Rating: 4.5

Version tested: 2.0

Description: Jpeg Express allows you to adjust the compression/quality ratio of a JPG or BMP image file while simultaneously previewing the picture quality and file size, enabling the user to achieve the best compromise between picture quality and file size.

Imagine that you’re working with large JPGs/BMPs that you want to scale down to a manageable size. The typical, quickest and easiest way to do this would be to save these images at a reduced quality setting, which will invariably make them smaller but will also adversely affect the way the images look. Most of the time little 10%-20% reductions in JPG quality will decrease the file size significantly, and although in most cases the differences in the visuals is barely noticeable to the naked eye, you mostly cannot really make these decisions to reduce the picture quality without having an idea on how the resulting image will look in comparison to the original.

Jpeg Express is a program that is designed to quickly manipulate image quality through a slider and enable the user to (a) preview the resulting/desired file size, as well as the (b) see the difference this intervention makes, if any, with both the before and after versions of the image displayed side by side. Here are some notes on this program:
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Rating: 5

Version tested: 3.0 (11/19/2007)

Description: Office 2007 Compatibility Pack from Microsoft is a free extension for MS Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003 that enables users of those versions of Office to open, edit, and save files using the new file formats used by Office 2007. The Compatibility Pack can also be used in conjunction with the Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2003, Excel Viewer 2003, and PowerPoint Viewer 2003 to view files saved in these new formats.

If you use an older version of Office (e.g. Office 2003) and work with someone who uses Office 2007 (or vice versa) then you’ve probably already noticed that documents saved with the new Office 2007 extensions (.xlsx/.xlsm, .docx/.docm, and .pptx/.pptm) do not open with older versions of Office. Most people work around this issue by working with documents in Office 2007 in "compatibility mode" and making sure to save their documents using the old extensions (.xls, .doc, .ppt) which Office 2007 can do easily.

Although the solution above can work, wouldn’t be ideal if you could simply install a converter on your current, older version of Office that simply allowed it to open the new extensions? This, in fact is what the "MS Office 2007 Compatibility Pack" does. Here are some notes on this program:

• How it works: this program will convert the document you are opening from the new Office 2007 formats to a format that your version of Office can work with, and then convert it back to the Office 2007 format when you save. Aside from the dialogs that show up when the conversions occur (see screenshot), the end effect is a seamless experience of working with the new file extensions.
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Rating: 5 pick

Version tested: 4.0

Description: DVD43 is a program that runs in the background and decrypts copy-protected DVD’s on the fly. It has the effect of making a DVD unrestricted and region free, allowing for simple copying of files to your hard drive within the Windows file system and/or unrestricted access to the DVD by third party software. It will also remove audio CD protection.

The first thing that I’d like to note is that this software is different from DVD ripping software in the vein of as RipIt4Me/DVD Decrypter or DVD FAB HD Decrypter. What DVD43 does can be though of (in a way) as transforming an otherwise encrypted DVD into what for all intents and purposes acts as a ’normal’, unencrypted DVD (similar to the shareware software AnyDVD).

In many cases using a program like DVD43 is will save you the need to spend 20-30 minutes ripping a DVD to your hard drive first (not to mention the 4.7gig-to-8gig hard drive space you might not have on hand). For example, if your objective is to ’shrink’ an 8gig DVD and copy it onto a standard size blank DVD (for which you would use DVD Shrink), DVD43 would spare you the need to rip the entire 8gigs into your hard drive first, allowing DVD Shrink to get access and get to work on the files on the DVD itself.

Or let’s say that your interest lies not in copying the DVD itself but rather in converting it into a video file that you could load up on your Ipod or mobile device using a program such as Handbrake. In this case as well DVD43 will allow Handbrake to process/convert your desired titles straight from the DVD itself, saving you the time, effort, and hard drive space of ripping the DVD first.

Here are some notes on this program:
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Description: The guys from South Park (Trey Parker and Matt Stone) have come up with some animations that ’illustrate’ the words of wisdom of Alan Watts (philosopher, writer, speaker, and expert in comparative religion according to Wikipedia) — to be found for your perusal on this Souljerky blogposting entitled "South Park Zen".

