Description: Wubi is an Ubuntu Linux installer designed to be run from within a Windows environment in order to create a dual booting Windows/Ubuntu machine. Wubi is an officially supported Ubuntu installer and is open source.

I install a lot of software every day. I am always on the lookout for good software, always researching and testing programs. If I had a nickel for every program I have installed in the past year I would have a nice stash.

I am also curious about Linux, and have caught myself at times mulling the idea of a dual booting XP/Linux setup on my computer. But installing an OS is not quite like installing an app; you don’t just click on an installer and click “next” a bunch of times; first, you have to create a new partition on your hard drive (which likely involves moving a lot of your data around), then figure out which Linux build to use and download it, then figure out the steps needed to install Linux and their sequence, as well as all the tools needed which you will likely have to add to you Linux boot CD, etc, then perform a whole bunch of steps to make it dual bootable. Wouldn’t it be great if instead of this drawn out process all you had to do was run an installer from within Windows much like you would install any application?

This, in fact, is exactly what Wubi does. In order to install Ubuntu you simply download this 1 meg executable and run it within Windows just as you would any other setup program. Here are more notes on this program:

• How to use: download and run the installer in Windows. You will be asked to specify a folder to install into, and asked to specify your login passwords. Wubi will then proceed to download Ubuntu for you (approx 700 megs), save it into your specified folder, and install it for you. (Or if you have an Ubuntu CD it will be automatically detected).
• Prerequisites: you need to have at least 5 gigs of space on your chosen hard drive partition. You do NOT have to re-partition and/or move data around. Minimum memory requirement is 256 Megs.
• Dual booting: the next time you boot your machine you will be asked whether you want to boot into your Windows OS or into Ubuntu. Very cool! The folder where you installed Wubi will be mounted as a partition.
• Access to your Windows partitions: you can mount and access the Windows partition where you installed Wubi from within Ubuntu and get access to your Windows files.
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Description: Xneat windows manager is a free windows enhancement that adds a number of “window management” type functions to explorer, including the ability to customize window transparency, minimize (or hide) windows to the system tray, toggling always on top, and drag and drop taskbar buttons in order to rearrange them. It also adds interesting options to the windows save file dialog: a “clone file” button that becomes active when overwriting a file, and a time stamp button.

I am always in the market for good windows shell enhancements, and I must say that this is one to take note of: Xneat has a good range of interesting Windows functions, uses very little memory, and has a very nice overall look and feel . Here are more notes on this program:

• Nice set of functions for open/minimized windows: change windows transparency, minimize to tray, hide, and toggle always on top are the standard ones. You can optionally add windows and process priority functions as well. Note that you can customize the context menu to display only the functions you want (e.g. only the minimize to tray and, say, the transparency functions, if that’s all you want).
• Save file dialog functions: adds two buttons; the clone button appears when you are about to save over a previous file with the same name, and gives you the option to create a clone with a counter appended to its file name rather than overwrite a file (e.g. filename(1).html rather than filename.html). Very useful. The other button automatically adds a date stamp to the filename, which could be very useful to some.
• Arrange taskbar buttons: by dragging and dropping, in the manner of Taskbar Shuffle.
• Hotkey activation: will make an Xneat “hotmenu” pop up on the screen wherever the mouse is located. This menu will give you access to all windows minimized or hidden to the system tray, but can also optionally give access to the Quick Launch menu shortcuts or a list of recently accessed files.
• Memory use: just about 2 megs, which is lightweight and quite an accomplishment by the creators of this program.
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Description: Looxis Faceworx is a free 3D modeling program that can construct a textured 3D model of a person’s head out of two 2D photos (one from the front, "mugshot" style, and the other profile style from the side).

