Data Crow: Media cataloger that's simply caw-esome

Almost everyone owns media. Books, DVDs, CDs, Software, it's all around us. Sometimes it can get a bit messy of what you have or don't have, and you might be looking for a way to organize it, and Data Crow can do just that.

Data Crow is a multi-featured media cataloger, designed to make it extremely easy to keep track of you various types of media. Right off the bat, it handles CDs, Movies, Books and even Software. It's pretty straightforward and easy to use, but also has the ability to be extremely customizable to an experienced user.

 Almost every single area of Data Crow is extremely well organized. It has everything divided up into "Modules" that can be enabled and disabled, so you can choose your own list of items you want to keep track of (example, "CDs", "Movies", "Books", etc). Under each module, there is also sub-Modules, like "Actors" or "Directors" for the "Movies" module, or "Artist" for the "CDs" module. Furthermore, under a module, you have a list of the items, like for example, I have "Extreme Days....I-Robot....Monty Python....." under my Movies, but you can also choose different ways to sort, like by "Actors", "Year", "Director", or just even by "Title".

The thing that (A) most impressed me, and (B) drew me to Data Crow is the ability to import an item. There's a TON of information for media items. Instead of entering in a DVD's title, director, actors, front cover, play length and other stuff that you might want, you can also just import all that data with a few clicks. The "Item Wizard" lets you search various online databases for the item that you have right in front of you. You can use the ISBN for things like books, and the UPC (barcode) for CDs, Movies, Software, etc. It's extremely accurate (from when I've used it). It uses well known sites like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, IMDB, SourceForge.net and gets almost every field available (depending on what site you choose). If the websites miss something or get it wrong, you can always manually edit a field.

The only other features I can think of to mention are Report and Filter. Data Crow can generate amazing reports in either PDF or HTML of an entire Module (ie, CDs, Movies). Very nice, if you need a detailed list of every CD/Book/DVD you own. It also has Filtering, which will bring up only the Movies/CDs/Books that match your filter, whether it be Actor, Author, Director, Title, etc.

The only thing that I was disappointed in was the ability to create your own module. Sounds great, right? Yeah, I thought the same thing too. I wanted to make a module dedicated to Steam games, but I found the process extremely difficult, and in the end, it just did not work out at all like I hoped. That being said, please don't let that taint your vision of Data Crow. I actually did create a good module, it just sorted the fields alphabetically, which put "Title" halfway down the list other than on top.

Otherwise, it really is a wonderful program. It's written in JAVA, meaning that it is cross platform. To be honest, Data Crow is the first program that's written in Java that I actually enjoy profusely. Other programs do their job well, but they still have that Java-y feel to them, and they're often slow. Not Data Crow. It can actually be skinned to where it hardly feels like Java, and it's extremely fast.
On top of that, Data Crow is portable, and open source. What more could you ask?

Visit Data Crow website for Download

Listmas: Just in time for next Christmas!

This last Christmas, I was searching for a freeware to create an extremely easy Christmas List, but I couldn't find any*. So I decided to write one. Listmas is a one-of-a-kind Christmas/year-round gift-planning freeware.

First off, let me say that Listmas saves everything to a file as you are typing it, so you'll never lose any data. That means that when you fire up Listmas for the first time, it will ask you to either create a new list, or open an old one. If you've never use Listmas before, you click "New". Listmas v1.0.2009 saves lists in a new format, LMF (stans for ListMas File). Anyway, once you pick a new file, you see Listmas! Yay! You'll see a bunch of fields at the bottom of the window with text like "Item", "Person", or "Store" above them, but don't type in them just yet.

In order to add a new item, right click in the Listview (the empty space) and click "New". You should see a new row added to the listview that's completely blank, except for 5 grey stars. Now you can hop on those edit fields. Make sure you have that new entry in the listview selected, and then you can start editing the fields below. As you type, you'll see that whatever you're changing is being updated in the listview row as well.
Here's the fields that are available:

• Item: name of the item
• Price: price of the item
• Person: recipient of the gift
• Priority: how important it is that you get this gift
  
• Store: where you bought it from
• URL: the web address to that item, if you're buying online. Can be launched by the button to the right
  
• Note: any other information you want to remember

One of the nice things about listmas is that nothing is required. Instead of forcing you to enter an Item name or a Price, you can leave whatever fields blank that you want.

Once you get a gift, you can mark it "Got" by either checking its "Got it!" box when you have it selected in the listview, or you can right click on a row and click "Got it". A "got" gift will turn to a different color, making it very easy to see what you have and what you don't have.

That's about it! Pretty simple, eh?

There are a few more features that I made sure to throw in which are all available in "Preferences" under Options.

• Currency: if you want, you can actually have Listmas keep track of those dollar signs (or whatever currency symbol you use). In version 1.0.2009, Listmas has dollars, cents, pounds, and yen. Or if you want to keep track of it yourself, you can choose "N/A".
• Grid: if it helps you stay more organize, you can add a grid to the list.
• Done color: by default, "got" items are yellow, but you can change that to a variety of colors, or even white, if you don't want the color to change.
• Open last used file: Listmas is designed to work that you open list files either from the simple "New/Open" dialog, or by passing them as an argument. But if you want, you can just make it remember the last list that you had open, and it will open that one.
• Show columns: the thing that I really wanted to add was customization. What if someone wants to create a list for just one person, so they don't need the "Person" column? Or what if someone doesn't shop online, so "URL" is irrelevant? Well, Listmas lets you hide whatever columns you want. This doesn't mean that the field will be hidden, just the column. That means that if you hide "Note", in the list, the "Note" column will be gone, but there will still be the "Note" space below the list. The reason for this is that I thought maybe the list could just be an "at a glance" view, and then if someone wanted to view all of the information, they click on the entry in the list and see the rest below.

It really is simple, but it's also very nice. It's not perfect, but from what I can see, it's the only list program out there. It's open source written in Autohotkey, portable (mostly, but I'll fix it all the way in the future), and it's very tiny, at only 250kb in size.

I still have a few ideas, if Listmas gets enough people to try it out and tell me they liked it. Here's a few plans that I am.....well, planning.

• "Shipping" column (for online buyers. I always like knowing how much I'm spending on shipping vs the price of the item.)
• "Date" column (for the year-round aspect of Listmas. Maybe even a reminder, like for birthdays.)
• Remembering & restoring column placement and width. (That would actually be pretty tricky, but I'd like to get there some day.)
• Generating an HTML report (I've already toyed with this, and it actually is not so hard. Just exporting everything to a very nice, presentable page that the user could print if they're going shopping, that also contains data like "Total amount spent". The problem is, the reports look....bleh. I'm really bad at HTML, so it looks very ugly. Plus, I'm having trouble coming up with enough data for an interesting report. I'd need some help on this one.)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
-CodeByter: *The one list program I did find was by a site called CodeByter, and I drew alot of inspiration from it to make Listmas (like the colored rows, thought I actually didn't think I could pull that off.) It was a wonderful list program, but it had a few things that I wanted changed, so that's why I wrote Listmas. Otherwise, I owe alot to him. His website is down, for some reason, which makes me terribly sad.
-UselessDreamer: For helping to point me in the right direction for putting images in a listview....and for the stars....sorry for stealing!
-Titan: For his amazing anchor script, which is like the oxygen for my programs. My windows would never be resizable without you, Titan.
-tkoi: For his Image Button Script. My GUIs are pretty thanks to you, tkoi.
-evl: For his amazing Listview color script. Didn't believe it possible (in AHK) until you proved me wrong.
-PhilHo: For his astounding listview-column-swap script, allowing me to add the stars, and take Listmas to the next level in the future.

