October, 2004 Issue

October 28, 2004 Softros Systems announced version 3.4 of its all-inclusive instant messaging software intended for local and wide area networks. Softros LAN Messenger allows for fast, reliable, and what is most important, easy communications within corporate or home network environments. The application resembles somewhat popular Internet messaging solutions except for it does not require a dedicated server to run and it is not overloaded with junk-features. Softros LAN Messenger offers plain text communications and file

WinFrigate is a new breed of file managers that is more of a command center, rather then a simple "file copying and renaming automation utility". The first important distinction is that it comes with functional modules that can be plugged in or disabled. In particular, the program has built-in file viewers (DBF, RTF, HTML, DOC, Excel, Hex), smart assistant utilities (TreeNotes, StartUp Manager, Calculator, SmartPad, Directory Size Manager), file navigation options

For some people icons and cursors are just small graphics. But for a small dedicated group of icon aficionados, it's life, trade, hobby, passion and much more. IconLover 2.10 is a professional icon editor and manager created specially for these folks who like to tinker with existing icons and cursors or create new ones.

FastReport is a set of add-in components that allows software developers to add a reporting feature to their application without having to write a single string of code. The component utilizes WYSIWYG technology for creating reports. The visual report designer fully interacts with data sources (all popular DB-engines) and supports text rotation, database access, style, URLs, html tags and so on.

Spyware is probably Net's biggest problem. Luckily, there are some pretty effective anti-spyware solutions available. Unfortunately, most of them work by scanning hard-drive and removing spyware rather then preventing spyware infection. Even firewalls can't prevent spyware from getting onto PCs when it piggy-backs its way with legitimate downloads.

MetaProducts has released StartUp Organizer v. 2.5, a utility that makes it easy to inspect, edit and temporarily disable the programs that are started when Windows loads. In addition to enhancing your security by eliminating spyware and other unnecessary programs, StartUp Organizer provides a simple way to clean your boot-up process, making your system faster and more stable.

A special mail program for exchanging messages with equations? There is already such a program! Sometimes it is unbelievable what sort of stuff those scientists come up with! About half a year ago, Russian scientists from Institute of Applied Mathematics and Kurchatov Institute of Atom Energy created a mail program for scientists. It is called Scientific Letter and allows its users to exchange messages that contain complex mathematical formulas. Scientists had been dreaming of it since the mid 90's and they finally got it. It is a revolutionary step in scientific correspondence. The American Mathematical Society (AMS) has already placed Scientific Letter among the 20 most necessary programs for scientists.

Downloading and sharing music is one of the most common Internet activities. This is largely due to popularity of mp3 file format, which is dominant nowadays. It offers small file size, great sound quality and in most cases ... incomplete tags. Files that are called track1, track2, track3 and contain no information about artist, album, year of release or lyrics are familiar to most music fans. Some dedicated music aficionados fill the missing tags manually, spending about an hour for each album. Yet, this all can be done in less then a minute automatically!

Gomel, Belarus; October 15, 2004 -- Afalina of Gomel, Belarus, has released version 2.1 of Add-in Express .NET, a .NET component library for developing MS Office COM add-ins, SmartTags, and Excel RTD Servers.

October 15, 2004 - AKVIS LLC announces the release of AKVIS Stamp V.1.2, with a new operational mode for added flexibility in digital photo retouching.

Archivarius 3000 - is a full-featured application to search documents and e-mail on computer, local network and removable drives (CD, DVD and others). Documents can be searched by keyword or using query language, the same as in Internet search engines. While searching the program automatically using all forms of words, which provide full-text documents search in eight languages: English, German, Spanish, French, Italian and others.

AdventNet Inc., the leading provider of affordable database migration, network, systems, and applications management software, today announced the release of a free edition version of its industry leading SwisSQL Database Stored Procedure Migration Tools. AdventNet is the first vendor to offer stored procedure migration as part of its SwisSQL database migration suite. With the free edition, customers can migrate up to 5000 lines of stored procedures across databases such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase, and IBM DB2.

You are a novice web designer and you like the picturesque banners you see on different sites, but you don’t know how to create your own one? You have no time to master or to simply get familiar with Macromedia Flash? You need a simpler tool? Or you want to create an entertaining slide show featuring the time you spend with friend and add some music to it as well? Then this program is for you.

In one of its biggest monthly "Patch Tuesday" events yet, Microsoft posted 10 new security bulletins, seven of them for critical flaws that could allow attackers to remotely take control of a computer.

Web design does matter. But how can a website owner with good taste but lack of design skills create a killer site? With XP Web Buttons any person who does not know a single string of HTML or what it stands for can create stylish web buttons, navigation bars and menus to give website a more professional and attractive appearance.

Power Notes is a simple application; basically it creates electronic "PostIt" notes for PC owners. The program has three major components. First is Organizer that arranges otherwise chaotic pieces of information in orderly manner. Second is Scheduler, a component that is responsible for planning events and running tasks when they are supposed to be executed. The final component is Reminder. It plays an alarm sounds or displays a visual reminder (sticker) when scheduled.

October 11, 2004 (Mission, British Columbia Canada): doubleT Inc. has released Demo Builder, a production tool for flash simulations and interactive demonstrations for use in software tutorials.

Dale City, VA – September 27, 2004 - fCoder Group, Inc.'s photo collage software PhotoMix has been selected by Colorwise' "Digital Photography & Creative Collage Workshops", for use in their educational workshops.

HSLAB HTTP Monitor is a handy real-time performance monitoring and statistics analysis software application for Apache servers, which are used ubiquitously in the web hosting industry. Basically, with HSLAB monitoring system administrators always know who is currently connected (via connection tree), server operations distribution, amount of bandwidth being consumed, number of server requests per unit of time and other important server parameters.

BVS Solitaire Collection is one of the largest compilations of solitaire card games in the entire world, now with 380 games that can be played by a single person. With over 95 variations of the original solitaire games, including the ones not available anywhere else, this collection is refreshingly different form other products available on the market. Besides common Klondike, Spider and Freecell, BVS Solitaire Collection comes with Triple Union, Carpet, Forty Thieves, Monte Carlo, Russian Solitaire, Flower Garden, Golf, Cruel, Accordion, Pyramid and other less known, but equally addictive games.

Today, MP3 and WMA are the dominant music formats. Digital technologies have become an indispensable part of our life. More people listen to music using MP3 players than ever before. Desktop computers, supported by modern operating systems, are also perfect for playing music. Music files can store additional information about the music in what's called "tags", such as artist names, song names and album titles. Quite often, many files lack this information and have generic filenames, like track01.mp3, track02.mp3, etc. This is why it is often difficult to find out what is playing at the moment, or to find a track on your hard disk. MP3 players can also display tags, but this feature is often neglected.

While Anyplace Control may not look like a revolutionary, innovative or breakthrough remote PC control software, it certainly stands out from its peers. What makes this software unique is that one does not have to be a system administrator, IT specialist or computer pro to be able to run it. The program is so simple that 9 of 10 people who use the program never bothered to look into help file that comes with it. While other remote control software packages cost hundreds and thousands of dollars, and can be deployed by professionals only, Anyplace Control costs $29.95 (two licenses) and can be set up by any person who installed any software application before.

Instant messaging technology proved to be one of the most popular and productive Internet inventions. With sixty million people using IM (instant messaging) daily, corporations started to use this tool as well. Naturally, due to security issues and abundance viruses, enterprise solutions are corporate network bound. To this day, there are over 50 enterprise IM solutions (sometimes called LAN chat or LAN messaging) available on the market. PopMessenger is NOT just another one of them.