Description: DExpose is a replacement for the Alt+Tab application switching funcitonality that emulates the Mac Expose window-stacking style.

A colleague of mine recently asked me about a good alternative to the Alt+Tab application-switching function in Windows XP, and I pointed him to the two Vista-style 3D-layering apps that I previously reviewed on this blog (Shock Aero and Winflip), as well as the uber-simple SmartTab, which is almost the opposite of those two in its complete lack of eye candy, but is still one of my personal favorites. None of these were quite what my friend was looking for; he did not care about the Vista style app switching but wanted more bells and whistles than the minimalistic SmartTab provides.

This made me think that it probably is a good idea to post DExpose on this blog, an application that displays open apps and windows Mac-style in a stacked "thumbnail" display, and varies the size of its presentation according to the number of windows displayed and the overall available screen area (see screenshot above). Here are more notes on this program:

• The look and feel: once invoked by a hotkey, both minimized and maximized windows become animated and fly into position on a preview screen (see screenshot). It really looks very cool, and can be performed in slow motion by pressing the appropriate hotkeys.
• Two modes of operation: you can DExpose all windows, or you can focus attention to one of the DExpose windows (using the arrow keys or mouse) and "maximize" that window while still in the DExpose "suspended animation". You can also use a hotkey to simply "DExpose" the currently active window, though I’m not quite sure what practical purpose that would serve.
• Other functions: pressing F11 can minimize all windows, while pressing it again afterwards will maximize them again. Unfortunately, this seems to conflict with the F11 function in Internet Explorer, and I had to switch it off (there was no way to re-define the hotkey in the version I tested).
• Invoking DExpose: F9 or F10 to DExpose all windows or a single window respectively (also Win+W and Win+Shift+W). Or you have the option to define your own shortcut keys, including using Alt+Tab, which I am guessing is probably what would make sense for most people.
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Description: Minimem is a free program designed to reduce the memory footprint of individual applications selected by the user. It runs in the background and will handle as many processes as requested.

If you’ve ever encountered a program that simply uses too much memory, Minimem will almost certainly be able to reduce it’s memory expenditure for you; just point Minimem to said app and watch its memory footprint magically decrease to a fraction of it’s original usage. It really is that simple (and really quite impressive to see).

Now that you know that Minimem will do this, a number of questions arise: is this a good thing to be doing? How is Minimem able to accomplish this? Which applications are a good fit to optimize using Minimem? This review will attempt to answer (or at least explore) some of these issues.

My experience with Minimem: to test this program I set it optimize the memory usage of four programs which I knew consumed too much memory (or memory than I thought they should). These programs were: Internet Explorer, Digsby, Outlook 2007, and VolumeTouch. All I had to do was run Minimen and select the programs I wanted (see image to the right) And although Minimem consumed approximately 20 megs of memory itself, the overall “savings” was in fact many times that number. See the screenshot above for a before and after. (Note: whether or not these apps were a good choice for using Minimem is another story).

How does it work?: according to the Minimem website “it optimizes memory by removing as many non-necessary memory pages as possible from the selected processes.” It will do this every 30 seconds by default, although this time interval can be tweaked by the user. The applications can then load these memory pages back if and when it actually needs it; meanwhile, if it does not, that memory is made available to other applications that might need it.

When is this a good idea?: I am assuming that (a) there are instances where “optimizing” a program’s memory footprint using Minimem is a good idea, and, alternately, that (b) in many cases there is in fact a very good reason why a program might hold on to memory pages and not unload them, and using Minimem to force it to do so is therefore not a good idea. The following are situations where I think that you might use Minimem to very good effect:

• Programs that have problems with memory leaks: such as Firefox v2 (and maybe v3?). These programs tend to hold onto pages in memory past the point that they should, and get increasingly larger and top heavy without needing to be. You might need to observe your programs and/or do some research on the internet to identify these, though. As a rule of thumb any program that grows exponentially and becomes unwieldy the more you use it might be a good candidate). The authors recommend using Minimem with browsers, office applications, and word processors.
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Description: Miestas is a free point and click flash adventure game that features artsy, hand-drawn graphics and a jazzy soundtrack that combine together to create a dream-like game environment.

