For example I find this tool useful when I need to copy some new songs to one of my mobile phones which does not play any mp3 file with more than 128 kbps. Some mp3 files have 192, 320 so all I need to do is to load them in the program and down-sample them to 128 kbps. All this easy as pie. This app knows how to handle CD, WAV, WMA, OGG, AAC, AC3, AIFF, FLA, MP3, MP4 and some other audio formats.

Unlike many other application suites out there this one only supports audio editing so it is a lightweight app which has some disadvantages (small amount of space occupied, loads and runs very fast, simple interface and very friendly).

If you are a more experienced user there is always the possibility of using the command prompt interface for doing all your tasks in a more professional way. If you are a rookie or an avarage user the GUI is very helpful. Some other features like adding an incremental value at the end of the file name to make a difference between the files, deleting the original file after conversion, overwriting it, logging the process, etc. are also present.

So as a wrap-up this tool can be looked up as a command-line MP3 converter for your daily basics operations or a command-line audio converter for  the most experienced users.

Much has changed since I started using Blaze MP at the start of last year and new features have been implemented so that it keeps being a competitive product. With its impressive features list it will pretty much satisfy even the most demanding users. I have to tell you that I am a pretty big fan of Blaze Media Pro as I wrote a tutorial (in romanian) some time ago about how to save the soundtrack of a movie with this great tool. Things haven’t changed for me since then as I use this great application even today. Why ? Because it’s small, it’s fast, it knows how to get the job done nice and easy. As an old Blaze MP user I tell you that it’s very easy to edit mp3 files and save them as ringtones for your mobile phone, save screenshots from different movies or clips.

I must mention the great help section of the site. Detailed, step-by-step guides showing you how to do everything with this neat tool are just waiting to be read. Also have a look at the screenshots to try and see how the program looks like.

Of course, web hosting companies noticed this trend and tried to offer something attractive and competitive for this newly emerged community called bloggers. For a start-up blog you don’t actually need a lot of bandwidth, storage space and so on. You need a decent amount of everything. I would say the “smallest” package would suit you best for about 6 months (depending on your blog’s growth). After that you would probably like to switch to the next package or if the hosting company gives you the chance, why not customize your current package in order to fit your needs. For example now you don’t need 250MB of storage space, now you need 1GB but you don’t need 15 databases or so, 3 are enough. So that, in my opinion, would be really great; the opportunity to customize your hosting package.

What I suggest you should do before diving in the hosting “pool” is read a couple of reviews about a decent number of hosting companies. Do that just to see what others think about them. Read, read and read happy customers opinions and listen to what some not so happy customers have to say about a particular company. I for example, would read 70%  negative reviews and 30% positive reviews. Of course, it is crucial that you collect your information from some highly trusted sources. Sources that don’t do positive reviews for money or in exchange of other services. You need to find yourself a highly regarded, honest source of web hosting companies reviews. For example before I want to buy a product on the internet I try to dig out some information about it on different forums, reviews sites, etc. just to make sure and to know what others think about it.

Web hosting geeks is a place where you can find web hosting reviews and a lot of information related to some fairly well known web hosting companies. If you want to find out exactly what a company is about all you need to do is to read a couple of reviews related to it. For example a review page has a couple of sections that should interest you. The first one contains a logo of the reviewed company, a link to their site and some pricing information. The next section would contain the host rating and some information about general and additional features. A particular section of interest would be the third one because it contains the customer reviews. Feel free to read as many as you can and make sure you ignore the ones that are nothing else but spam. You can submit your own review if you like. A very important section is about what the host’s script library includes. If you have some dependencies to consider then you definitely should pay attention to these. A live demo might be available as well. Again, a  relatively important chunk of information is in the 5th section where you can find out what the hosting service includes and/or supports. You should definitely pay attention to this section as you don’t want to end up with a host service that for example doesn’t support PHP 5. The awards section  should be so important but might be interesting. In the end a section that contains an overall wrap up of the  review. However if you are not satisfied with what you find over at Web Hosting Geeks you can use their web hosting articles page and choose to find out more information about web hosting by reading some interesting  and relevant articles. The left sidebar can be of great help when it comes to filtering the site’s content as it provides quick access to what might interest you. Also based on their reviews, on the home page you can view the list of the top 10 web hosting companies.

