Rating: 5 pick

Version tested: 1.26

[Note: this review was written by reader Sinkhan, a connoisseur of freeware and open source programs- The Freewaregenius]

Description: Audacity is a free full-featured digital audio editing program. It offers a broad spectrum of audio editing tools and capabilities and a simple, easy to use user interface.

Audacity is an open source program developed by a large and dedicated community of programmers. It has an immense array of capabilities, functions, and tools. I’ve personally used this program for tons of things, from recording and piecing together audio projects, to just random fiddling around. Some features of this application are:

• Supports many audio formats (from the common .wav and .mp3, to others such as .aiff, and .ogg).
• An easy to understand interface with large play, stop, pause, and skip buttons to control the playing of the file as you are editing it.
• A main display showing the frequencies or sound waves of the audio files. The scale can be adjusted from blocks of 24 hours to increments of 1/1,000,000 of a second.
• Various effects can be applied, such as echo, invert, and fade in and out. You can easily apply volume, normalization and gain changes to entire tracks. There is also a “noise removal” plugin, but in all honesty I have found that other (commercial) programs produce better noise removal results.
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Rating: 5

Version tested: 7.0.0.123 Final.

Description: DIManagerX saves the location of desktop icons, allowing you to restore them if their locations change

Imagine you’ve just cleared your desktop of all the icons you do not want and put in all the shortcuts and files that you typically like to work with, exactly the way you want them. Wouldn’t be cool to be able to save this configuration so you could always go back to it? With DIManagerX you could do exactly that.

There are a number of reasons why your desktop icons might change from the way you like them: you (or somebody else) may move them in the course of your work, a program such as a virtual desktop application may mess them up for you. Or, most commonly, it happens whenever there’s a change in screen resolution (which typically happens when launching games).

The main draw that this program has for me is that it works beautifully with Dexpot, my favorite virtual desktop program. Here’s what you need to know about DIManagerX:
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Rating: 5

Version tested: 2.00e

Description: Savage is a innovative online multiplayer 3D game that combines elements of a first person shooter with that of a real time strategy game. It lays claim to being the first of a new RTTS genre (real time strategy shooter).

This title was released as a commercial game that didn’t sell very well, so now the developers have released it as a full freeware title. Here’s what you need to know about it:

• Gameplay: 2 commanders (humans and beasts) play this as a real time strategy game, building structures and collecting resources. They give orders to their warriors (also called ’action players’), except the each warrior in this game is an online player which can choose to do whatever he/she wants. Most of the time you will play as a warrior (I must admit that even as I am reviewing this I have not played as commander). Commanders issue orders and players can decide for themselves what they are going to do (most of the time, it seems, players simply do as they’re told).
• Storyline: the game is set in a far future world where humanity had stripped the planet of all of its resources and, through constant warfare, reduced itself back into the stone age. During this time, however, a species of beasts have evolved into a degree of sophistication rivaling humans. The two species are now locked in a fierce rivalry over control of their shared planet they call Newerth (new earth).
• Production values: very slick (as slick as you would expect from a commercial game). The graphics are generally excellent. The music and sound are amazing.
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Rating: 4

Version tested: 1.0

Description: Packet Garden is an open source, multiplatform experimental art project that monitors your internet traffic and uses that data to generate virtual 3D worlds that you can explore at will.

What is the difference between geeks and artists? Not much, in my opinion, except that a small minority of artists may have more luck with the opposite sex than most of us. In any case if you like technology and fancy yourself a bit of an artist you might want to check out this program. Its an experimental art project that interacts with the internet but, the authors insist, it is NOT “Net Art”, which they say is different from other digital art in that it is “internet delivered”, which Packet Garden is not.

What Packet Garden does is record a bunch of information about your internet browsing activities (you have to manually switch the capture session on and off). To quote the author’s website “Packet Garden takes note of all the servers you visit, their geographical location and the kinds of data you access. Uploads make hills and downloads valleys, their location determined by numbers taken from internet address itself. The size of each hill or valley is based on how much data is sent or received. Plants are also grown for each protocol detected by the software; if you visit a website, an ’HTTP plant’ is grown. If you share some files via eMule, a ’Peer to Peer plant’ is grown, and so on”. Here’s some notes on my experience with this program:
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Rating: 5

Version tested: 1.0.0.8

Description: Ipodifier is a video to Ipod conversion software that can be scheduled to scan user-specified directories for video files and, when found, convert these to Ipod mp4 videos. Once the conversion is complete it can transfer the resulting video to iTunes and your Ipod. The basic premise is that if you capture videos from a source such as TiVo, SageTV or another device or download through Torrent or any another source, Ipodifier can be set up to work with these files once they become available and take them through all the necessary steps to get them on your Ipod without any user intervention.

