George's Freeware Review Page

File Search Tool -- Super Finder (version 1.5.1 build 1)

noreply@blogger.com (George) — Sat, 4 Mar 2006 15:24:00 -0600

Click Here to View Video

Super Finder is a really good replacement for the Windows built-in search tool. It allows you to search by file name, folder name or certain text in a file. There is an option where you can exclude files from your results list by file extensions or by the full or partial name. The results list after you do a search has a right-click contextual menu that is the same as right clicking on a file in your file manager.

I also use Copernic which I have reviewed previously on my site but its main usefulness lies in its ability to search the content of text files. Copernic cannot search for system files. An example of what I am talking about occurred while I was writing my previous review, I wanted to find the file “uxtheme.dll” that is used in visual styles. Copernic won’t work for a search like this but Super Finder works perfectly.

Although Super Finder is intended to be launched directly to your desktop from a short cut, I have found it to be the perfect complement to the Xplorer2 Lite file manager that I reviewed previously. Xplorer2 has a “Find” option but it defaults to the Windows built-in search tool. The Windows file search tool is really slow and the user interface is not as clean as Super Finder. I have revised my review of Xplorer2 Lite to provide instructions on how to edit the registry to launch Super Finder when you click on the “Find” button in Xplorer2. My review used to have similar directions to launch Copernic but decided to change it based on my comments in the previous paragraph.

Super Finder uses two dos expressions that will probably be intuitive to most of you. The first is the asterisk which is a symbol (*) commonly found above the "8" key on the keyboard. The asterisk widely is known as a “wild card”. The asterisk represents any group of characters or no characters. For example, when typing in the “File Name” field, the computer would look for any file ending with .txt. If you wanted to search for all file names containing “help”, you would enter *help*.* into the “File Name” field. Super Finder does have a “Smart Search” option so you don’t need to enter asterisks into the “File Name” field. The other dos expression is the question mark (?). It functions in a manner similar to the asterisk. Instead of representing groups of characters, the question mark represents any single character. For example, if you enter sm?th into the “File Name” field, it would retrieve "smith" and "smyth" in the results list.

I have found the author is receptive to bug reports. During the course of reviewing Super Finder, I encountered a minor bug. In order to make the search work properly, I found I had to separate words with a question mark instead of a space when I used the “Smart Search” option. I sent a bug report to the author on 3/4/06. On 3/7/06, I received an e-mail from the author saying the bug had been found and solved that there should be a new release in a few days. On 3/12/06, I received an e-mail from the author that the new released had been published. I have since downloaded the new release and verified the bug had been corrected. I was impressed that the author resolved the bug so quickly. If you find a bug, I encourage you to report it. I reported the bug by going to the Super Finder home page linked below and clicked on “Contact” to find an e-mail address.

The new release not only fixed the bug I mentioned above but also includes the first release of a user guide. In the video that I recorded (see the link to it above), I mentioned that the question mark icon didn’t actually link to anything. Well, it does now! I found the “Advanced Guide” listed in the contents especially helpful, particularly the section that explains the “Setup” tab.

The main reasons I like Super Finder is that it responds quickly to searches and it is easy to use. Those of you that are familiar with freeware might find it curious that I am selecting this program over another popular program called Agent Ransack. To my thinking, Super Finder has an easier to use interface. Agent Ransack has a viewer that shows the content of text files that Super Finder does not have. The problem is that Microsoft Office documents like Word and Excel contain text formatting information that display as gibberish in the file content viewer. Copernic has a very good file viewer that does not show the gibberish and is the tool of choice when searching for text files, including e-mail. If you don’t want to install Copernic, Agent Ransack would be a good choice although it is much slower than Copernic when searching the content of files. I have found that it works best for me to search for files containing text with Copernic and other non-text files with Super Finder.

Super Finder is reportedly compatible with Windows 98, Me, NT 4.x, 2000, XP and 2003 Server and requires no installation. The download consists of a single compressed file, superfinder.zip. When unzipped, a folder named SuperFinder is produced that contains three files, superfinder.lng, superfinder.chm and superfinder.exe. To install it, you simply save the SuperFinder folder and its contents to C:\Program Files. Then, you can follow my directions in my review of Xplorer2 Lite to make the “Find” button open Super Finder. If you want Super Finder to be a stand alone application, you can simply create a short cut to C:\Program Files\SuperFinder\SuperFinder.exe.

Super Finder Home Page

Download Super Finder

Desktop Visual Styles -- UXTheme Multi-Patcher (Neowin Edition 4.0)

noreply@blogger.com (George) — Thu, 24 Nov 2005 22:12:00 -0600

Click Here to View Video that Showcases Two Visual Styles

When I had first gotten Windows XP, I became thrilled with desktop themes. When I found the Neowin freeware patch for Windows XP, I discovered a whole new world of totally cool ways of changing the appearance of my desktop that go far beyond desktop themes. If you like desktop themes, you will love visual styles. The Neowin patch allows you to use styles that others have created that are much like the “Windows XP Style” that is included on the “Appearance” tab of the “Display” option in the “Control Panel”. I created the video above to show you two different visual styles that I installed on my computer.

Windows XP has the ability to use “visual styles” that use a *.msstyles file on your hard drive. Unfortunately, Microsoft didn’t set up Windows XP to allow others to create them. The code name for the “Windows XP style” was "Luna" when XP was developed. If you look in your “C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes\Luna” folder, you will find a file called "Luna.msstyles". This is the "skin" that is known as the "Windows XP style". The Neowin patch allows you to install visual styles created by others. I was a little concerned about installing a patch for Windows that was not created by Microsoft (some folks might call this a “hack”). The fact is that Microsoft does not provide visual styles other than the XP style that is included with Windows XP. Since the patch has provisions to restore Windows back to original configuration, I felt more inclined to try it. Another concern I had, was the potential that the patch might contain malware because I was not familiar with the web site where I downloaded the patch. After I installed the patch, I ran my spyware scanners (Ad-Aware, Spybot and Microsoft Antispyware), Trojan scanner (Ewido) and antivirus scanner. All of the scans came up clean so I consider the patch to be safe.

There are other programs that perform similar functions to visual styles, like WindowBlinds, Aston and Style XP, but none of these are free. The Neowin patch is the only freeware method that I have found of being able to use visual styles. Unfortunately, the Neowin patch can only be used on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

One thing that is lacking in the patch download is step by step directions on how to install and remove the patch. I’ve written directions that should get you through the installation of the patch; as well as, directions to remove it if you decide to do that.

Installing the Patch

Be sure you are using Windows XP, service pack 1, service pack 2 or Windows Server 2003, service pack 1.
Download UXTheme Multi-Patcher (Neowin Edition) 4.0.
After you download it, you will need to unzip the file (nw_uxpatcher.zip).
After you unzip it, double click on the file “UXTheme Multi-Patcher (Neowin Edition) 4.0.exe” with your file manager.
Click on the “Patch” button.
You will get a message that warns you that you will get a “Windows File Protection” message and to not insert your Windows XP setup CD. Click on “OK”.
On the “Windows File Protection” message, click on “Cancel” and do NOT insert your Windows XP setup CD. (Note that this message may appear behind the message to restart your computer that is discussed on step 9.)
“Windows File Protection” will then ask, “Are you sure you want to keep these unrecognized files versions?” Click on “Yes”.
Now return to the other “Install” message. It will say your computer needs to be restarted. Click on “OK”. Your computer will be restarted.

Restoring Windows Back to the Original Configuration

Using your file manager, double click on the same file that you used to install the patch “UXTheme Multi-Patcher (Neowin Edition) 4.0.exe”.
Click on the “Patch” button.
You will get a message that asks, “…Do you want to restore your uxtheme.dll?” Click on “OK”.
You will then get a question that asks, “Do you want to enable or disable themes service?” Click on the “Enable” button.
You will then get a message that says it is necessary to restart your computer. Click on “OK”. Your computer will then restart with all the original settings restored.

There are many visual styles that can be downloaded from the internet. The file that you download for a visual style usually consists of a *.zip file (or other compressed format like *.rar) which when unzipped contains other files and possibly folders. The download will include a *.msstyles file and possibly a folder named “Shell” that has *.dll files to produce different color options for the style. Visual styles that have only one color will not have the “Shell” folder. Visual styles can specify fonts which the author may include in the download, although you can usually elect to not install them. The author will typically include wallpaper which you can choose to not use. The author may also include “skins” or themes for other programs that match the visual style. I’ve found skins for Rainlender (a calendar programs that opens to the desktop, which is sometimes abbreviated as “Rainy”), WinAmp (a media player), SysMetrix (a clock, weather conditions monitor and CPU monitor) and Y’z Dock (a program launcher).

If you want the short version of how to install a visual style, just unzip the contents of the download file and double click on the *.msstyles file with your file manager. I created an MsStyles folder in my C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes folder where I save the unzipped visual style files. After you double click on the *.msstyles file, the “Appearance” tab of the “Display” option in the “Control Panel” will open where you can click on “Apply” to open the style to your desktop. I created a tutorial below that provides more information about how to install a visual style. In the tutorial, I use the xplorer2 lite file manager that I have reviewed on my web site.

Click Here to View the Tutorial on How to Install Visual Styles

You should be aware that if you create an MsStyles folder as I mentioned in the previous paragraph and in the tutorial that your visual styles will not appear in the “Windows and Buttons” dropdown list on the “Appearance” tab of the “Display” option in the “Control Panel”. I just use a file manager to launch a style by double clicking on the *.msstyles file name. If you want them to appear in the dropdown list, you will need to adopt a different folder structure. For the style to appear in the list, the folder name in which it is residing must correspond to the name of the *.msstyles file. For example, “elegant.msstyles” must be in its visual style folder named “elegant” in the correct directory (C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes) and it will appear. The path for the file would then be:

C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes\elegant\elegant.msstyles

If the visual style has a shell folder, it needs to be in the same “elegant” folder:

C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes\elegant\shell

I have found some web sites that have visual styles that you can download:

winmodify.net (not many recent ones but quite a few old ones)

Wulfert.com (This site intermixes visual styles with skins for WindowBlinds, which is not free)

Some of the web sites that I listed above may say that you need a program called StyleXP by TGTsoft in order to use the style. That is not really true if you have installed the Neowin patch. You can use a search engine to find other web sites where you can download visual styles. I recommend that you not use the web site “http://www.themexp.org” because they bundle their download files with spyware. In fact, you need to be suspicious of any download of a visual style or desktop theme that has an *.exe extension. Visual styles and desktop themes consist of files that require no installation. Downloads that have the *.exe extension may contain spyware. The only exceptions to this are self extracting zip files.

The Neowin patch is compatible with service pack 1 and 2 of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, service pack 1. The download consists of a single compressed file, nw_uxpatcher.zip. When unzipped, one file is produced, “UXTheme Multi-Patcher (Neowin Edition) 4.0.exe”. Follow the directions above for installation.

Update 12/4/05 – I’ve found that finding and downloading visual styles can be addicting. I’ve downloaded over 120 so far. I’ve added three more sites to the list of sites where you can download visual styles. Some of the sites I list above do have a few downloads with *.exe extensions which might contain spyware but all of the sites do have some downloads with *.zip extensions. I’ve installed the Neowin patch on three Windows XP computers without mishap but there is a different method of installing a similar patch if you have trouble (though I have not tried this method). You can get the modified uxtheme.dll file for SP2 final here and then replace the uxtheme.dll file using replacer.

