Monday, April 9, 2001		Downloads of the week

To many persons Internet means communication. Well! This is quite true as over 90 per cent of the Web users use the Internet today for sending and receiving e-mail and quite a few use it for making Web-based calls. Though there are many Web-based phone software yet there are only a few, which give you a lot of value. Web phone is one such software and is a PC telephony application that makes it possible to communicate with other Web-phone users. It has a number of nice technical features that makes it a class apart from others. This program utilises conventional TCP/IP for use over the Internet as well as within LAN and WAN (Local and Wide Area Networks). Using this software, you can do fast and real-time communication through the Internet, using compression algorithms that facilitates faster transfer of audio in compressed form to the IP address of the other Web phone user. Thus, you will find is more efficient than the other Internet phones. Moreover this program also features full-duplex mode, which facilitates easy two-way communication. Furthermore, in addition to basic telephony feature, other prominent features of the Web phone includes virtual answering machine and voice mail thereby making it a complete telephony solution. This virtual answering machine would place an outgoing message and record incoming calls. Adding further value is the feature of caller identification, which can identify callers, including the user name and e-mail address and also offers features like call blocking, conferencing and transferring options. This software is not just all about audio communication but also supports video attached to the USB port and can deliver full motion video to the other users. Furthermore it also retains its old popular features like Text-based chatting, in which you can have multi-party text chat. Despite all such modern features this is an easy-to-use software and has a user- friendly interface. You can download a trial version of this program from http://www.netspeak.com

A PC is like your home in the cyber world and holds a lot of critical information and data about you. However it is exposed to various risks of security as hackers and nuisance mongers may use this information to harm you. Therefore it is always in your interest to keep your cyber home safe as it is exposed to many kind of risks. However, there is no lock in the cyber world that can prevent your cyber home i.e. PC from such things. But there are many good software like Guard Dog, which are good at protecting your personal privacy. Guard Dog is an excellent utility that actually monitors the data that’s exchanged between the Internet and the PC. Thus it informs you each time a Web site or application attempts to either go online or extract information. It also has a feature called File Guardian, which can protect virtually any PC file from unauthorised tampering. Moreover it also has an in-built virus checker. Though not comprehensive yet it may still give you good protection. This is a simple program and alerts you promptly whenever it feels that your security and privacy is breached by receiving any cookie, Java Applet, Active X Controls etc. It also deletes the history of the sites visited by you in the recent past and also the disk and memory cache regularly. This not only helps your computer run fast but also protects you privacy. This is a user-friendly program and needs to be configured first before you actually start using it. It also check your system for any changes that may take place from time to time by installing or uninstalling programs and thus performs an extensive test for any possible security loopholes. Moreover it also determines the accessibility of deleted files, shared folders and personal data.

Besides this, Guard Dog has many excellent features for Web browsing that includes fast access to passwords and subscription, online shopping, and Web registrations. This software can be had from http://www.nai.com

Everybody in this world is talented. Some may be good writers while others may be good singers and only a few lucky ones get a chance to demonstrate their talent to the world. Now you can explore your talent as a singer and can even demonstrate it to the world. In this digital world, you can use your computer and free software called VanBasco’s Karaoke Player to explore your talent. VanBasco’s Karaoke Player is basically a MIDI player, which works as a Karaoke machine also. This software has many good points. First of all it is a freeware and thus you do not have to pay anything for it. Second it is easy to use with good user-friendly interface and features full playback. The best part is that it also has a screen display for the lyrics and uses coloured fonts, which makes it easy for sing along. Using this software, not only can you get the right notes but also gives the best sound possible. This makes it a user-friendly product and thus does not require any effort for using it. Moreover, this software sports all popular features of a Karaoke machine like on-the-fly adjustment of tempo, volume, key control etc. that gives you more professional singing experience. In addition to this you can also mute channels of a MIDI song thereby enabling you to sign along to individual instruments. For bubbling new singers, the download also includes, several Karaoke songs, which they can sing and explore their talent or even impress their friends. This software supports some of the popular media formats like MIDI, RMID and KAR file. However on this site you can find a search function for finding and downloading Karaoke files from the Internet. Using this software, you can define your song play list and use it for non-stop fun. You can download this wonderful program from http://www.vanbasco.com

We often talk about the paperless office but when it comes to encyclopaedias, thesaurus and dictionaries, we normally rush to paper editions. However, now times are changing and the digital editions of these important things are becoming more and more important. Especially in a scenario, when a major part of communication is being done using computers. So, now it is virtually essential to have a digital dictionary for easy reference. Dictionary 2000 is excellent software that is a resource of huge information related to several languages and their translations. It has coverage for all major international languages like English, French, German, Russian, Polish, Latin, Swedish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian languages. This dictionary is both expandable and replaceable and can be updated for future developments. Moreover you can also customise it as per your need by simply editing or deleting the words from it. Thus, once you have changed the word in one language it automatically synchronises with the other and updates it accordingly. It is thus simple dictionary software with user-friendly interface. For using this software, you need to select the "From" and "To" languages from pull-down menus and type the word you would like to check in other language and then simply click on it. This software will automatically generate the translation for you. Using this program is as simple as clicking the mouse. The capacities of this program are not just limited to translating the word as you can translate even a piece of text to other languages you choose. So, now you can communicate with your clients and employers in their language and gain their confidence. You can download the shareware version of this program from http://surf.to/stepanyuk.