Monday, April 1, 2002		Downloads of the week

TICK aims to enhance the current Dial Up Networking facilities provided in Windows by automatically detecting any dial up networking connections and provide extra features such as a pop up digital display, full call logging and costing, Internet Tools and much more. After installation, select the TICK icon from Start - Programs - TICK (or where you opted to install). A yellow telephone icon will be added to your notification area (near the clock). Right clicking on this icon will display the main configuration menu. It is recommended you uninstall or remove any existing dial up enhancers to avoid any possible conflicts. The Options menu allows you to configure TICK. You can set how TICK will look, your current call charges, applications to be run at connection and disconnection. Click the OK button to save your settings. If you wish to ignore any changes made click the Cancel button. TICK defaults all options to a setting that should be compatible for most (if not all) machines. Before changing any options ensure that TICK is running and connected to the Internet. You can then see how TICK works and to what the options relate. Connect to the Internet using a standard Dial Up Networking connection. After the connection has been dialled and the initial handshaking carried out, TICK will display or update a digital display with general details about your call, for example, total time connected, total cost of call, data transferred and current data transfer rate. When you disconnect from the Internet your call log will be updated with the full details of the current session. The Logs menu displays how much time you have spent connected to the Internet, a running cost and projections of your calls, data transferred and other general statistics about your call. The Tools menu gives you access to common Internet utilities and Web notification. Web notification allows you to check all sites in your favourites folder for updates. Download available from http://software.reallyeffective.co.uk

This program allows Microsoft Outlook's junk (or adult content) rules to detect more unwelcome e-mails. When you receive unwanted e-mails in Microsoft's Outlook program you can right-click on the offending article and add the sender to the list of junk or adult senders. Outlook maintains these lists as two files (named "Junk Senders.txt" and "Adult Content Senders.txt"). The only problem is that the cunning little senders will often use a different name. It might be "123@abcdef.com" today and 234@abcdef.com" tomorrow. Outlook does allow manual editing of these files and you can create an entry "abcdef.com" which will delete all mail originating from that address. Junk URL will do this for you automatically. It also extends this concept and can further prune "abcdef.com" and create a new entry "def.com". If this is created then all mail from "def.com" will be deleted. Junk URL works with and will modify the same files ("Junk Senders.txt" and "Adult Content Senders.txt") as Microsoft's Outlook. Junk URL can be used as a standalone program. If you wish you can also add a "Junk URL" menu to the menus already provided by Outlook. You can either start Junk URL as a dialog box or you can run it "silently". In this mode it will process your junk or adult sender files without any user interface. Note that you still have to add new offending e-mails to your list of junk or adult senders' first (usually by highlighting an offending e-mail and right-clicking to bring up the context menu). The first time you run the program it will offer to add its menu to Outlook. If you select "Yes" then the next time you start Outlook you will find a "Junk URL" menu item to the left of the "Help" menu. You will also find an additional menu item in Outlook's Help menu giving access to the Junk URL help file. If you get a message box saying that there are no new entries but you still want to see the program's main dialog box (say, to change the default senders' file name) then run the program with the /F switch ("Junk URL /F") or use the menu/shortcut item called "Junk URL (Display Dialog)". The command line switch summary gives more detail if you want to set up your own shortcuts. With the program's dialog box displayed you may select "Junk" or "Adult" as required using the radio buttons. Carefully review the information presented for each sender, selecting or de-selecting the checkboxes as required, before clicking on the Accept button. At the last new entry clicking Accept (or Skip) will also close the dialog box. Download available from www.andersson-design.com

HotKeyz is a shortcut utility with shortcut control for executing other files, launch them in a Normal, Minimised or Maximised state. The Parameter option gives you parameter control when launching another application like Internet Explorer and surfing to a specific site as parameter. For example "C:\ Program Files\ Internet Explorer\ Iexplore.exe" with the parameter "www.skynergy.com". It also features launching your e-mail window when composing a new e-mail even if your e-mail program is not active or focused. You can define shortcuts for launching files, minimising the current active window, showing HotKeyz itself or hiding it. The HotKeyz system tray icon will change to indicate a key press. The shortcuts work with Win, Ctrl, Alt, Shift modifier keys and most other keyboard keys. You can even enable or disable unwanted Hotkeys without deleting them from the Key List. Sometimes you don't necessarily want to assign or enable a hotkey but just quickly want to launch projects, documents or files in their respective applications. If you have some documents you consistently work on, like in Microsoft Word, it would be an overkill to have hotkeys for all or most of them. Use the hotkey combination for the "Show HotKeyz" command and when HotKeyz is visible you can either double click on this file or press enter on it to launch it in its application. HotKeyz has the functionality of a quick command menu and an application launcher without hotkeys. Download from www.skynergy.com/hotkeyz/hotkeyz_setup.exe

— Raman Mohan