Update 5/11/08 - If you have trouble getting the multi-patcher to work, I suggest using the tutorial at the following web site:

How-To: Use unsigned themes on Windows XP

If you install SP3 for Windows XP, there are directions to manually replace the uxtheme.dll at the following link. I have also added a link to a uxtheme theme patcher that I haven't tried:

Manually Replace Uxtheme.dll on SP3
SP3 Theme Patcher

UXTheme Multi-Patcher (Neowin Edition 4.0) Home Page

Download the Neowin UXTheme Multi-Patcher

Software Presentation Tool -- CamStudio (version 2.0 -- Last Freeware Version)

noreply@blogger.com (George) — Fri, 9 Sep 2005 20:52:00 -0500

Click Here to View Video

If you have been reading my reviews, you may have noticed a progression. I started out by adding screen shots of the programs I review. Then I started adding Macromedia Flash files using Wink (previously reviewed). Now I am adding video files. After I had been using Wink for awhile, I happened to find CamStudio that also does software presentations. Both programs record movies of your computer desktop as you demonstrate a computer program. Both are primarily used to create tutorials on how to use software in a visual presentation. I normally use these programs in a slightly different capacity in that I demonstrate the features of a program without providing directions on how to use it. CamStudio has an advantage over Wink in that it records your voice where Wink does not. It will also record your image from a camera while you are demonstrating a program (although I haven’t used this capability).

I had some difficulty setting up the microphone on my computer. It wasn’t a problem with CamStudio but my own ignorance. I kept getting something that sounded like static in my recordings. The microphone plugs into a pink jack on the back of the CPU. Little did I know that I had two pink jacks! I have a Sound Blaster card which produced the best sound. The jack for it was positioned along the same row of jacks as the ones for my speakers. To resolve the problem, I switched to the pink jack on my Sound Blaster card. The sound improved considerably. Later, I discovered yet another jack that I haven’t tried that is next to my modem line that is labeled “Mic” (although it not pink like the other jacks). Anyway, if you have bad sound quality, try looking for another microphone jack on the back of your CPU.

My first recording using CamStudio was 7 ½ minutes long and a whopping 157 megabytes in size. CamStudio comes with another program called “SWF Producer” that takes the *.avi files produced by the program and converts them to Macromedia Flash *.swf files. After using SWF Producer, my recording ended up being a 35 megabyte Flash file. After adjusting the settings on SWF Producer to produce the smallest possible file, I still ended up with a 30.6 megabyte file. (I found out later that CamStudio has a problem with Flash files that I discuss below). Although the Flash file was considerably smaller than the original *.avi file, it was still much too big for streaming video on the internet. Streaming video files for the internet should be less than 5 megabytes so that your visitors don’t have to wait so long to download the files. At this point, I thought that CamStudio might not work out for me. Then I decided to check out the Free Vlog web site. In their tutorials, they recommend compressing video using Windows Movie Maker. Movie Maker comes with Windows XP service pack 2 and should already be installed on your computer. It is usually opened by clicking on your Windows Start button, selecting “All Programs”, then “Accessories”, then “Entertainment” and then “Windows Movie Maker”. If it is not there, try looking in other options in “All Programs”. Unfortunately, the tutorial provided by Free Vlog is for a version of Movie Maker that I don’t have. I am using version 2.1 but figured out how to use it. I ended up with a video that is 5 megabytes in size which was acceptable for streaming internet video. I decided to create a tutorial on how to use Movie Maker to compress your video. If you don’t use Windows XP, the Free Vlog web site should help you compress your video using other programs. The site also has tutorials on how to do other things as well.

Click Here to View Tutorial on How to Compress Video

Windows Movie Maker will convert the *.avi file produced by CamStudio to a *.wmv file. This is actually a good thing because it is possible to select codecs for *.avi files that visitors to your site may not have (see my review of the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack for an explanation). The *.wmv file type will play fine with the Windows Media Player that comes preinstalled with just about every version of Windows. For this reason, the *.wmv file type is probably a better choice for streaming video for the internet because anyone that has Windows should be able to play it without any problem.

You need to know that CamStudio will allow you to create any size of a screen capture area; however, the video must be in a 4:3 aspect ratio when using Windows Movie Maker. If you use Windows Movie Maker to compress a video that is not 4:3, it will squeeze your video to make a 4:3 shape which will result in distortion of the image. I normally use a 320 x 240 screen capture area in CamStudio. If you want to use a different capture area, just multiply the screen height times 1.333 to get the screen width.

CamStudio includes two different versions of media players though they don’t have all that many features. A feature that I do like is the video will play back automatically after you save the file. Another great feature is “autopan” that I use all the time. It makes the video capture area follow the cursor to wherever it goes during the recording. It is possible to record the entire screen, but the file size of the video will be much larger.

There is a known bug with viewing Flash *.swf videos generated by CamStudio. The video cannot be viewed with Netscape or Firefox. When I tried to view a Flash file using Firefox, I found that audio was produced but there was no video. The same Flash file worked file with Internet Explorer. When a Flash file is created, CamStudio also creates a companion html file. CamStudio’s home page (link below) says the problem is with the companion html file and provides a way to edit it so it works correctly. Instead of using the Flash options, I prefer to compress the *.avi files produced by CamStudio and convert them to *.wmv files using Windows Movie Maker.

Other than this bug, I found CamStudio to be free of problems with one small exception. Screen annotations are saved in a layout to a fixed location on your screen. I would have preferred that the annotations would follow the movements of the screen capture area when using the autopan feature. As it is, you can make a screen annotation appear in a location on your screen that is not even being picked up in your recording. I consider this to be a minor problem that can be overcome by some advanced planning.

The program includes a very good help file that is accessed through the program’s Help menu option. It is very comprehensive. Anyone should be able to read it and understand how to use the program.

If you don’t especially like talking over a microphone, Wink is the software presentation tool for you. Wink also produces much smaller file sizes than CamStudio. Wink produces Flash files of ½ a megabyte in size or less. CamStudio’s files that are usually 4 or 5 megabytes in size after being compressed. I have to admit, however, that I find CamStudio to be more fun to use.

CamStudio is compatible with Windows 95, 98, ME, NT4, 2000 and XP. The download consists of a single compressed file, camstudio.zip. When unzipped, two files are produced, CamStudio20.exe and CamStudioCodec10.zip. Unzipping the latter file produced the files camcodec.inf, camcodec.dll and some text files. Right clicking on the file camcodec.inf and selecting “Install” will install the CamStudio Lossless Codec v1.0 onto your computer. Double click on CamStudio20.exe with your file manager to install the CamStudio program. After installation, the executable for CamStudio is Recorder.exe.

CamStudio Home Page

Download CamStudio

Trojan and Spyware Tool -- Ewido Security Suite (version 3.5)

noreply@blogger.com (George) — Thu, 1 Sep 2005 22:04:00 -0500

Click Here to View Video

I counted the scanners on my computer and found that I actually have five different scanners installed. Three of them are spyware scanners; Spybot, Ad-Aware and Microsoft AntiSpyware. One of them is my virus scanner (one that I have purchased). The final one is Ewido. I installed it mainly because it scans for Trojans. Having five scanners may seem a bit extreme but they are not really that much trouble because all the scanners can be started and run at the same time. I do a scan once a week. When I do it, I launch each program, select the option to perform updates and minimize it. I then do the same thing to each scanner. After performing the updates, I turn off my screensaver clicking on Screen Saver Toggle (reviewed previously), start the scans and leave it alone for about an hour. a screensaver uses system resources which can slow the scans, so I use the Screen Saver Toggle to turn it off easily.

My main purpose behind installing the Ewido scanner is to be able to find Trojan horses. A Trojan horse is a program that infects your computer and allows a hacker to take control of it without you knowing. A Trojan infection allows a third party to remotely access your computer. Technically, a Trojan is not actually a virus so your virus scanner may not detect it. Trojans do not replicate themselves like viruses so you must download them on onto your computer. Typically, they are disguised as something else (which is the basis of the name Trojan). Most people tend to think of Trojans as a virus; however, a virus scanner may catch only some Trojans but not all of them.

I decided to keep Ewido when it found a Trojan on my computer that none of the other scanners found, including my virus scanner. It also scans for spyware. I have found that it often finds spyware cookies for the Firefox web browser that are not picked up by the other scanners. It also has frequent updates to the definition files.

The first two weeks that you use the program, Ewido will have options for real time protection and automatic updates. These options will be disabled after two weeks when the program reverts to the freeware version (which is what I use). The scanner will continue to function identically to the commercial version.

Ewido is compatible with Windows 2000 and XP. The download consists of a single file, ewido-setup.exe, which you double click to install.

Ewido Home Page

Download Ewido

Video Player with Codecs and Tools -- K-Lite Mega Codec Pack (version 1.37)

noreply@blogger.com (George) — Sun, 21 Aug 2005 16:21:00 -0500

Click Here to View Video

After I had gotten my new computer that has Windows XP installed, I decided to download some video from the internet. I found that some of the files didn’t play back properly. The audio portion of the files would play but there was no video. I noticed that the file type that had this problem most often was the *.avi file type. After I had done some searches on the internet and going through a bit of a learning curve, I determined that I didn’t have the codec installed that I needed to play the video. I ended up finding one of the tools that comes with the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack that is called the G-Spot Codec Information Appliance (as best I can tell the name “G-Spot” is derived from the name of the program author, Steve G). With it, I was able to determine the codec that I needed to play back a video. Then I could perform a search on the internet for the codec where I could download and install the codec. I didn’t know about the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack back then but I wished I did. It provides a much simpler alternative in that it already includes most of the popular codecs all in a single package that you install one time. In fact, I would say it includes about 95% of the codecs that you will ever need to play back video. The author also provides regular updates to the codec pack and provides support on a forum that is available on a link from the K-Lite home page.

If you don’t know what a codec is, it is short for "Compressor-Decompressor" or "Coder-Decoder". In order to make video files smaller, all video is compressed in a manner comparable to *.zip files. In order to play the video back, you must have the same the codec that was used to compress the video. Microsoft provides codecs for the media player that comes with Windows, although they don’t provide codecs of other vendors. The *.avi video file type is capable of using numerous codecs that Microsoft does not provide with Windows.

The K-Lite Mega Codec Pack actually has more than just codecs but also comes with the following:

Media Player Classic	Video player similar in appearance to version 6.4 of the Windows Media Player but not affiliated with Microsoft.
BSPlayer	Video player named after the first author, Boris; hence, Boris Software Player.
Real Alternative	Allows you to play RealMedia files (usually .rm or .ram) without having to install the official Real player.
QuickTime Alternative	Allows you to play QuickTime files (usually *.mov) without having to install the official QuickTime player.
Sherlock	Tells you what codecs you have installed on your computer.
GSpot Codec Information Appliance	A tool that can tell you exactly which codecs are needed to play a certain video file. This is very helpful when you have trouble playing a video file.
Numerous codecs	The download has most of the codecs you will need, including the popular Divx and Xvid.

