Review: f.lux makes your computer usable at night

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AppId is over the quota

If you're reading this late in the day, pause to consider your eyes. Can you feel that familiar sting that comes from looking at a glaring LCD for too many hours? That's only the most noticeable symptom of what happens to our bodies when we spend hours staring into what's essentially a big, bright, lamp. F.lux is a simple and free app that helps fix this.

f.lux knows what time the sun sets wherever you are.

Turning down your monitor's brightness may help, but brightness isn't really the main issue: Color temperature is, and that can be trickier to adjust. Most computer screens emit bluish light that looks good in daytime, but becomes uncomfortable to look at in a dark room. It can also affect your sleep: Research suggests that reading on a tablet for two hours before bedtime can delay your sleep by about an hour.

F.lux helps by asking you where you're located in the world, then figuring out the approximate sunset time for your location. Come sunset, your screen will mimic nature, gradually warming up the colors and blending in much better with the surrounding light. You basically get your own private mini-sunset, ending up with a screen that's nice to look at.

f.lux now lets you adjust your monitor's brightness with keyboard shortcuts.

This basic functionality—tuning your screen's color temperature according to time of day—has been part of f.lux for years now. A recent version adds some new bells and whistles: You can now change your screen's brightness using Alt+PgUp and Alt+PgDn. This isn't exciting if you use a laptop, but for a desktop user like me, it's a great feature.

Another new feature is the so-called Darkroom Mode. Whereas the normal f.lux effect just warms up your colors, Darkroom Mode completely takes over your display, shading everything in dark, reddish hues. This makes videos unwatchable, but also means you can probably use your computer at 3am without losing your night vision.

You can dial in your own nighttime color temperature to suit your environment.

Since we don't all work with the same ambient lighting, f.lux lets you dial in a color temperature for nighttime. It uses Kelvin notations (commonly used for color temperatures), but also offers human-readable explanations ranging from "Ember" (1200k) to "Sunlight" (5000k).

All of these color changes are great, unless you happen to be trying to watch a movie. That's where Movie Mode comes in: This mode tones down the color effects for 2.5 hours, to let you watch a movie without having everything tinged red. You can also completely disable f.lux for one hour (for doing color-sensitive work such as photo editing), or until the next morning.

F.lux was a very good app to begin with, and this release only makes it better. If you're not using it yet, but do use your computer at night, you really should try it out today.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

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Announcement makes BI for Office 365

At the worldwide Partner Conference, we have today announced a new supply-makes BI for Office 365, power BI for Office 365 is a cloud-based business intelligence (BI) solution, which enables our customers, easily gain insight from their data in Excel analyze and visualize data in a self service way work. It works with Office 365, customers share knowledge, find answers and stay to assist you in connecting to their data from their favorite mobile devices.

Business data continues to grow at an exponential rate and a prerequisite for a flourishing industry now is a sense of all incoming information. Success can literally be determined by the tools that a company employee is available, because they affect the flood of data.  People love Excel for analyzing data, so that we make BI for Office 365 right in this experience have built so that an even more powerful tool. You may have already seen the power pivot and power-view functions in Excel and today we continue, to enhance our BI. Power BI for Office 365 now consists of:

Power query, the customer to easily search and public data and your company data, all within Excel (formerly known as "Data Explorer").Power card, a 3D data visualization tool for mapping, to explore and interact with geographical and temporal data (formerly known as code name "Geoflow").Power pivot for create and customize flexible data models in Excel. Power view for the creation of interactive charts, graphs and other visual representations of data.

We know that not only important for people the possibility to easily new insights identify it from their data, but also to operate and provide access to this data in a trusted environment have. Therefore makes BI stretches for Office 365 is existing premise systems about your deliver value within an already trusted service to provide:

Power BI pages dedicated to community BI workspaces in Office 365 for the exchange of data and knowledge with colleagues. Power BI sites also keep up-to-date with connectivity and refresh customer data back to their on premise data sources. New natural language query capabilities allowGet customers to ask questions and answers. Simply enter your question in a dialog box, and the system interprets and generates automatically interactive charts and graphs, on the basis of available data.Native apps for Windows 8, Windows RT experience BI connected, stay dedicated and iPad with your reports and data connected, where you, as well as HTML5 indicate support for browser are based on any device.