I stumbled on this game and decided to post it for the following reasons: (a) its’ nice atmosphere and game experience, (b) that you can get into it quickly and pretty much solve it within an hour or so, and (c) that it looks like art, which I like very much.

If you’ve played any games in this genre before you will instantly know what to do: you can control your character using the arrow keys and interact with the environment using the space bar; the only prerequisites for figuring out how to solve the game are lots of experimentation and, at times, thinking outside the box.
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Description: DK Finder is a desktop search program that employs a sophisticated indexing algorithm to deliver lightning fast search results. It is primarily designed to find files on your system but can also search for keywords contained within files. The program can also perform a number of excellent file-related operations on search results that go beyond moving and copying to include group-operations, advanced filtering, and exporting results as a collection of shortcuts.

Searching for files on a computer is something that everyone needs (or needed at some point or another). Most people have used the search that comes with Windows which, unfortunately, is sub-par to say the least in terms of performance. Then there are programs such as Google Desktop and Windows Desktop Search which, in my experience are resource hungry widget-engines in disguise that have the ulterior agenda of "integrating" your desktop with the internet - which might sound ok, until you find that the desktop search program has taken over your system. (Needless to say Google Desktop did not linger for a long time on my computer before I uninstalled it).

Alternately, I would venture to guess that 99% of most people’s desktop search needs revolve around finding files on a computer and filtering results quickly. If this is what you are after I present you with DK Finder, a small, lightning-fast, and powerful desktop search program with some nice features. Here are more notes on this program.

• The technology: DK Finder is an "indexing" search program that scans your hard drive(s), ’learns’ what’s there and stores it in an index. This means that you will need to perform periodical partial "smart reindexing" at times to keep it up to date.
• Filtering: is one of the strongest aspects of this program. A name filtering box allows you to specify multiple criteria simultaneously, including (/) and (-) for "or" and exclusion, respectively (see image to the right). You can also filter by size and date and/or by keywords inside the files themselves, and finally you can click the column headers to sort your results. Rather powerful and very cool.
• Performance: search results are almost instantaneous, however, the initial indexing when you first install the program will typically take a few minutes; subsequent reindexing, however (i.e updating the index) will typically take a few seconds (an average of approx 5 seconds on my machine, but this will vary). You can also run a full low-level indexing/re-indexing in the background.
• File operations: this is one of the most interesting aspects of this program. Aside from the usual copying/moving operations, DK Finder has the ability to create and save shortcut collections for marked files that can be saved into a folder.
• Where to search: because performing a search provides (almost) instantaneous results, narrowing in on a location for your search scope is done through the filtering function (see above). However, you can specify the folder locations on your hard drives which you might want excluded from the indexing process.
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Description: this posting will provide a number of mini-reviews for freeware programs written by the amazing Dirk Paehl: SimplyZip, DP MediaInfo, IndexMaker, and UPXG.

I received an email from reader Christ T (CT) which had insightful things to say about a number of freeware titles written by Dirk Paehl. CT kindly allowed me to use his mini reviews as a posting.

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CT: “Purely by accident (I was searching for a “GUI UPX-er”) I came across a website full of Outstanding Freeware Programs, from a guy named Dirk Paehl (visit his site here).

He has a LOT of nice SMALL programs, notably:

• SimplyZip: 2.22 MB Multi-Archive Tool, with GREAT Encryption ability, spanning/multi-zip, supports Many, MANY Archive types, and it can even run Portably! It’s directory looks like “Universal Extractor”, but it can Create as well as Extract, and more - Very Nice! (screenshot above).
• DP MediaInfo: 0.54 MB, kind of like “GSpot”, only much more comprehensive, IMHO! [Note: for a full Freewaregenius review of the related MediaInfo, go here].
• IndexMaker: 187.28 KB (yes, ’KB’!) & CDtoHTML, 208.35 KB - Which create HTML from Files & Folders and from CD’s/DVD’s (respectively), very handy for cataloging.
• UPXG [UPX Graphical]: the reason I found his site, only 372.55 KB (with Docs & Uninstaller); It’s a Single-File GUI for UPX, but with the UPX 3.03 ’Engine’ BUILT-IN to the single 351 KB ’EXE’ file, Totally Stand-Alone or with optional Shell Integration, plus many other options - I still haven’t figured out how the heck he did it, UPX is 265 KB by itself! Maybe his brain thinks at Machine-Language Level? Beats “UPX Shell”, “UPX Front End”, or “UPX Tool+” - Scary Efficient!

