Description: "MojoPac Freedom" is the free edition of the MojoPac desktop virtualization software. It allows you to install a Windows XP environment on a portable hard drive, Ipod, or other device that, when plugged into any PC, behaves as a self-contained Windows XP environment that can have the programs that you need installed and the desktop customizations that you are used to.

Picture this: you’re off to a 7-day visit to your in-laws over Christmas, during which time you would like to do some overdue graphic design work with GIMPshop, create a few blog postings using your favorite blog-publishing program, and perhaps put in a few hours of gameplay with that latest MMORG that you’re into. More importantly, you also need to be checking your email locally for work with Outlook as well as have all of your archived emails for reference just in case. Oh, and you’d also like to be able to move music and video in and out of your Iphone (i.e. you need Itunes installed as well).

For a scenario as described above it seems obvious to take a laptop, as it’s just not practical for you to be installing all this software on your in-law’s computer. However, there is in fact another option: use MojoPac to create a virtual PC set-up with all the programs and data that you need stored on a USB drive or even on your Ipod, and then simply plug that device into any computer to instantly get all of your programs along with an entire virtual PC environment on demand.

One of the nicest things about this software is the ease of setting it up. You have to create an account at the MojoPac site, which involves picking a username and password and submitting a working email, but you can actually do that from the installation process itself. The process takes a mere few minutes at the end of which your new mobile-device borne virtual PC will up and running (see installation section below).

My experience with MojoPac: I tested this software by installing it first on a 2-Gig USB stick as then on a 12-GIG partition on a portable USB drive. Here are my notes on this program:
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Description: PicLens is a free browser extension for Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari that interacts with a number of the most popular image sharing sites to provide a seamless, full-screen "immersive slideshow" experience. Sites supported include Google Images, Yahoo Images, Facebook, Friendster, Flickr and Picasa Web Albums. It is also possible to embed PicLens immersive slideshows within your own site or blog.

This program is a little bit hard to describe: imagine that you’re browsing, say, Flickr, and that you are looking at a page full of thumbnails. Normally what you would do is click on the thumbnail and view the image, go back to the page with the thumbnail and click on the next image and so on. What PicLens offers is an alternate way of viewing the images that literally "takes over" and overlays itself on top of your browser window; your images will be displayed full screen and all thumbnails presented in a horizontal sequence that is quickly browsable on the bottom of the screen.

• How it works: whenever you are surfing on a site that supports PicLens, a little distinct arrow will appear on the image thumbnail when you mouse over it which signals that the images are browsable with PicLens. Clicking on the arrow will activate the PicLens image browser, while clicking on the thumbnail anywhere around it will open/display the image as normal. (See second screenshot).
• Browsing with PicLens: you can use the mouse or arrow keys to scroll through the images, as well as the navigation arrows to move/jump back and forth.
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Description: My Lockbox is a free program that can quickly hide and password protect a folder and all files/folders within it from being shown in the Windows files system, and will do so under Windows safe mode as well.

I’ve always resisted writing about programs such as this one because the “protection” they provide is in most cases easily breached and the hidden files and folders easily discovered simply by booting into safe mode, and anyway I already had a staple for freeware encryption programs which I reviewed a long time ago in the form of TrueCrypt (which mounts encrypted partitions/virtual partitions)..

The reason I tried “My Lockbox” in the first place is because it promised to maintain its protection even under safe mode. I tested this and it is true; however, it is still the case that your hidden files can fairly easily be detected by someone who (a) knows that they’re there and (b) is relatively technically proficient.

On the other hand I would think that the whole point of using an encryption program, at least on a desktop system, is to hide the knowledge that the hidden files are there rather than to hide them well necessarily. If this is what you are after then My Lockbox might be a very good fit for you, as it can hide and unhide your protected folder at a push of a button. Here are more notes on this program:

• Performance: hides and password protects a folder on your machine instantly. Can be invoked using a keyboard shortcut (CTRL-Shift-P by default). No need to create hard disk partitions and /or allocate space for virtual volumes.
• Safe mode: booting into safe mode does not reveal your hidden folder, which remains hidden just as when booting under the normal Windows environment. Note: you have to check “protect in safe mode” in the settings.
• The background process: shutting down the My Lockbox process does not reveal your folder. Note that the program is added to your start folder, probably to support the hotkey (mentioned above). However you can remove it from the start folder using Starter. I advise this as I do not see why this process should be potentially calling attention to itself until I manually start it myself. (Note: the process takes up a mere 3.5 megs in memory).
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Description: BurnAware Free Edition is a free CD/DVD burning software with a small footrprint that can write to a wide range of CD/DVD media types including Blu-Ray; write Audio CDs and DVD-Video files. Aside from writing/verifying data CDs it can also create audio CDs from music files and burn data and video DVDs as well as burn ISO disk images. BurnAware free edition s

