Sumatra PDF Viewer is a lightweight, open source PDF viewer for Windows. Though it has a very simple interface and small feature set, it has two features that other PDF viewers lack:

• a very small memory footprint, and;
• a very rapid start time.

It loads PDF files pretty quickly and allows you to page through them easily and zoom in and out. There are options to view a single page, or facing pages two at a time. It will also show a bookmarks side bar if the document includes that info and the interface supports a wide range of languages. Finally it is also portable.

Final Score: 5 out of 5

BonkEnc is a both free and most excellent audio converter and CD ripper that you would be well advised to get your mitts on.

I’ve been using it for quite a while now and it’s reliable and very easy to use. It will convert between a range of audio file formats including MP3, MP4, OGG, FLAC and AAC. And conversion is the main use that I put it to, converting high bit rate audio files that I’ve bought to a lower bit rate (and smaller size) for playback on my Sansa Fuze.

It has also become my CD ripper of choice as it uses less memory than a full-blown music manager and seems to do a quicker job of ripping CD tracks to my hard drive. It also works very well with the CDDB database to retrieve and accurately append tag information to each track.

As well as that, it offers a whole range of other useful features such as:

• automatic creation of cue sheets and playlists;
• encoding to a single file;
• filename patterns to ensure your audio files are automatically organised into the correct folders by artist, year, album, etc;
• support for plug-ins, and;
• a multi-language interface.

All of which is packaged into an easy to use interface.

As I mentioned, I’ve been using BonkEnc for some time now and I think it is very good indeed. I’ve had no problems with it or the audio files it has output (either converted or ripped). So I can happily recommend it to anyone looking for a reliable audio converter and CD ripper.

BonkEnc is also available in portable form so you can install it on a USB stick (using PortableApps.com) and take it’s conversion and ripping powers on the road with you.

Final Score: 5 out of 5

Launchy is described on it’s home page as follows:

Launchy is a free windows and linux utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager.

Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes!

This is an absolutely spot on introduction to the application because, as that advert keeps telling us, “it does exactly what it says on the tin!”

I’ve been using Launchy for a long time now, on both my home PC and the ones I use at work, and it has become my automatic first choice when I want to launch anything from a command prompt to a word processor.

With a few key presses I can be launching an application much more quickly than by using the traditional Windows Start button, All Program Files, etc. route. The index within Launchy responds very quickly and provides a list of options matching your first couple of key presses. If you’ve already used Launchy a few times then it recognises previously used application entries very quickly and will display your most commonly used application beginning with “c” (for instance) very quickly.

Launchy is very configurable, allowing you to select your own shortcut key combination to launch it. You can centre it, make it opaque, fade it in and out, skin it, specify the types of items to be catalogued for launching and you can enhance it with plug-ins. That said, I haven’t really made much use of the plug-ins that are available but there’s a great collection of skins available both from the Launchy Forum and from deviantART.

When I first started using Launchy I had doubts about how responsive a keyboard-based application launcher would be as I’d only used point-and-click toolbar style launchers in the past. Now that approach is a thing of the past because Launchy has been such a revelation.

Unlike those point-and-click types, Launchy is completely unobtrusive if set to activate by a keyboard shortcut – it doesn’t use much memory and pops up instantly when activated. It also disappears instantly when you’re done with it or if you move focus away from it, unless you’ve set the rather cool fade out option.

As if all that isn’t enough, it is also portable and can be run from a USB stick!

I suggest you download it from www.launchy.net and give it a try. Immediately.

Final Score: 5 out of 5

I mentioned Battle For Wesnoth recently on my main blog, saying that it’s a “great fun and dangerously addictive” turn-based strategy game set in a fantasy world of magic, elves, orcs, etc. It is also a free game and, as such, deserving of a mention on this site.