To learn more about how you hide the insights in your data unlock makes BI for Office 365 can help, check out these two blog posts: what powers makes BI for Office 365? and introduction of power-BI for Office 365. And go here for the preview, coming later this summer to register!

--Julia White, General Manager, Microsoft Office Division

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What powers makes BI in Office 365?

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Ari Schorr and Seayoung Rhee are product marketing managers in the Microsoft Office Division focused on Excel and Business Intelligence, respectively.

Power BI for Office 365 is a new self-service business intelligence (BI) offering enabling businesses to gain insights from their data in powerful new ways within Excel and Office 365. Customers now have the ability to easily search, discover and access data inside and outside of their organization and, with just a few clicks, shape and transform that data. They can also analyze and create stunning interactive visualizations that uncover hidden insights to share and collaborate from virtually anywhere, on nearly any device.

Key features are:

Powerful Self-Service BI in Excel 2013: We are taking our most powerful BI solutions and building them directly into Excel. These solutions package the data discovery, analysis and visualization process into one self-service BI solution, which is essential for business customers who are looking to get bigger returns on their data. Features include:

For data search and discovery, we're introducing Power Query, formerly "Data Explorer." We've created a data search engine so customers can query data from within their business and from external data sources on the Internet, all within Excel. We're also working with partners to provide an internal version of this search engine so businesses can customize the engine and index the data sources they commonly access. Power Query also cleans and merges data sets from multiple sources, enabling IT and BI customers to focus on data insights rather than data management.
For analyzing and modeling data we will continue to offer Power Pivot. Power Pivot enables customers to create flexible models within Excel that can process large data sets quickly using SQL Server's in-memory database. Customers can customize the model as needed all within Excel - no extra coding needed.
For visualizing and exploring data we're introducing Power View and Power Map, formerly project codename "GeoFlow." Using Power View, customers can manipulate data and compile it into charts, graphs and other visual means - great for presentations and reports. Power Map is a 3D data visualization tool for mapping, exploring and interacting with geographic and temporal data. Customers can visually plot up to one million rows of data in 3D on Bing Maps, view data in a geographic space, and share findings through screenshot slides and cinematic, guided video tours. 

Collaborate and stay connected with Office 365: While all of these tools enable great self-service BI, asking business customers to work within a BI silo significantly decreases the potential value of their data to the entire organization. That's why we've made all of these Excel capabilities available in the cloud with Office 365, so customers can share and access their BI reports and models across the desktop, Web and devices, all in a trusted, managed environment.

To share insights and help customers get answers quickly, we've created BI Sites. Within their organization's trusted environment, BI customers can quickly create workspaces in Office 365 to share worksheets with colleagues, collaborate over insights and results, and quickly find data and reports. A couple key features of the BI Sites include a natural language query engine and a Data Management Gateway. We've incorporated a natural language query engine that IT can customize to help their users search for specific datasets quickly and easily. Additionally, we've created a Data Management Gateway, which allows IT to build connections to internal data sources so reports that are published to BI Sites in Office 365 will refresh either on-demand or on a scheduled basis, ensuring that customers are always looking at the latest view of their data.
To better manage data, Power BI for Office 365 empowers a business's IT organization to help its users become their own data stewards. This means that customers can grant access to their published data sets based on their colleague's credentials. In addition, customers can then track who's accessing their data sets and how often to better understand what data is of most value to others. 
 To enable customers to stay connected to their data from virtually anywhere they are, we've created a connected BI experience. BI users can access and receive live updates on their reports through their browser with HTML5 or through a mobile application designed for their tablet or touch-enabled device, either Microsoft Power BI for Windows or Microsoft Power BI for iPad.