Anyway a friend of mine sent me this link and I liked it so much I decided to share it with you, my dear Freewaregenius audience. (The videos are, after all, "free" — so technically they are "freeware", right?) These skits are about the meaning or, um, pointlessness of life, Zen … and other such pontifications. Trust me you will like them (Yes when I’m not doing freeware I fancy myself a bit of a philosopher.)

More on Alan Watts here.
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Rating: 4.5

Version tested: 1.0

Description: SWF Printer Pro is a virtual printer that can convert any printable document into PDF, standalone flash presentation format (SWF), as well as JPG.

There are several freeware virtual printer programs reviewed on Freewaregenius that convert printable documents into PDFs (PrimoPDF, Bullzip PDF Printer, and PDF Creator, the latter having the ability to convert to image formats as well). What’s interesting about SWF Printer Pro is that it can convert to flash format (SWF) in addition to PDF and JPG’s. Here are some notes on this program:

• Converts anything you can print: installs as a virtual printer, and if your document allows for printing then it can be converted no matter what format it is.
• SWF navigation: you can either set a time period for transitioning the SWF flash file from one page to the next that will apply to all pages (no, you cannot set it for each page individually) or choose to wait for user input before going to the next page. In this case SWF Printer Pro provides a number of pre-set navigation buttons to choose from, and will allow you to customize the placement of these on the page.
• SWF options: you can set the size and margin of the SWF presentation, set background color for transparent areas. Other options: whether or not to set ’full screen mode’, whether or not to allow scaling/enable right click menu/allow keyboard navigation. You can even choose an audio file (MP3 or WAV) to use as background soundtrack. For some reason the resulting SWF files that I generated lacked the .SWF extension in the file names, but worked great once I added that manually into the filename.
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Rating: 5 pick

Version tested: 0.7 beta 4

Description: Hugin is an open source program that can create panoramic views by stitching multiple images together. It blends together consecutive images by creating ’control points’ (i.e. visual elements that exist in both images) and uses those to create the panoramic image. Hugin is a GUI front end for a number of tools, notably “Panorama Tools”and “Enblend”.

You’re thinking: “fantastic, a free program that can create panoramas out of consecutive images, but does it do it automatically or through user intervention?” In fact Hugin does a fantastic job stitching images together automatically; it can use a number of external tools that automatically identify control points for each 2 consecutive images (control points tell the program that “this point in image A corresponds to this one in image B). From within Hugin, I used a program called “Autopano” for this, which worked exceedingly well (see picture above for an example; I stitched it together myself). Here are some more notes on this program:
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Rating: 5

Version tested: 1.4

[Note: this review was co- written by Pcfreakske2000 from Belgium.]

Description: The Sage is an English dictionary and thesaurus application that runs in the background to be used on-demand using a hotkey from any application for instant word lookups. The Sage does not need an internet connection to look up the words; they are stored locally for easy access.

Imagine that you are working with an application (say, a word processor or browser) and that you needed to get a quick definition for a word (or a synonym, or a usage example). With “The Sage” all you have to do is press a hotkey (CTRL-Shift-A by default) to immediately view all the language reference information you need for the word in question. Here are some notes on this program:

• The user interface: “The Sage” employs an interesting, hierarchical-tree structure whereby clicking on color-coded nodes produces different kinds of information on the word you are looking up. For example, clicking the red node will display the Thesaurus, green nodes will display usage examples, and blue nodes will display the same hierarchical structure for different parts of speech for your entry (e.g. as noun, verb, adjective, etc.) The interface is a bit unusual at first but is in fact quite practical and I got the hang of it very quickly.
• The reference database: comprises more than 145,00 reference with over 200,000 multiple detailed definitions and approx. 35,000 usage examples.
• Services provided: aside from definition and thesaurus lookups, provides wildcard word search and finding and solving anagrams. Will also display synonyms, antonyms, hypernyms, hyponyms, meronyms, holonyms, and nearly 1,200,000 relationships between definitions. It provides “Encyclopedic information (geographical, historical, political)” as well as “academic knowledge (medicine, biology, etc.)
• Portable: can be used straight from a USB drive.
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Rating: 4.5

Version tested: 1.3

Description: Vista Drive Icon changes your Windows XP hard drive icons to icons resembling the icons in Windows Vista. It also installs a horizontal bar under each drive icon that shows the drive’s free space, similar to Vista.

