Sarasota PC Monitor

Review Chairman's Industry Comments (08/10)

The Computer Buffet
by Herb Goldstein, Review Editor

E-mail comments, suggestions, etc. to Herb Goldstein at: revieweditor@spcug.org

BAD HYPERLINK?? Occasionally for reasons beyond our control, a hyperlink provided here will not work. After carefully checking your typing (needs to be 100% accurate), the only suggestion we can offer is that you go to Google and enter the name of the software. If a more current hyperlink is available, this is the best place to look for it.

Please also note: Most of the software mentioned below is freeware. It is gathered through researching usually reliable sources. I do not personally try most references, time being the obvious factor.

IEX. A little feature called Expos arranges all your open application windows as thumbnails spread neatly across your screen. Click one and it’ll pop to the front of the pack while the rest snap back into position behind it. To get these functions in Windows, you need to add a download. One little tool called iEx for Windows does the trick for free. www.oxygen-inc.com/premium/InsaniSoft/iEx.htm 

VAULTLETSUITE 2 GO makes it easy for you to protect and control your email, passwords, and valuable portable files, wherever you and USB drive may roam. VaultletSuite 2 Go uses industrial strength Open Source 2048 bit RSA public key and 256 AES encryption. https://www.vaultletsoft.com:443/ 

CD RECOVERY TOOLBOX (DOWNLOAD) TOOL was developed for recovering damaged files from different disk types: CD, DVD, HD DVD, Blu-Ray, etc. You can use it to restore information lost as a result of some mechanical damage of the disk (scratches, chips, different spots on the surface) or as a result of incorrect recording. Thus, the program can recover data that was considered lost. The CD Recovery Toolbox Free tool scans any CD and DVD disks and finds files and folders located there. We should mention that there can be some information on the disk that cannot be recovered. Not all of the files and folders can be found - that depends on the degree and location of the damage. Therefore, the CD Recovery Toolbox Free tool finds the possible maximum amount of information. After that, it shows a list of all files and folders available for recovery. Now the user can select the files and folders to be recovered. Those specific objects will be recovered while the others will be ignored. The program recovers the maximum amount of information in the damaged file. This reduces the risk of data loss considerably. www.oemailrecovery.com:80/cd_recovery.html 

INCREASE FONT SIZE IN XP. Some people may want to increase the default font size in Vista, possibly to help overcome visual impairments. Vista makes it simple for users to increase the font size to suit their individual preferences and physical needs. To increase the font size in XP:

—Right click a blank part of the desktop.
—Click the Properties option.
—From the Display Properties dialog box, click the Settings tab.
—Click the Advanced button.
—Click the drop down arrow under DPI setting and click the Large size (120 dpi) option.
—Click OK twice.

KANTARIS can play almost anything you can throw at it: AVI (DivX, Xvid, H264), MPEG, MGEG-AVC, WMV, MOV, MKV, FLV, MP3, WMA, and OGG files. It can also play DVDs and audio CDs. The player also displays beautiful visualizations for music. Kantaris is an all new media player based on code from VideoLan Client (VLC) and Bass audio library. http://www.kantaris.org/ 

VERVE EARTH. Blogging is a global phenomenon, and people from every corner of the globe have taken part in it. If you think reading blogs by people that are close to you geographically is interesting, then you should try reading blogs written by people from other countries because you can really get an interesting perspective from them. Many times we don’t think about the specific location where a blogger is writing to us from, but maybe we should. This helps to complete the picture, and it can be fascinating information to know. VerveEarth will show you blogs from all over the world on a map that you can interact with.

This is a fun way to look for new blogs, and you can add your blog to the map if you wish to do so. There aren’t very many blogs listed on VerveEarth at this time, but try searching through what’s available either directly or through the categories. When you find a blog that you want to check out, you can get a summary of its latest content and link to the posts directly. This may not be the most effective way to find new blogs, but it’s unique, and I hope more bloggers will begin to geographically list themselves. http://www.verveearth.com/landing/ 

PITASCHIO. No matter how much you love your OS, there are always things it could do better, more efficiently, and more to your taste. With freebie Pitaschio (yes, that’s spelled correctly), making dozens of Windows tweaks is as simple as checking boxes. You can snap windows to a grid. You can disable troublesome keys like Caps Lock, Insert, and the Windows key. You can disable minimize, maximize, and close buttons. Those are just a few of the options on the main screen. From the buttons on that screen, you can reach useful tools like Autoraise, which pulls any window you mouse over to the top. http://pitaschio.ara3.net/ 

FREE SOFTWARE TOOL CUTS PC ENERGY USE. If you’re looking for a very easy way to cut your computer energy use and save money, Verdiem Software and the Climate Savers Computing Initiative have released a free energy-saving software application called Edison. The simple to use software tool works with Windows XP and Windows Vista machines and you dictate which hours you use your computer most, choose the level of energy savings you want to achieve (using a sliding scale), and then it calculates your estimated savings based on the setting you choose. You can find and download the 28 megabyte application at their Web site.