Business that can rapidly gain insights from their data will lead their peers in the industry in the next decade. The ability to easily access any kind of data, extend existing IT systems, empower users customers with familiar tools to gain insights and quickly deploy powerful self-service BI solutions will become a key enabler for these businesses to differentiate themselves from their peers. Microsoft is uniquely positioned to help the enterprise through this transition, and only Microsoft is able to offer these features together in one complete cloud-based offering. 

To learn more about Power BI for Office 365 see below for some Frequently Asked Questions and go here to register for the preview, coming later this summer! 

Q: What benefits will this service bring to customers?

Power BI for Office 365 empowers customers with a powerful platform to address several business needs, including, delivering self-service BI solutions to everyday business users natively within the environment they're already familiar with - Excel and enabling collaboration and accessibility by putting BI in the cloud through Office 365. Not only will business customers be able to easily publish data sets and models to share with their colleagues, but their data will be accessible from virtually anywhere - on their desktop at work, over the Web at home, and on their mobile device while traveling. We will also be equipping IT with a set of management tools that enables them to safely leverage on-premise and external data sources within their organization's trusted environment and monitor employee collaboration around this data. This is a crucial step for organizations looking to take their data insights to the next level and will enable IT to open up new doors for business users.

Q: What business intelligence features will be available in Excel?

Microsoft is taking our most powerful business intelligence tools and building them directly into Excel. These solutions package the data discovery and presentation process into one self-service BI solution, which is essential for business customers who are looking to get bigger returns on their data.

Q: How does the connection to Office 365 work? What features are available?

Power BI for Office 365 enables customers to collaborate and stay connected virtually anytime/anywhere through the cloud. The connection to Office 365 allows customers to share and access their BI models across the desktop, Web and devices, all in a trusted, managed environment.

Q: Can you talk more about the mobile BI offering? What is it and what devices are compatible? Will this work across non-Microsoft devices and platforms (including Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android, etc.)?

Power BI will provide touch optimized access to BI reports and models stored in Office 365 through the browser with HTML5 or through the Windows or iPad mobile app. Within the application, customers can find Excel and Power View content, interact and present that content on their device, and then share that content via email. We will offer support for other widely adopted platforms at a later date.

Q: How does Power BI for Office 365 differentiate from other offerings currently in market?

Power BI for Office 365 is the first cloud-based business intelligence service that brings together Microsoft's full suite of self-service BI solutions and essential IT management tools that allow businesses to leverage on-premise and external data in a singular, secured environment. Our goal is to provide technology that enables employees to practice the art of analytics wherever they are, while providing IT with management technologies that increase collaboration in a trusted environment.

Q: Will on-premise Office customers be able to access these features?

Customers using the Excel 2013 application can create BI reports with features like PowerPivot and Power View. We provide the option to either utilize their on premise SharePoint and SQL Server BI infrastructure, or they may choose the Power BI for Office 365 service for publishing and sharing their reports.

Q: When will Power BI for Office 365 be available? How do I get it?

Customer can go here (http://www.office.com/powerbi) to register for the preview, coming out later this summer. Regarding general availability, we have no further information to share at this time. 

Q: How much will Power BI for Office 365 cost?

We have no further information to share at this time. We'll communicate pricing information at a later date.

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Review: Smideo HD 2013 makes smart-looking video slideshows

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AppId is over the quota

Showing off your photos is easy enough. But showing off your photos and your videos together—including videos that you may have spread across different services—isn't always that easy, especially when you want to add custom audio files to the mix. Smideo HD 2013 can help: This (mostly) easy-to-use application allows you to create video slideshows that look polished and  professional.

Before you begin your first project, Smideo shows you how to get started.

Smideo's name comes from "Smart Video Creator," and it fits, as the application is smart. You can try it free for 30 days, but the trial version will not allow you to create HD videos. You have to pay a little over $26 to unlock that feature.

Smideo lets you add files from your camera, hard drive, or those stored in various online photo and video repositories.