Visit FreewareWire Software Downloads page for Listmas v1.0.2009

Skeys: Specialize your Special Keys!

A while ago, I bought a keyboard to use with my netbook, and when it came it had many function keys that I was not used to ("Special" keys, if you will), because I had not used a keyboard with special keys for several years (certainly not since learning Autohotkey.) As I tested them out, I found that some of them opened a web browser that I would rather not use, or that brought up an e-mail client instead of Gmail (which I use), or even that the volume + and - seemed to be swapped. So I decided to do a little coding and rebind it to what I wanted. That was easy enough, but then I thought, "What if I wrote a program for this?"

Skeys (pronounced like "skiis") is the result of me itching to code and getting a new piece of hardware. It's actually been in the works for quite some time, even "Stable", per se, but I haven't written about it or posted it on FreewareWire Software for several reasons which I will not name. Anyway, I think it should be ready now.


Setup.
Before you can jump in to using your special keys, you have to figure out which ones you want Skeys to use and which key is which. When I was thinking about how to do this best, I was a tad befuddled at first. Of course I could name them things like "E-mail" or "Web browser", but where's the fun in that? (Plus, I wasn't sure if every single keyboard had all those keys do the same thing.) So instead, I took a different approach for identifying the keys you want. On the "Setup Screen", there are 18 buttons that all have "Use This Key" on them. When you press one of the special keys, the button for that key will change to "!!!Use This Key!!!" letting you know that that is the button for that key.

In addition, I also threw in an "Autocheck" feature; if "autocheck" is on, when you press one of the special keys, it will automatically press down the button too, meaning that you can configure which keys you want in under 20 seconds, easily.

The last feature for setup is Nicknaming. Again, naming keys "E-mail" or "Play/pause" is so droll, so I thought "Why not let the user be able to name them?" So when you find which button is for the key you want to use, right click it, and you assign that key its "Nickname", which will make it 100 times easier to identify.


The Heart of Skeys.
Finally we've come to the heart of Skeys. I wanted to make Skeys straightforward for the less computer-savy, but functional enough to be customizable to the fullest potential. The reason that you check buttons and whatnot is because I was writing Skeys and I got to its "heart", and I thought "Why should the user be worried about 18 different keys when they maybe just want to use one?" So using the Setup screen, you can handpick which keys you want to use, and then from then point on, those are the only keys you have to worry about.

So anyway, you can select the keys that you picked in the setup from a drop down list, and every key will either have the Nickname that you gave it (aha! See? Isn't it handy already?) or it's "reference code". [Every "Special key" has a reference code that is "SC" followed by three letters/numbers.] When you pick one of the keys from the list, you can then add actions that will be performed when the key is pressed. And
My.
Goodness.
There are a ton I threw in. I wanted it to be completely feature filled, so here they are:

• Open File/Program
• Power Function
• Logoff
• Switch User
• Standby
• Hibernate
• Hibernate/Standby [uses Standby as a backup if Hibernation is turned off]
• Shutdown
• Restart
• Send keystrokes
• Send
• Paste
•  Volume Function
• Mute
• Unmute
• Toggle mute
• Up
• Down
• Popup
• Center
• Bottom right
• Bottom left
• Top right
• Top left
• Skeys
• Show Skeys
• Show Skeys setup
• Disable Skeys
• Disable this hotkey
• Exit Skeys
• Wait

 Most of those are self-explanatory and don't have any configurable options, but others also do, which I will talk about now.
-OPEN FILE/PROGRAM: Choose whatever file/program you want to open/run. You can either manually type in the path to the file, or click the ellipses button and navigate there. Please note that in the "Select File" dialog, you may choose either "Programs (*.exe)" or "All Files (*.*)" from the drop down list below the filename field.
-"SEND"/"PASTE" KEYSTROKES: Under the submenu of "Send keystrokes", "Send" will "type" whatever you want. The only difference between "Send" and "Paste" is that "Paste" types whatever you have specified instantly, like pasting from the clipboard, while "Send" types one character at a time. I'll talk more about this later, because it's so massive!
-"WAIT": Simply waits, doing nothing, forever however long you specify. The time is in seconds, but is accurate to milliseconds (0.001 seconds). Don't go below that accuracy, though (ie "1.000000000001"), because that is just beyond the limitations of Autohotkey (and it's just plain ridiculous).



Sending keystrokes.
I only make this a separate section because it is so completely massive, and I am quite proud of it. You can send just about anything in terms of keystrokes, every single key on the keyboard from "A" to "Z" and from "1" to "0". But wait, there's more! You can also pick the "Other" keys, ones that aren't as straightforward.
-COMMON: Basically standard keys that have one function, and the arrow keys. Examples: Enter, Escape, Tab, Delete, Space, etc.
-F KEYS: All F keys, up to 24. Even if you don't have a keyboard that has 1-24, you can still use 13-24.
-NUMPAD: All keys and variations on the numpad. Note that, in terms of textual output, a "Numpad 7" is the same as a regular "7". The difference is only if a game uses the Num keys, or such. Also note that these options are uneffected by Numlock.
-TOGGLE: Contains the "Locks" and the "Modifiers". Although it should be obvious "Shift down" will act as though Shift has been pressed down until "Shift up" is indicated. A regular "Shift" will stay down only until the immediate following character, such as "{Shift}rs" will produce "Rs" (if capslock is off.)  A regular "Shift" will act like the user pressed and release Shift before sending the next key. Essentially, sending something like "{Shift}rs" is the same as sending "{Shift Down}{Shift Up}rs". (Thanks to Tony for catching that for me!)
-BRACES: (or brackets....) Because braces/brackets are used for "other" keys, they also become "other" keys themselves. In order to use a brace, just put it inside braces! Example: {{}Hi there!{}}     will result in        {Hi There!}

The coolest part about the key sending function is that it's very well organized. There is a huge menu with sub-menus and options that you can press, but you can also just get the gist of most keys and be able to type them in yourself. For example,
Enter = {Enter}
F2 = {F2}
Numpad - = {Numpad -}
If that isn't simple, I don't know what is! But if you're ever confused about what a key should be, the menu is there.




Multi-action.
While writing Skeys, I thought "You know what would be even cooler than Skeys being able to do one of those things? It being able to do more." Every single key in Skeys has not only one command it can execute, but a list of commands. For example, you can make one key (1) mute the volume, (2) send "I love FreewareWire!", and (3) send the computer to standby, in that order. You can add (theoretically) as many commands as you want, and Skeys will execute them from top to bottom.
But please let me make myself clear: Skeys is not meant to execute a long string of commands, and therefore is not supported in doing so. Please don't complain to me if you have a list of 20 commands that aren't being executed right.


Disabling Skeys.
If you want to temporarily disable a hotkey, go to the Skeys main window (NOT the Setup), and just uncheck the "Enabled" box for that key. The effect will be immediate, and the Special key will do its original intention outside of Skeys.

