Monday, April 15, 2002		Downloads of the week

NetSlideshow is a program that displays images in a slideshow-style format. It supports the five picture formats - .jpeg, .gif, .bmp, .emp and .wmf. There are several options on the main screen. The first one, Folder, displays the names of the image folders that you have displayed slideshows for in the past. Click the Dropdown icon to see and choose folders. Click the Select button to choose a new folder. It displays a folder-chooser window that lets you pick a folder containing images. The Edit option keeps an internal list of all folders you have displayed slideshows for in the past. If you use NetSlideshow often, and view slideshows for many different folders, this internal list can grow. Click Edit to display the list of folders that you have chosen in the past and delete the ones you no longer want. The next option Run runs the slideshow. The option 'Options' displays options that let you control how your slideshow is displayed. The last one Close closes NetSlideshow. Creating a slideshow with NetSlideshow is easy. There are two ways - you can open the NetSlideshow program directory from the Start Menu on your computer, or you can right-click on an image in Windows Explorer and choose the View with NetSlideshow option. To use the first method using NetSlideshow click Start, Programs, then Netslideshow. Click on the Select button. Locate the folder containing the images you want a slideshow for. Click the OK button. Then click the Run button. Press Enter to move between slides (or press F1 for more advanced movement keys). Press Escape to cancel the slideshow. In the second method, you can use the Windows Explorer. An even easier way to create your slideshow is to right-click on one of your pictures! NetSlideshow has been designed for use on CD-ROMs. If you have a collection of pictures that you want to distribute on CD-ROM, you can use NetSlideshow to create a self-running slideshow that doesn't require the installation of any software on the end-user's machine. To create a CD-ROM slideshow, follow these general steps. Copy NetSlideshow.exe into the folder containing the images you will be copying to CD-ROM. Create a text file named autoshow.ini and place it in the same folder. Create a text file named autorun.inf and place it in the folder. Use your favourite CD-ROM burning software to copy all the files in the folder to CD-ROM. When the end-user receives the CD-ROM and places in into the CD-ROM drive, your slideshow will be displayed automatically. Download it from www.netslideshow.com/download.html

This program provides powerful and extremely secure (unbreakable until broken) encryption of information whilst at the same time hiding that information within images. If you don't want to hide information in images you can still use Eyemage IIE's awesome encryption to protect any information. Why use Eyemage IIE? This freeware will encrypt any file into any image (size permitting) and the level of encryption is truly awesome. It hides information in the images without visibly altering them. It provides extreme security. If you don't know the password you don't get the contents. Then it's simple to use. What are its disadvantages? The age old Key Distribution Problem: how do I get the password to the person who needs it without others intercepting it. The writers have come up with a neat solution to this that may not satisfy spies but should work fine for us mortals. Occasionally, you may get the message: Size Inefficient. You may find you use a 100k image to send a 50k document. It's your call, but relax, the network can cope. You can always use the Pure Noise Images that are very size efficient. Eyemage IIE is easy to use. When you load it up you are presented with two buttons: Encode and Decode. Encode (On the left) is the button you should press if you want to hide something in an image. Decode (On the Right) is the button you should press if you want to get something out of an image. After pressing the desired button you will be swiftly carried to another screen. For encoding, firstly decide if you want to encode a file or Typed Text with the appropriate buttons. Then decide if you want to encode into an existing bitmap image (With the extension .bmp) or into a Pure Noise Image. Pure noise images don't require you to have a bitmap available and they don't waste any space. In fact with Eyemage IIE's inbuilt compression they save space. If you have an existing bitmap and you want to shrink it to match the size of your input file then check the "Shrink 2 fit" button. This will cause distortion in the image. Click the Encode Button. You will be prompted to enter a password (Or Intimakey). You can also select the speed. Make your selections and click OK. Your image will be encoded, you will be shown a preview of the image and can then save the image to distribute as you see fit, including its secrets. To decrypt an image that you think has been encoded with Eyemage IIE, select the image with the file requestor. Click the Decode Button. You will be prompted with a password requestor. Enter the password here. Eyemage IIE will attempt to decode the contents of the container image using the password. On completion and depending on the contents you will either be shown the hidden text message or you will be prompted with a requestor to save whatever file was hidden. The password is never stored in the image in any form. Nor is a password digest stored in the image as it is in some comparable systems. The advantage of this is that it makes things even more secure, and the "disadvantage" of this is that there is no way to tell with certainty if the password you enter is the one that the file was encrypted with.. Download from www.proporta.com

This nifty utility identifies files that are commonly discardable, virtually deleted files, temp files, cache files, and various others produced by install, uninstall, defrag, graphics, development, and disk-scanning utilities, infrequently used, excessively large, or other files on your disk. Because these files may be unnecessary, Space Odyssey lists them, and lets you take appropriate action on those files you specify to free up disk space. It has three methods of helping you create more disk space: Express, Custom and Duplicates. In all cases, Space Odyssey identifies files that may be unnecessary and gives you the option to compress, delete, or move them to another storage area. Download from: www.ultrasoft.ro

— Raman Mohan