Picture this: you’re sleeping, but your favorite TV show is being saved on your computer’s hard drive from TiVo or Torrent. As soon as the download or capture is finally completed, Ipodifier starts converting it based on your pre-defined conversion settings. When done, it transfers the files to your Ipod. In the morning your TV show is ready for you to watch on the bus ride to work.

At least that’s the basic idea. Here’s what you need to know about this program:
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Rating: 5

Version tested: 1.0

Description: JLC’s Internet TV is a freeware program which lists and displays over 1,300 TV channels that are available for streaming over the internet.

I’ve seen a number of “free internet TV” programs that promise hundreds of channels, but I usually shy away from featuring them on Freewaregenius. There are a number of reasons for this: the programs are usually poorly designed with a gaudy look and a small screen that is virtually drowning in a sea of ads. Moreover, the notion of “free internet TV” itself is a bit of a misnomer, given that the featured programming is typically a streaming, pre-recorded short segment that repeats over and over.

This is why JLC’s Internet TV was such a breath of fresh air. It has a simple yet functional (ad-free) design that works very well, and a nice-size screen that you can resize freely. Here’s what you need to know about this program:

• JLC imports its list of channels from WWITV.com and the program includes a channels updater that will ensure that it features the latest list of channels. (This does not occur automatically; he help file suggests you update the channels list once a week).
• The UI is very economical and works well. You can filter the list of channels by country of origin and can sort the different fields of information within the channels list by clicking on the column header. A handy search function is also provided to help you find exactly what you’re looking for (note that it will search the filtered list; to search all entries make sure to set to “All countries” first).
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Rating: 5

Version tested: 1.05

Description: Ashampoo Clipfinder searches and downloads videos from multiple video portals including YouTube, Sevenload, MySpace, Metacafe, VideoU, MyVideo, and Clip Fish.

Another day, another YouTube downloader. Except this one can download videos from other video portals as well. It is built using a plugin architecture which makes it easy to add more video websites, and the makers promise to to support more video portals going forward. Here are some notes on this program:

• Search all portals simultaneously or choose a particular one that you’re interested in. Displays thumbnails for video search results; other info includes length, "assesment" (a small bar that rates the video for relevance), and name.
• Search results for each portal can be viewed individually in a separate page.
• View videos from within Clipfinder or using an external media player.
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Rating: 5

Version tested: 1.03

Description: PMeter (pixel meter) is a simple desktop ruler that can be used for measurement and/or benchmarking standard for anything that can be viewed on screen. It is simple yet highly configurable program that includes an on-screen color-picker tool. Can also be used portably from a USB device.

The first time I used an on screen ruler was at work when somebody sent me a form they had put together on Excel that was so complicated and poorly designed that a desktop ruler was the easiest way to get things to be symmetrical. That was when I came to realize just how useful a desktop ruler can be to anybody who is creating any visual element, and since then I’ve kept my eyes open for a good one to post.

PMeter is a straightforward program that offers a nice set of features, as follows:
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Rating: 5

Version tested: 3.0.0.91

Description: ShellEnhancer provides a wide range of Windows Shell customizations including Alt-Tab menu customizations, minimizing windows to tray, Windows transparency customizations, defining custom tasks and running them through hotkey or mouse-gesture/placement, hiding desktop icons, and a number of other window-management functions such as default placement and size, setting priority, locking position and/or focus, and others.

The first thing you realize when you install this software is the sheer number and breadth of features and customizations it offers; so much so that it makes it a little bit hard to use the program. Luckily, the makers of this have created a very good wizard that can guide you through most of what’s possible. I will attempt to categorize this program’s many features below:

Alt-Tab switching functions: ShellEnhancer can completely revamp the Alt-Tab switching function. It features advanced features such as live previews (the preview functions mirror the original window in real-time), and the addition of keyboard and mouse navigation. You can also apply various degrees of transparency and other custom viewing options.
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Rating: Not Rated

Description: c64s.com is a retro-gaming website that contains an extensive archive of original emulated Commodore 64 games that are available for online play.

Ah, the Commodore 64, the bane of my existence throughout my teenage years (I had a Sinclair Spectrum until the Amiga showed up). Those "amazing" color graphics, the games, the games! If you feel nostalgic just thinking about this, head over to c64s.com where you can play a great many of the games of your childhood online (the owners of the site assume that these games are abandonware).