Smideo's step-by-step approach makes it easy to get started with your project. First, you have to create a Smideo library by populating it with the photos and videos you'd like to use in your slideshow. You can add individual files, entire photos, or download content from YouTube or Flickr. Anyone looking to create an instructional video will appreciate that Smideo lets you film your screen and share that screencast as part of your video, too. Once you have your files ready, you select the ones you'd like to use and move on.

If your video isn't the right file type, Smideo handles the conversion for you.

If Smideo gives you the option of cutting any video you've added into smaller chunks. When you move on to the next step—arranging the order of the slideshow—you can insert these smaller video chunks in with the photos you've chosen. You also can add text overlays to your content, and set the picture length as you desire. Next, you add any desired audio tracks to the slideshow. If you'd like you can record your own audio using your PC's microphone.

You can sort your photos and videos as you'd like, or let Smideo arrange them randomly.

When you're finished, you select the video effects for your finished product: relaxing or dynamic. This changes the transition between the photos and videos in the slideshow, either speeding them up or slowing them down. It would be nice to have more options here. Rival Fantashow, for example, allows you to preview the transitions and lets you use different styles in a single slideshow.

Still, Smideo will appeal to home and business users who want control over the look and feel of their slideshow. Unlike Fantashow, it doesn't require that you select a theme the slideshow; Smideo lets your content shine. But its options may prove overwhelming for casual users, who will likely be more comfortable with the hand-holding that Fantashow offers.

Liane Cassavoy is a veteran technology and business journalist. She contributes regularly to PCWorld and has written about business issues and products for Entrepreneur Magazine and other publications. She is the author of two business start-up guides published by Entrepreneur Press.
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Review: Glipho makes blogging social

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Glipho Glipho offers easy to use blogging tools and options for boosting your audience, but the site is limited by the size of its own audience.

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If you took a dash of WordPress, added a sprinkle of Twitter and a tablespoon of Facebook, you just might end up with Glipho…or, at least, what Glipho hopes to become. Billed as "the social publishing engine," Glipho is a cloud-based service that aims to build a social community of writers and help those writers increase their visibility.

To begin using Glipho, you sign up with an existing account: The available choices are Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and Twitter. You build your Glipho feed by picking writers to follow, though you have to select them based on a wide topic area (such as "technology" or "sports") and without seeing their writing at first. You can fine-tune these selections later, though, as you browse the site.

Glipho's home page displays the blogs in small blocks that show an image from the post as well as a snippet of the content. And Glipho's site has plenty of content to browse. The site posts content from trending writers—those whose posts are getting attention from other users—on the home page, as well as other posts the Glipho team chooses to highlight. You also can search for specific content, or browse by interests, topics, writers, and more. The overall layout is attractive and easy to browse.

Writing content is just as easy, thanks to Glipho's attractive layout. The blogging tools allow you to compose posts directly on the site, and you can import posts from Blogger, Tumblr, and Wordpress. Unfortunately, you can't automate the import process so that every new post is imported to Glipho from your existing blog. You'll have to import each new piece of writing individually.  Glipho also restricts what types of posts you import. You can't, for example, import photo-only posts from Tumblr, as Glipho requires that any content you import contains at least 150 words.

Glipho also provides tools for promoting your work and your profile as a writer. You can create a social profile that displays next to your writing, showing your Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Linkedin and Google+ accounts for readers to find. And the Glipho team promotes some of the work on the site through their own social media accounts.
Glipho offers plenty of tips as you begin to write.

Posting your work on Glipho could gain you a new audience for your work, and it could help your standing in search engine results. Certainly, the site will allow new readers to discover your work…but it's limited by how many people visit the site. Until Glipho's audience grows to a critical mass, the site's social reach is naturally limited.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can use the latest version of this Web-based software.

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Review: Easy-to-use window manager Mosaico makes sense of your desktop

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AppId is over the quota

If your desktop deteriorates into a morass of windows, look to Mosaico to help you tile them neatly.  You can use this $10 window manager (14-day free trial) to create different desktop snapshots for various situations.

The simple interface revolves around taking snapshots and restoring them.