One of the nice things about the download is that you can select items that you want to install. I tried the BSPlayer but didn’t like it and it does not work with the Real and QuickTime Alternatives. However, the Media Player Classic does work with the Real and QuickTime Alternatives and is my favorite media player for video. I have it set as my default player for all video. If you don’t install it, you won’t be able to watch streaming video with the Real Alternative. The Real player has some obnoxious characteristics that are explained well on another site. RealMedia files are quite popular for streaming video on the internet, so I consider the Real Alternative to be quite valuable. The QuickTime player is a good player and doesn’t have the obnoxious characteristics of Real player but I decided to uninstall it because I prefer having as few media players as possible. With the combination of Media Player Classic, Real Alternative, QuickTime Alternative and the codecs in the download, you can eliminate the need for the three players, Divx, Real and QuickTime. To my surprise, the Media Player Classic will even play back Macromedia Flash (*.swf) files. You will however, still need to keep the Windows Media Player that Microsoft provides with Windows. It will play a few file types that Media Player Classic won’t.

In addition to the versatility of the Media Player Classic, one of the main things I like about it is that when you select full screen during playback, the player controls disappear. The controls appear when you move your cursor to the bottom of the screen. Pushing the “Esc” button while in full screen mode returns the player to the small version and pauses it. The visual appearance of the player is very much like the version 6.4 of the Windows Media Player that Microsoft used to provide with Windows; however, the Media Player Classic is not affiliated with Microsoft. It is interesting to note that all Windows distributions still include the old Windows Media Player v6.4. You can run it by clicking Start, Run and entering MPLAYER2.EXE. I think you will find that the Media Player Classic is actually a much better media player than the old Windows Media Player v6.4.

What is the future of streaming video on the internet? Will the internet take over TV? I think internet television will require much more bandwidth than even today’s high speed cable modem. Certainly a step toward internet TV is the development of “Wi-Fi” wireless internet connections. From what I have read, today's Wi-Fi systems are limited to about 100 megabits of data a second, a rate that will support no more than a single high-definition television video stream in the home. If Wi-Fi systems catch on, I would expect developments that would increase bandwidth. It is apparent that CBS News sees a future in streaming video. They have dramatically increased their streaming video content recently. To watch the video, just click on the little TV cameras on their site but expect to be required to watch an advertisement when the video starts.

The K-Lite Mega Codec Pack documentation does not say what systems that it runs under but I read reports that it is compatible with Windows 98, ME, 2000 and XP. The download consists of a single file, klmcodec136.exe, which you double click to install.

K-Lite Mega Codec Pack Home Page

Download K-Lite Mega Codec Pack

Wallpaper Desktop Tool –- Wallpaper Changer (version 1.9)

noreply@blogger.com (George) — Sun, 19 Jun 2005 17:11:00 -0500

Wallpaper Changer Screen Shot (click on the image to enlarge)

Wallpaper Changer is a wallpaper manager that can change your background images on every startup, once a day or at regular intervals. Although it only supports four image formats, it supports the most popular ones, JPEG, PNG, GIF and BMP. Your pictures can change your images in random order, be automatically tiled, centered or resized to full screen.

Many other wallpaper changers only have the option to stretch your image to fill the screen. This usually ends up severely distorting the image. Wallpaper Changer allows you to keep the original aspect ratio (or they can be stretched also). In fact, Wallpaper Changer can analyze your picture and will determinate the best matching background and the most readable icon caption color for every wallpaper you apply to your desktop.

I have hundreds of images on my C drive but prefer the landscape shaped ones for wallpaper (images that are wider than their height). This makes it so there is less blank space on my screen. With portrait shaped images, you always have a wide margin to the left and right side of your wallpaper image. I found a way of finding only landscape images using another program called “File Bolter”. It has the rather unique feature of being able to find landscape shaped images in a desired folder. It uses a plug-in that is included in the download of the program. After I do a search using the “graphical files” plug-in, I just click on “File” then “Save found files list as…” and then I save it as a file with the *.wpl extension. After you save the file, you just open Wallpaper Changer, select “Open / Add” and select the file you saved. Wallpaper Changer recognizes the “File Bolter” list of files and that is all there is to it. “File Bolter” is a search tool that finds files on your C drive. Actually, this is the only purpose that I use File Bolter. There are other similar programs that I like better, but this is the only one that I have found that can list only landscaped shaped images.

Wallpaper Changer runs under Windows 9x, NT, 2000 and XP. The program requires no installation meaning you just unzip the file and double click on the executable with you file manager to run it. The download consists of a single compressed file, WallpaperChanger_v1.90.zip. When unzipped, it produces 54 files. Wallpaper.exe is the executable. When you double click on Wallpaper.exe, an icon will be placed in your system tray. Most of the files in the download support the Help documentation. To open the Help documentation, just open the “Help” folder and double click on “index.htm”. Another way of doing the same thing is to right click on the icon in your system tray and select “View Helpfile”.

Wallpaper Changer Home Page

Download Wallpaper Changer

File Bolter Home Page

Download File Bolter

Free Web Site -- Blogger.com -- Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (George) — Sun, 1 May 2005 17:45:00 -0500

Introduction

Screen Shot of the Blog Update Screen (click on the image to enlarge)

Every time I post an article to my web site I am amazed that I have been able to create this entire web site without spending a single dime. The format I use is called a “web log” and most shorten it to the term “blog”. People that publish blogs are often called a “blogger”. I explain this because I have read that 75 percent of Americans don’t know what a “blog” is. The reason might be that blogs are a relatively new thing. I have read that in 1999, just 23 blogs were thought to exist. Now there are more than 31 million. Most blogs are typically used to share personal life experiences something like a diary or journal, although some report editorials of the news. Most blogs have a variety of topics, but I elected to use mine like a magazine to publish articles about freeware that I have reviewed. With this article, I am venturing slightly out of the freeware realm. Since a blog requires no software to be installed on your computer, it is technically not freeware. Since it is a free computer application, it is close enough, at least to my way of thinking. If you would like to create a blog but are unsure about what to write, just think about your skills and things that you do well. I believe that there are not nearly enough “how to” blogs. A blog can be used to show others how to cook, construct patio furniture or how to make hot rods from used cars. If you have a digital camera, you can publish photographs to supplement your “how to” instructions. For example, the next time you cook a turkey, you can take photographs of each step of the process and post it to your blog with your recipe. If you are a writer, I have seen blogs that publish poetry, short stories and even complete novels. If you don’t write very well, I have seen other blogs that are used exclusively to publish photographs. If you are retired, you should seriously consider sharing your knowledge with the world. When I discovered Blogger.com, I was pretty apprehensive when I read that it is free. I thought there had to be a catch, especially since most internet service providers require you to pay for web page space. I have been posting articles to my blog since October of 2004 and I haven’t found a catch yet. In fact, Blogger.com has served me well. I have learned a few tricks that I will share with everyone.

The Blogger.com web site does a lot of things for you so you don’t have to be a “webmaster” to produce an attractive web site. A total of 33 templates are provided that format the look of your web site. The web site is set up to function somewhat like a daily journal where you can enter one article or a journal entry in what is called a “post” or posting. Your most recent posting is displayed directly under a description of your web site (which you can enter into the “Settings” tab and “Basic” sub-tab). The rest of your posts are moved down the page. The “Formatting” sub-tab of “Settings” allows you to specify the number of posts to display on your main page. If you use many images, you may want to limit the number of posts. People with slow internet connections may require a long time to load your blog if it is heavily laden with images. I use quite a few images so I have set my blog up to allow five posts on the main page.

When you add a new post, your new posts are automatically added to the “Previous Posts” section and the “Archives” section. The “Previous Posts” section only lists your ten most recent posts. All of your posts are accessible from the “Archives” section. I didn’t like the limitation of only having ten posts in the “Previous Posts” section, so I edited the template to change “Previous Posts” to say “All My Reviews”. You may notice I have more than ten posts there. It is because I manually add links into the template whenever I add a new post. If you would like me to add some discussion on how to do this, post a comment at the end of this article and I will add it later.

When you initially create a blog, you will find that you must enter an e-mail address. You may be a little apprehensive about entering a valid e-mail address. For my blog, I set up an e-mail address on Yahoo instead of entering my normal address. It makes me feel more secure even though I have never gotten spam or viruses to my Yahoo account. If you want to set up a free Yahoo e-mail address, click here. If you need step by step instructions on how to set up a blog, the folks at TinkerTech.net do a good job of it. In fact, they explain what all the buttons do when you create a post.

Although the blogger site has an option for a spell checker, I’ve never been able to make it work. To compensate, I write my blog entries using Microsoft Word and save copies to my C drive. I find it convenient to work from my “C” drive because the response time of the blogger site is not as fast. When I am working in Word, I insert any needed hyperlinks into Word also (like the “click here” text in the previous paragraph). I have written set by step directions on how to add hyperlinks into Word. To open the directions, click on the link below:

How to Insert Web Links into Microsoft Word

When I am finished writing, I copy all the text (with any hyperlinks) and paste it into the blog. I just highlight all the desired text, hold down the “Ctrl” key and type the letter “C” to copy the text. Then I open a new post on my blog, click into the space to insert the text, hold down the “Ctrl” key and type the letter “V” to paste the text into the blog. If you use the Mozilla Firefox web browser when you paste content into your blog, it will also include any changes you made to font color, bolding and most other text formatting options in Word and they will be transferred to the blog also. If you use Internet Explorer, any text formatting will be removed. Internet Explorer will; however, keep any hyperlinks that you inserted into Word. You can change the format of the text after you paste it into your blog whether you use Firefox or Internet Explorer. Every new post on the Blogger.com web site has two options that show up as tabs where you enter your post, one says “Edit html” and the other says “Compose”. The “Compose” tab is where you paste the content of your Word document. I will discuss using the “Edit html” tab later. The “click here to see demo” button above provides a demonstration of how I posted this article after having written it in Word and it includes some steps from Part 2 in this series about images.

After you set up your blog, you will probably want to add a hit counter so you can monitor traffic to your blog. I use the free service of StatCounter. This requires you to register and enter a valid e-mail address (where you can use a Yahoo e-mail address). Once set up, you add some supplied html code to the template of your blog. You can open your template by going to the update section of your blog and click on the tab “Template”. This template can be a little intimidating because the template is written entirely in html code. But all that is needed is to copy the code that StatCounter gives you and paste it near the bottom of your template just before the text </body> (just use the same “Cntl” C and “Cntl” V technique I described above to copy the code from StatCounter and paste into your template). StatCounter not only provides a daily count of hits of visitors accessing your web site but also provides many other statistics. Of particular interest is that it lists the web page that the visitor opened just prior to opening your web page. If the visitor used a search engine to access your web page, the keywords they used are listed. It lists how long they stayed and what country they are from. StatCounter offers the service for free and they keep detailed statistics of your most recent 100 visitors. A record is kept of the number of hits indefinitely.

