Monday, January 13, 2003		Downloads

USERS of Yahoo! Messenger and similar programs often complain of poor audio when using the voice feature. This fortnight we feature a freeware which not only offers excellent voice quality over the Net but encryption and other novel features. The other featured freeware is a useful tool for restoring deleted or damaged files - the result of abnormal shutdowns or virus infections.

Speak Freely is an Internet telephone for Microsoft Windows that allows appropriate hardware and software to send and receive audio, in real time, over a computer network. If you’re connected to the Internet by a sufficiently high-speed link, you can converse with anybody else similarly connected anywhere on the earth without paying long-distance phone charges. Users can find one another, even if they have dial-up connections to the Internet, by publishing and searching directory entries on a Look Who’s Listening server. You can designate a bitmap file to be sent to users who connect so they can see whom they’re talking to. Speak Freely is better than using the regular telephone not only because you aren’t running up your phone bill, but also because the conversation is secure from eavesdroppers. This freeware provides three different kinds of encryption, including the same highly secure IDEA algorithm PGP uses to encrypt message bodies. By using PGP to automatically exchange session keys, you can Speak Freely to total strangers, over public networks, with greater security than most readily available telephone scramblers provide. Speak Freely for Windows is compatible for Unix, currently available for a variety of Unix workstations. Windows users can converse, over the Internet, with users of those Unix machines. In addition, it supports the Internet Real-Time Protocol (RTP) and the original protocol used by the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory’s Visual Audio Tool (VAT). By selecting the correct protocol, you can communicate with any other network voice program that conforms to one of these standards. Multicasting is implemented, allowing those whose networks support the facility to create multi-party discussion groups to which users can subscribe and drop at will. For those without access to multicasting, a rudimentary broadcast capability allows transmission of an audio feed to multiple hosts on a fast local network. Download from www.speakfreely.org

This is basically undelete and data recovery tool for Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000 and XP users. It can reconstruct damaged files after an abnormal system shutdown like for example by a power blackout or through computer virus or unwanted deletion or after formatting. However, it cannot help if the data media is damaged physically in these processes. It supports FAT 12/16/32 file systems (used by hard disks, disks, SmartmediaT, Compact FlashT, Memory StickT and others). Its system requirements are: Microsoft Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000 or XP and a second hard disk is recommended for recovery. How much does it cost? Nothing. This program is a freeware. You may not only use it but also freely distribute it to your friends. Available from www.pcinspector.de