If you need a simple free program that can perform most of your CD/DVD burning needs check out this program. It combines a nice range of features with a simple interface and is generally light on system resources. Here are the reasons why you would want to use this software:

• Very nice interface: simple and straightforward and generally has a very nice look and feel. Runs in the system tray for quick access.
• Lightweight: very small footptint, less than 8 megs memory usage when running. Does not require .NET Framework as some other freeware CD burners do.
• Formats supported: all CD/DVD media types, including Blue-Ray; write Audio CDs and DVD-Video files. I am assuming this includes double density DVDs as well.
• Writes data CDs/DVDs: verifies written data, supports writing simulation, supports multisession (i.e. adding files to a burned disc later on), can erase re-writable media.
• Disk-image support: burns ISOs and can save your project as ISO; however it does not create ISOs from existing CDs/DVDs.
• Creates audio CDs: from your audio files. Supports MP3, WAV, and WMV audio files.

Here are reasons why this software might NOT be the one for you. Note that while BurnAware lacks the features listed below, adding them would likely have made a lightweight app more complex and/or top heavy. If you are looking the features below check out the free CDBurnerXP or InfraRecorder.
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Description: DVD Slideshow GUI is a powerful freeware program that can create slideshows consisting of images as well as videos, add subtitles, set to music then export them to .ISO format or DVD folder ready to be burned onto a DVD or any of a number of video file formats. Allows for adding borders, subtitles, and animating images, and provides a full editing environment where every element is customizable and a wide range of pre-defined filters and transition effects are available.

In the outset it is important to point out that there are two ways that you can use this program (a) you might want to upload a whole bunch of images, perhaps tweak the background color and add an soundtrack, and then export your slideshow to DVD or video file. Simple and easy and not too involved.

Or, (b) the other way to use this program is deliberately produce and plan out exactly what happens every step of the way in your slideshow, decide on what kind of transition you want between each and every picture/video, what filters to apply to your images (that might change or tweak the way they are displayed), and exactly how to animate each picture: where it comes in and out, what parts (if any) to zoom in or out, etc… In fact when used as described here this program functions nothing less than a video editor; and, at that, it does an extremely good job and brings to the table a set of very powerful tools for you to work with. Here’s more info on this program:

• The program: this program is a frontend that brings together a number of free tools including Avisynth, Dvdauthor, HCenc, Media Player Classic, FFmpeg, Flvtool2, Mplex, Demux, mkisofs, etc. All tools are included within the installer.
• The user interface: is one of the nicest things about this program in that it is really simple and straightforwad. If you’re the kind of person who likes to just pick up a program and figure it out you’ll be up and running with DVD Slideshow GUI in very short order. One rule of thumb: if you can’t figure out how to do something its probably in the "presets" section.
• Imports: the following types of media: image files, PNG images with alpha, AVI videos, and Avisynth scripts (AVS). Also accepts MP3 and WAV audio file for the soundtrack.
• Exports: into an impressive range of video formats: DVD folder or ISO (for burning onto DVDs), MPG, AVI, FLV (and will generate HTML code to embed FLVs into your website). Also exports to DVD audio, DVD chapters, DVD subtitles, Avisynth script, storyboards, single images with backgrounds.
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Description: Virustotal is a web service that provides on-demand scanning of your local files for worms, trojans, and all kinds of malware detected by antivirus engines. It allows you to upload any local file up to 10 megs in size and will perform a scan across 30+ different virus scanning engines (which include all of the leading heavy-hitter virus killer engines on the market).

Let’s assume for the sake of discussion that most of us have fairly competent, updated virus-killer and antispyware software and firewalls that keep malware attacks at bay. But what if you want to open a file or run an .exe that is, by your estimation, of dubious origin? It is possible for you to manually override your antispyware and firewalls merely because you are accustomed to doing so when they intercept legitimate software and files and ask for your arbitration. Or, alternately, you might have a dangerous file that is simply not being recognized as such for whatever reason by the security software you are using.

This issue is of particular concern to me as I like to think that all the software featured on Freewaregenius is malware free, and the way I "check" for this is to simply try out the software and see how the security software I run responds, which is not really a guarantee that a file is malware free.