After I created some Macromedia Flash files, I needed a new web page where I could display them. It didn’t work to display them on a blog post because the Flash files produced images that were wider than what would fit in a normal post. The right hand side of my blog displays my profile, listing of posts and archives. I needed a web page where I could use the full width of the screen. I ended up creating a whole new blog where I edited the template to remove the things that normally occupy the right hand side of my blog. I call it a supplemental blog. You may not realize it but when you click on any of the buttons in my blog that say “click here to see demo”, you are actually opening specific posts on my supplemental blog. I have found other uses for it, like posting images etc. If you would like to be able to do the same thing, I have posted a complete copy of the entire template as I revised it. Click here to access a copy of the template. All that you need to do to use this template is to create a new blog, open the template of your new blog and delete everything that is there currently. Then, click on the link above, highlight the text starting from just below the title and highlight everything down to end of the post (stop just before where it says “posted by George”). Then copy the text and paste it into the template of your new blog. Save changes to your template and then republish it. I created three images to support the supplemental blog. The links to them are displayed in blue text. You may want to make back up copies of these images in case my free image host stops working.

Go to Part 2, Adding Images to Your Blog

Go to Part 3, Promoting Your Blog

Free Web Site -- Blogger.com -- Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (George) — Sun, 1 May 2005 13:21:00 -0500

Adding Images to Your Blog

Adding images to a blog creates visual interest. I tried using a freeware program called Hello to add images to my blog. I discontinued using it because it made the images slightly blurred. I did like the way it added a small image to the main page of my blog and then produced a larger picture when you click on the image. I suspect the blurred images are probably caused by artifacts that result from resizing the image. The blurring is not quite as noticeable on digital photographs, although it is very noticeable on the screen shots that I post in my blog.

Blogger recently added a new option to add images to your blog. This is definitely the easiest way to add images and it works pretty well. The only limitations are that you must images in the JPG, GIF, PNG, TIF or BMP formats and you can keep posting images until you fill up to 300 MB of server space with images. I’d write a procedure on how to do it but Blogger’s own directions are as good as anything I can write. The procedure is similar to attaching a file to an e-mail. To access Blogger’s directions, just click here.

I found another alternative when I started using a free image hosting web site called Flickr. Flickr is a photo sharing service that allows you to upload any image to their site and then link to the images from your web site. It is free to upload photos up to a certain amount each month (although I have never gotten close to the limit). Flickr has a method of adding images directly to your blog. Unfortunately, I didn’t like the way it did it using the default method. I figured out a way of changing the layout so it is matches the way the Hello program does it so that a small image is saved to the main page of your blog and a larger picture is produced when you click on the image. If you are computer challenged, I have also written set by step directions on how to set up Flickr to send images directly to your blog. Even if you already have a Flickr account, you may be interested in how I changed the layout. To open the directions which includes the layout, click on the link below:

Adding Images to your Blog Postings Using Flickr

When you upload an image to Flickr, it saves the image in four different sizes; thumbnail, small, medium and large. The large size is the original size of the image that you posted. There is a fifth size option called “square” that crops off part of the image to make it square and is comparable in size to the thumbnail. You can actually use any free image hosting site where you can upload images and then link to them from your blog using the methods I describe below. I like Flickr because it is the only site I have seen that resizes the images for you. I have found Flickr does a very good job of resizing; in fact it does a better job of resizing images than most image editing programs I have tried. I have discovered that no matter what image format that I post, the resized images are always in the *.jpg format. Anyway, I have figured out some html code that imitates the way the Hello program posts images. I believe this method is a bit more difficult than the step by step method I outlined in the above link; however, it will work in your blog template or with any free image hosting site (if you choose to not use Flickr). I also included html code that you can use to create a clickable button that brings you to a web address. For this method of adding images to your blog, click on the following link:

Adding Images to Your Blog (Alternate Method)

I have posted several sample images so that you can compare the same image posted using Hello and Flickr. I think you will notice the images posted using Hello are slightly more blurred. I also posted a non-clickable image and a sample button for which I provided the html code in the link above. To see the examples, click on the following link:

Sample Image Postings

For web pages, you will find that *.jpg and *.gif formats are the best. The *.jpg format is a very high quality image of reasonably small file size. The *.gif format has lower resolution but has the advantage of being able to set the background of the image to be transparent on a web page (the background of the image adopts the background of the web page so it appears seamless). Most image editing programs will allow you to convert an image from one format to another easily. If you want the most capable but not especially easy to use freeware image editing program, try the GIMP (note that you must install GTK+ 2 for Windows before you install the GIMP – links to both programs are on this web page). If you want a freeware program that is almost as capable and easier to use, try PhotoFiltre. Most digital cameras save images in the *.jpg format so you can post them directly to Flickr without changing anything.

There are numerous web sites that offer free image hosting in addition to Flickr. I have had some difficulty finding a good free site to host the Macromedia Flash files that I have created using a program called Wink (see previous review). It seems that after a period of time the Flash files stop working, at which point I must find another free hosting site. A good resource for finding free web hosting is Free Web Hosting. You can actually find free hosting for entire web sites here, but you won’t need it with your blogger site. The Free Web Hosting site has an option on the right hand side of the main page called “Free Image Hosting” where you can find a list of free image hosting sites. If you want to add Macromedia Flash files to your web site, the hosting site must allow “hotlinking”. Hotlinking is basically where you link directly to another website's files. I have found that some hosting sites would allow me to upload my Flash file but it would work because the site did not allow hotlinking. The “Free Image Hosting” web site will usually tell you if the host allows hotlinking. I have created an article on how I add Flash files to my web site. To open it, click on the following link:

How I Add Macromedia Flash Files to My Blog

I discovered that Google has a web site where you can submit video for free at the Google Video web site (although I haven’t tried it). It is currently in a beta form (meaning it is not fully developed) and they are just now starting the gathering phase. If you want to submit video, it requires submitting an application, installing a video upload program and Google must approve content before it will be posted. This should be interesting to see how it develops. You might be able to post video to Google and create links to it from your blog. Blogs that have video are often referred to as “vlogs”. I suspect they will become more popular in the future. But if you want to create a vlog, your can do it right now and you don’t have to wait on Google. The folks at Free Vlog provide tutorials that have a step by step process of creating a free vlog! Even if you are not interested in uploading video to a vlog, step 1 includes directions to set up a blog. Step 3 was of interest to me because it provides directions on how to use a free hosting site for your video. This is of interest to me because I may use it to host my flash files in the future. You should be able to follow these same directions to add audio to your blog with the exception of Step 2. This step shows how to make a screen shot of your video in a player so that visitors can tell there is video on the blog. Instead of performing this step, might look for some clip art of an image of an audio player or use some other image that implies audio. I sent a message to an e-mail address on the site and received a very prompt reply from Michael Verdi who is one of the folks that maintains the site. My question was why does he advocate the use of the Feedburner web site when you can add a button for an RSS feed directly from Blogger’s pages? A simplified version of his answer is that Blogger.com uses a type of RSS feed that do not support media files for video or audio. The Feedburner web site has an option called “SmartCast” that converts the Blogger.com RSS feed to something called RSS 2 with enclosures (in other words a media friendly RSS feed). If you are not familiar with RSS, the folks at Wikipedia provide a pretty good explanation. Anyway, I highly recommend the Free Vlog tutorials.

Go to Part 1, Introduction, Blogger.com Free Web Site

Go to Part 3, Promoting Your Blog

Free Web Site -- Blogger.com -- Part 3

noreply@blogger.com (George) — Sun, 1 May 2005 12:32:00 -0500

Promoting Your Blog

You will probably want to promote your site once you have it reasonably well developed. Probably the best way to promote your site is for it to be listed on the DMOZ site. DMOZ is a directory listing of web sites that are grouped by categories. Before you submit your site to DMOZ, you need to study their structure very closely. It is very important that you submit your site to the correct category. You need to spend about two hours or more studying the various categories and click on several web sites in each category to see if there are web sites similar to yours. After you submit your site, your site is reviewed by an editor at DMOZ. The editor must consider your site to have useful content in order to be listed. You need to wait about three weeks for the editor to review your site. If your site is not listed after three weeks, you might try resubmitting to another category. It is a bad idea to flood their site with submissions. It will only worsen your chances of getting listed. Even though I don’t get much traffic directly from the DMOZ web site, I consider it extremely valuable because it practically guarantees that my site is listed and maintained by the various search engines. After my site was listed on DMOZ, I found it was copied to about 60 other web directories. I could easily tell my site was copied because the short description of my site on DMOZ is exactly the same as the other directory web sites.

There are numerous directories on the internet where you can submit your site. You need to be careful about the directories to which you submit your site. Be aware that Google maintains a blacklist of directories. If you submit your site to a blacklisted directory, it will lessen the chances that Google will list your site in their search engine. I don’t think it is possible to get a list of blacklisted directories. Some directories will post your site automatically after it is submitted. Other directories require it to be approved by someone before it is posted. I would say that directories that are reviewed and approved by someone are less likely to be blacklisted by Google. I am sure that the DMOZ site is not blacklisted.

The Blogger site has a few suggestions on promoting your site that you can access by clicking here.

You can submit your site to various search engines, although this will probably be unnecessary if your site is listed on DMOZ. It may seem like there are thousands of search engines but in essence there are really only four, Google (the most popular), Yahoo (number 2), Teoma which drives the Ask Jeeves search engine and the newest is MSN. The MSN search engine has actually been in existence for a long time but it used to be driven by Yahoo. Only recently has Microsoft decided to create their own search engine at the MSN.com site. Just about all other search engines are actually powered by one or more of these four search engines. That makes submitting your site easier. If you want to know more about search engines, go to the Search Engine Watch web site.

You can also join a web ring at no cost. You may have noticed at the bottom of my home page that I have joined a freeware ring. I have only found two directories of web rings that are sorted by topics. One is Ring Surf and the other is Web Ring. There are a few other web rings that can only be found by using a search engine. Joining a web ring involves submitting an application to join. When you get approved, you will be provided some html code that must be added to the template of your blog. You can paste this just above the code you pasted for your StatCounter that I described above. You will end up with something similar to what is at the bottom of my blog.

My final suggestion is to look for forums related to your page. Sometimes called a bulletin board or message board, a web forum is a web site for ongoing discussions of specific topics and issues. You usually need to need to register to be able to post items of discussion. You can simply post a topic describing your blog and provide a link to it.

I have posted here nearly everything I have learned about blogging since I started. I hope I have not overwhelmed you with information. You can start out by just posting text and then learn how to do images later. It is rewarding when you get positive feedback on your blog. But above all else, have fun with it.

Go to Part 1, Introduction, Blogger.com Free Web Site

Go to Part 2, Adding Images to Your Blog

How am I doing? Please provide feedback!

noreply@blogger.com (George) — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 22:09:00 -0600

This web site started out as an idea of a way of sharing neat freeware with friends and family. Originally, I thought I would write reviews in Word documents and e-mail them. When I found blogger.com, I decided to create a web site instead. To my surprise, several search engines included my site in their listings and I started getting traffic. As of this writing, I have posted 14 reviews of free software. I need feedback so I can produce a better product. If possible, please try to answer at least some of the following questions:

Are the reviews too complicated?

Do you like the screen shots of the programs I review?

Do you like the flash presentations when you click on the buttons that say “click here to see demo”?

Some of the reviews have procedures on how to do things. Are these helpful?

Are the web links included useful?

Have you installed any software because of my review?

You may add comments by clicking on the “comments” link at the end of the article, then click on “Post a Comment” and then “Anonymous” if you don’t have a blogger account. I can assure you that is impossible to obtain your identify if you post anonymously.

