PCUGR Shareware SIG -
February 24, 2001
Rawls Frazier,
Facilitator
rfrazier
Seven of us
got together at the February meeting to talk about some
interesting web sites and programs. 1st up was a quick look
at a backup program we were unable to get to at the last
meeting, Disk2disk (check out the write-up from the that
meeting (January
'01)
- here's the URL inadvertently left off there, as well: http://www.disk2disk.com/). From there we
surfed out to the web.
For a really
great software site, you need go no further than PCUGR's own
Steve Cerruti's "Gold" site: http://www.sonic.net/stephen/gold/
Another
interesting freeware site is http://www.topqualityfreeware.com/dfu.shtml
Finally, for
a collection of "reader's choice best freeware" go
to Pricelessware at:
http://home.att.net/~willowbrookemill/pricelessware.html
Next on the
agenda were a couple of sites that can help with tech
support. Overall, the best seemed to be the first link.
http://www.computerproblems.com/
http://www.answersthatwork.com/
http://www.tech24.com/
Got a need
to know what time it is now at some location elsewhere in the
world? Need to plan a global conference call at times
convenient for all parties? Then go to the World Clock.
http://www.timeanddate.com/time/
For a
surprisingly beautiful view of the world at night from space
look at:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0011/earthlights_dmsp_big.jpg
Want a set
of highly rated security software? Look at this list from
ZDnet (click the image):
And speaking
of security, take a look at what your browser can reveal to
the sites you visit.
http://www.privacy.net/
To surf
anonymously, go to the SafeWeb:
https://www.safeweb.com/
After all
this serious stuff, it was time to change gears a little.
Next up was a site, called SharewAIR, dedicated to such
things as spud cannons, twinkies and more.
http://www.improb.com/sharewair/sharewair-top.html
We next
cruised over to the PBS companion site to their Triumph of
the Nerds TV program. A fun part of this was the "What
Computer Is This?" quiz. See just how nerdy you are!
http://www.pbs.org/nerds/
http://www.pbs.org/nerds/quiz/
Looking for
some free photos for wallpaper, a photo screensaver, or maybe
to use on some greeting cards? Check out the site below.
http://www.beryl.addr.com/
For the
music afficianado, we took a look at some sites with retro
stuff. We're talking vinyl and 45's here.
http://www.gemm.com/
http://www.augiesrecords.com/
http://www.all-vinyl.com/
Hungry?
Crave chocolate?
http://www.chocolatepicture.com/
For the
gadget happy, check out this "sharp" site. (I
especially liked the talking tire guage :-)
Looking for
some dirt? Here's a "dirty" site that's still
"G" rated.
http://www.planet.com/dirtweb/flash.html
To
"clean" up our act and atone for looking at the
last site, we checked out the morals at:
http://AesopFables.com/
Whew! Time
to come back to the "beach" and take a look at some
software. (Well, we did take a moment and look at some
humorous pictures - captured from here and there - before
launching into the programs.)
Microsoft E-Book
Reader
This
program is designed to display text written in the so-called
e-book format (essentially it is Microsoft's answer to
Adobe's PDF format). A few books were downloaded from the
University of Virginia's free library to demonstrate the
features of the reader. One of the main ones was the new
"Clear Type" technology that's supposed to make the
reading experience on a computer or stand-alone, hand-held
e-book more like a real book. Opinion was not uniform as to
how well this was achieved! On the other hand, as a reader,
the program did have some other nice attributes - automatic
remembering of the last page read, multiple bookmarks, text
annotations, drawings (you can diagram in the books!) and,
not the least, a free Encarta dictionary that made it a snap
to lookup the definition of a word. Besides the free books
from U of V, there are a number of book sellers that are
featuring e-books for sale.
Find the
reader here:
http://www.microsoft.com/reader/
Some book
sites are:
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/
http://www.ebooksonthe.net/
http://gemstar-ebook.com/
123 Free Solitare
A
very nice collection of free solitare games. The graphics and
play features are well done and there are no nag screens.