With this program you can create a modeled 3D head and then export it as an .OBJ file for use in other 3D modeling software such as Sketchup or Blender. As a starting point you will need two well light photographs of the subject whose head you want to model, and, once imported into Looxis Faceworx, the process will require a degree of manual intervention on your part to best map your subject’s phase/features onto the 3D model. Here are more notes on this program:

• The learning curve: is very shallow. Just go to help then video tutorial and you will know everything that you need to know within 5 minutes. The program is very easy to use and come to grips with.
• How it works: once you have the images, you will have to manipulate a line/point structure manually in order to best fit it around the face in the photographs.What you need to know here is that there are different levels of detail that you can work with: you can tell the program to give you more points or less points to manipulate.
• More tips: make it simple by deactivating the line/points structures that you are not working with instead of having them be displayed on screens. Zoom into the images when working with them for best accuracy (with the mouse wheel). Start with as little points as possible then make it more detailed afterwards; the better you "fit" these points around the head, the better the result will be. Deactivate the "blend zone" to begin with and deal with it at the very end.
• The user interface: is very straightforward. Three different windows display your subject’s frontal image, profile image, and 3D model of the head. What is nice about this program is that since it only does one thing - maps images to a 3D head - there is a limited set of tools that you need to use and come to grips with.
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Description: Translate.Net is a desktop-based translation tool that will translate any text from one language to another. It connects with multiple online translation engines and delivers multiple translations at once straight into your desktop.

Although a translation engine where you enter you text and have it magically translated into another language sounds like a fairy tale, the web is full of these services. Of course these cannot provide the textual nuances that a human translator could, and the quality can vary widely from text to text and engine to engine, which is why it is a good idea to run a text through multiple translation engines and get multiple versions/attempts at deciphering the text.

Translate.Net, like the recently reviewed Lingoes, is a straightforward program that will simply run your text through several online translation services and give you a list of results. Here are more notes on this program:

• The user interface: is simple and intuitive and fairly self explanatory.
• Languages supported: the list of "from" and "to" languages is extensive, with 25 languages supported in total, including every major language represented. The total number of translation directions is a whopping 1352.
• The language resources: what is cool is that Translate.Net will automatically identify out the available translation engines/resources that cover your language configuration and use them. As of this writing there were 17 language resources used, including Google dictionary, Google,translator Wikipedia, wiktionary, and SYSTRAN translator (used by Altavista Babel Fish). For a list of these go here.
• History of language pairs: once you perform a translation your from/to language pair used will be stored in the main interface, enabling you to quickly fire up that language combo the next time you need it. Quite useful.
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Description: Daphne is a windows process manager that provides a number of interesting functions, such as the ability to shut down, find, or hide an app or process by dragging and dropping a tool onto open windows with the mouse. Other functions include the ability to set “traps” where processes invoke user determined actions, killing processes by name, etc, in addition to a number of the usual functions that you would expect to find in a program of this type.

This is another process manager that does some cool stuff. It offers many of the standard functions that you would expect from most process managers, but what makes it interesting is a visual interface whereby you could point to elements on the screen with the mouse in order to, for example, kill the process behind them, find the underlying process, or quickly access (and optionally change) the properties and values of windows and controls.

What I will do for this review, as I did when reviewing “System Explorer“, is attempt to convey a sense of this program by listing my top 5 favorite things you can do with it:

1- Killing a process with the mouse: all you need to do is set Daphne to “kill process”, then grab the crosshairs and drop them on the window. This will end the process instantly, and avoid the need to hunt for the name of the associated process in a list and/or going through multiple steps to get it shut down. (Note: you can also do this with Revo Uninstaller; see this posting).

2- Visually finding a process: if you’ve ever faced a situation where you are unable to determine the process underlying an app or a window you’ll appreciate this one; simply drag the “find” crosshairs onto the window to identify its process. I sometimes need this when I am trying to figure out how much memory an app is consuming but find the process hard to locate because it’s named differently.

3- Creating traps for a process: this means that Daphne will automatically take a pre-specified course of action once it encounters a process that you pre-specify or a window that has a certain title. Once it detects this, you can tell Daphne to automatically kill the process, hide it (so it’s not visible), set the process to a priority level that you want, set the window to a certain transparency level, and set it to be always on top (or not).
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Description: Binary Toys are animated windowless vector characters “made up of springs, muscles, and masses” that are designed to inhabit your computer, interacting with your desktop environment in accordance with the laws of physics.