Thanks,

George

Software Presentation Tool -- Wink (version 1.5 build 1051)

noreply@blogger.com (George) — Fri, 4 Feb 2005 22:00:00 -0600

Wink Screen Shot (click on the image to enlarge)

Whether you call it ScreenCasting or Demo Movie Recording, Wink records movies of your computer desktop as you demonstrate a computer program. It is primarily used to create tutorials on how to use software in a visual presentation. It allows you to create presentations by capturing screenshots, mouse movements and entering comments by using various types of annotation that are called “callouts” in the program. Wink presentations are geared for placement on web pages and use the Macromedia Flash Player. The Flash Player is a free download and already installed on most computers. Wink is free to use for business or personal use. The button above accesses some examples of presentations that can be created using Wink.

Some similar programs simply record screen shots in a timed sequence. While this method works, it tends to produce large files. Although Wink has a timed screen capture mode, it also has what is called “Input Driven Capture”. This screen capturing mode only records screen shots during mouse clicks and pressing keys on your keyboard. When the final presentation is rendered, cursor movement is animated by the program. The program does not record your actual cursor movements. Using this method produces fewer screen shots and translates into a smaller file size. A smaller file size means the presentation will load faster on an end user’s computer. I saved presentations for two of my previous freeware reviews, WordWeb and Audacity, using the “Input Driven Capture” feature of this program. My WordWeb presentation has 14 screen shots. If each of the screen shots are saved in *.jpg format, the file size is about 60 kb for each screen shot and a total size of 840 kb for all 14 screen shots. The file size of the final WordWeb Flash presentation is only 109 kb. I found the presentations load very quickly. These presentations can be accessed by clicking on the button in my review that says, “click here to see demo”.

Projects are saved with a file name of your choosing and the extension *.wnk. When you have completed a project, there are two output files the program can produce through a rendering process. The main output is a Flash file with a *.swf extension. At the same time, it produces a companion *.htm file that launches the Flash file when you open the *.htm. It is not possible to edit the Flash file with Wink. If you want to make changes to the presentation, you need to edit the *.wnk file and then render the Flash presentation again (so it is a good idea to keep the *.wnk file). I used this option for all my presentations. Saving the files to a web page is a snap. You just save both *.swf file and the *.htm file to the same folder and then create a web link to the *.htm file. Wink can also render a Flash file with an *.exe extension. The presentation runs simply by double clicking on the *.exe file. I haven’t found a useful purpose for the *.exe file type of presentation. You might add comments to this article if you find a use for it.

Flash presentations cannot be printed. So to accommodate this, the presentation may also be saved as an Adobe pdf file or htm file. This would allow you to create a “Printable Version” for your web site.

As good as it is Wink does have a drawback. There is no “undo” function. The biggest problem I encountered is deleting a screen shot I thought I didn’t need and then later realized that I needed it. It is possible to recreate screen shots but I didn’t find it very easy. I found the best process to use is to record all screen shots, and then save the project as a *.wnk file. Then delete any undesired screen shots and render the Flash file. If after viewing the Flash file I decided I needed a screen shot that was deleted, I closed the project without saving changes to the *.wnk file. Then I reopened the *.wnk file which would open with the deleted screen shots. Only when I knew I had the right screen shots did I save the *.wnk file and then proceed to add the comment annotations and “callouts”. This is a little inconvenient but it works.

All Flash presentations need to fit inside the area of a web browser, so the presentation needs to be as small as possible yet large enough to read. Wink has a function where you can resize all screen shots in the presentation, but the end result is a little blurred. You are better off reducing the screen resolution on your computer before you start recording screen shots. This is done by opening the “Display” option of your “Control Panel” and clicking on the “Settings” tab. You will want to set the screen resolution to its lowest setting (probably 640 by 480 pixels).

I must say the program download includes a very good user’s guide that is accessed through the program’s Help menu option. It is very comprehensive. Anyone should be able to read it and understand how to use the program.

Even without an “undo” function, Wink is still a very good program that I recommend highly. I especially like the way it keeps files sizes down of the Flash presentations so it loads fast. I posted a request to add an “undo” function on a Wink forum. The author, Satish Kumar. S, posted a reply that it would be included in the next release.

I recommend that you compare Wink with CamStudio (see my review) which is a similar program. Wink produces smaller file sizes than CamStudio. Wink produces Flash files of ½ a megabyte in size or less where CamStudio’s files are usually 4 or 5 megabytes in size after being compressed. CamStudio has an advantage over Wink in that it records your voice where Wink does not.

Wink runs under Windows 98, ME, 2000 and XP. The download consists of a single compressed file, wink15.zip. When unzipped, it produces a single file, wink15.exe, which you double click to install. After installation, shortcuts are installed to the executable, Wink.exe.

Wink Home Page

Download Wink

Dictionary Lookup Tool –- WordWeb (version 3.03)

noreply@blogger.com (George) — Sun, 16 Jan 2005 21:08:00 -0600

WordWeb Screen Shot (click on the image to enlarge)

WordWeb is an uncomplicated to use dictionary and thesaurus. It comes with a local database of definitions and is dictionary is quite complete. You not only get the spelling of the word, but the meanings dealing with every category for that word such as nouns and verbs. You are also given synonyms, attributes, the different types, and the types of the subject word. If a word is not found in the local database, it offers to look up the word using the internet.

The layout is expandable to the full screen but it's not really necessary as you can run this program in a small window quite well. There is an option that lets you keep the program "on top" which makes stay on top of any application no matter where you click. The top box is where your word is entered. The second box shows the definition of the word. The third box contains tabs with related words. To the right are the button icons which you can click on for the definition of the word as a noun, verb or adjective which ever is applicable. You can also scroll down the definition to get the same information.

WordWeb can be opened from a small icon on your system tray (usually at the bottom right of the screen), or from a keyboard shortcut (by default, Ctrl+Alt+W). To look up a word in almost any program, just double-click on the word to select it. Then hold down your Control (Ctrl) and Alternate (Alt) keys at the same time and type the letter “W”.

I use WordWeb the most when I am browsing the internet. I created a demo where I used WordWeb to look up a word in a news story on a web page (just click on the button above to see it). WordWeb is simple and quite fast to use. You don’t have to grab a hard bound dictionary anymore. I highly recommend it.

WordWeb runs under Windows NT, 95, 98, 2000, ME and XP. The download consists of a single file, wordweb.exe, which you double click on to install. After installation, shortcuts are installed to the executable, wweb32.exe.

WordWeb Home Page

Download WordWeb

Audio Editing Tool -- Audacity (version 1.2.4b)

noreply@blogger.com (George) — Sun, 19 Dec 2004 16:52:00 -0600

Audacity Screen Shot (click on the image to enlarge)

I like to create themes for my computer. I needed a program to be able to cut segments of audio files to shorten them to use in my computer themes. I discovered Audacity can do this and has many more functions that I haven’t even tried. You can record and edit WAV, AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format), OGG (Ogg Vorbis), AU (developed by Sun Microsystems), SND (Macintosh format), and MP3 files. It can mix many channels to one or two channels. I read that a music producer uses it to record and edit audio samples. Someone else uses it to make MP3 and WAV files recorded from the line in and microphone inputs. Yet someone else used it to record their LP records to MP3 files. In fact, about the only thing I found it can’t do is edit midi files. The sound quality of audio in the midi format is not usually as good as WAV or MP3 files but it is used fairly often in video games and on some web pages because of its smaller file size.

After I started using Audacity, it didn’t take long for me to realize that it had a great deal of capability. I removed the noise from a WAV file I downloaded that had analog hiss noise recorded with it. I downloaded another WAV file that was recorded in stereo but the volume on one channel was much lower than the other and was able to fix it. After that, I found that it was just fun to play with it. I found VST plugins to be especially fun to experiment with. VST is an abbreviation for Virtual Studio Technology. The VST technology is an interface standard for connecting audio synthesizer and effects to audio editors and hard-disk recording systems. There are numerous web sites on the internet where you can download free VST plugins. There are links to a few of them on the Audacity web site. I experimented with VST plugins that I downloaded from a web site called MDA-VST. They have a single download that has 31 VST plugins and a separate download that tells how to use each of them.

I’ve found that computer programs that have a lot of capability tend to be complicated but in fact I found Audacity easy to use. I posted annotations in the above screen shot of the only difficulties I encountered. I found everything else to be pretty straightforward and intuitive. Don’t be daunted if you have less experience with computers than I do, the program comes with the most comprehensive documentation that I have ever seen in a freeware package. It has a quick reference help file that is accessed from the “Online Help…” option on the Help pull down menu in the program. A separate download is available for a complete manual (see the link below). When you unzip the downloaded file for the manual, don’t be confused by the many HTML files. Just double click on the file named “index.html” with your file manager and your web browser should open to a web page with clickable links to the rest of the documentation. If you still need help, there are three on-line tutorials of which two are very elementary and come with sample audio files that you download and edit in a computer based training type of instruction. You might have read my review of the Firefox web browser, but I found some of the links in the tutorials didn’t work unless I used Internet Explorer.

To be able to save files in the MP3 format, you will need a separate program called “Lame”. To use VST Plugins, you will need a separate download called “VST Enabler” from the Audacity web site. You will need six downloads if you include the MDA VST plugins and their help file. I decided to provide directions on how to set everything up:

Create a folder called “C:\Audacity Downloads”.
Click on each of the six links below that say “Download…” and save each of the files to the folder you created.
Unzip the contents of “audacity-win-1.2.3.zip” to “C:\Program Files”. This will create a subfolder called “Audacity” which will contain files and additional subfolders. Create a shortcut on your desktop to “C:\Program Files\Audacity\audacity.exe” and name the shortcut “Audacity”.
Go back to “C:\Audacity Downloads” and unzip the contents of “audacity-manual-1.2.zip” to the folder “C:\Program Files\Audacity”. Create a shortcut on your desktop to “C:\Program Files\Audacity\audacity-manual-1.2\index.html” and name the shortcut “Audacity Help”.
Go back to “C:\Audacity Downloads” and create a subfolder called “Lame”. Unzip the contents of “lame-3.96.1.zip” to “C:\Audacity Downloads\Lame”. Copy the file “lame_enc.dll” to “C:\Program Files\Audacity”. This is the only file that you need from the Lame download.
Go back to “C:\Audacity Downloads” and create a subfolder called “VST Enabler”. Unzip the contents of “VST-Enabler-0.1.3.zip” to “C:\Audacity Downloads\VST Enabler”. Copy the file “VST Enabler.dll” to “C:\Program Files\Audacity\Plug-Ins”.
Go back to “C:\Audacity Downloads” and unzip the contents of “mda_vst_fx_win.zip” to “C:\Program Files\Audacity\Plug-Ins”.
Create a folder “C:\Program Files\Audacity\MDA Help”. Go back to “C:\Audacity Downloads” and unzip the contents of “mdahelp.zip” to “C:\Program Files\Audacity\MDA Help”. Create a shortcut on your desktop to “C:\Program Files\Audacity\MDA Help\index.htm” and name the shortcut “MDA VST Plugin Help”.
Double click on the shortcut “Audacity” to open the program and open any audio file. Then click on “File” and then “Export as MP3…”. You should get a prompt asking you to locate the file “lame_enc.dll”. Using the browse function, locate the file in “C:\Program Files\Audacity”.
Delete the folder “C:\Audacity Downloads” and all its subfolders and contents.

