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Four No-Name Multimedia Applications That Work Better Than Famous Brands
By John Deprice

If you think that Adobe, Ulead or Corel make the best multimedia products, think again. There are dozens of innovative indies who develop excellent software for images and video and don't charge you for the brand name.

A4 DVD Shrinker (Dans Digital Media)

A4 DVD Shrinker is a tiny but fast DVD backup and shrinking tool. Why do you need one? How about taking your DVD collection and backing up several movies onto a single DVD, without compromising the quality in a short time? A4 DVD Shrinker shrinks all types of DVDs and fully backs them up to your hard drive or burns them to DVDR discs and you get to keep all DVD extra features, like interviews.

A4 DVD Shrinker is based on a proprietary DVD Engine and can shrink all DVD contents like Menus, Movie, Audio, Subtitles and Languages. It can also peel off CSS protection from commercial DVDs automatically so that you can make your own DVD copies no matter what copy protection is used on the original. The built-in high speed DVD burner supports all type of DVDR discs ( R, RW, -R, -RW). You do not need third party drivers or burning software installed either.

Paint Buster (SoftBusters)

Paint Buster is a compact and innovative image processing program. It is quite simple for beginners yet powerful for professionals. With Paint Buster you can resize, crop, rotate, cut and paste and enhance your family photographs as well as create images for the home web-page. The best thing, you don't have to be a designer to do that.

Paint Buster gives you complete control of your images, on pixel, color, palette and print level. With a click of a button, you have a huge number of paint tools at your disposal. All with anti-aliasing, transparency and texture capabilities. It supports JPEG, GIF, TIF, PNG, BMP, ICO, PCX, and TGA formats.

This standard-issue image-editing application offers a solid set of tools for tweaking your digital photos. Paint Buster's interface echoes that of other applications in this class, with various icons for brushes, pens, and drawing tools surrounding the large image-preview window.

VirtualDJStudio 3.0 (Next Generation Software)

VirtualDJStudion 3.0 (VDJ3) is a virtual mixing console for DJs, professional and aspiring. You can play multiple MP3 and Wav files, with tempo/pitch control for beat-matching. Plus, easily set a configurable number of 'lines', each of which has its own MP3/WAV file player, volume control, pitch/tempo control, and other options. The program includes a 10-band EQ, plugin support, integrated File Navigator, and Playlist Editor.

VirtualDJStudio is not like all of the other DJ programs out there. While other programs limit you to two players with a Cross-Fader, Virtual DJ Studio provides you with an entire studio. Also, it's more demanding and takes time to learn.

Super Bot (SparkleWare)

Super Bot can download files, folders, or entire websites with as little as one click. The program uses HTML rewriting technology, so copied sites look and feel like the online versions.

Super Bot let's users browse at faster speeds, by loading files directly from your hard drive not the server (offline browsing). You can view websites without an Internet connection and archive pictures, videos, sounds and other Net content on your computer. Super Bot makes it easy to create functional and editable mirrors of online sites as well as browse a website's internal structure and organization. One good application for Sparkleware's Super Bot is to sanitize children's browsing by creating a "sandbox" of age-appropriate material. You can create autorun CDs and DVDs of your favorite sites too.

Download Links:

A4DVDShrinker: http://www.deprice.com/a4dvdshrinker.htm

Paint Buster: http://www.deprice.com/paintbuster.htm

VirtualDJStudio: http://www.deprice.com/virtualdjstudio.htm

Super Bot: http://www.deprice.com/superbot.htm

John Deprice owns and operates http://www.deprice.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

Hard Drive Cooling for 10 Cents
By Dave Tiberio

I have purchased almost every hard drive cooling device on the market, some costing as much as $50 or more. I have systems that place fans in front of the drive that suck air from the outside, and fans that mount underneath. The problem with these setups are that they tend to be expensive, the airflow tends to be quite low, and in general they just don't cool down the drives by more than 1 - 5 degrees. I even own one that claims an 80cfm airflow. But alas I was never satisfied with any of these cooling methods.

For over a year now I have been able to achieve a 10 - 15 degree Celsius temperature drop on my hard drives simply by using a 10 cent bracket from a local hardware store.

Image: http://cheapbooks.name/pics/DSC00823.JPG

- 1/2" bracket
- 80mm fan
- 3.5" hard drive

I use 3 hard drives in every one of my 20 servers, 2 running as a RAID-1 and the third as a spare in case the raid goes down. I use a mounted cooling fan blowing directly onto the circuit board of every drive, using an 80mm fan, with the air blowing in the direction of the drive surface. Any speed fan will have a dramatic affect on cooling. Please note that in some cases I suspected that the drive temperature was not being reported properly, as some drives showed no change in temperature via software but were clearly cooler to the touch.

Simply mount a standard 1/2" bracket available from your local hardware store. The bracket must fit one machine screw to mount to the rear of the hard drive, and it must also fit a screw capable of mounting the fan. I have been able to do it using the standard screws although you may need a matching nut & bolt for your fan depending on your bracket.