The games are classified into categories (action, adventure, arcade, etc). Most of these are 100% playable, except for the ’beta’ section which houses those games whose emulation is still being tweaked and that may have some problems running in the browser.
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Rating: 5 pick

Version tested: 2.0.3

Description: TCP Optimizer is a free program that provides 1-click acceleration of your internet connection through optimizing your internet registry settings.

The first question on many people’s minds whenever they hear of a program that purports to do something like this is invariably whether or not it is for real. The short answer to this question is yes; for the long answer, you can see the results below of my tests that I conducted with various TCP Optimizer settings.

There are 2 ways to use this program: if you are well versed with the different registry settings you can certainly perform your own custom tweaks across dozens of settings (go here for an explanation of all of these). For most of us, however, TCP Optimizer will automatically find out optimal settings based on one (or two) user inputs, as follows:
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Rating: 5

Version tested: 6.0

Description: Vista Visual Styles Pack is a theme for XP that mimics the look and style of the Windows Vista desktop. It provides a range of changes that you can optionally apply to different facets of Windows XP to transform these to a Vista-like look and feel. A number of Vista functions and Vista-like applications are also provided.

If you like the new look of Windows Vista and would like to have it on your XP then you’re in luck; “Vista Visual Styles Pack” delivers an excellent copy of the Vista look as well as a recreation some of the toys and widgets that Vista provides as well. Here are some notes on this software:

• Vista Visual Styles Pack offers 2 Vista themes, Basic and Aero. These are very similar but have slight differences (most apparent in open windows and dialog styles).
• The range of customizations possible is just simply impressive: you can change the look of the start menu, taskbar (and system tray), system font, and open windows and dialogs. You can also choose a Vista-style tray clock, Vista icons, Vista sounds, visual tooltips (similar to the Visual Task Tips program), Vista boot screen, new screensavers, new wallpapers, cursors, a customized media center, and a Vista-style sidebar with widgets. (See screenshot; note that the wallpaper in my screenshot is not provided in this package). Read more »

Rating: 5

Version tested: 1.2

Description: Toblo is an award winning game set in a 3D world where every piece of the game environment can be taken apart and/or used as a projectile to throw. It feels somwhat like a third-person shooter and features an excellent physics engine and frantic, addictive gameplay.

In Toblo, two teams compete against each other with the objective of capturing all of three of the other team’s flags. This involves raiding the other team’s base, taking apart their defences, and hitting them with projectiles (while avoiding being hit yourself, which will send you back to respawn at your base). Here are some notes on this game:

• Each player can carry a maximum of 15 projectiles. You can throw these in quick succession and you will soon discover that you can rain down projectiles, artillery style, on your opponent’s base.
• Any object in the game can be picked up and used as a projectile. You can also climb over anything using a nifty double jump (pressing space twice in quick succession). You can find and throw bomb blocks that explode and take a lot of things apart.
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Rating: 5 pick

Version tested: 1.0.12

Description: VSO Image Resizer is a small image resizing program with a full set of features, including shell menu integration, processing of images in batch, and format conversion. It features easy management of image conversion tasks through the creation of custom profiles.

It is a rare week that I don’t encounter at least 2 new free batch image resizing programs. Most of these I typically do not find noteworthy in any way; however, VSO Image Resizer offers a number of useful, well-implemented features that made me instantly like it. Here’s a summary:

• Batch processing: by now this is standard for this kind of program but has to be mentioned nonetheless.
• Shell integration: right click on the VSO command in the right click menu to process the image. Works for single, multi-image selections as well as folder selections.
• Profile creation: you can create and save named profile for re-use. For example, I created a “Thumbnail” profile that processes images to exactly the size I always work with, maintains aspect ration, and converts the image format to Jpeg format at 80% quality setting. From this point onwards I need only select this profile from the pull down menu in order to use it (I can also set it to be my default profile). Note that the program comes with a number of pre-defined profiles (so many, in fact, that its a bit cluttered). You can delete any of these if you dont want them.
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Rating: 5

Version tested: 1.3.0.1

Description: Explorer Breadcrumbs is a Windows Explorer add on that resides on the Windows Explorer toolbar. It displays the hierarchy of folders that were navigated in order to arrive at the current folder location. For these, it also provides contextual navigation buttons that can be used to access all locations that are connected to them.

This is a very powerful navigational tool simply because it provides two dimensions that can be navigated: the horizontal “breadcrumb” structure that lead to the current folder, and then any one of these nodes/breadcrumbs can be navigated vertically, as it were. The net result is that you have a lot of options to get to a lot of places really easily. (See screenshot).
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