The Audacity web site says it does not run on Windows 95 or NT4. Windows 98 or higher is required (which means you must have 98, ME, 2000 or XP). There are MAC and Linux versions if you go to the Audacity web site.

Audacity Home Page

Download Audacity Windows Program Zip File

Download Audacity Manual

Download Lame

Download VST Enabler

Download MDA VST Plugins

Download MDA VST Plugin Help

Printing from DOS Programs –– DOSPrint (version 2003.03.03) and PrintFile (version 2.1.5)

noreply@blogger.com (George) — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 17:53:00 -0600

Screen Shots of PrintFile (click on the image to enlarge)

I found a recipe program that was once many years ago required to be purchased but was changed to freeware status. Even though the program is written entirely in DOS, I still liked it. Most versions of Windows still have the ability to open DOS programs. The program worked perfectly except I could not print from the program. I was able export a recipe to a file and print the file using another text program like Notepad, but it would not print using the print option directly from the program. When I looked at the printer setup in the program, I found I could select LPT1, LPT2 or LPT3 which I later discovered were called ports. I discovered my printer did not support this type of port but instead uses a USB port to connect the printer to the CPU. I performed searches on the internet to find a solution. In my searches, I discovered several forums where others reported the same problem while trying to print from legacy DOS programs but no solutions. I’ve thought about reviewing the recipe program (Meal Master) but since you can’t use a mouse with it, I decided most people may not like it. However, I do think some people may find my solution useful when printing from legacy DOS programs.

I tried PRN2FILE which is a DOS utility that redirects the printer output from the LPT port to a text file which I thought could be redirected to my USB printer. Unfortunately, I was never able to print from Meal Master to a text file with it. I decided to try something else. My searches eventually brought me to the DOSPrint web site, which said it could capture LPT1 through LPT9 directly to local LPT, USB, or TCP/IP printers. When I started using it though, I still had problems. When I selected something to print from Meal Master, the software for my printer would produce indications on my computer screen that it was printing but it would never actually print. I decided that DOSPrint must not be compatible with the software for my Canon Multipass printer. I found a solution by setting up a dummy printer that would use the print to file function available on Windows. So when I printed from Meal Master, it would save a file to a folder on my C drive. I then found another program called PrintFile that has a “spooling” function. It monitors the folder on my C drive for the file, prints it and then deletes the file. It may seem like a complicated solution but it works. I do recommend that you try DOSPrint and have it print directly to your printer first. If that doesn’t work, try my PrintFile spooling approach. I wrote a procedure on how to do this below:

1. Download DOSPrint and unzip its contents to a new folder called C:\Program Files\DOSPrint.
2. Create a shortcut with the target "C:\Program Files\DOSPrint\DOSPrintUI.exe" and name the shortcut “DOSPrint”.
3. Save the shortcut to your “Startup” menu which is most likely in the folder C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup.
4. Determine the LPT number to which your legacy DOS program prints (or set it to LPT1).
5. Open DOSPrint by clicking on the Windows “Start” button, then “Programs” then “Startup” and then “DOSPrint”.
6. Highlight the LPT number to which your legacy DOS program prints.
7. Click on “Set” and select your printer from the list.
8. Try printing something from your legacy DOS program. If it prints, you are done. If it doesn’t, continue with the next step.
9. Add a new folder to your C drive, C:\spool
10. Add a new printer as follows:
a. Go to the Windows control panel and open the printers option. Click on “Add Printer”.
b. Click "Next" on the "Welcome to the Add Printer Wizard" dialog box.
c. Select "Local printer" and uncheck "Automatically detect and install...", click "Next".
d. Click "Create a new port", type has to be "Local Port" and click "Next".
e. Enter: C:\spool\dos.txt when prompted for port name, click "OK".
f. Select "Generic" from the "Manufacturers" and "Generic / Text Only" from "Printers", click “Next”.
g. The next dialog will prompt you for printer name and enter “DOS Printing”, select "No" to use this printer as default and click "Next".
h. In printer sharing dialog select "Do not share this printer" and click "Next".
i. Select "No" to print a test page and click "Next".
j. Click Finish.
11. Install PrintFile.
12. Set up PrintFile as shown in the screen shots above. In the “Settings” option, be sure that “Enable Spooler function” is checked. In the “Settings” option, click on “Conversion…” and ensure the option “Enable conversion of:” is unchecked.
13. Create a shortcut with the target "C:\Program Files\PrintFile\PRFILE32.EXE" /s:c:\spool\dos.txt (exactly like this with the quotes) and name the shortcut “PrintFile”.
14. Save the shortcut to your “Startup” menu.
15. Open DOSPrint.
16. Click on “Set” and then select “DOS Printing” from the list of printers.
17. Click on “OK”.

There are several settings in PrintFile that will change the appearance of your printed copies. You may want to read the help file that is downloaded with the program for assistance.

According to the documentation, DOSPrint requires Windows NT 4.0, 2000, or XP. Windows 9x is not supported. The file downloaded from DOSPrint is a compressed file, DOSPrint.zip. When unzipped, it produces 3 files DOSPrintUI.exe, DOSPrint.PDF, DOSPrint.exe that you save as identified in the directions. The PrintFile documentation states it needs one of the following versions of Microsoft Windows, 3.1x, 95, 98, ME, NT 3.51 or later, 2000 or XP. The PrintFile download produces compressed file prf215.zip which when unzipped produces files PrFile32.exe, PrFile.exe and SETUP.EXE with some other text and help files. The download contains both 16 and 32 bit versions of the software. Double clicking on the SETUP.EXE with your file manager will result in the installation program choosing the correct executable for your operating system.

DOSPrint Home Page

Download DOSPrint

PrintFile Home Page

Download PrintFile

Spyware Tool -- Spybot - Search & Destroy (version 1.4)

noreply@blogger.com (George) — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 17:19:00 -0600

Spybot Screen Shot (click on the image to enlarge)

Surprisingly, there are quite a few people that don’t know about spyware. You can just type spyware on any search engine and find vast amounts of information about it. If you want a brief version, spyware is basically a program that installs when you either visit a web site or may be installed when you install some programs. Most spyware is completely invisible to the user and it reports your web surfing habits to some other web site. Most often, spyware installs in the form of a cookie when you visit a web site. However, it can be installed with other free programs that you download from the internet. If you don’t care if someone else knows your web surfing habits, spyware can take more obnoxious forms. For example, some spyware makes advertising pop-up on your computer even if your web browser is not open. Some spyware can add tool bars to your browser. Even the invisible forms of spyware can slow down your connection to the internet, because each spyware object must connect to the internet to report your web surfing habits. I had a friend tell me that he knew of someone that had over a thousand spyware objects on their computer. It definitely slowed it down. Spyware may sound like a type of virus but since it does not damage your computer, most virus scanning software does not check it. Some virus scanners do check for some of the worst spyware offenders but I don’t know of any that does a comprehensive check. Congress is working to pass laws making spyware illegal but the laws have not been passed yet. Even if they do, I doubt there is much the U.S. can do about spyware created in foreign countries. To the best of my knowledge, none of the software that I recommend on this page comes bundled with spyware but it is impossible for me to check it continuously. I have found that spyware often comes bundled with desktop themes and screensavers that you download from the internet. In 2002, I bought TurboTax to do my income tax and found that it even had spyware. I found TurboTax would not work without having the spyware installed also. Even Microsoft Windows Media player come bundled with spyware. When you install a new program, I recommend that you review the license agreement. If it has wording about software from third party vendors, the program probably has spyware.

Spybot has a scanner that functions like a virus scanner only Spybot looks for spyware. Spybot has a pull down menu called “Mode” that has two options called “Default” and “Advanced”. I actually only used the advanced mode one time after I installed it. I use a pop up blocker with my web browser which uses a proxy. Spybot inherited the same proxy but wouldn’t work with it. I used the advanced mode to delete the proxy. I recommend using the default mode unless the program does not work, then you may need to use the advanced mode. More likely than not, you won’t need the advanced mode.

After you open Spybot, you will notice it has four basic options, “Search & Destroy”, “Recovery”, “Immunize” and “Update” on the left side of the main panel. Before you perform any scans, you should first see if the are any updates. The “Update” option has three main buttons. “Search for Updates” lists any updates that need to be installed on your computer. You simply click in the box to place check mark inside it. The second button allows you to select a site from which to download. The third button downloads the updates.

After you download an update, you should open the “Immunize” option and click on the “Immunize” button. It blocks spyware from being installed. I have found that it also monitors your registry and asks if you want to allow a change. If I am browsing web pages, I always say no to prevent changes to the registry. If I am installing a program, I always allow changes to the registry.

The “Search & Destroy” option is how you access the scanner. Just clicking on the “Check for Problems” button starts the scan. A list of spyware that is installed on your computer is generated. You can then select each item and then select to fix the problems, which will deactivate the spyware.

The “Recovery” option allows you to reinstall the spyware that you deactivated. It is provided as an option because some programs that you want to use must have the spyware installed in order for it to work. I have never had the need to use this option, but it is there if you need it.

The biggest problem I had with Spybot was when they issued a new version of the software. I noticed when I was using the program that I stopped getting updates. I discovered that they had released a new version and you couldn’t get updates by using an older version of the program. Oddly, there was no indication when I searched for updates that a new version was available. It just simply stopped receiving updates.

Spybot’s web site says that it supports Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, and XP, although there is no support for Mac OS or Linux/Unix. Spybot’s home page has a link to a tutorial that I recommend reading to learn more about the software. The download consists of a single file, spybotsd13.exe, which you double click with a file manager to install. After installation, the executable is SpybotSD.exe.

Your best defense against spyware is to install the three spyware tools that I recommend on my web site, Spybot, Ad-Aware and SpywareBlaster, each of which I have reviewed separately.

Spybot Home Page

Download Spybot

Spyware Tool -- Ad-Aware SE Personal (version 1.06)

noreply@blogger.com (George) — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 17:17:00 -0600

Ad-Aware Personal SE Screen Shot (click on the image to enlarge)

The personal edition of Ad-Aware is a scanner much like an anti-virus checker only looking for spyware. It does not have the “Immunize” function that Spybot possesses unless you purchase an advanced version that has something called “Ad-Watch”. The reason I use Ad-Aware is that it sometimes finds things that Spybot does not. I have also found that Spybot sometimes finds things that Ad-Aware does not. As a result, I have found it is best to use both programs. The default settings in Ad-Aware work pretty well for me and probably for most people so I won’t cover them here. The help file does a good job of explaining things if you want to change the settings.

When you first open Ad-Aware, the “Status” screen is displayed. The screen has an option called “Check for updates now” that you should use before performing a scan. After you search and download any available updates, you can then perform a scan by clicking on the “Start” button on the “Status” screen. There are four options that appear on the following screen. I always perform the “full scan” to be sure to search everything. The “smart” scan option is faster but it may miss some objects.