Once you're happy with the way your windows are laid out, click the snapshot button to save the arrangement. You can save up to eight different desktop snapshots, and restore them easily from the program's snapshot browser.

When restoring a snapshot, Mosiaco will open relevant programs if closed, and will minimize others that are not part of the snapshot. It cannot, however, go as far as opening specific documents.

Snapshots aside, Mosaico also comes with an enhanced window-snapping feature which can be accessed by clicking the arrows on the program's interface, or by dragging windows around. The latter can be achieved by enabling the "Arrange manually" option in the toolbar, or by pressing the "M" key. Mosaico supports multiple monitors well, and features a built-in button for moving windows between monitors.

Position previews make it easy to drag windows to an exact position on the screen.

Mosaico's main weakness is its current state of Windows 8 compatibility. Although the program runs fine on Windows 8, there are some small quirks such as random display issues, inability to set custom keyboard shortcuts, etc. These issues do not occur on every Windows 8 system, and will be fixed in the program's next update.

Note: The Download button will download the software to your system.

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Review: Prezi makes it easy to create cinematic presentations with zoom and pan effects

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AppId is over the quota
Prezi Prezi is fun to use, and the presentations you can make with it are fun to watch.

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Traditional slide-based presentations are just that: Traditional. You could have fantastic visuals, but no matter how fancy (or austerely minimalistic) each slide is, it remains a slide. Prezi (various prices, starting at free) tries to change this by turning your presentation into a wide-open canvas on which you can draw your ideas spatially, and then presenting them by zooming and panning all over the canvas. Used well, the end result feels cinematic and engaging in a way traditional presentations rarely are.

Prezi offers over 50 templates to get you started.

To get you started, Prezi shows a list of templates you could use. There are an ample number of templates, but there is no way to preview what a template looks like except by starting a project with it. If you start a project with a template and find out it doesn't work for you after all, you can switch over to a different template midway through, but you will have to adjust things to work in the new template.

Prezi uses a canvas, but makes it easy to see how a presentation flows.

Prezi's canvas-based nature means that you create the presentation where you'll be showing it. If you want to zoom and pan somewhere when presenting, you'll have to zoom and pan while editing, so you instantly get a feel for what your audience will see. Instead of "slides," Prezi uses "path points": saved states for your presentation, where the viewport shows a portion of the canvas.

It is easy to insert images using a built-in Google Images search, or from your local computer.

As you present, you move through a progression of these path points, with Prezi automatically animating things as needed. If a given path point covers a small area of the canvas, Prezi will smoothly zoom into it, revealing new details as needed. If the next path point is all the way across the canvas, Prezi will smoothly pan there.

Prezi offers built-in diagrams.

I found Prezi easy and intuitive to work with, without much of a learning curve. When I had to insert an image, it let me search Google Images right from within Prezi, and I could tell it to only look for images that are okay to use commercially. You can also embed YouTube videos, as well as content from your local computer. A recent Prezi feature is the addition of sound: You can now upload sound clips to go along with your presentation, or even narrate the entire presentation so that it can stand on its own.

Instead of slides, your presentation flows along path points, which you can change and edit as needed.

Internet connections have a tendency to flake out at just the wrong moment, especially in a busy convention center. To avoid potentially embarrassing situations, Prezi lets you download your presentation for offline viewing. The presentation is packaged as a Zip archive, with a small executable player.

Prezi lets you present to others online.

Prezi is available in three different plans, starting with a free Public plan. I tested the $4.92/month Enjoy plan. The $13.25/month Pro plan is the only one that lets you work offline.

A big part of Prezi's appeal is that it's still unusual. It is likely your audience is used to slide-based presentations, so Prezi's cinematic nature would wow them. In time, if Prezi or similar products become commonplace, it may lose its visual edge. Until that happens, Prezi is an almost surefire way to create an engaging, surprising, and beautiful presentation.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can use the latest version of this Web-based software.

