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yBook

Do you love e-books, eh? If you have not heard of them, you are missing something great. Some say they are no replacement for the real thing, but as long as you are reading something, that cannot be all bad, right? Anyway, yBook is a free e-book reader. There are many like it, but this one keeps it simple, making it as close to a real book as possible. The pages are split up just like a real paperback novel and when you are ready to turn the page, just click. You can even change the font and size to suit your eyes. It allows you to print and visualise a large numbers of folders and files. Unlike other products, the output is highly graphical, including file type icons and the folder hierarchy. Filter by as many file masks as you want (include or exclude), dates, file sizes or content. Go down your folder structure as deep as you want. Sort by any column, you can also remove or reorder them to get the exact look you want. The printout design is highly configurable; you can choose colours, backgrounds, headers, footers and title etc. You may also search on the file tree. It has the capability to export to HTML or ASCII. If you download the EXE file instead of the full install, you will need to get hold of the Visual Basic 6 runtime, if you don’t already have it on your computer. The quickest way to find out is to run yBook. If it works, you don’t need the runtime. Once you open the program you will see a strip across the bottom containing several buttons, knobs and other assorted controls. Click on the Search Term box, type a word (or sentence) into the resulting text box and press Enter. Now click < to find the first match on previous pages and > to find the first match on subsequent pages. Likewise, ‘Justify’ will attempt to spread the sentences out so that they fit all the way across the page, like a real book. You can click it on and off, marvelling as the little letters shuffle left and right at your whim. Sadly, however, due to limitations with scaling, you can’t get the right edge ruler-straight with all fonts. It also features Font Size controls. You can click - until you can’t read the text any more, or click + until it gets very big. (8 to 20 point is the range) Because the book has to be re-indexed each time you alter the size, it’s quicker to click on the number between the -/+ and enter the size directly. Next is the ‘Font’ button. Click here to get a list of fonts. Clicks re-scan to see whether any new fonts have been checked for legibility and added to the approved list. Download this from www.members.iinet.net.au/~simonh/yBook/ybkfull.zip

Office 2000 Sounds

You can install these sounds to have fun audio cues play as you work with any Microsoft Office 2000 program. For example, you will hear sounds when you work with toolbars, scroll bars, and dialog boxes, zoom in or out, or when you send mail. To install this download, double-click the sounds.exe program file on your hard disk to start the Setup program. Follow the instructions on the screen to complete the installation. Here are useful tips for using this program:

1. In any Office 2000 program, on the Tools menu, click Options.

2. In the Options dialog box, click the General tab, select the Provide feedback with sound check box, and then click OK.

To select or deselect specific sounds:

1. On the Start menu, click Control Panel, and then double-click the Sounds icon.

2. In the list, select the sound you wish to turn on or off, and then click OK.

To adjust the volume of the sounds:

1. On the Start menu, click Control Panel, and then double-click the Multimedia icon.

2. Click the Audio tab, adjust the volume by sliding the volume bar, and then click OK.

To remove this download:

1. On the Start menu, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.

2. Double-click Add/Remove Programs.

3. In the Install/Uninstall list, select Office Sounds, and then click Add/Remove.

4. Click Remove All.

5. Click Next.

6. Click Finish to complete and exit the installer.

You can download it from: http://office.microsoft.com/downloads/2000/sounds.aspx

Cogitum Co-Citer

This utility gives you a simpler way of saving text from the Internet, provided you are running IE 5.0 or higher. Just highlight the text you want, right click, and select "Grab Selected Text." That’s all there is to do. Now that you have your text, you can add comments, save your files to certain collections, sort your records, combine (or split) your records, search collections, send your files in an e-mail, and import and export your files. Cogitum Co-Citer automatically captures selected text, its title, Internet address where the text was found, and the date the text is added to the collection. Once a text selection has been grabbed, you can create and manage new collections, create and manage folders for organising texts, add comments about the grabbed text, sort citations according to various criteria, follow the link associated with the grabbed text just by clicking on it, Import/export collections to work with them at other computers, to split a large collection into smaller ones, or to combine small collections into a larger one, Publish the collection as a Web page, send the collection by e-mail, control how the grabbed texts and information are displayed, search the collection, print texts from a collection and delete grabbed texts from the collection. You can manage the collection off-line. However, to follow a link or view a page from which you have grabbed a text or the page to which the text refers, you will need an Internet connection.You can download this very useful program from www.cogitum.com/cociter/cociter.exe

— Raman Mohan