Month: October 2007

Photology is a revolutionary photo manager that enables you to browse your collection with innovative search filters. You can, for example, look for photos with certain colors or them, or about a given topic such as a beach, a close-up or a sunset. Photos can also be used as wallpapers and share by web directly from Photology in a very easy way.

This flickering Jack-O-Lantern will decorate your Mac for Halloween like no other icon. You can choose between two pumpkin sizes, decide to have a candle or not and set the flickering state of your Mac-O-Lantern. While it can use up a bit of your CPU, it’s a fun decoration to have on your Mac for Halloween night.

Every Halloween I face the same problem: I love this celebration and I take lots of pictures, because I like to have some nice memories of it. But when I copy them to the PC, I suddenly realize that a few of them haven’t come out as expected. Dark images, red eyes and strange colors, among other issues, can ruin my Halloween pictures forever.

Of course, these flaws can be corrected with Photoshop, but I don’t have the time nor the ability required by this huge photo editing tool. What I need is a quick, easy way to fix my pictures and then add some simple embellishment, all with a single click. So after browsing Softonic for a while, I found the perfect solution: five apps for a quick photo retouch and five more to pimp your Halloween photos:

• Digital Camera Enhancer – Automatic improvement for your pictures
• Neat Image – Reduce image noise in a snap
• S10 RedEyes – Remove devilish red eyes with a couple of clicks
• RGBmachine – Color correct your pictures with sliders
• Perspective Pilot – Straighten your photos up in a simple way
• Mystical Tint Tone and Color – Easy tint tone and color effects for your photo
• Intocartoon Professional – Turn photos into cartoon sketches
• Framing Studio – Embellish pictures with frames and borders
• PhotoChances – Apply photo effects the easy way
• Photo to Sketch – Recreate your pictures as beautiful drawings

We’re coming up to a very important part of the year for many religions. Tomorrow sees the celebration of All Saints Day by Christians, while December will be a busy month for many believers, with major festivities for Jews (Hanukkah), Buddhists (Bodhi Day), Muslims (Eid), and Christians (Christmas). If you want to prepare for your the festival of your own particular faith, or if you simply want to learn more about other beliefs then simply fire up some of these handy religious applications:

• The Hadith Software – Learn more about Islam with this Hadith database
• Bible-Discovery – Brush up on the Bible with this comlete study tool
• Al-Quran Explorer – Work with the Quaran easier than ever
• Animated Books of the Bible – Great learning tool for kids
• Calendar Magic – View all the important Buddhist and Chinese festivals
• Brittanica World Religions (Pocket PC) – Available for Christianity and Islam
• Oxford English Dictionary of the Bible (Symbian) – Study aid for Christ fans
• Pocket Quran (Palm) – The holy book of Islam in its orginal Arabic
• Holidays & Holidates (Palm) – Holiday dates for Christians, Muslims and Jews

One of the most lauded features of Apple’s new operating system, Leopard, is probably Time Machine, the automatic backup that makes up to date copies of every single thing on your Mac, without you having to worry about a thing. The design of Time Machine and its simplicity, as startling as it may sound, make backing up an exciting task. Yet, for you unlucky people who still haven’t gotten their hands on a copy of Leopard, saving and storing files is far from being the most thrilling thing you want to be doing on your Mac. I’ve gathered a few programs that will do the job effectively and will at least make backing up a bit more easier for you. Let’s check them out:

• Personal Backup – A quick solution to save copies of your files, can even save to any external drive and synchronize two Macs together.
• Mozy Remote Backup – 2Gb of free online storage to backup your files any time, anywhere so long as you’re connected.
• SuperDuper! – The king of backups, this program has a built in -scheduler that could almost make backups as easy as in Time Machine.
• Deja Vu – Clone your OS X system disk, mirror the content of folders, and have backups ready in a click.
• BackityMac – Backing up is as easy as checking a file in a list. Great to store files from Mac specific apps like Apple Mail, iCal or iPhoto.
• GrabBack – Best for making backups on USB flash drives, this application makes sure you’re never left without a copy of your most important files.

If you’re planning to take lots of photos of the little ones this Halloween, then why not preserve the photos with a Halloween album? AutoGraphicsHTML is a digital photo album that features some ready-made Halloween (and Thanksgiving) templates that will give your Halloween photos this year an extra special touch. You simply insert the images into the template of your choice and you can print them out for framing or send by e-mail for sharing. You’ve got several options to frame your photos from Dracula’s teeth to pumpkins and haunted houses.