If you want to disable ALL of Skeys, Double click on the tray icon, or right click the tray and click "Enabled". If Skeys is disabled, the icon will be greyed out, and all of the Skeys will do their original purpose outside of Skeys. In other words, when Skeys is disabled, Special keys will act as if Skeys is not even running.

If you want to make a special key do nothing, mark in in Setup, then just check its "Enabled" box in the main window without adding any actions. This will make Skeys take over that key from its original purpose, but then give it 0 commands to do, meaning it will do nothing.

Icing on the cake.
On top of all that, there are options that I included to make Skeys as streamlined as possible.
-Start with Windows: If you get to the point where you love Skeys so terribly that you need it all the time, there's an easy menu option for that.
-Start Disabled: If for some reason you don't want Skeys to be active when it starts, you can make it start disabled.
-Skip Setup: This is where it really starts to make the experience great. Once you get the feel of Skeys and you routinely use the same special keys, you can make Skeys skip the "Setup" screen, meaning it will go straight to the "heart" window.
-Start in tray: Maybe you are so used to Skeys that you don't even need to see the configuration screen. That's ok, check this option, and it will will skip both the Setup screen and the Heart screen and will sit quietly in your tray.


Final notes.
Just a few things that I want to say.
-PORTABLE: Skeys is portable, in that it does not need any external files and it leaves nothing on your computer. However, certain things, like launching a program with a Skey, will not work because the path is not relative.
-Open Source: Yay for freedom!
-Untested/Unstable: I've tested Skeys to an extent, but not heavily. There's already things that I know that don't work amazingly well, like the popups.
-Messy code: To be honest, I am a messy code writer and it's been a while since I actually wrote Skeys, so the code is very messy. (Hopefully a few programming courses next semester will whip me into shape.)

Acknowledgements.
Just a few people I want to thank.
Xoxide - For making a freakin sweet, glowy keyboard to write Skeys.       
Titan - For his ABSO-FRIKKIN-LUTELY A-MAZING anchor script, whichout which my programs could never be resized.
Yook - For his AMAZING Balloontip script, letting you display a balloon any current control.



That's about it. I really love Skeys, possibly the most out of all the programs I've written just because of how limitless it is (and because, honestly, I'm really proud of the keystroke sending.) I hope if you decide to take a look at Skeys that you'll enjoy it. It's a fun little app that I believe has great potential.

[NOTE: Over the last two days, I've compiled and recompiled more times than I can count because I keep finding problems that I thought I had fixed a long time ago. So what that means to you is, Skeys is way less stable than I thought, so if you find an error (or errors), don't be surprised, but also let me know. PLEASE let me know. I really want to make it the most usable it can be, and I can only do that if I fix the bugs.]

Visit FreewareWire Software Downloads page for Skeys v1.1

Music Animation Machine: MAM your MIDIs!

MIDI files are pretty nifty, if you think about it. Really, they are just directions that tell what to play, like sheet music for the concert pianist. You might not find that fascinating at first glance, but after seeing what MAM can do with that sheet music, you'll do a double take.

Music Animation Machien (shortened to "MAM") is a MIDI player, but it's more than that. MIDI's might be considered to be sound files, but MAM definitely makes them something more. In addition to being able to play MIDI files, it also has a visualizer, and a pretty sweet one at that. It has 12 different views you can choose, differing from the regular piano roll-esque dancing lines to views that really have music theory behind them. Either way, no matter what you choose, you can most certainly say "Pretty colors" to any of them. MAM takes a midi file and turns it into a musical screensaver.

You can change colors, show the note start lines, and choose whether the notes are colored due to pitch or by what track it is. If you choose pitch, you can set the tonic, thus changing the colors of the notes. You can also view the track by right clicking in certain views.

MAM also has a limited ability to accept MIDI input as well. For example, it has the ability for "Live play", meaning that it will create the visualization as you play on your MIDI controller. Let me be clear, though, in saying that MAM is not a MIDI editor. You can save files, but all it does is save the color preferences for later usages of MAM.

It's the niftiest MIDI player I've yet seen. The only thing that I'm kind of said about is that it doesn't have a fullscreen option. If it did, you could rig it to be your screensaver, opening a random MIDI and taking up the full screen. But alas. Anyway, one of the other things about MAM that is great is that it is very tiny, weighing in less than 1MB, and is portable.

It's really nifty. There are a ton of videos of neat works that are just played through MAM. It's fun to search around and find works you like and then toy with the color and view settings until you get a really great lightshow.

Visit Music Animation Machine website for download

GIMP: Move over, Photoshop

To those of us who are not rich enough to afford Photoshop, or corrupt enough to torrent it, there is GIMP. GIMP is one of the best freeware of all time. It is so amazingly huge that it's almost impossible to explain the advantages in one blog post. But I'll try.

Please know that (1) I am not a graphics designer, and (2) I've never actually tried photoshop for a serious project. That being said, there are many people who are skilled in graphics design and photo manipulation that could write a far better review that I'm about to give, and I agree with them 100%. However, I'm still going to attempt to voice my opinion from the viewpoint of someone who just wants a freeware that can manipulate photos, not one that can compete with a $$$$$$$$$ commercial product.

So on with the show! The first thing you notice about the GIMP is that it requires GTK, which means that it has that "Linux type look" on Windows (and Linux as well). Some people aren't used to that, and it might scare them away, but it is very nice if you can deal with a little GNOME-ish appearance.

Next, the GIMP can handle a ton of different filetypes. It has its own, XCF, but it can also handle pretty much any image file you can image, from Photoshop files down to a gzip archive. It has tons of different tools, many mimicking Photoshop, and you can download things like fonts, brushes, and other little gadgets to further personalize your editing skills. It has a ton of filters which are being updated with each release, and it supports layers (obviously).

There are a few things wrong with the GIMP though. First is the startup time. It takes about a minute to start on my EEE PC, even more if you have a ton of fonts and brushes and such. Also, it's actually fairly buggy, and has crashed on me several times in the middle of work. That's not to say that it crashes every time, just several times. And any computer person knows, a program crashing before you've been able to save is never a happy thing.

The last thing I have to criticize GIMP for is the lack of user friendability. (Is that a word? Well, it is now.) Out of all of the freeware programs I've come across, the GIMP scared me the most when I first opened it. I mean, before GIMP, I used MS Paint, and jumping between those two is like going straight from crawling to running a marathon. It doesn't make it any easier that the "Help" file is not included in the download. However, there is plenty of support available on the GIMP Talk forums, and even books about GIMP (which are far more interesting than you'd think, in my experience).

Right now, it might seem like GIMP is a mediocre program since I've spent about half the time talking about it's flaws. But that's not the case. GIMP is an amazing program, but it's extremely complex. It's not as easy as just saying "Well, it has a nice blur filter," because GIMP really doesn't have one use. Heck, it doesn't have an intended use, really. GIMP is the most unbounded freeware utility you will find this side of Linux. The possibilities are endless.

Not only is GIMP 95% of everything you want in a (freeware) image editor, it's also cross platform, portable, and open source.

This is probably the worst review I've done (which is saying something), but I figured that if I put out a crappy review, someone smarter than me would offer to write their own and let me post it (giving them credit, of course). The way I see different users using GIMP is like this: if you don't know that much about GIMP, then this review might help turn you on to a great utility that you can begin to learn how to use. If you do know a ton about GIMP and think this review is oversimplified, then you're smarter than me, what are you doing here expecting profound image editing advice? I am no guru.