Battle For Wesnoth can be run on multiple platforms (Linux, MacOS and Windows) and can you can download either a stable release or the current development version. I suggest you go with the stable release in order to avoid any potential problems that might either put you off the game or spoil your enjoyment of it. At time of writing I’m using the current stable release (version 1.6.4) for Windows and you should bear that in mind for the rest of this review.

Once you’ve downloaded and installed the smartest next step is to run the tutorial and read the online Getting Started guide. The tutorial shows you the game basics – movement, recruiting allies, combat – and introduces you to a couple of key characters. It’s a pretty straightforward task to master the game-play which has been kept fairly simple. This is very important as you’ll find that to succeed in the game you need to focus on tactics, strategy and development of the characters the make up your band of followers.

Each character has different abilities determined by their attributes, the terrain they are operating in and the time of day. Yes, you need to pay a lot of attention to the time of day in game as this can have a big impact on how well your characters perform!

Much thought also must be given to how you will move your characters around the game space, as characters can travel different distances during each turn. Keep an eye on the position and possible moves of your opponents characters too otherwise you may find yourself surrounded then overwhelmed when battle begins.

It will take a lot of time and experimentation to get the right tactical balance as you work your way through the scenarios available within Battle For Wesnoth. You will lose the occasional campaign and you will suffer the grief of losing characters who have risen through the experience levels to gain a special place in your heart. But do not loose heart because there are many campaigns to enjoy as standard and there are more to download as add-ons making this a game with a long shelf-life indeed.

As well as being able to download add-ons the game includes a map editor so you can create your own campaigns. You can easily change the game language and configure a range of other settings via the Preferences dialogue. Should you suddenly find you’ve been up half the night immersed in a campaign you can save your game before grabbing a few hours sleep and picking up where you left off. There’s also a Multiplayer option so you can play against your mates over a network or the interweb. What more could you ask for?

Well, as you can see the game has great graphics and take my word that it also has lots of cool sound effects which enhance the whole experience. Horses neigh and gallop, swords clang, bowstrings hum, and magical spells warble. So this is not one to play in the office!

Overall, Battle For Wesnoth is a brilliant game which is all the sweeter for being free. In fact it easily stands comparison with the turn-based fantasy games that you can buy in the shops. I thoroughly recommend it and suggest that you head for www.wesnoth.org and download it for yourself. I know it is a 200Mb+ download but that really isn’t all that much these days – it’s not that much bigger than an album download but will perhaps hold your interest for longer!

Final Score: 5 out of 5!

I’ve been happily using the free version of AVG Antivirus for a number of years. However, I’ve become increasingly concerned about the amount of memory it uses and about how slow it makes my PC run when performing on-access scanning. Recently my current installation started bombarding me with pop-up windows informing me that it was time to upgrade so I visited the AVG web site to check out what the latest version had to offer. In addition to the standard antivirus protection I noticed that anti-spyware and something called Safe Search have been added. Mmm, I thought, that will push up the amount of memory and processing required to an even more unacceptable level. Time to find an alternative antivirus application.

Enter ClamWin!

Clamwin is a free and open source antivirus appliction for Windows based on ClamAV, which is an antivirus program for UNIX.

The first thing you need to know about ClamWin is that it does not feature on-access scanning of files, i.e. real-time protection – at least not yet. Some may see this as a problem but if you’re careful it need not be.

In my experience as an IT professional most virus infections result from opening files that, on reflection, you’d never have touched with a barge pole normally. So if you take the time to pause for a moment before opening that email attachment or file you downloaded from the interweb you will dramatically reduce the likelihood of your PC becoming infected. If you couple this care and attention with frequently scheduled ClamWin scans of those parts of a Windows installation most likely to be infected by a virus (the Windows directory itself and the Documents & Settings folders) you reduce the chance of infection to more or less zero. Of course you also have to be sure to scan all other areas of your system regularly too, as well as making sure that you keep your antivirus definition database up to date (ClamWin very thoughtfully does this for you). All too often I’ve found myself removing viruses from PCs where the virus definitions were 6 months or more out-of-date!