So, that pretty much covers it all. If you would like to read further helpful advices and tips that could help you make up your mind check out their other site. If you prefer a more friendly approach, a blog would be the answer.

As a conclusion, if I was to start all over again this would be the start point.

“Feedreader is a FREE RSS news aggregation solution that provides robust, state-of-the-art features in an intuitive, user-friendly environment.”

I think that pretty much covers it all. A good application, just like any other product or service will speak for itself. Basically this neat app has everything a feed reader should have. For the beginning you should know that this is not a web-based feed reader like Google Reader or many others. No, this is a 100% desktop application that collects your feed data and serves it to your delight.

What is so cool about it ?

The structured way of interaction, the user-friendliness, the easy-to-follow, non-intrusive grouping of news makes everything so easy with FeedReader3. I honestly think that such a professional yet easy to use interface has to do something with a little of psychology. You can’t design everything so well and put it in the RIGHT place without having a little bit of experience in how a person approaches these kind of apps. For example the three main panes starting with the tree-like structure of the feed directory, followed by the content of the selected feed and ending with the built-in browser make everything incredible easy and less stressful. The content of the selected feed however has some almost unique and powerful features when it comes to organizing a certain feed. It groups all the news in a category-like structure based on the date when the post was submitted. For example a particular feed content is grouped in the following manner: today, yesterday, this week, last week, last month and older. This is just an example of simplicity and easiness of access. Also the attachment icon will be present if the post contains any kind of attachments such as archives, different files or any other media files. The exact date and hour when the post was published will also be present in the right of the corresponding post. Of course this is just the standard look. I enjoyed it so much that i didn’t feel the need of adding something else. However you can easily filter your content by a whole bunch of things such as date, read or unread posts, tag, source, date, creator, etc. If you feel like you need to try another layout you can choose to change it to classic, wide and full. If you have problems with the size of the text you can selecte a larger or a smaller font size for all of your feed’s content.

What more features does it have ?

When it comes to updating your feed collection, FeedReader3 does it by itself. Practically it checks for new updates in all of your feeds and alerts you in a decent way regarding the new content. That way you can concentrate more on your productivity instead of browsing all the feeds you are subscribed to, just to check if there is something new. Smartfeeds are a must-have and FeedReader3 has them. You just need to type in some keywords that are relevant to you and FeedReader3 will help you aggregate news related to that particular selection of yours. It’s as simple as it can get. Also FeedReader3 can automatically download enclosures and podcasts attached to any article in your feed. Not only that it downloads the attached files, it also provides a native interface to help you tag and categorize them. The default enclosures “directories” are all, audio, video, images and other. Of course, full support for Unicode and SSL connections is available. You don’t need to worry if you have a large amount of feeds. The stress can now go away because this cool app will organize your new content and feed it to you just like a pro. As far as portability, I was very pleased when I exported my feed list out of Wizz RSS to an OPML file and imported it in FeedReader without any problems. You can have FeedReader send you e-mail to keep you informed regarding new feed content. Nevertheless another cool feature is the rating system that allows the app to suggest you possibly interesting articles based on the statistic he gathered when you starred different articles.

Will these great features affect my desktop performance ?

For example it’s installer is under 4MB. FeedReader3 knows how to manage itself with the exact amount of available resources he needs and nothing else more. So don’t need to worry about the fact that this is a third-party app and it will take you longer to have access to your precious feed. You can easily choose to block any alerts whatsoever if you don’t want to be disturbed or eliminate all other features to have a low-cost reader in terms of resources. I tested it and these cool features won’t affect your computer’s performance at all !

Why is FeedReader better at reading feeds than ThunderBird ?