Whether you have a bit of Vista envy or simply think this is a cool functionality to have, Vista Drive Icon deliver the goods. Not much more to say about this self explanatory software (the screenshot says it all), except that the cost of running it in memory is just under 3 megs (rahter small, although I would have thought it could have been smaller).
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Rating: 4

Version tested: 0.19

Description: Shup is a small memory resident app that can upload files to Stashbox. It can also instantly upload images (or other types of files) to several online storage services straight from Windows’ right-click context menu (Flickr, Imageshack, Photobucket, Stashbox, Waffle Images , or even a custom file hosting service). The tool also performs several other functions as well such as on-the-fly image encryption, screenshot capture and upload, and image editing.

Imagine being able to right click on an image and instantly send it to your online image storage account. Now imagine that you have several online accounts, and that this same right click context menu can access all of them, giving you the ability to select which online account to fire-away and upload to with the press of a button. That’s exactly what Shup can do and it is the reason that I was attracted to it (see screenshot). Here are some notes on this program:

• Stashbox.org: Shup is created by the people from Stashbox, a free file uploading service, which is why Stashbox figures so prominently in the program’s machinations. Note that you can upload any type of file to Stashbox.com using Shup’s context menu, but that files on Stashbox are not guaranteed to stick around forever. Not sure about max file size allowed either.
• The search box: Shup’s main interface consists of a searchable list of all the files which it uploaded. The searchbox is useful for finding the entry that you need, at which point you can either find (or open) either the URL of the uploaded image or the file path where it resides locally. Oddly, though, the main interface displays your uploaded images not by the image names but the serial number it gave each image on uploading.
• Supported online services: Flickr, Imageshack, Photobucket, Stashbox, and Waffle Images. If yours is not on the list, however, you can create and save a new profile that is added to the right click menu (this seems like a fairly easy process, but I have not done it myself).
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Rating: 4.5

Version tested: 2.3

Description: Task Killer is a small, memory resident freeware program that provides the ability to quickly find and shut down processes, services, and applications that are running in Windows.

While shutting down processes or apps is not something any PC user aspires to have to do, it seems that many times when you need it most the Windows’ built in task manager (accessed through CTRL-Shift-Esc) can be too slow or sluggish, especially when the machine’s resources are being drained by a process or program that’s gone berserk (or is malicious). Task Killer provides an easier option for shutting down running processes, apps and even services that is more user-friendly. Here are some notes on this program:

• Resides in system tray: processes are listed straight from the system tray icon, with submenus for processes, applications, and services
• Display: the icons for individual processes/programs are displayed, making it easy to identify the different programs/processes at a glance. You also have the option to list the full path for each entry on the hard drive, which might clutter your list a little bit but can be very valuable. The memory consumption for each process/app is also displayed.
• Color coding: problematic processes (or ones that are taking an inordinate amount of resources) are listed in red for easy identification. Known system processes are displayed in green.
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Rating: 4.5

Version tested: 2.2

Description: "The Wonderful Icon" is a memory resident app that allows you to install a customized list of tasks and functions so that they can be launched from an icon in the system tray or through a hotkey (or both). It provides a large number of tasks for you to choose from, ranging from windows management to audio, clipboard, document, and hardware management functions.

The idea behind "The Wonderful Icon" is to enable the user to create a customized system tray utility that provides only the functions that the user feels that they need or wish they could access easily. Or alternately, to create a number of hotkeys for tasks that the user likes to be able to access quickly (or both hotkeys and system-tray based functions). A degree of creativity and user-involvement is required in setting this program up, since it provides such a large array of functions and tasks that the best way to get the most out of it is to figure out which functions you actually want/like to have.

Here are some notes on this program:

• System tray tasks: you can mix and match and install the ones you want in the system tray, separated by dividers.
• Hotkeyed tasks: you can set these up without them having to be in the system tray at all.
• Command line tasks: if you want, you can access all of the tasks this program offers from the command line.
• Some of my favorite functions (see screenshot above): hide/unhide desktop icons, hide/unhide individual windows (or all visible windows), minimize a window (or all windows) to taskbar,close all visible windows, close all visible windows, save/restore clipboard, mute/unmute volume, enable/disable (or launch) screen saver, type characters into window (you can copy this one multiple times for multiple phrases and invoke them with different hotkeys to get the functionality of a program such as PhraseExpress).