PS - If I get so much as one comment saying how much better Photoshop is than GIMP, my head is going to explode. Look at the title of this blog. This is "FreewareWire," not "$700CommercialSoftwareWire".

Visit GIMP website for download

Raindrop: Drop what you're doing and relax.

The sound of a raindrop is very soothing. So it makes sense that a freeware named "Raindrop" would be soothing as well. Raindrop creates "natural ambient sounds" for relaxation, sleep, and meditation. It does this by providing several two interesting features:

Background sound: Raindrop comes with several WAV files such as an air conditioner, a summer night, and wind noise. You can set up to three of them, and adjust each of their volume's indepdently of each other. It also has some sounds that are more for meditiation, like chanting and a "voice lullaby." Let me just say that, for things such as "Electric fan", they are very realistic, and don't sound at all like it is just a looping file.

Binaural beats: I am not an expert, but here's my explanation. If your ear here's two tones that are very close to each other in frequency (with 30 hertz), sometimes, it can make a mistake when it sends the information to your brain, giving you the impression that there is a "beat." That is a binaural beat. Binaural beats are known for being very relaxing when using low frequencies.

So anyway, Raindrop allows you to set two different tone frequencies (for example, 160hz and 165hz, and it will play the two tones out of the Left and Right speakers, creating a binaural beat, which can soothe and relax you.

The nice thing about Raindrop is that it's extremely customizable. You can have several ambient sounds going, but also some binaural beats as well. Not only that, you can set the individual volume for all three ambient sounds and all three binaural beats. You can also "automize" Raindrop by adding a "starting silence", a fade in/out time, and a "Stop after ___ seconds" with the option of shutting down after it stops.

Overall, Raindrop is an adorable little program. It's nice for someone who wants background noise, without the background noise-causer (like a fan), or for someone who just wants to relax. It's written in Borland Delphi, with the source being freely available, and it is portable to boot. The program is very tiny, at only 400kb, but the WAV files do add on to that, to about 20mb total. However, if you wanted it just as a binaural beats generator, or just wanted one WAV and trashed the rest, you could shrink it down to 1mb. It uses around 1-2mb of RAM when being run, which means that it is very good at creating background ambience in the background of your PC.

Visit Raindrop (mayakron's deep) website for download

xkcd Wallpaper Randomiser: Hat Guy approved.

If you're not familiar with the webcomic xkcd, it's an extremely witty, funny, nerdy comic strip that really only makes sense to geeks geeks might enjoy more, but anyone can appreciate the wonderful humor it creates. xkcd Wallpaper Randomiser does exactly what it says: it randomises a different xkcd comic as the desktop wallpaper. There's a ton of nice things about it.

Auto-cache: Instead of having to download every comic, xkcd actually downloads them for you and keeps them in a cache folder. Of course, if you, for some reason, don't want that, you can manually delete the cache folder's contents every now and again. But anyway, it only downloads the comics once, then uses the saved version.

Preview pane: Kinda nice, but also kinda useless. You can really only see a preview of the current comic, and it's very small, so the image is blurry. Still kinda nice though.

Exclude: If you come across a comic that is not so funny, you can add it to an "excluded" list, which will prevent it from being used again.

Parameters: True, it does have a user interface, but what's also nice about xWR (wow, I am a lazy abbreviator, aren't I?) is that you can pass two different parameters to make it automatically change. Passing "-random" as an argument will not bring up the GUI, and will just cycle to a new wallpaper. Passing "-silent" will make it ignore any windows that might pop up, if you're not connected to the internet for downloading a new comic.

So this means you can make shortcuts, and even add it to your startup to change the wallpaper.

There are only two limitations, and they are both planned and reasonable.

Can't change wallpaper settings: It usually works best to set the settings to "Center", and the surrounding color to either black or white. But xWR can't do that. Really not a big deal, just go into the Control Panel and change it yourself.

Doesn't automatically change: By that, I mean that with other wallpaper changers, you can set it to automatically change every __ minutes, but xWR is a one time deal. You have to click a button or run the -random parameter every time you want it to change. Really, not a problem, just don't expect it to do things like Wallpaper Master or Wallpaperer or any other wallpaper utility. It's name is xkcd Wallpaper Randomiser," and that's exactly what it does; no more, no less.

Probably the best part about xkcd WR is that it's tiny. It's only 28kb in size, but you do have to account for the image sizes, which can easily climb to several megabytes. Still, it's extremely small if you routinely clean your cache. It's also open source, written in C#.NET 2005, to those who are interested. I'm not entirely sure, but I believe it is portable. I'm just a simple man, but I don't think that it requires the .NET framework, but maybe I'm completely wrong. (It does happen. Quite often, actually.) So it might be portable, it might not.

xkcd Wallpaper Randomiser is written by a fan of the xckd comic strip, so it is available on his website.

Visit xkcd Wallpaper Randomiser (Apathy Sketchpad) website for download

MobaLiveCD: Aaaaand we're live!

MobaLiveCD is a very unique way to run a virtual machine. The unique thing about it is that it's portable, at only 1.6mb in size. It actually uses Qemu, a different virtual machine engine in and of its own, but it uses it in such a way that makes it portable.

Portability.

The cool part about MobaLiveCD is that it's not only portable, it's designed to be portable. That is, it has an option to install a "Right-click association," meaning that you can right click any ISO files and it will show an option for MobaLiveCD. But the real nice thing is that you can add and remove that association with a click of the mouse. Click "Install" and it's there, click "Uninstall" and it's gone.

Functionality.

So once you pick your ISO file, you have an option of creating a virtual hard disk for it. Your live CD pops up in a window, just as it would if it were on a separate computer. That's about it! Moba makes it really easy to run your live ISOs. The window is NOT resizable, but you can go fullscreen, which is very nice to see how the live CD will look on an actual monitor, not in a window.

Limitations.

The point of MobaLiveCD is not actually to be a virtual machine that is used for an extended period of time (ie, installing Linux inside of Windows and using it often), but instead, it is meant to "test live CDs". Because it's not meant to be as complicated as other virtual machines, there are some limitations. First off, it can only handle ISO files. Secondly, it has the bare bones in terms of customization (RAM amount, USB devices, etc). Lastly, it doesn't appear to be able to boot from a virtual hard disk. You might be wondering "Then why do you have an option to create one?" I'm wondering that as well....I'm guessing it's because maybe you want to attempt to install (like from an Ubuntu Live CD) and you want to give it a test try, then you can. But otherwise, it looks like it's more of a "session-by-session" deal.

So for being a tool to "test Live CDs", it performs EXTREMELY well. Compared to other virtual machine programs, it may seem a little limited, but I prefer the term "lite". Great for if you want to just try out an ISO for a new Linux distribution, or just like to keep a VM program on hand at all times.

Visit MobaLiveCD (Mobatek) website for download

KCleaner: Clean, K?

KCleaner is a disk cleaner from the same people that made SUMo. It is very much like CCleaner, in that it cleans unneeded files, freeing up disk space. It has many different options to clean, such as the Recycle Bin, Service Pack Uninstallers, and a ton of Caches from all types of programs (Firefox, Songbird, XnView, even TomTom).

There are two very nice features that make KCleaner its own brand of disk cleaner. The first is the option for secure deletion. KCleaner lets you choose from either regular deletion, 1 pass, or 3 pass deletion, and then deletes all junk files in that way.