I can’t stand third-party apps that want to do everything by themselves. This is the solid reason why i dropped ThunderBird and used Wizz RSS News Reader. I just don’t like ACDSee-like apps that started to do a thing (in this case viewing pictures – and they did it pretty weel) but furthermore in hope that they will increase their sales by targeting a larger market segment (photos, audio, video, etc) ended up with a program that tries to do everything but actually nothing as it loads slower and lacks power features and must-haves. I’m not saying ThunderBird is like that because that wouldn’t be true (mainly because it is free and it is developed my Mozilla), but i like to regard it as an email client and not as a suite of emails, rss reader and god knows what else. Programs are just like humans. They can’t be professionals at everything. As soon as they try to do many things at once their level of performance is very likely to go down. So i think they should concentrate more on one thing rather than a bunch. As far as this matter goes, I will try to cover it alone in a future post.

What are the demands of FeedReader ?

Almost zero. With this reader you don’t have to worry about incompatibility issues as it supports the most common feed formats out there. Regarding the OS, it runs without any problems on Windows 2000 and all the above versions.

This is good stuff but i want to check it myself !

Here are some screenshots mainly to help you make an idea of how FeedReader3 looks like.

Download FeedReader3

Among others, you have the possibility of integrating credit and/or debit cards support thereby your clients will have the chance to pay in a matter of seconds deposing the money directly in your bank account. Not only that this thing nowadays is vital but you will also eliminate plenty of paperwork and stress.

A smart security system which will protect your private information is also at hand.

Another important characteristic is the fact that you have the possibility of reducing the amount of work and stress related to bookings for your front desk. You can do that with the available online booking system which is based on credit cards. All you have to do is to tell the program which are the booking rules and he will manage everything. One of the many advantages of this is that you can get rid of hang-ups, stress and you can take in more than one bookings simultaneously.

In case you have multiple locations and work points, now you can have all the information in one place. At the head office you can collect information from your different locations and generate reports regarding your staff, profit, costs, efficiency and many more, just so you can see which work point needs adjustments and which needs bonuses for it’s hard work.

If your service is integrated in a hotel you can connect to the front desk of the hotel, from where you can take in orders. The program checks the clients status so that all the costs are approved before the client has left the hotel.

Yet you can have a peek at the features table for more details.

You can refer to it as spa software, salon software or even as software for salons, you name it. No matter the approach, Spa & Salon 2007 can be of great help in case you want to modernize your company and to get it updated with the latest management techniques.

• Local files or folders

• Registry keys

• MS Outlook Files

• Outlook Express Files

• My Documents

• Explorer Favorites

• Explorer History

• Windows Address Book

• MSN Files

• ICQ Files

• Modem and Windows settings

Let’s say we want to create a backup of a local folder. After we selected the desired folder we have the opportunity of choosing through a powerful yet dinamic filter which files will be processed and/or which ones will be ignored. Also the filter allows you to skip read-only, hidden or system files as well as empty folders. An important filter option is the possibility of skipping files created or modified before or after a certain date.

Another great thing about Backup Platinum is that it offers you the chance of storing your backup on a FTP server, CD/DVD media or locally on your HDD or why not on the local area network. In case if you want to burn the backup on a CD/DVD this neat tool provides you with the necessary options like: volume label, burn speed and even the options of erasing the disc or close the disc session. Everything has been taken care of so if for some reason one of the storage options is unavailable you cat set your alternative destinations so that your backup process does happen no matter what.

Of course you can choose from a list of storage options:

• Store each file as is

• ZIP each file

• Encrypt each file with blowfish

• ZIP and encrypt each file

• Put all files into a single ZIP archive

• Put all files into a single encrypted ZIP archive

Further more you can select the compression quality, the ZIP archive name or choose to split your volumes.

Finally you can choose to create a scheduled backup based on repetitions that take place when you want.

If somehow you forgot to set up something or just made an error you don’t need to go through all the process again. All you need to do is to right click on the item and access it’s properties from where you can correct anything you want. You will see a new tab called “Advanced” which is
more than of great use ! There you can select further characteristics of your backup such as setting your backup type to an incremental one with the possibility of deleting the old files. Also security measures can be taken: check to see if the file is not being used by another program, safe overwriting and CRC verifications.

