective from ground level results in converting lines in a photograph. Just fire up the program, load a file, and click "Automatic correction." You see one version of the corrected photo the left, and a version with correction lines superimposed on the right. If you don't like what you see, you can click individual lines on the right-hand version to turn off selected corrections, or just click the Re-optimise button for another try. Still not happy? Click "Adjust correction" to fine-tune the settings. When you're happy with the results, either select File, Save As to choose your own name, or File, Save Results to automatically save a version with "ShiftN" added to the file name. Alternatively, you could click "Save and exit." You could use an image editing program like Corel Paint Shop Pro or Adobe Photoshop to correct perspective distortion yourself, but that is relatively tricky to accomplish. And you have the added step of needing to crop your photo afterward, since these fixes invariably warp the photo out of its rectangular shape. ShiftN not only fixes the distortion, but it also handles the cropping for you. ShiftN should be in any casual photographer's toolbox. It's very simple to use and produces nice results. Minimum requirements: Windows 98/ Me/ 2000/ XP/ VistaWiseval Photophant - Ver: 1.0Wiseval Photophant is a free software for batch resizing, converting and renaming images or your digital photos from and to jpg, bmp, png and gif formats. Main Features:
Licence: Free Email Monitor - Ver: 2.1Monitors all outgoing emails from your computer and alerts you whenever an unauthorised or unknown program (virus, keylogger, spyware etc.) is trying to send an email in the background. It also stops emails being sent to unknown recipients, and emails which contain potentially unsafe attachments. Works on the system level and cannot be bypassed.Minimum requirements: Windows 2000/ XP EPrompter - Ver: 2.0There are so many free Web-based e-mail programs available - Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and others - that many people use multiple ones. That's certainly useful, but it can be painful as well. It means manually checking each account multiple times throughout the day - a productivity-killer, if there ever was one. EPrompter solves the problem neatly. It automatically checks all of your Web-based e-mail automatically every 15 minutes, and alerts you when any has new mail. You'll be able to do this for up to 16 different accounts. In addition, you don't even have to log into the different Web-based mail systems in order to see your inbox, read your messages, and respond to them--you can do all of that from directly within the program. You can also delete mail as well. There may be problems getting Hotmail to work with this software. On one occasion, if the program was identified as Live-mail it worked, but another time it wouldn't work even when that was done. So you may have some setup problems with Hotmail. On the other hand, it's free -and it works fine with other Web-based mail, so it's certainly worth a try. gAttach - Ver: 1.2008.9Because Gmail is Web-based, it suffers from one very annoying problem: It doesn't integrate with Windows. So you can't just right-click a file to send it via Gmail, as you can with most desktop e-mail clients. gAttach solves the problem. Install the software, and from then on, whenever you right click a file an choose Send To -->Mail Recipient, it will create an e-mail in Gmail and attach the file to it. You then open Gmail (if you haven't already done so), finish creating the message, and send it on its way. You can set the program up to either log you in automatically whenever you attach a file, or instead have you log in yourself manually via your browser. It's much easier and convenient to have the program log you in automatically. If you run into problems with the program, it may be that you haven't set Gmail to be your default e-mail application. To fix the problem, go to gAttach's options screen, click the Computer & Internet tab, and click the "Make Default" button. If that doesn't solve your problem, go to gAttach's FAQ for more help. NOTE: This program is free/donationware for personal use. Business users must buy a license. Minimum requirements: Windows 2000/ XP/ 2003/ VistaEntertainmentMovienizer - Ver: 1.8One of the big trends lately is borrowing the data on the Internet, taking a bit from Column A and a bit from Column B. Movienizer is a powerful program which searches the Net to give you a leg up in documenting your movie collection. Much like EMDB, it connects to online databases to download information about a movie. You enter the title (Star Wars, for example), and it shows possible matches--pick the one you really want (the original, where Han shot first!), and it then gets all the pertinent data. And some pictures. And a whole lot more. Movienizer isn't limited to one database, though. It comes with a huge built-in list of movie sites, and for those of you with eclectic tastes who enjoy watching grainy six-hour black-and-white films about people dying slowly of consumption, it includes many foreign language sites as well. NOTE: This program is donationware. It is free to try, but the author accepts and encourages donations towards further development. Minimum requirements: Windows 2000/ XP/ VistaScreamer Radio - Ver: 0.4.2There is little reason to listen to commercial FM radio anymore, it is an old medium that provides little choice of music and is saturated with advertisements. For the last couple of years there has been an alternative, streaming internet radio. An alternative that has been somewhat complicated to use. Screamer Radio attempts to remedy this problem by bringing most of the required steps into a single, easy to use, freeware program. Why to use Screamer Radio:
GamesMouse Trap - Ver: 1.1.0In this game you need to trap the mouse and prevent it from escaping. You trap the mouse by erecting pillars to surround it. Each time you erect a pillar, the mouse will make a move. You need to plan your pillars carefully in order to trap the mouse. With this said, have fun...Minimum requirements: Windows all/ .NET framework 2.0 Prezzie Hunt - Ver: 3.0Easy to play 3D game set in a snowy village environment inhabited by Snowmen, Penguins and Fairies. There are 2 large levels each containing 50 Christmas presents that the player has to find.Along the way you will have to negotiate various obstacles, swim with penguins, find keys for doors and gates, catch fairies that carry presents to give to the player or can help the player in other ways, you will have to slide down a ski slope to collect presents, climb ladders, tightrope walk and search a host of locations looking for the lost presents. Although this was originally made as a Children's game most feedback for Version 1.0 was from adults. Minimum requirements: Windows 9x/ Me/ XP Home/OfficeHousehold Register 2009 - Ver: 6.11Household Register for Windows helps you organise and manage a detailed list of everything you own. It's ideal for both home and office. The program automatically organises each entry by category, location, and owner. You can customise the category, location, and owner look-up lists to fit your needs. The program tracks item, location, owner, category, serial number, model number, description, purchase and replace prices.Minimum requirements: Windows all OpenOffice - Ver: 3.0OpenOffice is a free fully fledged office application suite, complete with a word processor, spreadsheet, database and presentation graphics program. OpenOffice is a suite of office software, including a fully featured word processor, spreadsheet, database and presentation graphics program that are all compatible with Microsoft Office, along with an HTML editor, a maths and a drawing package. You can also export as the free open office document format, which is compatible with other office suites such as Lotus Symphony Suite. This is the official release of OpenOffice 3. The most immediately visible change to OpenOffice.org 3.0 is the new "Start Centre" , new fresh-looking icons, and a new zoom control in the status bar. Other highlights include Notable Calc improvements, including a new solver component; support for spreadsheet collaboration through workbook sharing; and an increase to 1024 columns per sheet. Writer has an improved notes feature and displays of multiple pages while editing. There are numerous Chart enhancements, and an improved crop feature in Draw and Impress. Minimum requirements: Windows 2000/ XP/ VistaPrint2PDF - Ver: 8.0.08.1007Turn almost any savable file into a PDF using Print2PDF. Like similar programs, this useful utility installs as a print driver, allowing the user to specify settings such as fonts and image-compression quality inside the print dialog of the other applications. Users can encrypt, watermark, or sign a document, and can configure user permissions to print, copy, or change the file. During tests, the output quality and conversion speed both proved quite satisfactory. If you're looking to convert documents into the PDF format, this tool will likely have all the options you need. Newer features include support for pre press graphics-file exchange, file attachments, and a self-extracting client version. There's a lot here, and it works exceedingly well - sure to appeal to home businesses, small business owners, or anybody who needs a sharp PDF creation tool. Minimum requirements: Windows 2000/ XP/ 2003/ VistaInternetBabelgumThe free, interactive Internet TV service which offers independent and brand new content, provides an alternative to traditional broadcasters, and personalises the user experience through tag searches and collaborative filtering. Babelgum is unique in the programs it offers. There are a lot of indie films, programs, and channels. There are also familiar channels such as PBS and BBC. One of their recent partners is VBS.TV which has a wide variety of cool programs.NOTE: You will require broadband for this program to be effective. Minimum requirements: Windows XP/ Vista/ See Note above KillCopy - Ver: 2.85KillCopy is an internet data backup software that can copy files on a network and can also copy files on local drives - sometimes it can speed up copy of large files by 2-3 times.User friendly skin based interface. The build-in explorer shell make this internet backup program very simple in use. You can download any files and directories by pressing the right mouse button and choosing KillCopy to change the target directory. KillCopy can also shutdown your system after copy completes, can play sound and ask user to open target directory. KillCopy can copy files to some targets simultaneously. Also you can start KillCopy from command line. Minimum requirements: Windows all Moyea FLV Downloader - Ver: 1.16.0.17Moyea FLV Downloader is a high-speed freeware for you to download FLV's from the Internet. With this downloader, it is possible for you to download FLV's of all types of formats online. You can download FLV files one by one or you can download multiple all at once. Besides downloading, the downloader allows you to play back FLV's with Moyea FLV Player.Licence: Free NetWorx - Ver: 4.0NetWorx can help you identify possible sources of network problems, ensure that you do not exceed the bandwidth limits specified by your ISP, or track down suspicious network activity characteristic of Trojan horses and hacker attacks. The program allows you to monitor all your network connections or a specific network connection (such as Ethernet or PPP) only. The software also features a system of highly customisable visual and sound alerts. You can set it up to alert you when the network connection is down or when some suspicious activity, such as unusually heavy data flow, occurs. It can also automatically disconnect all dial up connections and shut down the system. The incoming and outgoing traffic is represented on a line chart and logged to a file, so that you can always view statistics about your daily, weekly and monthly bandwidth usage and dial up duration. The reports can be exported to a variety of formats, such as HTML, MS Word and Excel, for further analysis. Minimum requirements: windows 98/ Me/ 2000/ XP/ 2003/ Vista Trillian Basic - Ver: 3.1.11.0 |