Enter Virustotal, a service that will scan any file that you upload to it using more than 30 virus detection engines with all the latest updates, making it far more likely that if the file in question is dubious that it will be recognized as such by a subset of these engines at the very least. Here are more notes on this service:

• Types of malware detected: can detect worms, trojans, and all kinds of malware detected by antivirus engines. This does note include adware (I tested with a known adware program), but most (not all) of the engines will identify spyware.
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Description: Note2Email is a website that allows you to send quick emails to yourself or others through a simple form. You can optionally enter in a special encryption key such that the recipient will only be able to read the email if they know it.

Have you ever logged into your email account in order to send a note to yourself ? (I know that I personally have done this numerous times). With Note2email you can send notes by email quickly and easily without needing to log into your email account. All you need to remember is the note2email.com URL. Here’s more info on this service:

• Your email will be from "note[at]note2email.com",which enables you to set up a filter in your email service or program and create a repository folder for notes sent to yourself.
• Note2email relieves you from needing a web-based email if sending email notes from a computer that’s not your own.
• Note2email relieves you from needing to log into web-based email in order to send email notes from a computer that’s not your own. This is both more secure (alleviates any risk of compromising your account password) and will save you time otherwise spent logging in.
• You can send email with a special encryption key that you specify. Your recipient will only be able to view the email if they can enter in your key.
• Spam protection: you will need to identify the note2email logo from other random images to send email with note2email. This protects against random spammers using the service for junk mail.
• Lastly, I should mention that note2email allows you to send email fairly anonymously to any address. (Note: anybody with little technical skills can send an email disguised as being from anyone they choose. At least with note2email the sender is "note2email" and not some fake identity).
• Bookmarklet for taking quick notes by email is in the works.
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Description: InfoTag Magic is a useful shell extension that provides informational tooltips on mouse-over for audio files (MP3, WMA, APE, and Ogg Vorbis), quick tooltip previews for text files (TXT, INI, LOG, BAT, DIZ, BAK, and QUE, tooltip information on the properties of windows shortcuts, and tooltip version information for EXE, DLL, and OCX files.

This is a very straightforward software that provides informational toolips whenever you hover your mouse over certain types of files (see screenshot). Here’s more info on each of the different types of files supported:

• Audio files: supports WP3, WMA, APE, and Ogg Vorbis. The first thing you need to find out is whether your audio player already provides informational tooltips for audio files, and, if so, whether you like the ones you already have. What I have noticed is while InfoTag Magic creates very nice tooltips, in some infrequent instances it omits some info even when that info seems to be available (as far as I can tell). The 2 MP3s in the screenshot both had info in their ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags, but the "Air" song did not have the title and artist displayed in the tooltip.
• Text files: (actually TXT, INI, LOG, BAT, DIZ, BAK, and QUE files). This is a really handy tooltip if you’re browsing a bunch of files or notes that you’ve created and would like to be able to quickly peer into files to see whats in them.
• Shortcuts: if you’re like me you not infrequently resort to right-clicking on a shortcut and displaying its properties to find out where it is pointing to and where it starts. With this tooltip, all you have to do is hover over a shortcut to instantly see this info.
• Executables: (EXE, DLL, and OCX). A quick way to see version and other info.
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Description: Input Director is a free program that enables two or more computers connected on a network to share a single mouse and keyboard input, allowing for dragging a mouse pointer across multiple screens. This easy to set-up software also enables the sharing of clipboard contents, including copying/pasting files and folders across multiple computers.

If you work with multiple computers at once that are connected on a network it will in most cases make sense for you to control these computers through a single mouse/keyboard. Input Director allows you to do just this, with the added advantage of sharing clipboard contents and freely transferring files and folders across computers as if they were in fact a single unit.

Input Director is not the only freeware program to do this, but it may just be the simplest to set-up. Here are some notes on this program:

• Control: once set up, you can control a the mouse pointer and/or cursor either by using the mouse and keyboard from the main "Master" computer as well as the mouse/keyboard on the individual computers themselves. It is possible to have the cursor wrap around in a 360 full circle style.
• Clipboard: simply copy something into the clipboard on one computer, move the mouse to another app on another computer, and paste. If you want to be able to copy files and folders you will have to allow that first (it is turned off be default). Do this by going to "global preference" tabs on both computers and unchecking "exclude default C$ D$ shares for file copy pastes".
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Description: Docx2Rtf is a free program that can convert .DOCX and .DOTX (Word 2007 MS Word formats) as well as SXW and .ODT (OpenOffice) into the universal .RTF format that can be read and edited by any Word Processor. It also offers the ability to convert documents to .PDF and can open, view, and print all the above mentioned formats as well as PalmOS Database Documents (*.PDF) and Aportis (*.PRC) files.