The other unique feature of KCleaner is "automatic" mode. When you do this, KCleaner will automatically clean every certain number of hours, meaning that you don't ever have to worry about cleaning again (as long as you have the settings how you want them). KCleaner can also minimize to the tray, and also start with Windows, so it can keep your computer clean with little to no user interface.

But it also can be very hands-on. It shows every listed file, and you can check/uncheck individual files that you don't want to be deleted. It actually seems to pick up more than CCleaner, since it just now found 700mb that are dispensible, whereas CCleaner found 200mb (but that may have to do with the options). KCleaner is about 1.7mb in size, 2mb RAM on idle, 5mb on scanning/cleaning.

On top of all this, KCleaner is portable, just click the 7-zip/Zip icon on the KC Softwares download page. I have to say, I love CCleaner and Piriform, but KCleaner looks like it might split my heart when it comes to disk cleaning. (Forgive me, CCleaner!)

Visit KCleaner (KC Softwares) website for download

GhostZilla: A Happy Haunting

GhostZilla is a web browser based on (if you can't tell by the name) Mozilla. GhostZilla is different, though, in that it is designed to be an extremely secretive web browser. GhostZilla is actually so good at what it does, it will probably redefine your view of "secretive."

Before talking about why GhostZilla is so secretive, let's first talk about it as a web browser. GhostZilla is actually quite dated, originally created as shareware in 2002, then gone freeware (woohoo!), then open source (woo-hoohoo!), then shut down (aww...). It does, however, have many features that are still around as must-haves; tabbed browsing, for example. Even though the tab bar is extremely small, there is indeed tabbed browsing support in GhostZilla, as well as bookmarks, history, password memory, form memory, customizable homepage, and proxy configuration (essentially everything that was in Mozilla 1.0.1). So if asked the question "Is GhostZilla a full-fledged web browser?", I would say "Yes".

I would like to quickly say that though GhostZilla is a "full-fledged" browser, it does take some getting used to. First, the menu bar ("File", "Edit", "Options", etc) is extremely skinny so that it does not draw the eye's attention. Likewise, the tab bar is MUCH thinner than any browser I've seen, and does not show a site's favicon by the title. Just thought I'd throw that in there.

Now for the secretive side. Rather than having it's own window, GhostZilla actually fits inside other windows, almost in a "parasitic" manner. The whole logic behind that is that if you open a window of a program that is easily recognizable, (like say, Mozilla Thunderbird), you can open GhostZilla inside the that program, giving the impression that you are not surfing the web, but doing something else (like checking your mail). Of course, GhostZilla is also secretive because it hides itself completely, even from the taskbar. When you want to use it again, touch the left side of the screen, then the right side, then the left again (a left-right-left motion). This will bring GhostZilla up inside whatever window is active. To hide GhostZilla, just move your mouse outside of GhostZilla's window, and it will become hidden again.

So that's how GhostZilla hides. But what about when you're using it? How is it really that secretive? Levels. There are 6 "Hiding Levels" that can be chosen from in GhostZilla. Here they are (almost directly copied from the GhostZilla manual):
Level 1: Looks regular, like a normal web browser.
Level 2: Web pages are shown in black and white. Big pictures are hidden, except for on mouseover.
Level 3: Same as Level 2, except big pictures are black and white.
Level 4: Same as Level 2, except pages are gray and white.
Level 5: Same as Level 4, except big pictures are black and white.
Level 6: Page is gray, pictures are gray and pale (and only shown on mouseover).

As you can see, each greater level adds something more to make the page less noticeable to the eye. The biggest eye catcher is -of course- pictures, which GhostZilla takes care of by auto-hiding them. If you use Level 6, the page is so gray, one could scarcely believe that you are checking Facebook, rather than doing your taxes (or some other boring activity). Or if you want to just use a browser that hides uber quick, use Level 1.

GhostZilla even handles ads. Pop-ups are not even allowed to exist, and on-page ads are handled by the "big picture" rules with the Levels.


So right about now, you're probably interested in this spy-browser. But then you think, "What about after GhostZilla is gone? What about footprints that lead back to me?" I mentioned history, bookmarks, etc, but does that mean that those are all left on the disk when you leave? Well, as for things like the cache (temporary internet files), they are "[stored] in Windows temporary directory", and GhostZilla "removes them all on exit". So it's kinda up to you; do you trust having files on the host computer, even temporarily? If so, then don't worry. If not, then perhaps a more paranoid browser is more your style.

But what about the "profile"? Bookmarks, history, and all that jazz? Well, GhostZilla lets you store all of that info in an encrypted archive. Because it is protected and not GhostZilla specific, no one looking at it will be able to tell that it's for GhostZilla. Of course, when GhostZilla came out, GhostZilla was meant to be run on a CD, and it was amazing that "you can choose to store the archive on a floppy!" Nowadays, you can have both GhostZilla and the profile on a USB drive. But anyway, it IS possible to save your bookmarks, preferences, and all that profile stuff, and it IS possible to use it next time. When you first start GhostZilla, it will ask if you want to load a profile, in which case you can if you have one.


Now let me take a brief moment, Freewarenites, to give a few precations. (A) GhostZilla is not untrackable. Schools and businesses and such log every web site access that is made, no matter the browser. This means that if you're planning on visiting inappropriate websites (whatever "inappropriate" means for your circumstances) and want to use GhostZilla to get away with it, you're going to be sorely disappointed when you get detention/fired/thrown in jail. And the most important part is DON'T COME CRYING TO ME IF YOU USE GHOSTZILLA AND GET YOURSELF IN TROUBLE. Fair warning. (B) GhostZilla may not be "legal". GhostZilla is no longer actively supported, and its home website is down and out. I do know that GhostZilla came under scrutiny from Mozilla (because it was trying to sell GhostZilla for $20...when it was based on open-source software...made by Mozilla). However, it came back online after it removed some of the proprietary stuff. However, it then again went offline in 2007, and has not been seen since. I don't know why it's gone. It might be a legality issue (though I doubt it). But just know that if Mozilla is still upset about GhostZilla being distributed, well, then I'm screwed. But you might wanna watch your back too.


GhostZilla is really a "full-fledged" web browser. It weighs about 26MB (which is a little lighter compared to Firefox or Chrome), and uses a good ~50MB of RAM, maybe more, depending on what you're doing. The best part of GhostZilla is that it is portable, because it makes it ten times more useful to be discreet on a computer that does not have GhostZilla installed. It's one of the most interesting web browsers you'll ever come across, and -even though I've never personally tried Mozilla (*gasp*)- I do love the feeling of having a Mozilla Coporation product under my fingers.

(As I mentioned, GhostZilla's homesite is gone. However, A+ Freeware is freakin' amazing enough to not only allow me to discover GhostZilla, but also to host the last known version, v1.0.1)
Visit GhostZilla (host site A+ Freeware) website for download

Cool PDF Reader: It's a PDF reader. It's cool.

Cool PDF Reader is probably the smallest PDF reader in existance. Here's some of the things that make it what it is:

Uber tiny: Some might say Foxit Reader is small, but "small" is a relative term. Foxit is 6mb. Cool PDF Reader is 600kb. Wow. That's freakin tiny.

Portable: Because it's so tiny and doesn't use registry, it's easily portable.