Another new tab shown in the item properties is the “Actions” tab that lets you define the execution of certain programs before and after running the backup process. Also in this tab
we can find the option of sending an e-mail notification which helps you make sure everything went smoothly.

The synchronization function provided completes the package. Again you can select two folders: the source and the destination. Then you can choose to swap them or select from which one files
will be copied to the other directory. The synchronization function supports FTP transfer and filtering mode applied to folders and/or files only as well as scheduled synchronizations.

Backup Platinum can run in service mode with almost no user interference (this great option might be of use for the network administrators if they want to create backups in “stealth mode”).
Speaking of interferences, you might want to have a look at the “Automatic Replies” section that allows you to configure the behaviour of the program in certain situations. Also the program has an agent located in your tray just to make sure you have quick access to your backup tasks.

The priority of the thread can also be adjusted to fit your needs. FTP and e-mail notifications settings are more than welcome especially the “Send test message” button which alows you to check your configuration.

Even some interface tuning options for the logs and files are available for the ones crazy about colored grids.

I turned this program upside down and i can tell you it’s really great, however i would like to see in the future versions a module that allows the user to create backups of remote files/folders. That shouldn’t be such a hard thing to do as they already have the FTP engine writing to the server now all they need to do is to get it to read from it.

The best of all is that Backup Platinum requires approximately only 3MB of free disk space !

Oh, i almost forgot. Too bad this program doesn’t run on Windows Vista but i’m sure the next version will.

So if i convinced you that this program is worth the money go ahead and buy it. If you feel like you want to give it a test yourself you can also download it and use it for 30 days of trial.

Below are some pictures just to help you make an idea.

The effects tab has two options: pattern and glass types. Of course you can choose the desired opacity for each of them. There are a few patterns from which to choose:

• 4X4 LR diagonal
• 4X4 RL diagonal
• 3X3 LR diagonal
• 3X3 RL diagonal
• Diagonal cross
• Dots pattern

If you’re wondering what 4X4 and LR/RL means, its simple. 4X4 means that the width of the lines is bigger than 3X3 which of course is smaller and LR means that the lines are orientated from left to right.

Also we have some glass effects at our discretion:

• Wave bottom
• Wave top
• Wave left
• Wave right
• Ellipse bottom
• Ellipse top

I’m not going to explain these because their name sais it all.

The bottom line is that you can combine patterns with effects to your delight. Also you can choose to have a colored border around your userbar and a neat glow effect.

Another great option is to add an overlay image of which you can choose it’s opacity, position and you can even stretch the desired image until you get a custom shape.

When it comes to saving you have two options. The first one is to save the current userbar as a project (this is most than useful if you want to add a little more touch later or if you are making more than one userbar and all you need to change are a few settings); this is much like the Photoshop psd file. The second save option outputs your userbar to a png image which then you can use as you please.

Please don’t forget that this customization options are just a few clicks away and you don’t need to use Photoshop or other picture editing programs.

The single disadvantage this program has is that it cannot generate an animated userbars. That’s not a problem because you can use this form that lets you animate your userbars. It permits you to choose from five transition effects: fade, scroll up, scroll left, door and squish. You can also select the preffered amount of time for each userabar to show. You can fetch your userbars from the web or from your local computer.

Download Userbar Generator

I can’t say that the interface isn’t user-friendly as it’s structured on tabs, has some very intuitive drag and drop options for moving the side panels arround. The thing that every side panel has the option of being hidden or always on top is also great. A nice advantage if you edit some project based files is the Explorer module that gives you quick access to the files you need.

I think that TextPad (as well as many other text editors) is in lack of a module that would permit it to connect to a host via FTP and edit the remote files like if they were local files. Another useful feature is the “warm start” that will let you continue your work from where you’ve left it, but nowadays this is a must-have for every text editor. The workspace can be defined and saved so that you may set up a custom workspace for each type of file you edit, this too isn’t a new feature.

A nice feature which not all text editors have, is the chance of bookmarking some key lines. After you toggle a few lines as bookmarks you can cycle between them (even if they are in different files). This thing is really great because it helps you understand the code.