I really like UPXG & SimplyZip particularly, and have been using them a lot lately, with no problems at all.  SimplyZip and Pismo File Mount are working beautifully together. Read more »

Description: Desktop Media is a free program that can display shortcuts on the desktop to USB drives, CDs/DVDs and other media when you plug them in, and automatically removes these shortcuts when you unplug. It can also alternately create so-called "hard links" to your media instead of shortcuts.

[Update Jul 24, 2008] This program has gone through several changes as to warrant an updated review and a "Freewaregenius Pick" award!

This program is similar to the afore-mentioned "Desk Drive" in that it aims to provide the user with automatic shortcuts to their USB and other drives that appear and disappear from the desktop as the user plugs their media in and out. Shortly after posting the review for "Desk Drive" I received the following email from the author of this program, which pretty much sums it all: "I just saw your post on the Desk Drive application yesterday, and I thought it was a great idea ….. Unfortunately, I usually prefer not to install .NET apps, so I decided to write my own version of this… It also has a feature that Desk Drive does not, which is support for Symbolic Links via the Junction utility from SysInternals… Please let me know if you run into any bugs and I will be glad to fix them. This was a great idea for an application and I wanted to create an app with a small footprint to make it a little more appealing." This about sums it all up. Here are more notes on "Desktop Media":

• Supported media: optionally supports any or all of: removable drives, fixed drives, network/remote drives, CD/DVD drives and RAM disks. Also allows the exclusion of specific drive letters that you might want to opt out of displaying desktop shortcuts.
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Description: this posting will describe how to create program shortcuts on the root folder of a USB drive that preserve the relative path of the USB drive’s folder structure (such that these shortcuts will always work no matter what drive letter Windows assigns the drive). It will also aim to preserve the icon of the application in the new shortcut.

The problem: say you have a portable app that in a folder on a USB drive with, for example, a path such as “F:\EjectUSB\EjectUSB.exe”. Say, moreover, that you would like to create a shortcut to “EjectUSB.exe” and place it on the root folder of your USB (”F:\”, in this case). You might be tempted to simply copy a shortcut and place it on the root folder; except for one thing: that shortcut will always refer to “F:\EjectUSB\EjectUSB.exe”, and should you plug your USB drive into a computer that assigns a different letter to the USB drive (i.e. a letter than is not “F”) the shortcut will break down and not work. Hence the need for a shortcut with a relative path.

The solution:

• Windows does not support relative paths in shortcuts. Instead, this article will describe a solution based on creating a so-called batch (.BAT) file and converting that into an executable (which nonetheless displays the original program’s icon).
• I will use the example outlined above (”F:\EjectUSB\EjectUSB.exe”).

Step by step:
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Description: Pismo File Mount is a free program that makes it possible to mount compressed archives, ISO CD/DVD image files, and its own custom encrypted private folder files as virtual drives that can be accessed freely through the Windows file system. Provide context menu integration for mounting/dismounting volumes quickly and easily.

This is an interesting app that allows for mounting compressed archives as (well as ISO files, open-format CFS files, and private folders) as virtual drives. This means that instead of unzipping or extracting a zip archive you could simply mount it as a virtual drive (with its own letter drive number) to access the files within it.

The idea of mounting compressed archives has a certain appeal to me (as compared to the ’messiness’ of decompressing an archive, with its inherent duplication of files, that have to be deleted later on). However, to be honest the practical benefits/application of mounting ZIP files are not very obvious, especially as the mounted volumes are not writable for most supported file types (aside from the private folders which Pismo can create).