According to John Skinner of Intel, more than half of the energy being used by computers is wasted because a significant percentage of people do not use the computer power management features on their computers. A typical home PC uses enough electricity to emit 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year. That’s a lot of wasted energy! And energy our organizations are paying for with monthly electric bills. www.verdiem.com/edison/ 

CLUTTERBUSTER provides access to oft-used programs and lets you remove excess icons from your desktop. The application doesn’t install; just download it and double-click the icon to launch. You’ll see a blank gray grid. Right-click one of the squares, then browse your hard drive to find an executable to link to it. The program’s icon will show up on the square. ClutterBuster is quick and easy, and some people may prefer it to hunting through their Start menu. www.appsapps.info/clutterbuster.php 

UNLOCKER. If Windows won’t let you manually delete a program file or folder, try Cedrick Collomb’s free Unlocker. Once installed, Unlocker comes up automatically when Windows refuses to delete, move, or rename a file or folder, or you can launch it from the file or folder’s context menu. Once up, it shows you what processes are hanging onto the culprit and lets you kill them. http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/#faq 

REINSTALL WINDOWS. So your PC is acting wonky and you need to reinstall Windows. Starting from scratch can take hours. The faster solution is to back up your data and then use the recovery tool that accompanied your PC. The tool usually comes either as a bundled CD or DVD or as a hidden partition that you can access at boot time. Consult your computer’s documentation to see which setup applies.

CRAIGSLIST READER allows you to search craigslist based on multiple locations and categories. Sort items by location, category, title, or price. Search the entire world, or just a selected country, state, or city. http://www.motiont.com:80/craigslistreader.aspx 

CELESTIA is a free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions. Unlike most planetarium software, Celestia doesn’t confine you to the surface of the Earth. You can travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy. http://majorgeeks.com:80/Celestia_d5030.html 

GLOBE TRIP. Traveling means different things to different people. For some of us, we’re just trying to get from one location to the other, and this is usually the case with business travelers who are so preoccupied with what they have to accomplish that they can’t even enjoy the journey. However, others make an effort to enjoy every moment of their trips, and they immerse themselves in what each area has to offer so that they can truly experience it. If you’re a traveler who enjoys stepping away from your familiar surroundings, then you might want to take a look at GlobeTrip.

Traveling within the United Sates is one thing, but GlobeTrip has an international presence, and almost all of the content that you’ll find here will be related to countries outside of the United States, which is great. You can plan on finding other travelers, watching video guides, seeing photos, and reading travel journals. I’d love to visit more countries in the future, and GlobeTrip is giving me a taste of what I can expect once I get to them. http://globetrip.net:80/

LINKMAN. Arrange your bookmarks in nearly any format you wish. Convert and sort links and easily generate Web pages of your saved marks. Linkman includes a database of thousands of URLs for your use and organization, too. www.outertech.com/?_charisma_page=index&PHPSESSID=f83ba6e3021a6fe5475e105aa4671645 

ESSENTIALPIM is an absolutely free personal information manager which can store, manage, and encrypt data: day/week/month/year schedules, to do lists for keeping all your tasks up-to-date, notes (pictures, tables, any formatted text), and contacts. Offers Rijndael 128-bit encryption, MS Outlook import/export, Windows Address Book import/export, search capabilities, versatile print features, and adjustable contacts storage with unlimited fields. www.essentialpim.com/?r=download 

SOME PDF TO WORD CONVERTER can help you convert PDF to Word document files and RTF so you can edit and reuse your PDF content. Some PDF to Word Converter preserves original layout, text, images, and vector drawings of your original PDF file. www.somepdf.com:80/some-pdf-to-word-converter.html 

VISTA START MENU. The Windows Start menu is a mildly useful tool for running programs and accomplishing other tasks. But what if you want something more than merely a mildly useful tool? Then get this program, which despite its name works with both Vista and XP. It puts all of your programs and important folders within easy reach, so that you can launch them quickly. It also gives you fast access to turning off, rebooting, logging off, and switching users. www.ordinarysoft.com/index.html 

