Monday, June 4, 2001		Downloads of the week

The craze of the 60s and 70s is back. Earlier radio was a good source of entertainment. This day also, the craze for radio is on rise as the digital revolution is sweeping the radio transmission. Now it’s FM, which has become synonymous to the radio. On your radio set you can listen to only limited channels as it is limited by available frequency of the station. If you want unrestricted entertainment, then WIN FM is the right program. It is basically a replica of your physical AM/FM radio tuner. Since all major radio stations now offer Internet broadcast also so, you can use this software to tune in to scores of radio stations across the globe, without experiencing any limitation of frequency. Thus you can tune in to your favourite radio station playing Jazz in the USA and can even tune it back to Indian music. It is thus a diverse mix of audio content. This is very user-friendly software and sports a nice interface, which makes it easy for you to locate stations by genre, country and state. Using this program, you’ll discover hundreds of stations that provide music, news, sports and virtually everything that you could think of. This is small software and consumes less space on your desktop as it is shown in the form of Minibar window that lets you play radio broadcasts. Easing your work further, this software has its own list of radio stations, which are preset and pre-programmed. Thus you need not find them each time you wish to listen to them. However, for other radio stations, which are not available in the list, you can simply enter it manually. All radio broadcast lovers can download it from www.inklineglobal.com

In a recently conducted survey in the USA, the most popular hobby is Web page designing and development. Well! Its indeed a good career too, but today many people take it up as a hobby and use their skills of Web page designing to develop their own homepages. In the Web page designing, there are many programs and tools required and more you know about them, the better your skills would be. Thus to sharpen the Web skills there is one more program called AnFX. This program is basically an alternative for flash and helps you add many interesting features on your Web site mostly in the form of interactive graphics. This program could be used for creating banners and navigational menus besides adding fizz to your normal Web site layout. This program is basically an easy way to practice Java, in the visual form without any need to know the popular Web language Java. Another great and practical feature is that unlike flash, the Web sites designed using this program would not require the visitor to install plug ins like flash player etc. to browse as this program uses Java and most of the browsers available today support Java. The visitors would only be required to download a 22 KB Java applet once because additional pages on your site reuse it.

Using this program is easy and is similar to making a video and involves concepts like actors, action etc. However, this program may not be user-friendly for novice, but advanced users will find it very useful as it has a well-documented and excellent helpfile. Moreover its editing feature of point and click also makes the task of designing the Web page easier as its built-in playback controls for previewing creations in real time helps in fine tuning your creations. Using this software you can also test designs in a browser and have the program instantly generate the HTML code. This useful tool for Web designing could be had from www.stepaheadsoftware.com

The Internet is a medium for so many things like information, entertainment, and business. However, its most popular use is for communication. A majority of people use the Internet for e-mail, IP telephony, chatting and video conferencing etc., as it is the cheapest and best medium of communication. There are a host of software available on the Internet, which offer these facilities. A majority of them are not complete, as they do not offer all features of communication. However ICUII is one such software, which has a complete Internet communications package for the PC users. It has features like instant messaging, video conferencing, voice telephony etc. The best part is its ease of use as it is easier to use than Net meeting yet it is more power-packed than ICQ. Using this software you can connect to anyone on the Internet or Intranet. Moreover with a large display it offers more visibility and clarity to the users. This program provides access to several "directories" that you can connect and socialise with other ICUII users. Unlike other chat clients this software is better for persons who love to chat with others on the Internet as quite a many of the directories are filtered for offensive content. It also features caller ID, which makes it possible to know about the person who is trying to contact you, before you accept his invitation. This software can also work as your personal information manager as it can keep the list of details of all your contacts on the Internet, including their phone numbers, addresses, e-mail addresses etc. Overall it offers a good Internet communication package and can be downloaded from www.icuii.com

All that we know about the Internet is an exceptionally good thing, however there are some bad things about Internet also. The most common bad aspects about the Internet are virus and security. Though for combating onslaught of viruses, there are many anti-virus software, which even a common man has an access to. However as far as the security on the Internet is concerned, it is still a far cry for the common person. The most common concern related to security is the security of the data and message, which you share on the Internet as it is subject to the risk to being hacked by other persons. However, now with the help of software like Advanced Encryption Package 2001 (AEP2001), you can find a solution to all such problems. AEP 2001 is a strong security program that locks down the critical data. This program offers a simple and user-friendly way to encrypt files that are stored on your hard drive. The decryption part of the data is equally simple and thus it also ensures security on the Internet. It allows you to create self-decrypting (EXE) files for other users. All they’ll need is the password besides a computer running Windows operating system. Technically, this program includes two algorithms: DES (128-bit) and Blowfish (448-bit), which has the power to protect your data from shroud intruders on the Net applying all anti-security measures. Using this software you can also protect password protect your critical data from others. This software can be downloaded from www.secureaction.com