Especially nice is a rating system that lets the player have
some idea of how difficult the game is to play, to win and
how long typical play is. For a more extensive set of games,
one can purchase an upgrade.
http://www.123freesolitaire.com/
xpert
Expert File Extension for Windows adds a new item, With, to the standard
"right-click-in-Windows-Explorer" menu, right under
the Send To selection. With this addition, you can set up
multiple associations with a file extension. Thus, for
example, you could choose toup a .HTM file in Internet
Explorer, or Netscape Navigator, or Opera, or Front Page, or
Notepad, or ... you get the idea. Very handy if you don't
want to be stuck with just one way toa file type.
Freeware from BaxBEx software.
http://www.baxbex.com/xpert.html
Resource
Hacker
Ever wondered what all the icons, dialog boxes, menus,
strings, etc. - the so-called program resouces - are in a
program? Ever wished you could make some changes to some of
these (a new program icon, better error messages, clearer
menu names)? Or maybe you are a programmer and you'd like to
grab a dialog or menu as a template to get started on a
project. Well, Resource Hacker is for you. As Steve Cerruti
says, "[It is an] Amazing tool for viewing, grabbing,
modifying resources in Windows PE (portable, executable)
files."
http://www.rpi.net.au/~ajohnson/resourcehacker/index.html
SysTrayPlayer
A simple yet useful MP3 player that parks itself in the
system tray. It features playlists, an equalizer, and low
system resource usage. Give it the go and it will search your
hard drive for all MP3s, create a playlist on the fly and
start playing. The controls are even skinable! Very nice.
http://systrayplay.chat.ru/
1toX
This shareware file splitter is designed to chop up files
into sizes that fit onto floppies or ZIP disks. It has lots
of features wrapped in a nice GUI interface. These include
creation of self-reassembling files and optional zip
compression. $22 Shareware from Jean Piquemal.
http://www.logipole.com/indexe.html
HJ-Split / HJ-Join
If you are looking for a freeware solution to splitting large
files over multiple floppies, ZIP disks, CD-Rs, etc. Take a
look at this program. Things are a bit more manual when
compared to 1toX, but it gets the job done. In use, one
clicks the Split button on the first screen that pops up,
browses for the file to split, chooses how big each split
file is to be (the default is OK for a 1.44M floppy) and
clicks the button. The split files are deposited in the same
folder that the original comes from. You now can copy each
split file onto it's own floppy, etc. To rejoin the split
files, all the pieces are copied to a folder and then the
Join option is chosen. One nice safety feature is the
program, when reconstructing the large file from its pieces,
will not overwrite another file with the same name. The
program also inlcudes a simple file comparison utility to
verify the "joined" file matches the original. Also
provided is a simple joiner application called Join32.exe.
This file can be included with a set of, e.g., floppies and
copied to the destination folder along with the split files
pieces. Once there, just double click Join32.exe and, presto,
all the pieces are rejoined. Freeware from Freebyte.
http://freebyte.com/hjsplit/
Manrun
Our last item of the day was a program that purported to let
you turn off your CDs autorun feature and, when needed,
manually run the CD. In testing we discovered this utility
actually looked for the files INSTALL.EXE or SETUP.EXE and,
if found, would launch these. According to the docs, it would
also fire up an audio CD, but this was not tested. As a side
benefit, a shortcut to the program could be setup to do the
same manual startup to a floppy or ZIP disk. Too bad it
didn't recognize AUTORUN.INF and launch the program listed
there. That would have been much cooler.
http://www.softseek.com/Utilities/Diskette_CD_ROM_and_Hard_Disk/Review_13203_index.html
A last item
available to all were updates to the following (click on the
icons to go the respctive web sites):
F-Prot
version 3.08c
IrfanView
version 3.33
ZipCentral
version 3.0
A BIG thanks
to Steve Cerruti for all the fine programs and links he
brought to share. And thanks again, to Bernie Stepan for the
meeting room at RE/MAX Marina, Petaluma and for the Internet
connect.