I haven’t had many problems. Once it didn’t let me know that new version was available although the version I was using would still receive updates. Another time I had some objects that Ad-Aware could not remove. I would get a prompt asking if it could run Ad-Aware at the next start-up. If I said yes, it would run the program at the next start-up but would fail to get rid of the spyware. I found that I could get rid of it by starting Windows in “Safe Mode”. This is a little known Windows function that you access by pushing F8 repeatedly during the initial starting sequence of your computer. It will then bring you to a screen where you can select “Safe Mode”. Windows will start and look normal except it will display “Safe Mode” along the outside edge of your screen. I then started Ad-Aware and ran a full scan. After the scan, I was able to remove the spyware objects without getting the prompt to start Ad-Aware at the next start-up.

Their site states that Ad-Aware is compatible with Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP and 2003. The download consists of a single file, aawsepersonal.exe, which you double click with a file manager to install. After installation, the executable is Ad-Aware.exe.

Ad-Aware Personal SE Home Page

Download Ad-Aware Personal SE

Spyware Tool -- SpywareBlaster (version 3.4)

noreply@blogger.com (George) — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 17:15:00 -0600

SpywareBlaster Screen Shot (click on the image to enlarge)

SpywareBlaster works very much like the “Immunize” function in Spybot. It does not have a scanner. It essentially installs a dummy file on your computer that fools web sites into thinking that its spyware has already been installed. It prevents the installation of spyware.

When you open the program, you will see the “Protection” tab displayed first. You may note in the above screen shot that it shows that Mozilla/Firefox protection is enabled. This option only displays after you install the Mozilla Firefox web browser, which I have reviewed elsewhere on my web site. The “Protection” tab has an option called “Download Latest Protection Updates” which brings you to another screen that has a button that says “Check for Updates”. This is a pretty simple way to get updates.

There is an option called “System Snapshot”. It saves various settings in case spyware changes them. It allows you to restore the settings to a previously saved snapshot. A less obvious option is a “System Info” option that is available when you click on “version 3.2” in the left column. It shows various system statistics on your computer.

I have found that SpywareBlaster works quite well at preventing spyware cookies from being installed. It may not catch all the spyware that gets installed, but it helps and works well with Spybot’s “Immunize” function. I’ve noticed a dramatic reduction in the spyware that the scanners find after having installed SpywareBlaster and use Spybot’s “Immunize” function.

Reportedly, SpywareBlaster is compatible with Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000 and XP. The download consists of a single file, spywareblastersetup32.exe, which you double click with a file manager to install. After installation, the executable is spywareblaster.exe.

SpywareBlaster Home Page

Download SpywareBlaster

Web Browser -- Mozilla Firefox (version 1.0.7)

noreply@blogger.com (George) — Fri, 12 Nov 2004 23:42:00 -0600

Mozilla Firefox Screen Shot (click on the image to enlarge)

The Mozilla Foundation is certainly gaining popularity with their Firefox web browser. Millions of people have downloaded it and for good reason. It has more features than Internet Explorer. My review identifies the main features that Firefox has but Internet Explorer does not.

Mozilla Firefox opens web pages so much faster than Internet Explorer that it is worth installing for that reason alone. I have read that the Opera web browser loads pages faster than Firefox but to my thinking not noticeably faster. Firefox has other features that I like better than Opera (Opera has recently removed the forced advertisement in their freeware version).

After you install Firefox, you will probably want to add the bookmarks and print buttons. You can customize the toolbar by right clicking on the toolbar and selecting “Customize…” Then, drag and drop the “Bookmarks” and “Print” buttons to the toolbar. Bookmarks are the same thing as “Favorites” in Internet Explorer. There is another option on the customize window where you can select “Icons and Text” instead of just icons which I personally prefer. After I added the “Bookmarks” button to my computer, I was really pleased when I clicked on it. Not only did my bookmarks appear, but a search tool also appeared. I must have several hundred bookmarks. I can just type in a portion of the name of a web page and a list of applicable bookmarks is displayed. This is really nice. I am surprised that Mozilla didn’t make the bookmark search tool more obvious in a new installation. It is a feature I use all the time.

Another nice feature is tabbed browsing. As shown in the screen shot, you can hold down your alternate key and click on a web link to open a web page in a new tab. I have found this allows you to continue reading the current page while you wait for the new page to open. If you click on the “Bookmarks” button and right click on a folder that has bookmarks, you will find an option that says “Open in Tabs”. This will open every bookmarked web page in the folder in a separate tab.

Firefox has numerous plug-ins (which they call extensions). These are accessed by clicking on the “Tools” pull down menu and then “Extensions”. On the “Extensions” option is a link called “Get More Extensions”. When you click on it, it brings you to their web page where you can download them. I tried several but there are only a few that I really like and use a lot. One of the most useful extensions is “Resize Search Box”. You may notice on the screen shot that the Google search bar is a little short. “Resize Search Box” to make it any size that you want. The extension “Image Zoom” allows you to enlarge pictures on web pages by right clicking on the picture. It is really frustrating to open a web page and find it has a picture that is too small to see. “Image Zoom” solves the problem. Another extension called “Google Preview” inserts a web site preview in Google and Yahoo search results. The extension “IEView” allows you to right click on a web link and open it in Internet Explorer. This is useful if the page does not support the Firefox browser. The last extension that I like is “ForecastFox” which displays weather information from Weather.com on a toolbar or status bar.

Firefox also has numerous Themes that are downloaded very much like extensions. I suggest staying away from one called “Pinball” if you use Windows. When I tried it, I ended having to completely reinstall Firefox. In fact, I don’t recommend using any of the themes that have a version number less than 1.0.

The only down side that I experienced with Mozilla Firefox is that I had to reinstall the Flash and Shockwave players and also Java when I installed Firefox the first time. I suppose it was worth it though because I found I was using versions on Internet Explorer that were out of date. A good thing is that it imported my favorites from Internet Explorer and other settings. When I upgraded from version 0.9.3 to 1.0, it was not necessary to reinstall Flash, Shockwave or Java.

I discovered by accident that Firefox saves bookmarks to a web page type of file. I made it my starting page. You can access it by using a file manager to access C:/Documents and Settings/[your name]/Application Data/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/default.mkl/ bookmarks.html. Just double click on the file “bookmarks.html” with your file manager and the web page will open up.

Firefox has a built-in internet search toolbar. When you first install Firefox, the Google search engine will appear. You can click on the “G” which allows you to select other engines like Yahoo. Adding an engine is simple. You just click on the pull down and select “Add Engines…” This will open a web site where you can select from over a thousand search engines. One of my personal favorites is KillerInfo.com. Firefox installs with the search engines for eBay and Amazon.com that you may want to delete. Deleting a search engine is not intuitive but it is fairly easy. Go to C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins. Each search engine has a *.src file, and either a *.png or *.gif image file. To delete a search engine, you need to delete both the *.src and image files and then restart Firefox.

Firefox has some other noteworthy features like:

“Live Bookmarks” lets you view RSS (Really Simple Syndication) news headlines in the bookmarks toolbar or bookmarks menu. A site must be enabled for live bookmarks. For example, on my web page just click on the yellow icon on the bottom right corner of the browser and then click on “Subscribe to George’s Freeware Review Page” and then click on OK. Each software review topic on my page will then be added to your bookmarks.
A built in pop up blocker
A cool “find function” that appears in a toolbar across the bottom of the page that you open by clicking on “Edit” and then “Find” (or press CTRL-F)
It saves passwords separately from other cookies, so when you delete cookies, you don’t delete your passwords.
A built in download manager
A bookmark manager that you open by clicking on “Bookmarks” and then “Manage Bookmarks”
When you open the bookmark manager, a nice feature is available on the properties option that you might miss. You can assign a keyword, or even a key letter, to any bookmark, and then open the website simply by typing the keyword or letter into the URL bar and pushing the “Enter” key.

I’ve found Firefox works with most web sites. If it is not compatible, you will get a message like "This site does not support older versions of Netscape (before v. 6.0)." The Microsoft Windows Update page which has a scanner that looks for updates to your system does not work with Firefox. I got around the problem by creating shortcuts just for Microsoft’s web site. When you create the shortcut, put the following in the “Target” (include the quotes):

"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" http://[Windows Update Site]

Then put the following in the “Start in”:

"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer"

By having your shortcuts set up like this, you can set Firefox to be your default browser and double click on the Windows Update shortcuts and open the Microsoft web site in Internet Explorer.

The only difficulty I had with Firefox was I use a temporary file cleaner and had some difficulty figuring out where the cache folder is located. After reading a tip on a web site, I found that all I had to do is type about:cache in the address bar. After I pushed enter, it not only showed the location but other things about the cache as well.

I’ve read that Mozilla Firefox was developed by the same people that created Netscape. They have actually created some other web browsers before Firefox. I think they must be trying to one up Internet Explorer. I think they succeeded with Mozilla Firefox. I like it a lot.

The Firefox web site says it is compatible with Windows 98, 98SE, ME, NT 4.0, 2000 and XP. I recommend reading the system requirements on their web page but it does say it works on Linux and MACs. The download consists of a single file, Firefox Setup 1.0.7.exe, which you double click with a file manager to install. After installation, the executable is firefox.exe.

Mozilla Firefox Home Page

Download Mozilla Firefox

Screensaver -- Picture and Sound Show (version 3.1c)

noreply@blogger.com (George) — Sat, 6 Nov 2004 14:37:00 -0600

Picture and Sound Show Screen Shot (click on the image to enlarge)

I really like to create my own screensavers. I tried quite a few screensavers where I could use my own pictures. Windows XP comes equipped with “My Pictures Slideshow” which allows you to use your own pictures although it doesn’t have many options. The “Picture and Sound Show” screensaver is one of the few that not only displays your pictures but also plays sound or music. The screen shot I have provided only displays the “Picture Options” but the “Picture and Sound Show” home page (link below) provides screen shots of all the options.

After you install the program, you may find it confusing that it adds no options to open it from your Windows start button and it adds no shortcuts to open it from your desktop. It is opened through the control panel “Display” option, “Screensaver” tab. To open it, you scroll down the list of screensavers until you find “Picture and Sound Show”. After you click on it, click on “Settings” to open the program.

The screensaver has the ability to create numerous collections of screensavers. As you can see from the screen shot, I’ve created “Star Wars”, “Star Trek” and “Terminator Movies”. Each of the collections actually functions as a separate screensaver. To create a new screensaver, you click on the “New Collection” button and give it a title. If you create more than one collection, there is an option called “Change Collection Options” where you can permanently select one collection or cycle between several collections.

You can set up the screensaver to use all the pictures in a certain folder or you can add individual pictures. The option for picture sequence has one that is called shuffled and another called random. I found by experimentation that shuffled means the pictures are randomly displayed but not repeated until all the pictures have been displayed once. Random is a completely random selection of any picture regardless as to how many times it had repeated before others had been displayed. The sequential order display option could be used to construct a training aid for a computer used in a common area. Microsoft Power Point slide shows can be converted to .jpg files which you could display sequentially in this screensaver. The screensaver could be used as a training aid while it is sitting idle. The option for picture size that I use the most is “Fit into Screen”. It scales the picture bigger or smaller to fit the screen without distorting it. If you use extremely small pictures, this option may not make them look very good because artifacts can be produced by the scaling. The screensaver supports the following picture formats: jpg, gif, png, bmp and icons.

The sound option allows you to add individual sound files or use all the sound files located in a certain folder. It will play mp3, wav and midi files. It is possible to add more file types.