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Review: Fences 2 makes desktop icons smarter, cleaner, and more useful

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AppId is over the quota

I have no icons on my desktop. I have two wide-screen monitors totaling almost 4,000 horizontal pixels, and not a single icon— because one icon often begets many, ending up with a messy, disorganized desktop and crowding my beautiful wallpapers. But $10 utility Fences 2 has me rethinking my anti-icon stance.

Fences makes it easy to get started by automatically categorizing your existing icons.

Stardock's Fences 2 eliminates all of the annoyances traditionally linked to desktop icons, and makes what's good about them even better. Installed, it feels like such a natural part of Windows, it makes me wonder how come Microsoft doesn't build a feature like it right into the OS.

Fences integrates tightly with Windows, becoming part of the Control Panel.

At its simplest, Fences groups your icons into virtual folders on the desktop. You can have a bunch of icons for your favorite applications, and another bunch for frequently used documents, and yet another for Internet bookmarks. It's a similar system to what some fastidious users may already be doing on their own–but it makes the process of grouping your icons together easy enough for the rest of us. When you first launch Fences, it offers to group your existing icons automatically, so you get three fences to begin with. They won't be perfect, but they're easy to customize: You can rename them, pull icons out or put new ones in, and move them around the desktop.

For reasons of both aesthetics and privacy, you may not always going to want icons cluttering up your wallpaper, so Fences can hide the icons once you leave the desktop idle for a while. When you want to reveal the icons again, double-click anywhere on the desktop and all of your Fences pop back into view. It's instant, and it's my favorite feature because it lets me enjoy my wallpapers and still use the icons whenever I want them. You can also disable the timeout and opt to hide or show the icons yourself.

The default fences may not categorize well the icons you already have on your desktop, but they're easy to customize.

Taking a cue from the world of smartphones, Fences 2 introduces a feature called Desktop Pages. Just like home screens on a smartphone, you can have multiple "pages" on your desktop. Bring your mouse to the edge of the screen, hold the mouse button down, and drag: The screen swipes over, revealing more space for fences. This sounds like it could conflict with some Windows 8 gestures which also use the edges of the screen, but on my desktop it doesn't. If moving your mouse all the way to the edge of the screen is too much work, you can also click the desktop, hold down Alt, and rotate the mousewheel to quickly flip pages.

Another interesting feature new to Fences 2 is Folder Portals, which let you place interactive shortcuts to folders on your desktop. If you have a folder with many files and subfolders, you can create a Folder Portal for it, and then get at those files directly. It's basically like having that folder constantly open on your desktop. It's an interesting feature, but has drawbacks: You can't use the keyboard to quick-search within a folder, and you can't drill down to subfolders (clicking a subfolder just opens it in your file manager).

The Folder Portal feature lets you quickly put the contents of an entire folder on your desktop.

Fences was an excellent product to begin with, and Fences 2 keeps the good parts and largely manages to avoid bloat. I'm not convinced Folder Portals are all that useful, but Desktop Pages are a welcome addition, and feel fast and natural. Even if you're not the sort of user who enjoys having icons on your desktop, Fences 2 may convert you. Give it a shot.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page will download the software to your system.

Endlessly tweaking his workflow for comfort and efficiency, Erez is a freelance writer on a mission to discover the simplest, coolest, and most effective software and websites to make tomorrow happen today.
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Review: WeVideo is a cloud-based video editor that makes editing in your browser fun and simple

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AppId is over the quota

The cloud is all the rage these days. We've got email in the cloud, backup in the cloud, not to mention project management, image editing, and pretty much everything else that you use your PC for in the cloud. WeVideo wants to add one more type to the mix: A cloud-based video editor.

What makes it potentially hard to get off the ground with a cloud-based video editor is that all of your raw footage must find its way into the editor. A decent five-minute video could require hours of raw footage to create. Since most users have connections with slower upload than download speeds, you could be uploading footage for hours on end before you can even begin editing. Fortunately, WeVideo's seamless connection with Dropbox and others cloud-based file storage services makes this less of an issue.

Erez ZukermanWeVideo makes it easy to export to connected cloud services, but its free option is watermarked.