The recent release of MS Office 2007 brought in a number of file formats that do not open with older versions of MS Office or other word processing programs such as the OpenOffice Writer. Most of the time users of Office 2007 send out these files to colleagues and collaborators who only afterwards discover the incompatibility. It is possible to go around this simply by saving using the old .DOC format or, if you have an older version of Office, by using the Office 2007 Compatibility Pack that Microsoft released. A program like Docx2Rtf , however, gives you the ability to free a Word 2007 document from Office and convert it altogether to .RTF, which will allow you to use any word processor program to edit and/or work with the document. You may, however, lose some formatting and or functionality in the process.

To test this program I created a .DOCX document that included tables, special characters, some bolded, italicized, and underlined text, a formatted image, an embedded Excel sheet, a numbered list, and a URL linked to a text lable. For the results (and more notes on this program) see below:

• Converted elements: transfers text, (most) special characters and images (without any effects). Bolded text transferred as such but italicized and underlined text did not. Tables (and Excel sheets) as well as numbered lists lost their formatting and their contents were simply listed in rows of text. Linked URLs not transferred. (Note: most of this loss of fidelity is due to the limitations of the RTF format itself rather than Docx2Rtf).
• Contingencies: you do not need Word 2007, OpenOffice or any other program to perform the conversions.
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Description: Launchball is a physics flash game where you solve puzzles by setting up a sequence of events to drive a ball into the goal area. The game also allows for level-construction by users as well as sharing your created levels with the player community.

This game is commissioned by the Museum of Science in London and is located on their website. All the elements in this game (e.g. batteries, fire source, water tank to generate steam, seesaws, etc.), have to be put together in a logical way such as to kick off the correct sequence of events. (Here’s an example: place a heat source by a water tank to generate steam and connect that to a steam-powered generator that produces electricity; place this generator adjacent to blocks of copper connected in a row that lead up to a fan which, once powered, will blow the stationary ball onto the goal area). The game in fact is somewhat reminiscent of the old “Incredible Machine” game which first appeared in 1992. Here are some more notes on this game.

• Playability: the game is highly playable, and very easy to learn and get into. The objective is to (a) solve the puzzles, but also (b) to get through the levels as quickly as possible. You can also request a hint for each level if you are stuck, and, if uncertain, you can get info on any object simply by hovering over it with the mouse.
• The production qualities: are in general very good even as they are kept simple. The graphics and sound are competent and deliver a very nice gaming experience.
• Play and create: this game is as much about creating and sharing your own custom levels as it is about solving the puzzles in the available levels.
• Available levels: the game has 30 pre-built levels for you to play through (aside from 6 levels intended to familiarize you with the game). There are also dozens of levels that have been created by other users that are of surprisingly high quality. The game also allows you to send/receive levels from your friends and to bookmark your favorite levels as well.
• Creating an account: you can easily create an account wihin the game by entering your email information. You will then receive an email with your own distinct code that you could enter into the game whenever you play it and retrieve your history of finished and/or created levels. Although this system works well enough, the game strangely takes a very long time to retrieve your account once you key in your code.
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Description: “Pidgin-Encryption” is a plugin for the open-source IM client Pidgin that provides for secure instant messaging sessions encrypted with the RSA protocol.

Here’s news for you: relatively speaking, your IM sessions are not secure. In an office environment your instant messages are probably fairly easily attainable by your network admin if they really wanted to see them, and there’s even software offered out there that does exactly this. The good news is that if you use Pidgin you can install this simple plugin for instant encryption of your chats. One caveat, though, is that both yourself and the person you are chatting with have to have this plugin installed (and by implication both need to be using Pidgin).

How it works:

• Download and install “Pidgin-Encryption”
• Launch Pidgin, go to Tools > Plugins from the main console and then check the box next to the “Pidgin Encryption” plugin to install it.
• Once installed, you should be able to see 2 visible changes in Pidgin as follows (a) an “enable encryption” command in the within the chat session window, and (b) a “turn autoencryption on” context menu entry for each buddy on your list (see screenshot above). Note that these options only work when the person you are chatting with also has the plugin installed.
• To invoke encrypted chat, either click on the “enable encryption” button in the chat window or turn on the autoencryption for your buddy. What’s cool is that the program will automatically detect someone who has the plugin and transmit your key to them (they will be prompted to accept). It will also save the keys for known users and warn you if the keys change.
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Description: this posting will cover three online services that provide solutions for common RSS issues, namely: filtering you RSS feeds by user-defined keyword(s), consolidating multiple feeds into one, and converting RSS feeds into email updates.

FilterMyRSS.com: is a web service that can filter your RSS feeds based on keywords that you specify. Needless to say this can be extremely useful in reducing information overload by delivering only those news items that contain your keywords and thus have a high probability of being interesting and/or relevant to you.