Straightforward: I mean, it's a PDF reader. It views PDFs. You can print, zoom, rotate, jump to pages, have a slideshow, and view the properties (creation date, encryption level, etc). That's really about it.

Convert to image/Extract Text: The only thing that might not be so "standard" is the ability to save a PDF as an image (JPG, PNG, BMP, etc) and the ability to extract text and save it into a TXT file.


Obviously, because it's so small, it lacks a few things that other PDF readers might have.
Chapters list: Most readers have a chapters/page list that you can view and jump to. Cool PDF reader does not have that.
"Smooth" view: Perhaps a poor term for it, but most PDF viewers view it like a Word document: you scroll down, and the next page is right below it, and you can scroll from one page to the next. Cool PDF Reader only shows one page at a time.
Mouse/key support: Strangely enough, you can't use the mouse wheel or arrow keys to scroll around when you are zoomed in.


But really, all of those are things that are nice, but not necessary. Cool PDF Reader is definitely faster than most PDF viewers (at least of the ones I've seen); the reason why is -because Cool PDF Reader only views one page at a time, when you open a PDF with it, it only loads the first page, and then loads the rest of the pages as you change to them. That mean that although Cool PDF Reader might be faster on the start, if you're viewing a PDF with a ton of pages, it might be slower in the long run (not to mention harder to navigate, since there's no chapter list). But if you only use one-page PDFs, or rarely use PDFs at all, Cool PDF Reader may work out for you perfectly.

Visit Cool PDF Reader (Cool PDF Software) website for download

FLVMDI: This will only hurt a little.

FLVMDI is an FLV Meta Data Injector. Sometimes, an FLV file will lack certain "Meta Data" qualities, which then limit what players can do. Sometimes, it will lack the ability to seek through the video, other times, players won't be able to play the video at all. FLVMDI allows you to "inject" this missing Meta Data and fix the FLV files.

I'm not going to pretend that I'm smart enough to know enough about Meta Data to pretend to know what I'm talking about. (That does actually make sense. Read it again.) I do know, however, that Meta Data includes things like the duration, the width and height, the framerate, and more of the like.

FLVMDI is a command line tool, meaning that in order to use it, you must pass arguments to it. Normally, I just drag the FLV onto FLVMDI, meaning it will use the default settings, and overwrite the file. There are handles, however, that can further enhance how you treat your FLV files.

/x - will create an XML file with all of the metadata of the input file, in case you want to look at it

/e - will write a string as "xtradata" into the FLV file

/v - will only create an XML file, meaning no data will be injected to the FLV

/p - will show the progress

There are several more, in which case I highly recommend reading the developer's site (link at the bottom of the post). Although FLVMDI is a command line tool, there is also a GUI released for it as well, making it much easier to use the above options.


Again, I am no expert at FLVs and Metadata and whatnot, and this post proves it. But what I do know is that when I've had "broken" FLV files in the past, FLVMDI has usually fixed them. The best part about it is that it's tiny at only 240kb (plus 450kb for the GUI), and is portable. Usually I'm afraid of injections, but this is one exception I gladly make.

Visit FLVMDI (Manitu Group) website for download

HJ-Split: Do the splits!

HJ-Split is a tiny utility to split files into multiple pieces. In the past, this was extremely useful for getting files onto floppy drives. But now people might be tempted to think that splitting files is useless, but that is not so. One primary use is e-mailing, if your attachment is too big you can split it. Or it's even useful for uber-large files, since HJ-Split can handle files "larger than 10GB!"

The first thing you notice about HJ-Split (as with any program) is the interface. To be honest, it looks like something that came out of the early 90s, but don't be scared off. You can't judge a book by its cover....or hideous gradient. (Kidding!) In all seriousness, HJ-Split is very useful because it does so much more than joining files; it also joins, compares, and calculates the checksum.

(1) Splitting is obviously HJ-Split's main feature. You can choose an input file, choose an output "array" (a string of files followed by "001", "002", etc), and then choose the split size in either KB or MB. Then you press "Start", and watch it run.

(2) HJ-Split also has a built-in Joiner as well. All you have to do is pick the first piece of the split file (like "file.001") and it will auto-find the rest, and join them.

(3) It also has a very simple Compare utility which will check if two files are equal.

(4) On top of everything else, HJ-Split also has a Checksum calculator. It can tackle even large files, and will allow you to copy the checksum straight to the keyboard with the press of a button.


The best part about HJ-Split is that it is extremely versatile. First off, it's very tiny, weighing in at 300kb for the Windows 32bit version. Secondly, it's portable, since it literally requires no other resource besides itself. Lastly, it's uber cross platform. What do I mean by "uber"? Well, of course it's available on Windows, and it's even available on Mac, and there's even a version for Linux. But HJ-Split goes way beyond that. It's got a Windows 16 bit version for older machines (like DOS), a version built for PHP for websites, a version for Amiga, and -last but not least- a version written in Java. If you don't know much about Java, Java is different because it can run on literally any computer that has a "Java Virtual Machine", which is almost every OS nowadays.

So if you're interested, check out the Java version as well. I've never been one for Java programs, but I find HJ-Split-Java incredibly interesting, and it's fun to see the exact program side by side with two entirely different feels. They are a little different though; for example, the Java version has a "Delete source file" option after you split or join a file. But they are essentially the exact same program.

Overall, it's a very useful program. If you're looking for an even easy progra for just joining, check out HJ-Split's sister program, HJ-Join, hosted at the same place: FreeByte. When it comes to RAM, the Win32 version is hard to judge, because it really depends on what you demand of the program. If you're splitting a 10GB file with 10kb pieces, it will take alot more RAM than if you split a 32kb file into two 16kb pieces.But it stays relatively low; around 7mb RAM for Checksum checking, 18mb for splitting a 60mb file. Totally worth it, if you ask me.

Visit HJ-Split (Freebyte) website for download

Regshot: Like shooting keys in a barrel.

Regshot is a registry utility to compare "before" and "after" snapshots of your registry. In case you want to know what registry changes before doing a system update installing a program, take a "shot" of your registry. Then, after making your change, take a second shot, then compare.

Regshot is actually a very simple program, but nonetheless ingenious and incredibly useful. It is the best way to tell if a program is truly portable or not, and that is just one of it's many applications. But beyond comparing, it can also save the log to TXT files, for later use or later comparing. It defaults to the Temp directory, but you can also change the output folder to defaultly save in whatever folder you want.

But Regshot is not limited to just registry. You can also choose folders for Regshot to watch, and if any file is changed between shots (added/deleted/modified), it will appear in the report.

Speaking of which, the report is practically the main feature. You can either choose a simple TXT or an HTML file, which will list in a table all of the changes including their old and new values, additions, and deletions.

Perhaps the best part about Regshot is the lightness and swiftness about it. Even though some might think that it would take time to scan the entire registry and take a snapshot, but Regshot does it in a matter of seconds, and is packed in at only a required size of 75kb. It does, however, use quite the amount of RAM to snapshot; while idling, it sits aroun 300kb, but while shooting, it can peak at 60mb. It's also portable, however, meaning that you can take it anywhere, and open source to boot.

Regshot is an excellent hands-on tool for administrating your registry. It may not clean like other apps, but it lets you see crucial details that other registry cleaners mostly miss.