When I use my Galaxy S III to shoot footage, it is automatically uploaded to Dropbox. The upload takes time, but I don't need to think about it or do anything to make it happen. Once the files are in Dropbox, I only need to point WeVideo at them, and it pulls them into the editor very quickly. Feeding WeVideo with a gigabyte of footage took less than ten minutes, once it was all on Dropbox.

Once your footage is in the editor, the editing experience is simple and pleasant. WeVideo offers a timeline you can drag clips onto. It is easy to trim clips as needed and add transitions, and there's a rich library of soundtracks you can use. Fading audio in and out takes just a couple of clicks, and the whole system felt responsive and would be familiar to anyone with experience with desktop video applications.

One advantage of WeVideo's cloud-based nature is collaboration: You can invite friends to upload footage to your project, and even create different edits based on the same footage. This collaborative workflow is one of the service's main selling points.

Once you're done editing, it's time to export your work. Free accounts can only export very low resolution (480p) watermarked video. I understand the limitation, but I wish WeVideo was more upfront about it and made it clear as part of the registration process, rather than reveal it at the last possible moment when the editing work has been done. It is easy to connect WeVideo to YouTube and other Web video services, so you don't have to download a file and upload it to YouTube yourself–WeVideo does the whole thing on its own.
If you need to collaborate on a video project with a distributed team, WeVideo offers important benefits and can let you share footage and edits in ways that aren't possible otherwise. It can also come in handy for the occasional solo project, as long as you don't mind uploading your footage to the cloud prior to editing.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can use the latest version of this Web-based software.

Endlessly tweaking his workflow for comfort and efficiency, Erez is a freelance writer on a mission to discover the simplest, coolest, and most effective software and websites to make tomorrow happen today.
More by Erez Zukerman

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Review: Dexpot virtual desktop makes feel like a native part of the Windows

Large desktop workstations have often more than enough screen: one or two 24-inch monitors to provide plenty of space for a mission-critical application, as well as multiple chat or email window next to. But if you have a Squeak with a 15-inch monitor (or maybe something even smaller), may be the next best thing to a virtual desktop laptop users additional monitor. Dexpot (25 euros, which is $33 on the 21.02.12; free for personal use) is a great way to get yourself a. Or five.

Dexpot taskbar plugin, you can use virtual desktops to control, without a special window.

I had to Dexpot in one word to describe, I would choose "customizable.". I can give me a single aspect of Dexpot you can not adjust: the animation (or lack thereof) used to switch between virtual desktops toggle number of desktops, hotkeys and active corners for desktops using keyboard and mouse, only one, are whether a virtual desktop runs all your monitors and the list goes on.

An application chooses total customization, is typically inflate the result. Dexpot tried to let you eat your cake and have it, too, through features in plugins break down you can enable or disable you prefer. Disable the plug ins animations, and sure enough, the animations go away - and do the options for them to control this. So not only you can customize the options according to your needs you can customize whether the options are also there from early on.

A learned skill is productive with virtual desktops. Because it is a paradox: a GUI assumes being able to see your applications. Hide in an imaginary desktop and you could also forget to come back later to them. To work around this issue, includes Dexpot Visual cues keep the virtual desktops and applications that contain them in the view. Food aid, Dexpot offers several features, ranging from a tiny indicator in the taskbar with the number which you are on the desktop, through a compact desktop switcher in the Windows taskbar until to an exposé-similar function, the screen shots with scaled-down versions of all window tiles you want all desktops so that you can easily click, without thinking what desk, built-in, it is (you can't learn it by entering its title, though). There is also a full screen preview mode, Division of the screen in separate desktop, you then Windows between can pull.

The preview screen shrinks, so can all virtual desktops on a physical screen and move to Windows.

When downs, some users prefer have a window with a different virtual desktop from the ALT-tab task switcher and taskbar disappear; others prefer it to stay there. Dexpot is to you, so that it is easy to experiment.

The Windows Catalog is similar to exposé on Mac, putting thumbnails of all Windows on the screen at once.