Anyway, to the ClamWin program itself…

Once installed ClamWin runs as system tray entry which has a very small memory footprint. This tray entry allows you to configure ClamWin and to open the main ClamWin interface, manually download updates, view scan and update reports, schedule virus scans, check for version updates and visit the ClamWin web site. In addition to this the program adds a Scan with ClamWin Free Antivirus extension to the right-click menu within Windows Explorer. This is very useful as it allows you to invoke a manual scan of any suspicious files before you open them. Whilst this is perhaps not as elegant as a real-time scan it certainly uses less memory and makes your PC run more efficiently.

I recommend that you set up a schedule of virus scans that will process the Windows directory and the Documents & Settings folders once a day, and a full system scan at least once a week. Though I should stress that that is what works for me – you may need to schedule more scans depending on how you use your system.

You can also instruct ClamWin to scan email attachements (both incoming and outgoing). It can be configured to exclude file types that you specify from scans and you can also limit the size of files that will be scanned (e.g. by telling the program not to scan files that are larger than, say, 100Mb). There is also an option to adjust the priority assigned to virus scans and to send an email alert if a virus is detected. All of which makes ClamWin a pretty powerful package despite the lack of a price tag.

As a result of moving to ClamWin, I have noticed an improvement in the performance of my PC – applications load and run faster now that they are not being scanned each time they are accessed – and I’m also experiencing quicker boot times. And even when ClamWin is conducting a scan in the background there is no noticeable impact on the performance of my PC.

The ClamWin site indicates that they are working on an on-access component which will be available in a later version but I now wonder whether I’ll find that feature necessary at all. That said, there are many others who would prefer that an on-access scanner be included, or at least that they have the option to turn one on/off as requirements dictate. That’s why the current incarnation of ClamWin falls slightly short of a perfect score. However, it remains an antivirus program with a very bright future.

Final Score: 4 out of 5

Trader’s Little Helper (TLH) is an invaluable tool if, like me, you are into collecting live recordings.

It is a graphical front-end for several command-line utilities (including flac, lame, and shorten) which makes it easy to encode and decode a variety of audio file formats to wav files, create and verify MD5 checksums, build torrent files, and fix sector boundary errors. It runs on all flavours of Windows from 98 to Vista and, best of all, is free for non-commercial use.

So far I have only used TLH to encode/decode wav files to flac and shorten formats, to check for errors in encoded files and to test wav files to see if they were created from mp3 source files. Using TLH to do these few things has been very easy thanks to its drag-and-drop interface and the straight-forward, sensible layout of its program window. You use the menu to choose the action you want to perform, drag your files into the space provided (or browse for them), adjust any options and then hit the action button (which will read Encode, Decode, Convert, etc., depeneding on the action selected). Then you just sit back and wait for TLH to do it’s stuff. The time taken will vary depending on the action performed but so far I have found it to be very quick most of the time.

This very short post, and my use of TLH, just scratches the surface of what it can do but even for these few tasks it has saved me a huge amount of time. I’m confident that when I need to make use of its other features I’ll be able to do so with ease.

I’ll maybe revisit this post or add another more detailed post in the future but for now this is an audio utility that you  really should have if you work with lossless audio files.

Final Score: 5 out of 5

Another useful tool for bloggers is FeedBurner. This is a service which enables you deliver your web content in a number of different ways, the most obvious example of which being the delivery of your blog as an RSS Feed.

As with other services (such as Technorati, etc) signing up is easy and follows a 2 step process:

1. provide the URL of the blog you want to burn as an RSS feed;
2. enter a title and an address for your feed, choose a user name and password, and supply your email address.

That’s it! With these simple steps completed, you can move on to using FeedBurner to “Analyze, Optimize, Publicize, Monetize and Troubleshootize” your feed.

The About FeedBurner page contains a link to a short video clip which clearly explains how to sign up and then configure your feed.