Here’s an example: let’s say that you get the RSS feed from a popular software portal but that you are only interested in seeing news items about freeware or open source items. Assuming that the RSS entry actually include a mention of the software licensing in it (as some do not), FilterMyRSS will allow you to enter “freeware” and “open source” as filter keywords and will only deliver those news items that contain any of these keywords in the RSS entry. Very useful indeed.

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FEEDblendr.com: if you’ve ever wished that instead of your dozens of RSS feed URLs you simply had a single URL that combined all of them together then you’re in luck; FEEDblendr is a s service that can combine multiple RSS feeds into a single river-of-news type feed for you.The FEEDblendr interface is very easy to use; simply enter your RSS feeds one by one into the form. If you would rather upload an OPML file with all your feeds that is also possible. Overall a really cool and potentially useful service.

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SendMeRSS.com: what I have discovered publishing my blog is that there are certain readers who (a) want to be updated with all new published postings on the one hand, while (b) do not want to subscribe to an RSS feed or deal with the RSS world in general, or (c) simply want to be notified by email whenever there’s a new posting.If this describes you then you’ll appreciate the SendMeRSS web service. All you have to do is enter the RSS feed URL into the service, and they will send updated feeds as emails straight to your inbox. They also will let you upload an OPML file if you would like to import a number of RSS feeds at one go.

SendMeRSS also offers widgets for site/blog owners that allow visitors to request email updates straight from the site. If you’re a publisher however consider that they will not share the email addresses of your subscribers with you, which is something to keep in mind (although they will give you stats on your number of subscribers).
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Description: RunMe is a free program launcher that can dock into sides of your screen and become available on mouse-over. It is similar to the Windows’ start menu in its look and feel, in that allows for placing shortcuts in folders within folders. It supports special effects, animation, transparency, and a good number of very good looking skins.

Nothing beats a good launcher for quickly re-inventing the way you work with your computer. I did not expect much of this launcher at first but after trying it I found it to be very robust and surprisingly smart-looking. here are some notes on this program:

• Docks to the edge of your screen: and can be invosked by a mouse over. Can be placed on the left, right side, or top edges of your screen and dragged and dropped for optimum placement.
• Drag and drop: shortcuts can simply be dragged into the launcher in order to be added to the list. You can re-order items by dragging them around while pressing Shift (and, while pressing Shift, you can remove them altogether if you drag them out of the launcher).
• Eye candy: the launcher supports transparency and animation, and you can customize the way it behaves and looks in the settings (e.g. how you want it to behave when you mouse over, degree of transparency, change the color, sound if any, whether or not to display a ’tab’, glow, zoom, or bounce effects, etc.) But it also performs well in that it runs smoothly and without hiccups.
• Skins: RunMe comes with a handful of skins that mostly are very well done/good looking indeed. Download more skins here.
• Elements supported: include groups (which behave as folder), program shorcuts, links to folder, My Computer, Recycle bin, Run prompt, Control Panel, Show desktop, Restart/Shut Down/Standby, Separators, and a handful of other elements.
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Description: Chaos Wallpaper is a free program that has the dual function of shuffling your wallpaper as well as embedding RSS/ATOM feeds into your active desktop background. You can optionally use any one of the two functions or both together.

There are a number of desktop wallpaper shuffling programs around; this one, however, has the distinction of functioning as an RSS news aggregator that can interactively embed your feeds straight into your desktop. This means that your feeds will refresh periodically but also be clickable as well as scrollable using an on-screen slider on the right hand side. Here are more notes on this program.

• Image Shuffling: the program requires that you point it to a folder that contains images to shuffle, and it will go through all of these. It will also allow you to set the time in seconds to wait between images. You can set the images to be centered, stretched, or (when the RSS option is disabled) tiled.
• Usage: you can use the wallpaper shuffling function alone, the RSS embedding function alone, or both together.
• Interactivity: click on the heading of a news item to open it in your browser. You can also use the side scrollable bar to scroll down your list of feeds, but this one tends to be frustratingly sluggish and/or unresponsive at times.
• Support: can display JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIF images as wallpaper and RSS 0.9x, 1.0, 2.0, and Atom 0.x feeds
• Configurability: the program is in fact highly configurable, but you will need to go in and edit CSS style sheets that it uses so you’ll need to know a little bit of HTM. By default the bottom RSS portion of the screen (around 25% or the screen area) contains the RSS feeds displayed on a white background. You can edit the rss.css stylesheet however and customize this (for example I was easily able to go in and make the background and the header bar transparent). Go here for more info.
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