Get the picture: animated wireframe creatures walking, crawling around your desktop, tumbling from the top of one open window to the another, falling on their backs, legs wriggling in the air, and hence unable to move without your intervention (which, in this case, could either be to grab hold of the edge of the creature and flick it around with the mouse, or press “U” to magically untangle it). Not sure if I should categorize this as a “game” or a “desktop enhancement . Here are more notes:

• Interaction: you can grab any of the “nodes” on the creature’s body and drag it around, drop it, etc. Keyboard controls as follows: T/toggle transparency, S/change size, large and small, M/show muscles (really just changes the look a little bit), U/untangle, get back on its feet, R/reverse direction, Space/pause and unpause.
• Creatures: ten in total (right click on a creature to change). You can have creatures change randomly or have multiple creatures running around the screen simultaneously. Creatures include: Amoeba , Bouncy Diamond, Breaking Wave, Caterpillar Pod, Cheeky Triangle, Dainty Walker, Dirk Jiggler, Hairy Caterpillar, Millipede, Wiggly Worm. There’s an option to load creatures from an XML file for future additions.
• Behavior: according to the Binary Toys site: “these toys exhibit complex behavior and are surprisingly life-like”. They really do.
• Memory consumption: around 5 megs in memory.
• Installation: no installing necessary; simply run the executable.
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Description: Kana Launcher is a “pop-up menu” style applications launcher that can either reside in your system tray or appear anywhere on the desktop when invoked by a hotkey. It offers two modes, a regular “context menu” style pop-up launcher with a hierarchical tree structure, and a so-called “floating icon” launcher style. It also offers the ability to install a permanent shortcut to programs, bookmarks, or folders within the system tray itself.

Ok so those of us who have tried indexing, search-box style launchers (such as Launchy) may not be looking for a new icon-based launcher, but we at Freewaregenius are always on the lookout for useful and/or interesting launchers, and have determined that Kana Launcher deserves a mention here. More notes on this program below:

• Two modes of operation: a “floating window” style launcher and a pop-up, context menu launcher. These can be configured separately (i.e. the shortcuts that are displayed in one need not be the same as those displayed in the other). The “floating icon” mode displays tooltips that can help identify each icon as you hover over it. See the screenshot above to get a sense of what these two modes are like.
• System tray or hotkey: the launcher is called by right clicking or hovering over its icon in the system tray (for the pop-up and floating window launchers, respectively), or otherwise both the pop-up and hovering styles can be called anywhere through user definable hotkeys.
• Shortcuts: Kana can open programs, folders, files/documents, or URLs/bookmarks. The popup menu style launcher includes the ability to create a hierarchical folder structure that can be used to organize your shortcuts.
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Description: Cobview is a Windows shell extension that installs a command in Windows’ right-click context menu which can be used to get general file/properties information for most file types

If you’ve been following this blog you may have seen my previous posting regarding getting informational tooltips for most file types. Cobview provides a similar function on-demand as a command in the context menu. Here’s more info on this program:

• Information provided: this is different for each file type. For images, for example, you will get 2 tabs, with a preview of the image in one and the file details (resolution, bit depth) in the other. Syntax highlighting is offered for text files (Pascal, c++, java, html, etc; see thumbnail to the right). For dll or exe files the exported and imported functions are displayed. For MP3 files the ID3 tags are displayed.
• Plug-in architecture: in theory if you write code in any language you could create your own plugins to support any file type that you want. More info here.
• Other options: once the information is displayed you can either save it to a .TXT file or copy any of the rows presented into the clipboard.
• Unsupported file types: video file formats (AVI, MPG, MP4, FLV), Adobe PDF, MS Office file types (XLS, DOC, PPT and variations on those). There are others of course, but these stand out.
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Description: BBox Audio Player (BBoxV2) is a free lightweight audio player/manager that offers a good range of features including CD ripping, audio file tagging management, internet radio, automatic volume normalization, audio library management functions, and others.

This program pulls a very interesting trick: it takes up less than 2 megs in memory for the program itself (apart from libraries/music data loaded into it; more info in the comments section) — yet nonetheless provides enough functionality for most people to use as their primary audio player/manager. Compare this to, say, a program such as iTunes, which consumes 51 megs in memory, Mediamonkey or JRiver Media Jukebox (both of which consume approx. 30 megs).