The whole process can also be conducted with a setup wizard which shows you exactly how to prepare your photos. You can also sign photographs personally with a digital pen and you can upload them to the AutoGraphicsHTML server and leave the photos open to comments from others. You can arrange the photos in a number of different styles from cascading tiles to a simple slideshow and the developers claim it supports over 50 file types so whatever format your photos are in, you should be alright.

Those were the days – hanging around the amusement arcade playing Outrun, trying to knock 2 pence pieces out of those slot machines and of course, pinball. In my local arcade, there were pinball machines for every theme you could think of from Evil Dead to naked ladies jumping over the ball. Eventually, I got my own mini-pinball machine at home until I smashed the plastic casing during a tilt scenario and so in the end, all I was left with was my PC. But that’s not such a bad thing – the theme variations and special effects on a PC are far more impressive although nothing can beat the feel of pulling that trigger!

• Future Pinball – Awesome pinball game which allows you to make it just as you want

• WildSnake Pinball – It’s got a Christmas theme but got some great targets and obstacles

• Trap Pinball – Play against a friend at the same time with tons of combo shots

• Monster Fair – Monsters and Aliens galore in this great graphics pinball game

• Superball Arcade – A compendium of games including a very basic pinball shooter

The Mac environment is built to make full use of keyboard shortcuts, yet very few people know exactly how to use these. You can familiarize yourself with them thanks to this app, KeyCue, which will show all relevant shortcuts depending on what task you are carrying out. KeyCue has an elegant interface, which displays shortcuts by theme like message, edit or mail. You can even use the application in any sort of virtual desktop.

I’ve never really gone in for all this hocus pocus about star charts, spirit guides, negative energy and the like. However, many years ago a wizened old lady with a hat and a glass eye said I would one day write an article about fortune telling software for mobile devices, so I’m keeping an open mind. Whether you believe that the secrets of the past, present and future are locked in the stars, the spirits, or in George Bush’s sock drawer, there are plenty of phone-based applications that purport to have the answer. Download these programs and you’ll be seeing the future in no time:

• Astrology & Horoscopes Pro – Detailed and well-designed astrology program for Palm
• Oracle – Why make your own decisions when you can get a pool ball to do it for you?
• Hand Reading Pro – Read palms by reading your Palm
• Zen Tarot – Discover the mysteries of the Osho Zen Tarot
• Best Tarot Pro – Learn about fortune telling on your Pocket PC
• Astrology – Quickly find out the compatibility of two people on your phone
• Feng Shui – Get yourself ‘centred’ with this mobile guide
• Palm Biorhythms – Get to know your biorhythms with this handy application

One of the great things about working for a software portal is that you get to see a lot of software that passes other users by. From Palm OS applications for monitoring your car’s fuel consumption to games set in fashion boutiques, I’ve seen it all. But few niche software categories are as unusual (or potentially worrying) as the programs designed for surveillance and spying.

Most programs in this genre offer somewhat unconvincing reasons for why you should install them. Key-logging applications suggest that their main use is “not for spying” but to help you remember all your passwords, license keys and email addresses. And how about a program which can send you photos from a remote cell phone, the description for which suggests “…if you are not at work you can monitor an operating machinery or supervise your office”? Yeah.

Actually, there are perfectly legitimate reasons for using this sort of software: keeping tabs on your kids’ computer use or your home while you’re away (though a mobile phone camera-based surveillance system is no substitute for a nanny) are both decent things to do. But remember that a key-logger or a camera app won’t actually stop bad things from happening, so much as record them when they do. Still, if you’re interested, here are my top surveillance apps at Softonic:

• Revealer Keylogger – a free, safe key-logging program for Windows
• Anti Keylogger Shield – used to protect yourself against the program above
• Argus Remote Surveillance for S60 – ‘monitor’ your ‘office’ while you’re ‘away’
• SpyCall – record conversations on your cellphone (illegal if it’s done without permission)
• Classroom Spy – keep an eye on your students’ monitors from your desk
• SpyMe – monitor your Mac remotely
• Golden Eye – if only for the name – complete info on how your PC is used
• PhotoSpy! – turn your phone into a secret surveillance tool