Visit Regshot website for Download

CCCCtrlC: It's G-g-g-g-g-great!

CCCCtrlC is a multi-clipboard utility that is very different in approach. First off, you'll notice that there is no UI. At all. No tray icon (defaultly), no windows, nothing. The only UI that is given is a tooltip, and that's where CCCCtrlC shines.

First off, let me say that CCCCtrlC does not overrule your regular clipboard, rather it enhances it. To use the normal clipboard, press Ctrl+C, like normal. To use one of CCCCtrlC's clipboards, hold down Ctrl+C until you see a tooltip in the bottom right corner. You'll see 5 lines, with one surrounded by parenthesis, like so:

_ _ _ _ (_)

Each line stands for a separate CCCClipboard, the one with parenthesis being the currently selected one. As you hold down Ctrl+C, the selection will move from right to left, eg

_ _ _ (_) _

_ _ (_) _ _

etc...

When the CCCClipboard you want is selected with the parenthesis, let go of Ctrl+C, and whatever you want copied will be copied into that CCCClipboard. If a CCCClipboard currently has something in it, it will have a "C" rather than a line, like

_ C _ (C) _

in which case the 2nd and 4th CCCClipboard have data stored in them, and the 4th CCCClipboard is selected.

To paste, it's the same basic principal. Hold Ctrl+V, wait until the tooltip appears, and wait until your CCCClipboard is selected to release Ctrl+V. The same thing works with Ctrl+X (cut), and also Ctrl+Insert (copy), Shift+Insert (paste), and Shift+Delete (cut). When pasting, all of the tooltip will look slightly different because it will trim all of the trailing empty CCCClipboards; that means that if your current layout is like this:

_ _ _ _ _ (C) _ (C) (C) _ _

it will be like this in the paste tooltip:

(C) _ (C) (C) _ _

The reason for tis is because there are always at least 5 available to the left of the list. To put it simply, "you always have 5 dashes after the last cccclipboard with data". Because of this, there are an inifinite number of CCCClipboards available. That's right, infinite. The author personally assured me that there that the number of CCCClipboards "is not programatically limited", which is a smart way of saying "to infinity and beyond."

There are also special functions with keyboard shortcuts: showing a "help" tooltip, showing/hiding the tray icon, displaying the current CCCClipboard list, and erasing all CCCClipboards. Lastly, you can adjust how quickly CCCCtrlC moves between CCCClipboards. pass a number as a parameter (like create a shortcut), with low being faster and high being slower (and 10 is the default).

One of the main important features about CCCCtrlC is that it really is like multiple clipboards. That means it will copy files, formatted text, and everything a normal clipboard can copy, and paste it without losing quality.

CCCCtrlC is very minimlistic- only 205kb, runs at around 3.5mb RAM, is standalone, and completely portable. If you can get used to thee timing (which really doesn't take that long), CCCCtrlC is a very efficient way to manage multiple clipboards.

Visit CCCCtrlC (DonationCoder Forums) website for download

VirtuaWin: Virtually Awesome

VirtuaWin is a virtual desktop manager that lets you have multiple "desktops", helping to organize your life. For example, you can have one desktop for work and one for play, and instead of having a ton of windows open in one desktop, you can divide them up into two. It also helps you keep focused.

I'm not going to lie, other OSes (Linux, notably) have a strong emphasis on virtual desktops, so much so that they are often built in. But Windows users may not be familiar with the idea, and may therefore be less likely to try it. But I would suggest giving virtual desktops a try, even if they sound odd or perplexing, because they just might very well change how you use a computer.

The first nice thing about VirtuaWin is the layout of the desktops. By that, I mean, you can set it up to be "3 wide, 1 deep", or "2 deep, 4 wide", meaning you will have a "grid" of virtual desktops. I myself prefer to have just a line that I can switch between, left-right style, but if you so desire to have a 3x3 grid of nine desktops, that usabilty is there for you. You can also name your desktops, so you can distinguish what windows go to what (like my earlier example, "Work" and "Play" could be your desktop names).

You can also configure how to handle when windows pop up (like switching to the desktop where the window is, or bringing the window to the desktop you're on), and configure what options you want to be accessible in your tray menu. Speaking of options...

Options! On top of having different windows on different desktops, you can also use nice tray options like "Switch to" a specific window, "Move here" to move a window to the current desktop, and "Always show" which makes a window follow you wherever you go.

VirtuaWin also has the very, very nice tool of hotkeys, meaning that you can navigate through your grid of desktops just by pressing a key. You can set them to be almost whatever you want, and the actions you can use for the hotkey are vast.

VirtuaWin also allows you to use your mouse, like dragging the window to the right of the screen will move it to the next desktop on the grid. And of course there are too many options for me to list for this as well.

If VirtuaWin wasn't amazing enough, you can also download modules, which allow many different enhancements (like having a panoramic wallpaper spread across your virtual desktops, for example.)

VirtuaWin has a lot of options for such a small program. It's only around 200kb in size, runs around 6mb, and is completely portable, in case you wan't to take virtual desktops on the go. It's also open source, if anyone wants to take a peek at how it works.

The only slightly bad thing about VirtuaWin is that it is so configurable, it might scare those who are not used to virtual desktops. It might not be the best choice for someone who has never used a virtual desktop program before, but if you have and you want customibility, then VirtuaWin is for you.

Visit VirtuaWin website for download

Mojolauncher: Get ready for launch!

The other day, I was using MojoPac -which is in and of itself a very handy application- and I decided to drop a shortcut to the MojoPac starter onto my Rocketdock. It worked fine, until later that day, when I clicked the shortcut, and it couldn't find the file. My MojoPac had moved disk letters from "E:\" to "F:\". I realized that it was really pointless to create a shortcut for an application that was meant for an external drive, because it might be in a different place. So I decided to make a Mojo Launcher.

Mojolauncher is a very, very simple program that I wrote specifically to help with Mojopac. When run, it will monitor the root directory of every available disk for MojoPac's Start.exe (such as C:\Start.exe, D:\Start.exe, etc). If it finds a MojoPac starter on a disk, it will add the disk letter and the disk label to a list. You can then select from that list and launch whatever Mojopac you've selected. In addition, if Mojolauncher detects that MojoPac is running, it will wait until MojoPac closes until refreshing the list.

That's about it. It's a very, very simple program, and it's designed to be that way. The interface is very minimalistic, with barely any text, and no menus.

MegaLauncher/INI File:

To be honest, I don't feel like making Mojolauncher a full fledged program with customibility and everything....but I left the option open. Although I designed Mojolauncher specifically for MojoPac, I made it able to accept different programs. If you select a different program, Mojolauncher will become MegaLauncher (both are ML, if that helps you remember). It performs exactly the same way, only it will look for a custom EXE, with a custom description. In order to to this, look at the sample INI file a ways down. But first, read on about....

Custom Folders! Again, I really don't feel like making a GUI for a program that is so simple, but the functionality is nice. Add the folderpath to the INI file, and Mojolauncher/MegaLauncher will search that folder.

SAMPLE INI FILE: MOJOLAUNCHER.INI

[Folders]

also1=C:\Path\to\Program

also2=%ThisDrive%\FreewareWire\is\awesome.exe

[OtherApp]

OtherApp=StartupSaver.exe

OtherAppDesc=StartupSaver

If you can't tell by looking, also# are the custom folders, OtherApp is the alternate program's filename, and OtherAppDesc is the alternate program's description. Make sure you type both correctly, because MegaLauncher will not be able to tell if you typed an error, especially in the description. If you type either OtherApp or OtherAppDesc wrong in the INI file, MegaLauncher will simply never find what you told it to look for.

