If you’re tired of being bugged by WinZip to upgrade or register and don’t mind using something slightly different, then ALZip is an excellent solution.

AlZip is compatible with all ZIP and compressed file types and best of all, it’s completely free for home use so there’s no annoying nag screen or usage period to worry about. But much more than that, AlZip allows you to choose which program you want to open a certain file with rather than autoselect one for you or open it as generic Windows file. It’s also a good option for unzipping files that have been downloaded from eMule or other P2P networks because it scans them for malware or viruses before opening them. The one thing that strikes you about this program though is how easy it is to use – you’re grandma could probably unzip files with this program easily. It takes you through the unzipping process gently and doesn’t hide decompressed files in some inconvenient location like some programs do. It also doesn’t require any plugins or add ons to enhance its functionality or deal with certain file times – it’s all in the program anyway. The latest release is ultra fast and they’ve implemented a new update and restore option for repeated tasks.

For a comprehensive, easy to use and powerful decompression tool, ALZip is all you need to banish those zipper blues.

Review by Nick Mead

OxygenOffice Professional is an office suite completely based on the famous open source package OpenOffice, but with more templates, cliparts, samples and fonts. All six applications included in OpenOffice are present, but if you click on File, New, Templates and Documents, you’ll find ten categories to choose from with dozens of pre-formatted documents, so you can save time and have more eye-catching works in minutes.

The categories go from Business Correspondence to Presentation and Education. In each one you can find templates for different type of files, like spreadsheet, presentation, andwriting documents.

Although it’s appreciable the effort of providing more materials to work with, OxygenOffice doesn’t add that much to OpenOffice. Having aimed to be more graphically efficient, the program could have improved the general GUI of the Open Office application. In this case it would have been a real plus and people would have had more reason to use it.

OxygenOffice offers many templates and cliparts for you to be more creative while creating personal or professional documents. It would have been nice if the program had improved the GUI also to differentiate the package from OpenOffice though.

Review by Francesca Migliorini

Volumouse provides you with a quick and easy way to control the audio volume on your system – simply by rolling the wheel of your wheel mouse. It allows you to define a set of rules for determining when the wheel will be used for changing the sound volume. For example: You can configure Volumouse to use your mouse wheel for volume control when the Alt key is hold down, when the left mouse button is down, when the mouse cursor is over the taskbar, and so on…When the conditions that you define are not satisfied, your mouse wheel will be used for the regular scrolling tasks, exactly as before.

Rapid Typing is a fast and useful application that allows you to improve your typing skills, both in accuracy and speed. The interface is fairly clear, although maybe you will have to disable the aquarium animation set as default in the background as it can disturb you when concentrating on your exercises. You can do that, in the option menu, ticking the animation option and if you wish, choosing a background colour, although the white one, is probably the clearer.

When you start the session, simply type the letters you see on the screen, without looking at your keyboard. Exercises are increasingly difficult and test you on specific letters each time, until you are able to remember better what’s where.

If you don’t know which is the correct finger to use to press a letter, press the Show/Hide Virtual Keyboard button, on the far bottom of the main frame. You’ll get a representation of your hands, telling you with which finger you should use to press the key.
At the end of each session the program tells you how many mistakes you made and how fast you have been, showing you a graph of your improvements.

With Rapid Typing you can improve your typing speed and accuracy when using your keyboard with increasingly more difficult exercises. Although it’s very easy to use, it lacks of an initial explanation on how to position and move your fingers, so two-finger typers might have to look for an alternative training method.

Review by Francesca Migliorini

Burn4Free is an easy-to-use free burning solution that’s compatible with more than 1200 CD/DVD drives. The application burns data and audio from different files types (WAV, WMA, MP3, OGG and .CDA (Import from Digital Audio Disc File)) Burn/Save .ISO file. You can use the program to verify content and import your audio compilation from .M3U and .ASX Playlists.

DreaMule is a nicely designed file sharing program which follows the format of eMule, the famous P2P application. The structure of the two applications is basically the same: the way you search and download files and also how you prioritize them. The plus of DreaMule is an easier searching tool and a more pleasant, user friendly interface, together with a hidden, vital enhancement which puts many people off file sharing programs.