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Rating: 5 pick

Version tested: 1.3

Description: "Find As You Type" is an add-on for Internet Explorer which installs a search box on the IE toolbar that will interactively find and highlight the first instance of the search string as you type it. It also makes it easy to scroll through instances of the search string in the page, and adds the ability to highlight all instances of your search string that occur in the page.

Here are some notes on this program:

• Searching from the toolbar: this program allows you to search for strings straight from the toolbar (no need to press CTRL-F).
• Finding as you type: will find and highlight the found search string in the page as you type it.
• Scrolling through found entries: buttons on the toolbar itself that make it easy to find next/previous instances of the search string.
• Highlighting all search strings on page: (this one is my favorite); if you’ve ever wished that there was something equivalent to the highlighted-search-text function in Google whereby your search terms are highlighted across the browser page for easy identification; this is it.
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Rating: 5 pick

Version tested: engine version: 0.23.11029 beta (Nov 12, 2007)

Description: VectorMagic is a web service that can convert your uploaded bitmap images into vector images and allow you to download the result into several formats (EPS, SVG, and PNG).

Vectorization is the process whereby a pixel-based image it transformed into an image that is represented by a number of geometrical shapes (such as lines, circles, and curves). The obvious advantage to this is that vector images can be enlarged significantly without any of the pixellization and loss of fidelity that occurs with bitmap images. This makes them very practical to work with for designers/artists. Here are some notes on this web service:

• Quality settings: you can convert your images across low, medium, and high quality settings (the latter taking the most time to process).
• Quality of output: is simply excellent, in my (subjective) opinion. However, these guys have published comparisons between Vectormagic and leading commercial vecotrization products (Adobe Live Trace and Corel PowerTRACE) that seem to show Vectormagic as the best product.
• Source images: allows you to upload the following image types: JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF. However, large images will be degraded to 1 megapixel in order not to overload the service (although it seems to be frequently overloaded/unavailable all the same).
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Rating: 4.5

Version tested: 3.3

Description: Sizer is a Windows enhancement that adds the ability to quickly change the size and/or placement of active Windows to a predefined profile. It is accessed by right-clicking on the "maximize" button on the title bar, right clicking the taskbar window, or from the system tray.

Here are some notes on this program:

• Pre-sets: comes with 3 preset sizes, but gives you the option to create size entries of your own. (see first screenshot above).
• Custom profiles: you can create sizing profiles that comprise desired size of a window as well as its placement on screen: Top, Bottom, Center, etc. (even a user-defined placement anywhere on screen). You can define your own pre-sets to obtain most of the window managing functionality provided by a program like WinSplit Revolution.
• Resize any window: even ones that normally do not allow you to do so (this comes handy more often than you would expect).
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Rating: 4.5

Version tested: 0.9.2

Description: ITunes Art Importer is a plugin for Itunes that downloads album art from Amazon.com and saves it within the music files ID3 tag. It adds an additional layer of user control over the process of finding album art beyond that provided by ITunes.

While ITunes provides a fairly decent ability to mass-retrieve album artwork for a music library, it suffers from problems in that (a) ITunes will not retrieve album art for tracks that do not contain album info or are not tagged exactly the way it expects, and (b) ITunes requires the user to have an ITunes account and be logged in in order for the album art function to work (simple to set up but requires a valid credit card).

ITunes Art Importer can provide a very practical (and powerful) tool to get the album art for your music collection. It can be used to auto-import album art for an entire music collection (or part of one), but for those tracks for which auto importing will not succeed, ITunes Art Importer is versatile enough to be used effectively on a per-case basis to get album art imported for all of your tracks.

• Auto Importing: ITunes Art Importer can scan an entire library (or part of one) and automatically import the album art for tracks. When in doubt, it can be set to automatically use a ’best guess’, and can be instructed to either leave all tracks that already have images alone or re-process them. In my experience, auto-importing by best guess works brilliantly.
• User assisted album art downloading: for those tracks that auto importing doesn’t identify, you can manually override the automatic search by typing an alternative search string in the search box. This will typically generate a list of possible entries to visually browse through and work from, and is an extremely handy way to quickly take care of all those tracks in your library that don’t auto import their album art.
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