ENCRYPTION ANALYZER. Encryption Analyzer scans your PC for password protected and encrypted documents. It can copy found files to a particular folder or attempt to recover lost passwords (but only if you buy a separate add-on kit). The free version uses a simple, explorer-like interface to search for a wide range of protected files from programs like Microsoft Office, Quicken and WinZip. To start a scan you first choose whether to scan all files, or to speed the scan by skipping system folders and database files, and whether to scan all drives or specific locations.

www.lostpassword.com/encryption-analyzer.htm 

HxD. In a world of fat, poorly conceived, and poorly programmed software forced out the door before its time, there are islands of sanity. One such bastion of common sense is Mal Hrz’s HxD hex editor. A hex editor displays and lets you edit files (any type, not just text files), memory, and disk info in both ASCII and hexadecimal (base 16). Hex numbers, which range from the 0-9, plus A-F to represent 10 through 15 display information that 8-bit ASCII characters can’t and are perfect for representing memory values. Some common uses for hex editors includes repairing file headers, retrieving data from damage files, and checking portions of memory for viruses. http://mh-nexus.de/hxd/ 

PINGINFOVIEW. A small utility that allows you to easily ping multiple host names and IP addresses and see the results in one table. It automatically pings to all hosts every number of seconds that you specify and displays the number of succeed and failed pings as well as the average ping time. You can also save the ping result into a text/HTML/XML file, or copy it to the clipboard. www.nirsoft.net/utils/multiple_ping_tool.html

IRON MAN WALLPAPER PACK. From the video-game inspired by the action movie "Iron Man," this pack contains two wallpapers in three sizes: 1024x768, 1200x900, and 1280x1024. http://tinyurl.com/6otfx6

INTERCLUE. Install the Interclue add-on for the Firefox Web browser, and from then on when you move your mouse over a link you’ll see a small icon appear next to it. Click the icon, and you’ll see a pop-up preview of the link destination. The pop-up preview shows selected text and images on the left side, along with information such as a list of downloadable files, page thumbnails and a word count for the destination page on the right side. If the link goes to a download, the pop-up will show the file name, size, date and MIME type. http://interclue.com/ 

MOZBACKUP is a simple utility for creating backups of Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, Mozilla Suite, and Netscape profiles. It allows you to back up and restore bookmarks, mail, contacts, history, and extensions. http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/ 

IM-TRANSLATE features immediate translation of instant messages using an intuitive machine-based language translator. IM-Translate conjugates verbs and uses sentence analysis to render the most accurate translation possible, instantly. Even IM chat slang/jargon has been incorporated into the translator. www.im-translate.com:80/ 

WTF!? MUSIC INFO scans your digital music collection, reads tags for Artist, Genre and Year, and creates bar charts that display which artists music you have the most of, along with the most popular year and genre in your collection. With it, you’ll get an analysis of just what music you tend to go for. http://seedling.dcmembers.com/ 

PHRASEEXPRESS saves you time and errors by typing commonly used (or commonly screwed-up) phrases for you. This simple macro utility can paste its own stock phrases, the favorite ones you add, or whatever’s on your clipboard into your blogs, e-mail, and so forth. If you fill in its AutoText field, PhraseExpress will automatically convert your own codewords, such as "myaddress" into the phrases you choose or enter. One especially nice touch is that PhraseExpress can import your AutoText and AutoCorrect settings from Microsoft Word. If you’ve already got your commonly-used phrases in Word, you can import them into PhraseExpress and use them everywhere you type. www.phraseexpress.com/ 

DTWEAK FREE. Those looking to tweak Windows Vista should download this free program right away. DTweak Free offers an amazing number of tweaks the customizing how Vista works and looks, and for increasing Vista performance. You’ll be able to change a remarkable number of features, such as hiding or cascading the Control Panel or hiding Favorites. You can also optimize how Vista works, by controlling how CPU cache and IO cache are used. And that’s just the beginning. www.daoisoft.com/ 

BOOKMARKSYNC is unlike other Web-based bookmark utilities. It is a unique system that enables real-time automatic bookmark synchronization between all your different browsers, computers, and operating systems. Add a bookmark to Internet Explorer at work, and it will automatically update your Firefox browser at home and your Safari browser on your Mac. It supports Unicode, so it works for bookmarks in all languages. www.sync2it.com/?ref=cn 

GETHUMAN. Calling customer support? Get a human. Calling any kind of customer support is frustrating. First, you have to find the right number to call. Then, you have to wade through an endless automated system. "Press 1 for English." "Please enter your account number." "I’m sorry. I didn’t get that. Please try again." Aargh! Just give me a person, already! These systems make you want to throw the phone out the window. Most customer support numbers have ways to bypass that nonsense.