Dexpot staggering array of plug-in the and means fine-grained configuration options, the application you use only agree with the basic premise of virtual desktops, can be a useful thing. The rest is negotiable and can be flexibly adjusted.

You have a keyboard shortcut obsession, like commit Dexpot, your every desire.

Knowing how means everything must adjust to experiment with Dexpot for some time, until a combination of settings hit, which could be useful for you. But if you take the time to do this, you might realize that a 15-inch monitor is finally not so small.

Note: The download button on the product information page will download the software on your system.

Endless tweaking his workflow for comfort and efficiency, is Erez of freelance writer on a mission, the easiest and coolest most effective software and websites to discover, make happen this morning.
More by Erez Zukerman

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Review: MP3 rocket makes YouTube videos in MP3s

YouTube videos to your ears win much of the eyeballs, but probably much enjoyment of its contents, to get. And if you would like to transform these videos to audio files and save, MP3 rocket (free of charge) it makes it about as easy as it could be.

MP3 rocket referred to himself as an "MP3 video converter" - and it does, actually convert YouTube videos into MP3 files or your own video files. You can certain songs or videos YouTube (you can search by artist name, song title or keywords) wanted, and proved to be quite capable of accurately very quickly deliver results. Results in a new tab, which shows presented the name of the file, source, file type and popularity rating and includes options for streaming audio to check it or download it as an MP3. If you want to download the file, can you choose the location and decide, add it to your iTunes library. MP3 rocket says that it downloads songs in "High quality mode with a bit rate of at least 256 KBS." In my ears were all downloads on a par with CDs that I had burned in my iTunes library. MP3 rocket Pro, a $30-version provides downloads to a higher bitrate of 320 KBS and promises faster downloads - even though the free version took only a few minutes to get the job done.

MP3 rocket displays the search results in a clean, organized list.

MP3 rocket includes many additional features, simple file conversion. It contains an own media player so you can hear the files that you have downloaded. And it offers also video conversion tool. Can hear a file on your computer of find and convert it to a different video format for display on another device or to an audio file for that. MP3 rocket also contains a 'watch TV' feature, you can YouTube videos from within the application, an Internet radio stream and access to some games.

If you convert a video to MP3, the software can select the location and name of the file.

If you think that MP3 rocket sounds like a good way to get lots of copyright-protected content stored for free on your PC, should heed tell its terms & conditions, the user that the application should not be used, "the purpose of copyright infringement." It says that all download are done for the purposes of time-shifting, and need for "personal, private and non-commercial use only." And despite the option, which include files in your iTunes library in the EULA: "you confirm that you do not share, distribute, or transfer all files downloaded with the software in any way. "You agree to keep the recording is longer than reasonably necessary to listen to or watch the show at a more favourable time."

Let the lawyers who these conditions to think, but otherwise MP3 rocket is a clever solution for YouTube overcrowding problem. It provides an easy way to create a collection of your favorite YouTube videos for later listening.

Note: The download button on the product information page, reach the website of the manufacturer, where you can download the latest version of the software.

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Skype for Windows 6.1 with Outlook integration makes closed even easier

Already in July at the Office customer preview event, we have said that Skype integration with Outlook as part of the new Office would come. As of today, we are happy to share that it has arrived with the release of Skype 6.1 for Windows desktop.

Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2013 users see Skype online status both personal message in the Outlook contact card. From the map, you can a Skype call or directly from the map IN the session start without leaving Outlook. We think Outlook users are to be able to love, to quickly and easily your Skype contacts directly from within Outlook to connect and encourage you to download the update today and try it. Go learn more about the rest of the today's version, the Skype big blog.

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“Linotype: The Film” Makes Its Left Coast Debut

“Linotype: The Film” Makes Its Left Coast Debut « Typblography function clearSearch() {document.search_form.s.value = "";} .recentcomments a{display:inline !important;padding:0 !important;margin:0 !important;}adobe.com      Typblography / “Linotype: The Film” Makes Its Left Coast Debutby Christopher Slye  

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