Once you have you’re feed(s) set up, you can publicise your feeds in a variety of ways, an example of which can be seen in the sidebar of this blog under the heading Other Views. This widget shows a headline summary of recent posts I have made over on A View From The West. You can also keep track of statistics associated with your feed(s) such as how many subscribers you have.

There are various other things that FeedBurner can do for you but the best way to assess these is really to browse their site yourself and have a look at what’s on offer. I have found their service very easy to use and very reliable on which note I shall say: give them a whirl.

Final Score: 4 out of 5

Have you ever been annoyed by the fact that couldn’t be sure which drive letter would be assigned to your USB flash drive when you plugged it into your PC?

Well, as a PortableApps user (more on which later), I have. So much so, in fact, that I recently spent quite a bit of time looking for a solution. I tinkered with the autorun file on the USB drive and tried a couple of autoexec tricks but all to no avail. Then I happened to find my way to the USBDLM page.

This is a nifty little utility which can be installed as a Windows service and can then ensure that one, or more, dedicated drive letters are used when you plug in a USB drive.

This utility comes in the form of a zip archive (a windows installer MSI is available for network installation) and is free for private and educational use.

Installation is pretty straight-forward:

• unzip the file to your hard drive;
• copy the enclosed USBDLM_sample.ini configuration file to USBDLM.ini;
• open this file and change it to at least specify the drive letter(s) you want to use for your USB flash drive(s) – keep the chosen drive letter(s) high in the alphabet to prevent conflict with other devices, especially if you’re on a network;
• there are more options which are well documented but which I saw no reason to employ;
• then save the edited configuration file and run the included _install.cmd script.

Thereafter, when you plug in your USB flash drive it will be assigned the drive letter you have specified.

Sigh. Now I can assign any drive letter I want to my USB flash drive it’s safe to use that drive letter when setting up a backup, configuring a virus scan, or whatever. An excellent little utility!

Final Score: An easy 5 out of 5!

Media Convert is a site which offers an incredibly useful and free service. It will convert files between a wide range of formats for you without the need to install a pile of different file conversion applications.

I was using it today to convert some .bmp files to the .png format and the process was an absolute snap:

1. Use their web site to browse to the location on your PC where the file you want to convert can be found.
2. The file type should be automatically recognised by their system, though you can choose the type of the source file if you want.
3. Then choose the format you want for your output file from one of the file types available in the Output Format drop-down list.
4. If you’re converting image files, you also have an option to resize the output image and, if supported by the file type, apply compression to it.
5. Accept their terms and conditions and click OK.
6. Within a few minutes, depending on the size of the file being converted, you should be presented with a successful result and a page which allows you to download the converted file either directly or in a .zip file.

An absolute dawdle and an extremely useful service and I particularly like the fact that you don’t have to install any software locally to use this site. Excellent.

For a full list of file types that can be converted visit http://media-convert.com.

Final Score: 5 out of 5!

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Now playing: Gentle Giant – On Reflection
via FoxyTunes

Installation & Configuration

It has to be said that Zoundry Blog Writer is a very nice little application. I’ve used it to post several entries on A View From The West and it has done the job very well. So far I have found only one minor niggle, more of which later. For now, I’ll get on and give you a flavour of what the application is like.

The obvious place to start is with installation and configuration. The installation was a snap, no problems at all with the installer. It’s a reasonably small package as well so doesn’t take much time to download and has little impact on your hard disk space. Configuration is likewise straight-forward. There’s a wizard which runs first time you start the program and, provided you already have a blog, you tell the program the blogs URL, provide your account details and it does the rest. It accesses your blog, and downloads any posts that are already there, then you’re ready to go and you can start composing and posting blogs direct from your desktop.

Using The Interface

The interface provides all the formatting tools that you are likely to need. You get all the usual tools such as bold, italics, underline, strike-through, bullets and numbering, text justification, change case, insert an image, insert a web link, and more – all accessible from tool-bar buttons. There are also buttons for adding block-quote and code formatting, which are very useful for blogs like this one.

