Posts by Category: software

software programs rule!

hmm..interesting April 30, 2008 posted by

XPLite – Windows your way!

XPLite is a software utility which lets you tweak Windows XP to create the operating system you want. Remove components, strip out useless features and reduce your operating system footprint down to a pretty cool level. They’re talking about squeezing XP into around 300MB (down from gigabytes) which is pretty impressive. Bet it’s fast too. $39.95.  The latest developments in XPLite now see clean installations of Windows XP in under 350MB and Windows 2000 approaching less than 200 MB (excluding paging file)…


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cool tech April 24, 2008 posted by

Truebones – motion capture for your animations at $1.00 or less

Truebones. Despite sporting one of the strangest site designs that I’ve ever come across, this is actually a very useful service if you’re involved in animation or 3D computer graphics work. The site lists and supplies motion capture clips which you can use with your animations to make them come alive without having to re-invent the wheel. Prices seem reasonable and there’s a custom motion capture service available on request. The clips work with all the major animation programs like…


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Bookmark This! April 24, 2008 posted by

Noise Ninja – Removing noise from photographs the easy way

Noise Ninja is a commercial software program which uses a bunch of clever tech to remove noise from grainy images. The program also comes with a useful profile feature which lets you create and store profiles for your particular camera at various ISO settings. This means that the program will automatically select the optimum settings when you open a photo for processing once it’s read the exif info from the image. Great for fast processing. The product costs $34.95 for the…


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Awesome March 25, 2008 posted by

Network Magic – at last an awesomely easy way to manage your home wireless network

Network Magic is one of those software products that is quite simply a game changer. Install it on your home computers and instantly gain the power to configure, test and use all of the wireless components in your network area. Thinking about getting a wireless printer? Forget it, just install this on a computer which is hooked up to a printer and you’ll give every machine in the house (or office) access to that printer. Sure you can do this…


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Mobile Tech March 24, 2008 posted by

SlideIT – new text entry on your mobile phone goes slide happy

SlideIT. New text entry program for mobile phones looks like it could be useful (and fast at 50 wpm). Instead of tapping you slide your words out. Kind of like Clint Eastwood. Without the gun. $40.00  SlideIT is a breakthrough, speedy and intuitive way to write text on touch screen enabled devices. Instead of the current method of tapping each letter on the screen, the user points to the first letter of a word and slides the stylus to the…


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Bookmark This! March 3, 2008 posted by

Visual Thesaurus – interactive graphical dictionary and thesaurus for wordsmiths

The Visual Thesaurus comes in two flavours, online and standalone program, and lets you track the connection and meaning of words via an artfully designed graphical Java Applet interface. As per other visual products, this one relies heavily on the simple node point/line metaphor and while it initially looks attractive, I’m not really sure whether it adds value or speed to the word hunting task. And is it worth $2.95 a month subscription when you can use Thesaurus.com or the pure Roget’s…


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software January 17, 2008 posted by

Photology – automaticallly tag and filter your photos…hm…maybe…

Photology is a new program which is designed to let you filter your photos and bring some semblance of organisation to chaos. Fire it up, and it will automatically index all of the images on your hard disk. You can then search for a range of photos based on useful filters like indoors or outdoors, in or out of focus, photos containing flowers, beaches, sunsets, that sort of thing. It’s a neat idea and potentially extremely useful and I really want…


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Mobile Tech January 4, 2008 posted by

Phone Protector – remotely lock your mobile phone by SMS

Phone Protector. Install this software program on your handset (Nokia Symbian only at the moment) and locate and lock the phone if it’s been stolen or lost. It also features an online CELLID location service which can pinpoint your handset’s position down to 500 metres. More here.  In case of theft or lost you can remotely lock your mobile phone with Phone Protector by using the SMS messaging system. When your phone is locked your data is protected. It will be impossible for third parties…


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cool tech December 5, 2007 posted by

RoadTour – audio travel tours delivered direct to you car satnav system

RoadTour is a clever new software program which delivers short audio-visual travel guides to your satellite navigation system detailing nearby places of interest.  It runs from your satnav memory card and contains around 600 UK heritage sites and 900 ‘best pubs’ which should be good for the drink driving business. Unfortunately it only works with Garmin satnav devices and Windows powered GPS phones at the moment, but hopefully they’ll extend the range of compatible devices sooner rather than later. £29.95….


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Bookmark This! November 22, 2007 posted by

Snapter ICE – from digital camera to PDF in one click (or two…)

Snapter ICE turns your digital camera into a scanner. Snap a document, bang it through the program and it will colour correct, align, flatten and otherwise tweak the page into pretty fine PDF document for your total reading pleasure. I gave it a quick whirl with the free download trial version and it worked really well. You need to make sure that the background of the book or document is contrasty enough that the program works (otherwise you just get…


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software November 21, 2007 posted by

Viewranger – GPS mapping for off-roaders

Viewranger. GPS mapping software designed for walkers, cyclists, ramblers and anyone who likes to stray off the beaten path. No fast food points of interest in this puppy, we’re talking next tree on the left, after that bush type of stuff. You can record your trip, ‘share your experiences’ and most importantly track your buddy so you know where they are at all times. £24.99 and a Symbian S60 phone takes you outbacking in style.  ViewRanger is a unique mapping, navigation, tracking,…


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Bizarre November 16, 2007 posted by

Giggles Baby Program – software encourages babies to drool on your keyboard, huh?

Giggles Baby Software. Now here’s the thing. Most of us spend a fairly large amount of time trying to keep kids and babies away from our computer keyboards. And for very good reason. They dribble, spit, drop lumps of food and brown yucky stuff in between keys…the list goes on. You wouldn’t let a 40 foot great white shark near your mouse would you, well babies are 1000 times worse. Right? RIGHT? So when we hear about a software program specifically designed…


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cool tech October 8, 2007 posted by

Splashtop Instant-On Computing – banishing boot-up blues for ever?

Splashtop is a new embedded Linux package which provides instant-on access to the Internet or Skype on any computer on which it’s installed. The product gets an official release on Wednesday, but here is a preview write up of the tech running on an ASUS P5E3 Deluxe motherboard which makes interesting reading. The software bundles together a Skype client and badged Firefox browser which is accessed on power-on before the operating system. At that point you have a choice of whether to surf or…


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Mobile Tech October 1, 2007 posted by

MobileView CCTV Program – control your security cameras from your phone

MobileViewer is a Java program which gives control of up to 16 CCTV cameras from a GPRS enabled mobile phone. Yep, not only do have to suffer a shed load of cameras watching our every move, but now we’re going to get people doing the surveillance from their bath, pub, holiday home or desert palace. How perfectly beastly. And if you stick one of their £99.00 ConnectVu webcams on the other end, you’ll be able to snoop on someone in the…


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Bookmark This! September 28, 2007 posted by

iPhotoMeasure – measure anything in a photo using your digital camera or phone cam

iPhotoMEASURE is a $99.99 software program that lets you measure anything in photos you take with your digital camera. You place a small 7.5” square (DigiTarget) in the shot when taking your photo which the program then uses to calculate the measurements you want. If it works as advertised, it could be one of the single most useful photo tools ever. The company is marketing it as a professional product for garden designers, builders and anyone who has to deliver quotes…


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