Vital shortcut keys are already set up: increase/reduce indent, upper/lower/invert case, but you can go even further and customise them as you can set up some macros that will help you get the desired effect in the shortest amount of time. Of course there are some default macros that are available but just need to be activated. A nice undo/redo function with unlimited number of records is also at your discretion.

A big disadvantage TextPad has is the fact that is doesn’t suport skins or some kind of templates that might be of use when editing different kinds of files to highlight for example some ifs and elses.

You can choose to define different document classes in order to set up a proper developing enhancement. Just to make sure that nothing bad happens you can activate the backup option that will create a backup of the edited file just before the changes are applied.

Overall this look to be a strong and stable text editor with some basic features and a couple of enhanced must-have modules. It’s not really at the head of my preferences list but if i didn’t had any alternatives i think TextPad would be ok. So much for this text editor at the moment.

Download TextPad 5.10

A nice library is always at hand if you need it and helps you manage your music files even if you have a small collection or even a huge one of 50.000+ audio files as it offers you the possiblity of sorting the files and finding the desired tunes in a snap.

If you own a portable player of any kind MediaMonkey is the perfect audio player for syncronizing your tunes. It’s currently supporting iPod, iPod Shuffle, iPod mini, iPod Nano, iPod Video, iRiver H120, H320, H340 and almost any USB Mass Storage Devices. You can syncronize informations like album arts, ratings, volume leveling, play history and of course playlists.

On top of that, this awesome player also has support for ripping CDs using encoders like OGG, LAME MP3, WMA and FLAC. Of course it has a format convertor too which lets you convert from almost any format known to OGG, MP3, WMA, or WAV. However if you wish to convert from other formats check out the available input plugins.

MediaMonkey also has an MP3 Tag editor which is practically an ID3 tag editor which supports ID3v1 & and ID3v2, an OGG tag editor which also supports FLAC files, a WMA tag editor, an APE2 tag editor which is of course for APE files and even an WAV tag editor.

Did i told you MediaMonkey is great for organizing your music collection ? Of course i did, but guess what ? this player helps you do more than that: it helps you store your files into well structured folders rather than all over the hdd and renames the files you want according to their artist, track number, album, etc.

Obviously this player also knows how to ease your pain when you try to create playlists, which of course you might want to export later to m3u files. If i got into playlists i can’t go any further without mentioning the fact that you can use MediaMonkey to manage your library or playlist and use Winamp as your player. This is a built-in feature of which you can see a picture somewhere at the end of this review. I think this more than cool, the freedom of choice.

This jukebox-like player is the perfect solution for you if you throw a party and care to play your tunes from the PC. The “party” module helps set a password for your player just to make sure and protects your library and playlist from being modified. The “auto-dj” module also helps you by automatically playing tunes when your manually selected tracks run out so you can sit back and relax without worrying that the music will eventualy stop.

You don’t have to worry about the fact that some audio files have different volume levels because the MediaMonkey uses Replay Gain and MP3 Gain technology which will do the volume adjusting for you. It’s not a secret that a 10 band equalizer is available and some dsp plugins as well.

A rarely encountered module is the Statistics generator that helps you gather information about your library activity and status which you then can export to excel, html, or xml files if you want to share them with others.

I can’t belive i almost forgot to remind the “Disc Burning Wizzard” that helps you create MP3 discs, audio CDs and other media formats. MediaMonkey also suports scripts that can substantially extend it’s list of features and help you customize your experience.

I think the above features and the other ones i didn’t mentioned should make MediaMonkey a highly regarded audio player. I greatly appreciate the dynamics of the interface (here’s to be mentioned the skins support), the user friendliness and the reliable DirectSound output plugin that is most than perfect not only because it resembles with Winamp’s DirectSound plugin but has a nice GUI with all the needed options.

Download MediaMonkey Standard or purchase the Gold edition.

You ought to try this great player as it’s one of the best i’ve tested in a while. Below there are some pictures with the main characteristics, just to help you make an impression.