As well as formatting, the interface allows you to switch between a design and XHTML view of your post. Most of the time the design interface works well for me as there’s nothing more useful when typing than seeing everything in WYSIWYG form. Of course you do need to delve into the code every once in a while so having the option to do so is great.

Should you need to, the interface also allows you to change the date and time of your post. You can also choose a category for your post – provided the blog service you are using supports categories (the application picks up the list of categories you have specified on your blog). There are also options for setting tag words (a la Technorati, del.icio.us, etc) and trackbacks for your post. As if that wasn’t enough, there is also a Preview tab that lets you have a sneak peak at how your post should look when posted (in a basic kind of way).

Posting A Blog Entry

Once you’ve used all these features to compose your post, you’ll no doubt want to publish it on your blog. This application does this with the click of a button.

Actually, depending on the settings you have chosen, it’s a few clicks but when you see why all the extra clicking makes sense.

First stop after clicking the publish button is the spell checker (if enabled using Tools / Settings from the menu and picking the Spelling entry in the Settings dialogue). This is a very useful pause on the route to publication as there is nothing worse than a badly spelld blog bost.

Next, you are presented with the Post Entry dialogue which is made up of several tabs: General; Tags; Weblog Ping; Trackbacks, and; Log. This gives you a chance to review various post settings such as which blog you want to post to, whether you want to post as a draft, which categories to post under, etc.

You can also go to the Weblog Ping tab and choose which weblogs to ping in order to announce your latest post to the world. Once all that is done you can finally click the Post button and watch as your entry wings its way to your blog.

Other Things To Note

As I discovered when writing this post, this program will also upload the images that you include when you publish to your blog service (if it supports doing this – WordPress seems to do so quite happily), copying them directly from your local hard disk. Alternatively, you can use a Media Repository which allows you to link directly to images, podcasts, etc., stored on an FTP server. I haven’t tried this out yet but will update this entry if I do.

You can post an entry to more than one blog. This is very useful for the novice as you don’t need to worry about using a different editor interface for each blog that you write. It also saves you having to log onto several different sites and muck about with cut & paste when you do want to post the same entry several times. Very user friendly!

Problems?

Overall, I’m finding that the Zoundry Blog Writer is a very reliable tool for posting blog entries with. Every once in a while it throws up the occasional formatting hiccup which means that things don’t look quite the way you expect them to when you view the post on your blog. However, I haven’t found anything that couldn’t be quickly sorted by using the blog’s on-line editor or by making a minor change withing Zoundry itself, using the XHTML view of the post.

The problem I most often have is when I write to A View From The West, which is hosted by Blogger. When I look at entries there that I have posted using Zoundry an extra bit of whitespace appears between the post title and body. I sort this by simply opening the entry on-line to edit it and clicking the Publish Post button without making any changes to the post at all. Then when I return to look at the post the extra space is gone.

The other problem area I’ve encountered is to do with the positioning of images within a blog post. So far I’ve resolved these by tweaking the IMG tag using the XHTML view. I have a fair bit of experience of working with raw HTML so I’ve not been bothered too much by this however this could be a bit more awkward for novice users.

None of these very minor niggles have put me off using Zoundry and I can see myself using it more often in the future. As you can see from the Zoundry web site, the application is (at the time of writing this) still in beta development so there’s every likelihood that these issues will be ironed out in future releases. You’ll also find some pretty good documentation by visiting the site, along with support forums that I’ve found useful when starting to use the program and when writing this post.

In Conclusion

This is a very nice application and it makes composing and publishing blog entries very easy. It also supports a wide and growing range of blogging services including Blogger, WordPress, Movable Type, and Typepad (to name the obvious ones). You get all the formatting and publishing tools you are likely to need and can post each entry to more than one blog using one desktop-based interface. It is also very easy to set up and quick to operate. You can also store copies of all your blog posts, past and present, on your home PC.

Final Score: An easy 4 out of 5. Go to the top of the class!

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