PCUGR Shareware SIG - March 2000

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PC USERS' GROUP OF THE REDWOODS !
Santa Rosa, California

PCUGR Shareware SIG - March 25, 2000

Rawls Frazier, Facilitator

This month 10 of us met at RE/MAX. After fiddling around trying to coax the network there to accept the club machine, we opted for using Bernie's laptop, which was part of the RE/MAX office. This provided "live" comedy as I tried to type URLs on an unfamiliar laptop. Between the laughter, we did see some interesting sites.

1st stop was the location of DVD Profiler. This program is a database for DVD collectors. With it, one can store everything imaginable (and maybe more) about the DVD including ratings, images of the covers, movie formats, actor cross references - the list seemed endless. The real attraction, however, was that the entered data can be posted back to the DVD Profiler web site. In this way an online database is created, available to anyone using the program such that you don't have to enter the DVD info if someone else already has. Just log on, enter the UPC code on the DVD package and, boom, you have the data. Interesting concept.

For those who take photographs and would like to share them with others, there are web sites available to assist. We looked at a few. To demo one of these, we went to PCUGR member Jim Noble's site on MSN's Communities area and took a look at his PCUGR photo album. We then then looked at PhotoCenter on Excite's site (say that fast a few times!) and Adobe ActiveShare, two other locations that provide similar services. Finally we dropped in on Shutterfly, a place to upload digital photographs (from cameras or scanned images) and get personalized prints in various sizes made and sent to whomever you please for reasonable rates.

Another way to share pictures is to create a web site. To facilitate doing that, we stopped by a couple of sites that offer extensive HTML tutorials: Joe Barta's site and Webmonkey. Lot's of good information on how to make web pages.

Yet another way to share files of any type, not just pictures, is to use one of the various web based storage sites. These sites can also be used to archive data or provide off site, backup capability. Two sites visited are lists of web storage sites: FreeWebSpace's free online file storage space list and Locate.com's listing. We then looked a a few of these. Xdrive—check our our ad link in pcugr.org (it's good for the club!), with it's unique, client side application to make your web space appear like a local hard disk was our 1st stop. Then we looked at driveway.com, a site that I had used with a niece in college to exchange a large file our email servers choked on. We also tried to go to @Backup, a pay-for-service site that specializes in backup services, but that wasn't available. (Turns out the site was being updated). A question asked about @Backup was whether you could get non-web access to your backup files and the answer is yes, via CD-ROM.

The last spot on the net we went to was OptOut - Steve Gibson's site addressing Adware/Spyware and which includes a program to remove the notorious Aureate adware program discussed at the last PCUGR meeting. Lots of details regarding this kind of stuff.

At this point, we shifted back to the club computer and continued off-line with more shareware/freeware, looking next at Tweaki...for Power Users. This program is similar to Microsoft's TweakUI but not a replacement for it. It is particularly strong in providing a simple way to control all sorts of security related items. We walked through the various screens, discussing the myriad functions provided. One particularly nice find was a tweak for Microsoft Word that restored the normal function to the vertical scroll bar. Thus, instead of Word 97 and later version's default habit of displaying "Page 1", etc. when the scroll bar is moved, the tweak will change the behavior to scrolling the page up and down like any other normal Windows program. Very nice.

We then took a look at Plug-in for Windows, one time a must have for Windows 3.x users. The publisher, Plannet Crafters, has decided to put this out as freeware, so we discussed how to "register" the application for such use and reviewed it's features. We also mentioned Freewheel, wheel mouse enhancement software, which is also now freeware.

Next up was Screen Saver Builder, a nifty application that let's you build your own screen saver. You choose the pictures, sounds (.wav files) and/or music (midi files) and then create a screensaver file (.scr file) or a self-installing .exe version. The pictures can be expanded to fit the screen or displayed with various transition effects. These options, as well as playing sound/music can be turned on or off, either when being created or by the person using the screensaver. Another very nice feature is the ability to save a project file for the screensaver. That way, revisions, additions, etc. are very easy to do. The software comes in two flavors, a regular edition and a "pro" version which supports the creation of shareware screensavers with registration keys, etc.

Ever wished you could copy things to the clipboard without erasing what was already there? You can do it with CopyPaste, the next utility we looked at. With this software you can copy text or graphics into 11 different spots using a simple Ctrl-C-#, where # is a value from 0 to 10. Retrieving is just as easy: Ctrl-V-#. Prefer to use the Edit menu? No problem as the edit menu is enhanced to support the multiple clipboards. You can also save what you've copied to the clipboards 1 - 10 into a file for retrieval/use later. Registering the software gives up to 100 clipboards! In addition there are a number of handy clipboard manipulation utilities and information on how to make your own. Definitely worth an investigation.

The last items we looked at were a couple of freeware calendar utilities. The first of these was Simple Calendar. Just as its name says, this was a very simple to use appointment book. The other program, Calendar Maker, while also relatively easy to use, had more features to display monthly calendars.

Our thanks, again, to Bernie Stepan and RE/MAX Petaluma for providing a meeting place with a connection to the Internet. Next month, we will shift back to the Bank of the West for our meeting.

Here are Internet links to some of the programs we explored.

DVD Profiler:

http://www.intervocative.com/dvdpro/index.html

Jim Nobel's Internet Photo Album:

http://communities.msn.com/NoblePhotoAlbum

Excite Photo Center:

http://www.photo.excite.com/photocenter

Adobe ActiveShare:

http://www.activeshare.com/

Shutterfly (Web based photolab):

http://www.shutterfly.com

Web page tutorials:

http://junior.apk.net/~jbarta/

http://webmonkey.com/

Web based disk storage:

http://www.freewebspace.net/guide/diskstorage.shtml

http://www.xdrive.com

http://www.driveway.com

http://www.locate.com/freespace/

http://www.www.atbackup.com

Getting rid of adware/spyware:

http://grc.com/optout.htm

Tweaki...for Power Users ($15 shareware):

http://www.jermar.com

Plannet Crafters (Plug-in for Windows and Freewheel):

http://www.plannetarium.com

Screen Saver Builder:

http://www.mgshareware.com

CopyPaste clipboard extender($20 Shareware):

http://www.scriptsoftware.com/copypaste/index.html

Simple Calendar:

http://hannex.com/SimpleCalendar/

Calendar Maker:

http://pantheon.yale.edu/~bdc5/calmaker/

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