Description: Enso Words is a free program that offers a number of text-related functions that can be performed universally within any application. These include a spellcheck, word definitions, thesaurus, word and character counts, uppercase/lowercase conversions, instantly Googling selected text, and others.

"Enso Words is part of the Enso group of applications, a collection of task-oriented software that employ the same basic interface and method of interaction with the user. They are designed to perform simple tasks - tasks that might otherwise interrupt your workflow or require shifting your focus from your work- quickly and easily. Here are more notes on Enso Words:

• The User Interface: first select a text or word, then press a hotkey (the caps lock button) that brings out a kind of command prompt overlayed on top of all open windows in the top left corner of the screen. Here, you can type in a handful of commands that perform the available functions. The program will immediately offer several "autocompleted" commands that are filtered as you type, making it very easy to hone in on the task that you seek (see first screenshot above).
• Available tasks: include spell check, word definitions, thesaurus, word count, character count, uppercase selected text, lowercase selected text, Google selected text, calculate (for on-the-fly calculations) and even cut/copy/paste text for apps that do not support these natively.
• Online tasks: note that the word definition and thesaurus require an internet connection and will in fact open the answers.com webpage as reference. The spellchecker, thankfully, is local.
• The spell check: is performed within a window that overlays itself on top of your application, and is limited to English, at least at the moment. Unrecognized words are highlighted in yellow and left-clicking these will display a dropdown containing suggested spellings that you can choose. You can also add unrecognized words to the database. The spell check is powerful and works really well; one glitch, however, is that it can, at times, mess up your text’s formatting (this happened both in MS Word and Post2blog, the program I use to write my blog postings).
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Description: gMote is a free program that allows you to record mouse gestures and associate them with applications, websites, and Windows tasks. You can then launch those whenever you need them by drawing the specific gesture associated with the program or task you need on-screen.

It seems that there is an increasing number of interesting launchers employing new, quick ways to launch programs aside from clicking on icons or shortcuts. Programs such as Launchy, for instance, as well as keyboard-shortcut programs, and now gMote’s screen gestures. Here are more notes on this program:

• How it works: press control and shift simultaneously then draw your gesture with the mouse. A window will popup near the system tray after you perform a gesture that will display the number of the action associated with it or otherwise display a question mark if the gesture is not understood. Note, however, that if you dragged a shortcut and then deleted it, the association is lost.
• The gestures: have to be in one continuous motion (i.e. you can’t take the pen off the page, so to speak). The program will alert you if the gesture you drew is too close to another one that you made previously in order to re-do it.
• The user interface: the user interface looks really good and is split into left and right panes; gestures are drawn on the right pane while the left pane lists the different actions. You can drag and drop shortcuts, executables, and bookmarks into the left pane to convert them into actions or you can browse to the applications manually.
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Description: DMEXBar is a free Windows explorer toolbar extension that provides the functionality of a dual-pane file management program straight from within any normal window. It integrates a wide range of functions into a toolbar embedded within Windows explorer and can, additionally, control and arrange multiple open windows on the desktop side by side in the style of a file management programs.

I am one of those people (I assume there are others like me ) who never could quite get myself to use dual pane file managers. I know that many people swear by these, and I can understand how they can be indispensable when it comes to doing certain tasks, but the reason I’ve not really used them myself, I think, is because of the primacy of the Windows explorer: jumping off to another app to manipulate files does not seem to make intuitive sense to me.

Which is why I find DMEXBar so exciting: it actually manages to provide a wide range of file and window management functions straight from Windows explorer, such as mass renaming or changing file attributes, a ’favorite folders’ button on the taskbar, filtering (selecting/deselecting) files by wildcard, synchronizing files across 2 open windows, monitoring a folder for changes, copying filenames/paths, calculating directory sizes, DOS prompts on demand, mounting directories as drives (in NT compatible OS’s), aligning open windows side by side, and a handful of other functions (see screenshot above).

Installation: The DMEXBar setup comes with a number of other auxiliary extensions that you can optionally install. I tried all of these but for the purposes of this review I am limiting the scope to DMEXBar itself and the DMEXBar context menu extension. Another note about installing this program: on some machines I installed it on it committed the cardinal sin of ending the installation process with an error message. However, I do think this is a non-issue and if it happens to you just re-install the program immediately; the second installation will run its course 100%. DMEXBar uninstalls normally through the add/remove control panel.
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Description: This posting will describe how to change the default icons used for any file-type using the free”Icon Phile” program.

Imagine this: you have just installed a very nice program that may be outstanding in many respects but inexplicably foists on yours PC some of the ugliest icons you’ve ever seen for the file extensions that it handles. Or you’ve just downloaded some nifty icon libraries with very nicely done icons for various file types, and you would like to use those instead of the default icons on your system. This how-to will show you how you can do this; it will assume that you have (a) an icon or icons for a file type that you want to change, and (b) an icon or icons that you want to use in their stead, in the form of an icon file (.ICO), an icon library (DLL) or even an executable that might contain the icon(s) you seek.

For the purposes of this posting I will change the default icons for PDF files from those used by my favorite free PDF reader, PDF-XChange Viewer, to another icon I found in a library.

The program used: is called Icon Phile. Alas this freeware program is no longer in development but you can find a download link on my Icon Phile review page. Once downloaded unzip the archive in the place you want to keep it, as this program does not require installation. After this go ahead and launch the program.

Step by step:
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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: 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: 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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