Nonetheless here is a list of practical scenarios where this could be useful:

• Working with files within archives: you can view, say, media files, images or other filetypes that are compressed into zip archives without unzipping them. Simply mount the ZIP file and view the files on the virtual drive. Unmount when you’re done; no decompressing or file deletion afterwards needed.
• Using system-wide tools on archived files: if for example you would like the files in as ZIP archive to be subjected to file-system-wide tools such as desktop search or file de-duping software. Simply mount these archives as virtual drives and you will be on your way.
• Installing software: can be useful if you would like to install zipped software without decompressing then cleaning up. Simply mount the zip file, install, then unmount. No need for decompressed folders cluttering your working space.

More info on this program

• How it works: right-click on a supported archive (e.g. a ZIP file) and you will find (self explanatory) "Mount" and "Unmount" options in the context menu -see screenshot above.
• Encrypted folders: can create (writable) encrypted private folders that are mounted to a virtual drive and accessed through a password.
• Supported filetypes: ZIP, ISO, CFS (read), as well as writable "private folders" (see above).
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Description: Accelman is a dual-pane "File Manager" with a wide set of features ranging from multiple file management panes to a full-featured image viewer and editor, archiver with support of 15+ formats, media player and playlist editor, as well as a host of file and folder management tools.

Accelman, which used to be a paid program but just turned freeware, is a so-called dual pane file manager (commonly also referred to as a "Windows Explorer Replacement"). It brings together one of the most thorough and impressive range of features that you can get for a program in this category; however, because of the extensive features, I will resist making this review into a re-iteration of the features list and attempt a more holistic description. Therefore this review will be structured into (a) a PROS section, (b) a CONS section, and (c) a listing of my top 10 favorite features that Accelman provides.

1- PROS:

• Multiple panes: with the ability to drag-and-drop to arrange them. It also comes with pre-set defaults that emulate the layout of other popular file managers, and will let you save your layout scheme for later use.
• One stop shop for most file types: Accelman includes a built in image viewer/editor, a zip/archiving program, and a text editor/viewer with syntax highlighting. All of these are above average in their own right and support numerous formats (note: this does not preclude using an external app if you want to). It also incorporates a playlist manager and a surprisingly versatile media player. And, if you have Acrobat Reader or MS Office installed, can be used to view PDF and Office files.
• Sophisticated file management tools: such as filtering throughout, mass renaming, searching for folders, files, or text, the ability to take directory snapshots for later comparison, folder bookmarking, batch file-attributes editor, files merge/split, folders comparison, changing file associations, etc.

2- CONS: (and wish list)

• Less might have been more: ironically, this program has so many features as to make you (at times) wish for less. Does a file manager really need a built in media player?
• Unintuitive design: this program has a learning curve. Unless you are willing to fiddle around with it endlessly you will need to dig into the help section in order to figure out how to perform some operations.
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Description: CRP (Control Running Programs) is a small free program that runs in the background and performs two functions: it re-launches a program automatically once it detects that it is no longer running, and it limits the instances that a program can be running simultaneously according to a user defined number of instances (including preventing a program from running at all).

Have you ever, say, somehow shut down your instant messaging client without really meaning to only to become aware of this hours later when friends or colleagues call or email you to ask why you’re offline? Or say you have a notes managing app that you like to be always running but shuts down when you only mean to minimize it.

Another, different kind of example is a program that when you try to access it using a launcher or shortcut when in fact it is already running, will mistakenly create another instance of that program running in memory when what you had intended was to simply maximize it or bring it into focus.

CRP program brings together two extremely useful functions that help you manage your system in the above mentioned scenarios. Please note, however that CRP does not automatically limit the instances of running programs on your machine across the board; rather, all operations will apply to programs of your choosing that you have to tell CRP to monitor. Here are more notes on this one:

• What it does: (a) it re-launches programs that you specify whenever it finds that they have been closed or have shut down, and (b) limits the running instances of programs that you specify to a user-specified number.
• How it works: CRP consists of two lists, one for “Instance Controlling” and another for “Instance Launching”. Once you add the appropriate programs to either list you can activate each one of these lists separately (i.e. you can have both lists activated or one list activated and not the other). The program will then run in the background and monitor for the system for instances of the programs on your list.
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