DreaMule resolves the issue of having a ‘low ID’, which is the sword of Damocles of all eMule users and causes very slow downloads or very long waiting lists before a download can start. Usually this happens when users use a firewall or a protected router. They are still able to upload and download files but need the help of servers to be reached by other clients. Their IP/ports are not exchanged between other peers, limiting their possibilities for finding sources. You will have to decide for yourself whether this major issue is definitely solved or not, meanwhile I can say the programs had no problem in finding and connecting immediately to many sources to download copyright-free materials.

It’s an open source, ad-free application which improves eMule’s main features making file sharing friendlier and faster. It’s your turn now to give the last word.

Review by Francesca Migliorini

MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. When used in conjunction with an arcade game’s data files (ROMs), MAME will more or less faithfully reproduce that game on a PC. MAME can currently emulate over 3000 unique (and over 5400 in total) classic arcade video games from the three decades of video games – ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, and even some from the current millennium.

The ROM images that MAME utilizes are "dumped" from arcade games’ original circuit-board ROM chips. MAME becomes the "hardware" for the games, taking the place of their original CPUs and support chips. Therefore, these games are NOT simulations, but the actual, original games that appeared in arcades.

MAME’s purpose is to preserve these decades of video-game history. As gaming technology continues to rush forward, MAME prevents these important "vintage" games from being lost and forgotten. This is achieved by documenting the hardware and how it functions, thanks to the talent of programmers from the MAME team and from other contributors. Being able to play the games is just a nice side-effect, which doesn’t happen all the time. MAME strives for emulating the games faithfully.

While iTunes is an amazing music management application, it’s not great when it comes to importing tracks from your hard drive to the iTunes library.

Normally if you want to add music files to the iTunes library there are only two options – you have to add them manually or let iTunes store files on your system folder. iTunes Folder Watch is constantly on the lookout for new tunes that have been added to your hard drive and then automatically adds them to your iTunes library. The program runs in the background and doesn’t actually indicate when it’s working or triggered but you will notice that files have been added to your iTunes library. It works basically as a background process although you can bring it into the foreground if you choose. Note that you’ll need iTunes version 6 or above for iTunes Folder Watch to work correctly. In this trial version, some folder management features have been disabled and you are bugged by a nag screen to purchase an upgrade to the full version. The licence key that they give you also works with iTunes Album Browser so if you do upgrade, you’re effectively getting two programs for one.

If iTunes is not managing your newly added music the way you wished it would, then you may find this program hits the spot.

Review by Nick Mead

Collanos Phone is three tools in one – a multi-protocol instant messaging client, VoIP app and a
video conference suite.

The program supports a multitude of IM clients and protocols including Jabber, MSN, ICQ, AOL, and Yahoo! The VoIP phone function is based on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) standard while the Instant Messenger is based on the popular Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) standard. As far as conference calls are concerned, it doesn’t support more than three callers at a time which is a definite drawback for large meetings. It is very well organised though in the way it shows useful information about contacts in the profiles. The program is based on existing Collanos user profiles so if you use any other Collanos products, the profile is instantly imported and shared in Collanos Phone. The other thing that makes life easier is that you make calls from the Windows taskbar – simply right click on the Collanos Phone symbol and you are given options to call or start conference calls.

A very basic but professional VoIP and IM client that’s suitable for businesses although general users won’t find all the fun features you find in most similar communication suites such as MSN Live Messenger.

Review by Nick Mead

RSS has made life easier in so many ways – with it you can keep track of the latest website updates without actually visiting the site.

However, some sites don’t have RSS and in those cases, you can waste valuable time keep visiting them to see if they have been updated. That’s where diffbot comes in – it’s an online bookmark manager that notifies you when one of your pages has new content on them. It works by constantly monitoring webpages for changes and new content and notifies you via e-mail when something new has been added. You have to create a diffbot.com account or use the Firefox plugin to track the sites.

The developers claim that it’s a much simpler solution than RSS although I’d rather be able to see the headlines of the latest articles in a glance than receive e-mails every time a site is updated. One good thing is that it automatically imports your favourites so you can be up and running within a few minutes. However, be prepared to be deluged by e-mails – it’s probably a good idea to set up a rule or alternative e-mail account to receive updates.

An effective solution for those that want to keep track of sites that don’t support RSS.

Review by Nick Mead