There are no less than 26 different transition effects between pictures, each of which can be turned on or off. You can also select a background pattern image that is used if the picture doesn’t completely fill the screen. To use it, you must turn the transition effects off before you can turn the background pattern image option on (then you can turn the transition effects back on again later).

There is an option for captions that I don’t use. It may be useful however if you have a digital camera and you want to display the names of the people in the picture or the location where the picture was taken. You can just rename the picture files to what you want to display. The screensaver can be set up so it displays the file name but not the file extension. The size, color and font of the file name can be changed.

There is yet another option called “Create Screen Saver” where you can export a screensaver that you created and send it to someone. This option produces two files, one is an *.scr and the other is a *.pss file. The *.scr file is the working part of the screensaver and the *.pss file contains your picture and sound files. You can send a friend these two files and as long as they place them both in the same folder, they will have a fully functioning screensaver without installing the “Picture and Sound Show” program. You can download another program from he “Picture and Sound Show” home page that allows you to open the *.pss file and extract the files if desired. I once created a screensaver that displayed humorous pictures of house cats while playing the music “Alley Cat”. I sent it to my sister and she loved it. One word of caution is that the *.pss file can become exceptionally large if you have a large number of picture and sound files. The one I sent my sister had about 40 medium sized pictures and a single mp3 file. The *.pss file was large but manageable.

I have described most of the options but not all. The “Picture and Sound Show” screensaver has so many nice options that make it the best I’ve ever tried. If you don't want to explore its many options, it is pretty easy to just set it to open your folders of pictures and music and use the default settings. It will work just fine that way. I highly recommend it.

The documentations states it works with Windows 95, 98, Me, NT 4, 2000 and XP. The download consists of a compressed file, PictShow31.zip, which unzips to two files, Setup.exe and ReadMe.txt. Double click on Setup.exe with a file manager to install.

Picture and Sound Show Home Page

Download Picture and Sound Show

Screensaver -- MovieScreensaver (version 0.1)

noreply@blogger.com (George) — Sat, 6 Nov 2004 14:21:00 -0600

MovieScreensaver Screen Shot (click on the image to enlarge)

If you would like to use your favorite music videos as a screensaver, “MovieScreensaver” is what you need. Although it doesn’t have many options, it really doesn’t need many to function. It does require you to have “Windows Media Player” installed. This should not be a problem because “Windows Media Player” usually comes with most versions of Windows.

The program requires no installation (meaning you don’t double click on an *.exe file to install it). You just unzip the file and copy the files to the locations provided in the directions. If you don’t have a C:\windows folder as it describes in the directions, you can perform a search for *.scr and find the folder where your other screensavers are located. Then just copy the files there.

After you save the files to the correct place, you open the screensaver through the control panel “Display” option, “Screensaver” tab. To open it, you scroll down the list of screensavers until you find “MovieScreensaver”. After you click on it, click on “Settings” to open the program to display what is shown in the screenshot.

Unfortunately, you can’t add a folder and have it play all the video files in a folder. It works by clicking on “Add” and you save the location of each of your video files individually. The option called “Save position” is pretty nice. Enabling this option will result in the screensaver remembering which file was playing when you interrupt it (move the mouse or press any key). The next time the screensaver starts, it will continue with that same movie at the position it left off the last time.

The documentation states that it works on Windows 95/98 and XP but on some Windows 2000 and NT systems it doesn't seem to work. I have few problems with it working on Windows XP. I have found that the video occasionally locks up when it first starts to play but the sound continues to play. I don't consider this to be a significant problem because you can move your mouse and the screensaver goes away and everything is OK.

The download consists of a compressed file, moviescreensaver.zip. Unzipping the file produces three files, readme.txt MSVBVM50.DLL and MovieScreensaver.scr

MovieScreensaver Home Page

Download MovieScreensaver

Screensaver Tool -- Screen Saver Toggle (version 1.0)

noreply@blogger.com (George) — Sun, 17 Oct 2004 16:54:00 -0500

When I start my defragmentation and anti-virus programs, I leave the computer alone for awhile and do other things while the programs are running. The problem is that the screen saver starts and uses resources which make the programs run slower. It is time consuming going into the control panel to stop the screen saver and then restart it again when the programs stop running.

I found a program called Screen Saver Toggle that is so simple that I didn’t even attach a screen shot. The program puts an icon in your system tray that looks like a star field. When you click on the icon, it deactivates the screensaver and changes the icon to a star field crossed out with a red 'X'. When you click on it again, the red ‘X’ disappears and the screensaver is reactivated. If you forget to reactivate the screen saver when you shutdown your computer, the screen saver will be reactivated when you boot up your computer the next time.

That is all there is to it. Sometimes programs don’t have to be complicated to be useful.

The documentation states it works on Windows 9x through XP. The download consists of a single file, sstsetup.exe, which you double click with a file manager to install. After installation, the executable is sstoggle.exe.

Screen Saver Toggle Home Page

Download Screen Saver Toggle

File Management -- Xplorer2 Lite (version 1.4.0.1)

noreply@blogger.com (George) — Sat, 9 Oct 2004 15:33:00 -0500

Xplorer2 Lite Screen Shot (click on the image to enlarge)

Windows used to come with a file manager that could be configured with two panes. It made moving files from one folder to another easy by using the drag and drop method. Later versions of Windows came with Windows Explorer that could not easily be configured with two panes. When I bought a new computer with Windows XP, I set out on a quest to find a good two pane file manager. I found what I wanted with Xplorer2 Lite. I probably use a file manager more than most people because I not only use it to move files around, but also just to navigate and open files. The advantage is you can double click on any file and launch the application that goes with it. The only requirement is that you have to know where your files are saved.

After I initially installed Xplorer2 Lite, I really didn’t like it that much until I extensively customized the toolbar. I was able to put the most frequently used functions on the toolbar and was still able to use other options with the pull down menus. The screen shot shows the toolbar after I changed it from the default. The left most pane is a navigation pane like the one in Windows Explorer. It doesn’t show any files but is used to navigate the active second or third pane. The “Tree” button will toggle the navigation pane on and off.

A very useful option is the ability to bookmark a folder. The bookmark can be named anything and once set, you can navigate directly to frequently used folders. A useful feature is in the file renaming option. When you rename a file, it only highlights the beginning portion of the file name but does not highlight the period or the extension. This eliminates the need to do any manual highlighting and you can just type the new file name. You can manually highlight the extension and change it, but it is not usually a good idea because the extension is what tells Windows the application to launch when you double click on a file.

The default "find" option opens the Windows search function which I don’t like. The help file shows how to change the registry so that when I click on "find" it opens “Super Finder” that I have reviewed on my site. I was a little apprehensive about changing the registry because if it gets messed up things will stop working. I found it was easy by following the following steps:

Exit all running instances of Xplorer2.
Start regedit by clicking on the Windows Start button, click on "Run..." and type regedit. Then click on OK.
Locate HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ZabaraKatranemia Plc\xplorer2\ in the left pane.
In the right pane, double-click on szExtFindFiles to open a new window called “Edit String”.
Type in C:\Program Files\SuperFinder\SuperFinder.exe into “Value Data:” (unless you changed the default location when you installed Super Finder).
Click on “OK” to close the “Edit String” window.
Click on the “Edit” pull down menu and then click on “Modify”.
Close the registry.

I did encounter a small problem that was easily fixed. When I closed Xplorer2 Lite, I would get an error that said, “the instruction at "0xXXXXXXXX" referenced memory at "0xXXXXXXXX”. The memory could not be "read".” I read on a forum that by disabling a shell extension called "IZArcCM.dll", which belongs to a freeware compression zip utility named “IZArc”, made the problem go away. I fixed the problem by uninstalling IZArc and deleting the IZArc subfolder from my program files folder that contained the dll.

I have tried just about every freeware file manager that is available and consider Xplorer2 Lite the best. FreeCommander is pretty good and would rate it as second best. Before Xplorer2 Lite was released, I used 2xExplorer for more than a year. It was created by the same people that made Xplorer2 Lite. I would rate it now as third best.

The documentation states that Xplorer2 runs on Windows 95, 98, ME, NT4, 2000 and XP. The download consists of a compressed file, xplorer2_lite.zip. When unzipped, one file is produced, xplorer2_lite_setup.exe. Double click on xplorer2_lite_setup.exe with your file manager to install. After installation, the executable is xplorer2.exe.

Xplorer2 Lite Home Page

Download Xplorer2 Lite

File Search Tool -- Copernic Desktop Search (version 2.3)

noreply@blogger.com (George) — Sat, 9 Oct 2004 01:02:00 -0500

Copernic Screen Shot of File Search (click on the image to enlarge)

I decided there had to be a better tool to search for files on my C drive than the one that comes with Windows. I set out on a mission to find one and tried several before I found “Copernic Desktop Search”. This one is definitely a cut above the others. It indexes the content of your C drive so that when you do a search, the results are displayed almost instantaneously. It does take a while to index but you only have to do it once if you set it up to load at startup. It can then index changes and new additions to the files as they are made. It works extremely well with finding text in e-mail and text files. It searches text files, music, pictures, videos, web page favorites and history and email and contacts in Outlook Express/Microsoft Outlook.

Something that is really cool about the e-mail search option is that it not only searches Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express email messages but also the attachments. The default installation option does not search deleted e-mail but an option can be changed so that it does.

The file search option includes default search options for Microsoft Office documents (Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, and Excel worksheets), WordPerfect documents, Adobe Acrobat documents, HTML pages and text/RTF files. Both the e-mail and file search options have a really good file preview option. Most file preview options that come with file managers show gibberish at the beginning of Microsoft Office documents. That is not the case here. The program works by looking for certain file extensions and indexing the contents. Additional file extensions can be added in the advanced options.

The options to search music, pictures and videos are limited to finding text in the file name and properties. This may seem limiting but the file properties of MP3 files usually include title, artist, album and genre which are searched.

The Copernic web site says that Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000 or XP is required. The download consists of a single file, copernicdesktopsearch.exe, which you double click with a file manager to install.

Update 12/6/09: Unfortunately, version 3.0 of Copernic Desktop Search is a downgrade from version 2.3. I still think it is the best free desktop search tool available. Version 3.0 removes the search as you type feature, along with other features like saved searches, it no longer indexes network drives and it now has forced ads. Fortunately, build 30 of version 2.3 is still available for download here (click here).

After you install Copernic 2.3, you will also want to disable the "update feature" so that you can continue using the 2.3 version without the nagging prompts to update. Just follow these directions:
First, exit the Copernic program by right-clicking the icon in the system tray and select "Exit".
Click on your Windows start button and select "Run". Type in regedit and select OK.
In Regedit, go to Local Machine-->Software-->Copernic-->DesktopSearch2-->System.
There are three entries of interest: "LastSoftwareUpdate", "LastSoftwareUpdateShown" and "UpdateAvailable".
Open your Windows system clock and change your system date to some date very far away, like October 2020. You can do this by right clicking on the time display next to your system tray and select "Adjust Date/Time".
Open Copernic Desktop Search again; you will get an "update" notification. Click Cancel.
Go back to Regedit and hit "F5". The "LastSoftwareUpdateShown" value will have changed. Copy the hex value in this key to the "LastSoftwareUpdate" key. Then change "UpdateAvailable" value to "0".
Change your system time back to today's date.

Copernic Desktop Search Home Page

Download Copernic Desktop Search