You might wonder whether it is appropriate to compare BBoxV2 with these programs, and in many ways it is oranges and apples since the scope of these latter programs is so much broader; however, BBoxV2 does provide an impressive array of functions in a nice little package, and in truth if you preferred a slim and compact audio player/manager that is simple yet powerful BBoxV2 delivers (and delivers very well). Here are more notes on this program:

• CD Player and Ripper: rips tracks and pulls tag info from an online database. MP3 format only with a wide range of quality options (CBR/VBR).
• Tagger: the tagging function is surprisingly powerful, and includes the ability to do auto tagging based on an online search, including album artwork. (Allows you to change the search string used, which is very useful).
• Music library functions: includes quick filters (artist/album) as well as (a very useful) keyword search.
• Internet Radio: with 68 pre-defined stations. Although I was not able to determine how to add my own stations to the list, I was able to add shoutcast (.pls) shortcuts to the music library and add/play shoutcast stations that way. (Update: see comments section for how to add stations).
• Smart volume: i.e. normalizes volume for different audio tracks playing in succession, eliminating any sudden variations in volume.
• Supported audio formats (playback): MP3, WMA, Wave, MP1, MP2, MP4, AIFF, OGG, M4A, M4V, M4P, AAC, AC3, APE, TTA, OFR, SPX, FLAC & CDA.
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Description: Moby Gratis is an archive of instrumental music clips created by the alternative rock/electronic music maestro Moby. These are available to anyone to download and legally use in their film projects, provided that these are independent, student, non-commercial, or non-profit films.

One day I will make a film, and it will be fantastic (you’ll see!). When that day comes and I am faced with the issue of finding music to use for my scenes I will go to Mobygratis and check out the growing collection of instrumental/electronic/soundtrack music that might fit the mood. If you are working on your own project you should check it out.

You will have to create an account first, afterwhich you can log in and check out multiple pages of links to music. All of the music is instrumental; you will not find tracks from his albums (or at least I didn’t see any). You can preview the clips on the page through a flash player, and request a license on-the-spot if you want to use it. How cool is that?

See video below of Moby talking about Moby Gratis:
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Description: Unhider is a program that can reveal/unhide any window(s) that belong to applications and/or process running in the background that are not visible. It can do this for programs that are running but not visible in the wake of a crash.

This is one of those tools that you must download and keep somewhere on your hard drive. You may not use it that often, but when you do need it you will be very thankful that it’s there. It is able to reveal any hidden window, including programs that seem to disappear completely after explorer crashes and are not amenable to being brought back using Windows’ Task Manager.

Imagine the following scenario: you are working on something for more than an hour using program A when Program B crashes, or Windows explorer itself crashes, or for whatever reason the system crashes. Your first reaction is to go to the task manager, find the program or process that is causing the trouble and end it (or in the case of explorer crashing, you end the explorer.exe process, go to the task manager’s ’file’ menu, and run a new instance of explorer).

All good and well, except now the window for Program A is not showing. A quick check with the task manager shows that the process for Program A is indeed running, but you have no access to it. Or it’s showing as an application in the task manager but you are unable to reveal it even when you right-click "switch to" or "bring to front". At this point you are prepared to bite the bullet; you’ve already started thinking about not wasting any more time and simply re-creating any unsaved work. But here’s the good news: Unhider will most likely bring the application window back for you, enabling you to save your work before you restart your computer.
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Description: IconX is a free Windows Explorer context menu extension that enables you to change the icon used for any file-type. It can also change the icon used for any individual file, and for any individual folder.

IconX? Yes. Do not mistake this with the shareware Stardock IconX, though, which is a completely different product.

A few weeks ago I wrote about how to change the icons used for any filetype using a freeware program called Icon Phile. And although that program worked great for me, I discovered through reader’s comments that it didn’t work on all systems or had problems. Moreover, it was not as user friendly and I would have liked, so I kept my eye out for other options and found IconX. I am happy to report that IconX does the job easily straight from the Windows right-click context menu. Here are more notes on this program:

• How it works: simply install IconX, right click on any file or folder and select “change icon” from the context menu. A dialog will be shown with a preview window for any icon files that you might browse to. Note: you can use ICO files, DLLs, ICL icon libraries as your target, just change the “files of type” dropdown at the bottom of the open file dialog. You can also point it to EXE files with icons in them.
• Individual v. global: to change the icon used globally for a file type, right click “change icon” on any file of that type then check the box in the IconX icon browser that says “use icon for all files of that type”. Otherswise, if the box is unchecked, IconX will change the icon of the individual file rather than globally.
• Where are the icons stored?: for files with individually changed icons, the new icon is not stored in the file/folder itself, but rather in a centralized place on your system (most likely the registry). This means that files/folders with customized icons that are emailed or moved to a network drive will not display custom icons when viewed from another computer. (Unlike, say, Stylefolder, which will store the icons in the folder itself).
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Description: ProgramLaunch is a applications launcher that docks into the top or bottom of your desktop and can be accessed either by mousing over the edge of the screen or by a shortcut key. It offers a number of interesting functions such as organizing shortcuts by group, assigning keyboard shortcuts for each icon, assigning a single launch icon to a group of apps, and others.

