Archive for February, 2008
Watch as your monitor fills with water and real 3D fish begin to swim around the screen you were just working on! It has the following features:
• Real time 3D fish that don’t just swim back and forth, but towards you and away from you, up and down. Like real fish!
• Uses realistic 3D fish models, not just flat 2D images like other screen savers do!
• Dymanic underwater lighting. So if the surface of the water ripples, so does the refracted light!
• Download additional fish with ease! The registered version lets you download fish right into the screen saver from the Settings screen on the Mac OS X version, and from the website for Windows. It couldn’t be easier!
• You can select the background you want! From your wallpaper or a random image (jpg, png or gif files), as well as the option to capture the current screen.
• Select between warm and cold, salt water fish, and fresh water fish, or mix them all together! Remember virtual fish can all survive in the same virtual water!
• The fish’s eyes move, so they now look around as they swim across your screen.
• Background Hum/Bubbling sound for that real aquarium atmosphere.
• Many options so you can customize it to your liking. With the full version, you can have as many as 40 fish swimming around at once, as long as your CPU can handle it!
• Feedback is always welcome! If this isn’t the best 3D aquarium there is, then let us know how you think it can be improved.
Having heard lots of juicy gossip and seen pictures of the new Windows Mobile 7 OS, I’m itching to have a play with it. Unfortunately for me (and everyone else) it’s not due out until 2009. Until then, why not give your OS and overhaul by revamping the interface?
Poorlyduck’s Vista Suit allows you to skin your Windows Mobile operating system to make it look like it’s bigger brother, Vista. The customisations come in the form of a Zip file with a series of folders that contain new skins for different areas of the OS. The enchancements include a Vista Action screen, Commanger, Calculator, Audio manager, Cube, Today theme, and more.
Installing everything onto your device takes a while and is a little complicated because you need to make sure that the files and folders are copied into the correct directories in Windows Mobile. There are text files with instructions inside each of the enhancement folders though, and the details are pretty clear.
Once you’ve got everything installed at set up the new skins are pretty impressive and while they don’t replicate Vista exactly, they certainly provide a flavour of the latest Windows desktop OS. Particular favourites of mine are the dialler, which adorns your on-screen keypad with shiny Vistaness; the Vista Audio Manager, which makes it much easier to organise your music; and the gorgeous Windows Media Player skin.
If you’ve got the patience and know-how to configure it, Poorlyduck Vista Suit is the perfect way to make your Pocket PC look like a new desktop PC!
Review by James Thornton
File Juicer doesn’t care what type file you drop onto it, it searches the entire file byte by byte. If it finds a JPEG, JP2, PNG, GIF, PDF, BMP, WMF, EMF, PICT, TIFF, Flash, Zip, HTML, WAV, MP3, AVI, MOV, MPG, WMV, MP4, AU, AIFF or text file inside, it can save it to your desktop or to another folder you choose.
With File Juicer you can:
• Extract images from a PowerPoint slide show
• Extract images from PDF files
• Recover images and video from erased flash cards
• Recover text from damaged files
• Extract CAB files from Pocket PC self installing EXE files
• Extract the images and html files in Safari’s cache
• Extract attachments from email archives
• Convert iPhoto’s iPod cache files to TIFF
• Extract Flash animations saved in .EXE files
• Convert zip files which have been saved as .EXE files to zip
• Extract the JPEG pictures from Canon’s RAW files
• Extract System 7 Sounds
PC World - Microsoft’s expectations are running high for the upcoming release of Windows Server 2008. Steve Ballmer, the company’s CEO, will officially launch the server software at an event in Los Angeles on Wednesday, capping months of beta testing by customers around the world.
AM TasksPlus is a Today Screen plugin that replaces the simplified tasks plug-in provided by the PocketPC manufacturer. AM TasksPlus shows compact tasks statistics or a detailed list of incomplete tasks grouped by date (Actual, Due today, Overdue and Future tasks). The list can be easily switched between the compact and detailed form.
Fully configurable
Allows you to set which tasks to show and how to show them, including the possibility to control the number and order of tasks. Different formats of view allows you to show tasks in form you like, in text and caption size you like. Tasks are filtered by categories.
Windows Mobile 5.0 compatible
Supports new PIM notification system.
Windows Mobile 2003 SE compatible
Fully supports hi-resolution screens with landscape rotation. Square screen devices are also supported.
Small footprint
Installation size takes about 60 kb for the main library, additional language packs have approximately 7 kb each, but they are not required for run.
On-screen menu
Standard operations as copy view, beam, send to bluetooth, delete task, or make task complete are accessible from Today Screen pop-up menu. Shell extensions are fully supported and included in the menu.
Language packs
Distribution currently contains English (included in main library), Slovak, Czech, Spanish, French, Dutch, Italian, Danish, Swedish, German, Norwegian, Polish and Greek language packs. These packs are not required by the plug-in to run, so you can delete them. Additional language packs are coming.
Reuters - Microsoft Corp released the latest
version of its Windows operating system for powerful servers on
Wednesday, thrusting itself into the red-hot market for
virtualization technology that allows one computer to act like
many machines.
Ever wanted to ditch your current furniture and completely redo your house? In this case you can use an interior design application to get a rough idea of what it could look like. Sweet Home 3D allows you to add and place furniture to recreate your rooms. The program offers more than 50 different pieces of furniture ranging from beds to lamps or tables. You can also import extra ones from the developer website. To create your rooms all you need to do is drag and drop elements into the grid view. Use the virtual visit tool to get a 3D preview of what it looks like.
Sweet Home 3D is easy to use but suffers from poor graphics. Most pieces of furniture look quite boxy and you shouldn’t expect to choose from the latest trends in furniture design. On the whole though, Sweet Home 3D is a solid free interior design application with lots of elements to choose from, which should help you get working on the restyling of your home.
Review by Cyril Roger
You want full access to all of your daily needed information at any time? You are looking for a program that manages those data in an easy, secure and clear way? Then you have found it!
Passwords, banking information, addresses, credit card information, online accounts… Manage all information you daily need comfortably with one single program - visKeeper. visKeeper Professional is a bundle containing visKeeper PPC and visKeeper PC!
• Secure encryption of your data with 128 Bit Twofish algorithm
• 3 optional login methods (PIN, text, picture password)
• Graphical authentication: highest security granted by the patented visual Key technology
• Tutorial and introduction for immediate use of the software’s whole functionality
• Management of any text data in clearly arranged tree structure
• Creation of any number of safe files for your data
• Easy and flexible classification system for folders, subfolders, entries and notes
• Predefined templates for passwords, online accounts, banking information, etc.
• Differentiation of your entries by individual icons
• Identification of your entries by free choice of color, font style and multiple font types
• Search function for quick navigation in large safe files
• Integrated password generator for random passwords
• Synchronisation and further editing of your data with the optional PC edition
• Compatibility with Windows Mobile 5
NewsFactor - On Tuesday, VMware pulled a virtual rabbit out of its software hat, announcing agreements to embed its ESX 3i hypervisor in servers from Dell, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, HP and IBM. The four vendors are expected to begin shipping VMware-embedded machines within the next 60 days.
InfoWorld - Some of the biggest server vendors are starting to ship machines with built-in support for VMware virtualization software. Fujitsu-Siemens began to ship servers with embedded VMware technology Tuesday, while Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM will jump on the bandwagon within 60 days.