You may be wondering about the "%ThisDrive%". Well, that is there because Mojolauncher is entirely portable. Instead of the drive letter and colon, substitute in "%ThisDrive%" without the quotes for Mojolauncher/MegaLauncher use the drive letter that it is currently on.

It's not the best program, I know, but it was pretty fun to write, and I actually do use it myself. It's a standalone app, 370kb, and consumes around 4mb of RAM. I will always upload the source, including all the original icons, and edited icons (that is, if RingCube doesn't sue me. Please don't sue me.) Oh, I almost forgot to grovel. RingCube, if you're reading this, I made Mojolauncher because I love MojoPac. I don't intend, or even want, to make any money off Mojolauncher; I release it only for the purpose of better MojoPac. Please don't sue me. Pretty please.

..............

Visit FreewareWire Software Downloads page for MojoLauncher v1.0

Get MojPac here

I would like to also quickly give props to people who profoundly influenced the developement of this program, even if they are anonymous, or don't know I used their work.

• In terms of icons, I used icons from all-free-download.com, so thankyou whoever made those. (I did alter the colors, but that was really easy...much easier than making icons.)
• In terms of code, I used the Graphic Button "ILButton" script by tkoi, which I really must mention, because it made it crazy easy to use graphic buttons.
• I also used wOxxOm's code for retrieving file descriptions, to verify that the Start.exe is MojoPac's, which was so advanced, I couldn't pick out the code for just the description.
• Ladiko's AHK compiler, which made it very easy to include multiple icons in ML, and easily add version information.

Duck Doom Deluxe: Daring and Delightfully Destructive

Two great games of ages past are Duck Hunt and Doom. Add them together, and you get many very, very dead ducks. Duck Doom Deluxe is half Doom, half Duck Hunt, which means that you are shooting at ducks, except you get better weapons.

The weapons you get as you progress are obviously most of the fun. You start out with a pistol, but eventually earn more.
CLICK HERE FOR SPOILERS OF WEAPONS

You can earn guns such as a shotgun, super shotgun, chaingun, rocket launcher, and the BFG-9000 (a laser cannon).

It retains most of the rules of Duck Hunt: you can choose between 1 or 2 ducks, you get three shots until a duck will fly away, and you have a percentage of ducks that you must get. There's two difficulty levels (Feathery and Fowl), and you can choose either a simple sky or a more complex sky for a background.

But unlike Duck Hunt, you have "Health" which decreases by 10% every time you miss a duck, and ammo for each gun, so you can't just always use the best gun and spray bullets everywhere. There's also a little head that follows the ducks, just like Doom (I assume).

Overall, the game is put together very well. It very smoothly incorporates both Duck Hunt and Doom graphics, and it runs very smoothly. Obviously you use the mouse, so it is a little different with an recticle actually on the screen (although you could always use a program like WiinRemote to make it more like the original Duck Hunt.) It has to run in fullscreen, which is a tad annoying, but it does help enrich the duck-shooting experience.

The funniest part about this game is the shear strangeness of the two games it combines. For example, the ducks make a sound like some beast from Doom when they are shot, and occasionally, some weird being will pop up holding the duck instead of the dog.

The game itself is 7mb in size, and runs at around 20mb of RAM. It is portable, though, which means that if you ever want to impress some friends, whip out your flash drive and vaporize some ducks.

Visit Duck Doom Deluxe website for download

Strongbad's Time Machine: Everybody! Everybody!

No, you can't actually travel back in time. What you can do is keep track of time using everyone's favorite wise cracking, The Cheat kicking, sbemail answering masked smart alec. Strongbad's Time Machine (also known as Strongbad's Clock) is a nice little clock utility made by the creators of the Homestarrunner flash cartoon series.

STM is essentially a pixelated version of Strongbad's head that can verbally tell you the time; there's also a clock in the top left corner, for those who don't want sound. Using STM, you can make Strongbad announce the time in three different voices (normal, angry, or soothing), and you can set an alarm. Another thing to note is that Strongbad also announces the time every half hour (like 1:00, 1:30, 2:00, 2:30, etc.) Also, according to the Homestar Runner Wiki, STM "does not automatically set the time for Daylight Savings, even if your system clock does."

The program itself is fairly hefty for what it does. Consumes around 6mb of RAM, and is 1mb in size, even if it is a standalone app (and, by the way, it's portable). Yeah, you could get a smaller, lighter app that does the same thing, but then you wouldn't have Strongbad.

Visit Strongbad Time Machine (Homestarrunner) website for download

Avast! Virus Cleaner: Tiny little worm eater

Avast! Virus Cleaner is a tiny utility to help combat viruses and worms. Please keep in mind that it is not meant to be used as a computer's sole defense against viruses, it is merely a supplement, mainly for if your computer already has a worm.

It's hard to say anything about this, because it's very straightforward. The program is standalone, 400kb in size, 2.5mb RAM on both idle and scanning, and completely portable. Press the "Start Scanning" button and it will start scanning your computer for some 20 different worm types (please check the Avast! website at the bottom of the post for more info), and a box shows the normal virus scan stuff: current operation, current file, number of infections, etc.

To be honest, I really can't say much about it, just because I've never had to use it. My computers in the past have either (a) been protected enough from viruses that it never came to having to use this program, or (b) got so toasted by virus(es) that I had to start with a fresh installation. So I cannot give my testimony about Avast! Virus Cleaner, but I'll do my best to review it, with my limited virus-related knowledge.

First off, I do have to say that A!VC will immediately scan your memory on the start of the scan. That means that if a virus is running, it will either kill it, or at least disable it, so it will stop from spreading. Then it scans your disks, then your startup, then the infected files are dealt with, then your system is clean and happy (or at least it should be).

The last thing I am noticing on the page is that you can "run Avast! Virus Cleaner 'somehow'", meaning that it doesn't have to be run as an EXE. Other filetypes can be run, such as BAT, PIF, COM, and SCR, or even CMD. If a virus disables your ability to run EXEs, you can just rename A!VCT to one of the named filetypes above and try that. It's like outsmarting a computer virus! The only reason I mention this is because I have indeed witnessed a virus taking out all the EXEs on my computer; every time I clicked the start button, more icons would go missing. If I had known about A!VC back then, it probably would have saved me from doing a System Restore.

The thing about A!VC is that it's really something that you need to have on hand. Odds are you might not be thinking about what to do if you get a virus until you actually have one, but A!VC is a handy, small tool to keep as an ace in the hole, so you aren't freaking out about what you should download before your machine is toast.

Remember, I've never used A!VC (well, I've scanned with it, but it's never found anything), so I cannot say for certain if it works, but it is from Alwil Software, so it is at least safe, and for how small it is, it is a very handy tool to have on hand.

*If someone ever wants to run a controlled experiment and download a virus and use A!VC and tell me if it works, be my guest. Please note "controlled"; I'm not telling you to go downloading viruses willy-nilly. I take no responsibility for such foolishness you might commit.

Visit Avast! Virus Cleaner Tool (Alwil) website for download