With a little help, you can go straight to a human. This site is invaluable. Its founders believe companies should provide high-quality customer service. The database has more than 100 well-known companies. You’ll find the correct customer support phone number. And gethuman tells you what to press or say at every prompt. You’ll be able to race through these automated systems. www.gethuman.com/ 

BRINGO. Find the company you want, and enter your personal phone number. Bringo will call the company for you. When it reaches a person, it will call you. It then connects you with the representative. This is not a foolproof service. An automated system may request account information. If it does, you’ll be brought in there, instead of with a person. www.nophonetrees.com/ 

GLARY UNDELETE. If you’ve accidentally deleted files, and want to recover them, you’ll find Glary Undelete a very helpful utility. Deleted files and then emptied the Recycle Bin? No problem. This free program will find them for you and restore them. It’ll even find files you’ve deleted from a DOS window. www.glarysoft.com/gun.html 

CELTX. The first comprehensive software package designed for people who work in the Pre-Production of Film, TV, Theatre and New Media. It provides all of the tools you need under one application and works on all platforms. Lets you open and close multiple documents in tabbed windows, develop detailed profiles for characters and scenes, and jot down your new script ideas. www.celtx.com/

FREE FLV CONVERTER. Get your favorite online videos easier than ever. You will be able to search videos without opening your browser and watch them using the built-in video player. This freeware can convert FLV files to AVI, iPod (MPEG4 or H.264), iPhone, 3GP, PSP, or MP3 audio only. This software can also convert all your videos (DIVX, XVID, MPEG, DVD, AVI) to FLV video (Flash video) with an automatic HTML page creation.

www.koyotesoft.com/indexEn.html 

VOLUMOUSE. Provides a quick and easy way to control the sound volume on your system—simply by rolling the wheel of your wheel mouse. It allows you to define a set of rules for determining when the wheel will be used for changing the sound volume. www.nirsoft.net/utils/volumouse.html 

ARSCLIP. This little program monitors the Windows clipboard and stores text that you copy or cut. You can copy the stored text into any application from within the program, or by using hot keys that you define. You can also configure ArsClip to track and store images ("non-text items"). www.joejoesoft.com/cms/showpage.php?cid=97 

TAB MIX PLUS. Browser tabs are darned handy, but they could do more. With Tab Mix Plus, Firefox tabs go past the obvious and into the indispensable. Tab Mix Plus’s options menu offers you a huge array of tweaks to make Firefox work the way you think. You can set new tabs to open as blank, as your home page, or as a duplicate of the current page. You can set bookmarks to open in new tabs instead of overwriting the tab on top. You can enable all sorts of mouse functions for tabs, such as selecting a page by hovering the mouse on the tab. http://tmp.garyr.net/ 

EM CLIENT is being developed as a light-weight alternative to Outlook. It integrates an enhanced calendaring interface, tasks, and contacts that users can simply synchronize with any CalDAV server. eM Client fully supports U3 USB smart drives so you can carry it around as a secured email & calendar client. With eM client and calendar, you can easily import your messages and contacts from Outlook, Outlook Express, The Bat, and Thunderbird. www.emclient.com:80/ 

DEEPBURNER. Most computers or optical drives ship with some sort of burning software bundled. However, if you bought your new drive bare, or for some other reason don’t have anything to burn CDs or DVDs with, you don’t have to fork over any cash to perform basic tasks. DeepBurner Free burns audio/data CDs and data DVDs from raw data or ISO images. And as you might infer from the name—it costs nada. www.deepburner.com/?r=download 

7-ZIP. Although Windows comes with its own utility to open archive files, 7-Zip can do a lot more. It works with ZIP, ARJ, TAR, RAR (unpack only), and others. Its own "7z" format can be used to achieve high compression compared to other formats. It can also create self-extracts files, and can encrypt files and folders for strong security. With a user-friendly interface yet advanced functionality, 7-Zip is a popular piece of free software for both basic and advanced users alike. www.7-zip.org/ 

HELP SAVE ENERGY and the environment by putting your monitor to sleep. You can save electricity and reduce your impact on the environment by activating your monitor’s sleep feature in Microsoft Windows XP. Activating sleep settings on just one computer may prevent considerable CO2 emissions each year. Letting your monitor sleep allows it to go into a low-power mode when you’re not using it. To wake your monitor, you simply touch your mouse or keyboard. To set Windows XP to automatically turn your monitor off when your computer isn’t being used

  1. Right-click the desktop, and then click Properties.

  2. In the Display Properties dialog box, click the Screen Saver tab. Then, click the Power button.

  3. In the Power Options Properties dialog box, click the Turn off monitor list, and select a time to automatically turn off your monitor. Five minutes is a realistic setting. If you have a portable computer, set the time for both Plugged in and Running on batteries.