This is a launcher that is somewhat reminiscent of Rocketdock and ObjectDock in that it is a dockable, horizontal row of icons, but it is different in that it does not feature the Mac-style zooming into the active icon, allows for clustering of icons in groups (like Stablauncher), and offers a number of functions such as setting keyboard shorcuts for apps and using a single icon to launch multiple applications. More notes below:

• How it works: hover on the side of the screen with the mouse for a few seconds and the launcher will appear, move away to autohide. (Or press F12 to summon/dismiss. You could alternately switch off auto hiding altogether and use the keyboard shortcut primarily). Drag shortcuts to add to the launcher, drag them across the different groups you create. Overall very user friendly.
• Groups: create a group that makes sense for each set of icons that belong together. These are placed at the bottom of the launcher and function like tabs.
• Keyboard shortcuts: you can define these for any app whose icon appears in the launcher. Also allows for setting launch parameters and path.
• Batch launching: you can create shortcuts that launch multiple apps. As an example, I am using this for a bunch of apps that I have disabled on startup that I nonetheless sometimes like to have open at once. The one strange thing is that the program requires that all apps that are batch-launched be included somewhere in the launcher individually, which seems quite needless.
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Description: ToneShop is a small, free program that can create ringtones out of your audio files for any phone that supports a true audio ringtone, including the Apple IPhone. It provides the ability to quickly and easily select a snippet of sound from within your audio files to be used as a ringtone.

I’ve had my eye out for a simple program that can quickly create ringtones out of MP3s for my IPhone when I found this program, which in fact can do this for a very wide range of phones and devices. ToneShip is in fact a frontend GUI for FFMPEG, the encoding engine which the majority of freeware video and audio conversion programs are based. Here are more notes on this one.

• How it works: simply load an audio file, then use the (0.1 second precision) trackbar to identify beginning and end points for your ringtone (note that different phones vary on length of ringtone they will accept, so take that into consideration). You can also enter in the start and finish positions as values manually, and preview the ringtone snippet by pressing the "show" button. Finally, select the desired ringtone file format from the dropdown and press the "convert" button to create your ringtone.
• Phones supported: all phones that use true audio ringtones. Go here for a (non-exhaustive) list.
• Audio file types supported: can input MP3, WAV, WMA, and M4A formats, and produce ringtones in MP3, WAV (uncompressed PCM), AAC (Advanced Audio Codec, .m4a), Nokia TrueTones (AMR-WB, .amr), AMR-NB (.amr)
  Yamaha SMAF (.mmf),ADPCM (4-bit compressed PCM. way), and Apple IPhone (AAC, .m4r).
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Description: this posting will compare a number of different possible ways to convert PDF files into Word Doc format, including freeware programs and free web and email services. Six different programs/services are tested: (1) PDF2HTMLgui, (2) the Koolwire email PDF to DOC conversion service, (3) the Zamzar web service, (4) Free PDF To Word Doc Converter, (5) Adobe PDF to HTML email conversion service, and (6) the MediaConvert web service.

In order to do this test I created a PDF document using Open Office’s export to PDF function that had the following elements (1) a two-column table with special formatting, which contained (2) three thumbnail-szied jpeg images. My PDF document also contained (3) working hyperlinks; and (4) it featured text that was bolded; (5) contained bulleted points, as well as (6) a numbered list.

For the sake of simplicity my PDF was only a single page. To see what the document looked like click on the screenshot to the right.

The objective: was to get a converted document that could be loaded into MS Word where the text/contents could be edited and subsequently saved as .DOC format, which is to say any of the following formats would be satisfactory: .DOC, .HTML, and .RTF.

Comparative results: look for them at the bottom of this positng.
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