Before removing your drive and fan, make sure you get a test reading of the temperature reported by your hard drive, if your drive supports it.

Image: http://cheapbooks.name/pics/DSC00822.JPG

Mount the fan to the bracket as shown above. Make sure you mount it with the airflow arrow directed to the drive. Also ensure that the power cable for the fan is mounted at the back end of your setup. A second bracket can optionally be used on the other side of the fan, but keep in mind that in some cases you may have a slight warping effect on your fan if the holes do not line up accurately enough.

Image: http://cheapbooks.name/pics/DSC00820.JPG

After mounting the bracket to the fan, mount it to one of the rear screw holes on the drive. Mount it on the side facing your open case panel if you want to be able to replace the fan without removing the drive.

Image: http://cheapbooks.name/pics/DSC00818.JPG

Connect all the power cables and take a sampling of your temperature sensor on your hard drive, using tools such as SMART software. You should notice a dramatic change in temperature such that other cooling methods will no longer be necessary.

Copyright 2005 CheapBooks.com. All Rights Reserved.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

Create Professional Quality Documents with Microsoft Word by Taking Advantage of the Formatting Tools
By Anthony Magno

Create professional quality documents with Microsoft Word by taking advantage of the software's exceptional formatting tools.

The cardinal rule of word processing should be followed by students and businessmen alike: Key in your data first, format last.

Why? Efficiency – by typing up your 30 page research paper, 20 page report or two page memo, you will be able to focus on content without the distraction of stopping, highlighting (selecting your text) and applying formatting on the fly. Since Microsoft Word is designed with powerful formatting tools, you will be able to apply paragraph and character formats later with simple clicks of your mouse. Save valuable time by sticking to this rule.

Formatting when used in this context is simply the appearance of your text, e.g., font size, bold, italics, underlines, color etc.

The following guide should be followed AFTER you’ve completed your deliverable, e.g., essay, thesis paper, or letter. Once it’s been proof read, you can then take full advantage of MS Word’s formatting tools.

Let’ say that you plan on placing emphasis on specific words throughout your document using an underline, making the word(s) bold or a different color. MS Word will speed up this task by enabling you to format once and then to reapply it over again with a click of your mouse. You can use Format Painter on the Standard toolbar to apply text formatting and some basic graphics formatting, such as borders and fills. Note If you don't see the Standard toolbar (Standard toolbar: A toolbar that performs some of the most common tasks in a Microsoft Office application, such as opening, saving, and printing files.), on the View menu, point to Toolbars, and then click Standard.
1. Select the text or graphic that has the formatting that you want to copy.

2. On the Standard toolbar, click Format Painter . The pointer changes to a paintbrush icon. To apply formatting to more than one block of text or graphic, double-click Format Painter.

3. Click the text or graphic that you want to format.

If you’re creating a lengthy document, e.g., term paper, thesis or newsletter you may want to incorporate Word styles. A style is a set of formatting characteristics that you can apply to text, tables (table: One or more rows of cells commonly used to display numbers and other items for quick reference and analysis. Items in a table are organized into rows and columns.), and lists in your document to quickly change their appearance. When you apply a style, you apply a whole group of formats in one simple task. For example, instead of taking three separate steps to format your title as 16 pt, Arial, and center-aligned, you can achieve the same result in one step by applying the Title style. The following are the types of styles you can create and apply:
1. A paragraph style controls all aspects of a paragraph's appearance, such as text alignment, tab stops, line spacing, and borders, and it can include character formatting.

2. A character style affects selected text within a paragraph, such as the font and size of text, and bold and italic formats.
If the Styles and Formatting task pane (task pane: A window within an Office application that provides commonly used commands. Its location and small size allow you to use these commands while still working on your files.) is not open, click Styles and Formatting on the Formatting toolbar (toolbar: A bar with buttons and options that you use to carry out commands. To display a toolbar, click Customize on the Tools menu, and then click the Toolbars tab.).
1. In the Styles and Formatting task pane, click New Style.

2. In the Name box, type a name for the style (style: A combination of formatting characteristics, such as font, font size, and indentation, that you name and store as a set. When you apply a style, all of the formatting instructions in that style are applied at one time.)

3. In the Style type box, click Paragraph, Character, Table, or List to specify the kind of style you are creating.

4. Select the options that you want, or click Format to see more options.

By utilizing styles throughout your document, you will be able to create professional indexes or a table of contents (TOC) more effectively. The biggest benefit of applying styles in your document is consistency. Main topics, headings all the way down to sub-topics will have identical formats. Moreover, your table of contents will become dynamic, i.e., if you add or delete pages to your document, the TOC can update with the click of the mouse without having to manually renumber your pages.

Anthony M. Magno, president of MMC, Inc., has 10+ years experience developing and implementing successful corporate learning, leadership and development programs. Learn about getting a Free Needs Analysis at: http://www.MagnoConsulting.com Anthony can be reached at 949.350.2872 (e-mail: amm@magnoconsulting.com)

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/