  4. Click OK twice.

Windows XP will let your monitor sleep after your computer has been idle for the specified number of minutes. To reactivate your monitor, move your mouse, or press a key. You’ll save almost as much power as if you had manually turned your monitor off, but you won’t have to press your monitor’s power button.

AVIRA ANTIVIR PERSONAL. Avira typically does a great job of detecting malware on a PC; the paid version of the program posted a 99.6 percent catch rate in the latest tests from AV-Test.org. The free version employs the same engine, but you’ll have to tolerate the occasional pop-up urging you to upgrade to the paid application. www.avira.com/en/pages/index.php 

TUX PAINT. If you have children in your life, then you know how much they love to draw and paint—and they love computers. It’s a sure bet, then, that they’ll love Tux Paint. This fun and free program is user-friendly for parents and teachers as well as kids: There is a long list of interface languages to choose from, and when you install the program you’re treated to a comprehensive how-to, then asked to configure the program. You can simplify it for use with younger children, make it run in full-screen mode, disable printing, and more. www.tuxpaint.org/ 

DAEMON TOOLS LITE. It’s a real pain—not to mention slow—to continually swap CDs and DVDs out of your optical drive. It can take up to half a minute for your drive and Windows to mount a disc. Gamers who must leave a copy-protected disc in the drive in order to play a game are especially affected. If you spend a lot of time swapping and hence waiting on CDs or DVDs to mount, Daemon Tools Lite is worth its weight in gold. www.daemon-tools.cc/dtcc/announcements.php 

SIV SYSTEM INFORMATION VIEWER. Want to get a complete rundown of the hardware you’re running? Then give SIV a try—it’ll provide more information about your hardware setup than you can imagine. Whether you’re looking for the information for technical support, or some other reason, you’ll find that it offers just about anything you need. Simply run the program, and SIV reports its results. http://siv.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/ 

PDFCREATOR. If you’re looking for an easy way to create PDF files without the hefty price tag of Adobe Acrobat, give this free program a try. With this program, you can send formatted documents and have them retain their appearance on another monitor or printer. As the name suggests, the download adds a PDF creator under your list of printers. Simply select a printable Windows file, print to the PDFCreator and your document will save in PDF format. You can then read, print or e-mail the finished product. http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/?abmode=1 

WINBUBBLE. Are you frustrated that you can’t tweak Windows Vista as much as you’d like? Be frustrated no more. WinBubble is here, and it will let you change just about every part of the operating system you can imagine—and then some. Want to customize the apparently uncustomizable Bubbles, Ribbons, and Mystify screensavers? You can do it. Hack the Windows Explorer right-click context menu? You can do that as well.

There’s plenty more, including hacking the Desktop and Internet Explorer, customizing all your icons, removing the shortcut arrow from shortcut icons, and plenty more. In fact, it’s hard to find something that this remarkable tweaking program can’t do. Whether you’re a dedicated Vista tweaker, or just getting started, there’s something here for you. http://unlockforus.blogspot.com/2007/11/winbubbles-features-gap.html 

OPERA BROWSER. It's free, filled with features, and fast. Opera combines tabbed browsing and e-mail in one surprisingly clean, yet highly customizable interface. Like IE and Firefox, Opera's browser blocks pop-ups, accepts plugins, remembers your online passwords and lets you subscribe to RSS newsfeeds. This latest version adds a welcome anti-phishing tool, but you'll need to turn it on (look for Enable Fraud Protection in the Security section on the Advanced tab in Preferences). www.opera.com/ 

HURRICANE TRACKING AND MORE. Member Bob Farrell is a former US Navypilot/airline captain. Few people know as much about weather as professional pilots, so when Bob sent the following, I was happy to follow up. I wasn’t disappointed. You won’t be either:

"www.stormpulse.com is the best hurricane website I have found. Might be worth letting the members know. It is interactive. You move the mouse over a city and it gives direction and distance. You can advance the storm etc."

A similar site with greater local and Florida info can be found at www.ibiseye.com :

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Copyright 2008. This article is from the October 2008 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/  Web: http://www.spcug.org/ 

The Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. has 1,100+ members and was established in 1982. We are members of the Assoc. of PC User Groups (APCUG), the Florida Assoc. of PC Users Groups, Inc., and we are members of the America Online Ambassador Program.

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