Introduction

Recently, I found out that a lot of my friends at work like to game- and not just video games!  I hadn't played in several years, though I've still collected the books for 'some day'.  The concensus was to play Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition.  That wouldn't have been my first choice, but I found that I liked it after playing- gave the standard RPG some tactical options that hadn't been available before, and made 1st level characters something akin to a protagonist from a fantasy novel rather than just a target awaiting an unlucky critical before he ever had a chance to develop.  Anyone who's played a first level wizard with d4 hit points knows what I mean.

After a bit, the DM started getting a bit tired of running his campaign and wanted to play, so I stepped in and said I would DM the Dark Sun campaign which being remade for 4th edition.  But I knew that I didn't want to go through the standard preparations that I formerly took- I just didn't have the time since I was older, with more responsibilities.  So I looked to a computerized way to run my game...

App Name	Lipsum
App URL	http://lipsum.sourceforge.net/
App Version Reviewed	2.0 for Windows
Pricing Scheme	Lipsum is free.

Intro:

Virtually any designer who works much with text will be familiar with Lorem ipsum which is filler text frequently used in page layouts. Lipsum expands on this and generates meaningless filler text that a designer can use to populate layouts for typographical work, web pages, etc. This dummy content gives a good view of how the layout will look, regardless of subject matter.

Who is this app designed for:

Anyone working with layouts that will ultimately be filled with meaningful text. In this circumstance, it is useful to deploy text that has no particular meaning, the purpose being to see whether the layout itself will be pleasing to the eye, properly balanced and so forth.

The Good

Lipsum will use text already on the clipboard if so desired. More importantly it also comes pre-populated with a variety of texts (including Lorem ipsum). Thanks to a very simple, relatively unobtrusive interface, with a few large buttons, one can choose quickly whether to use text from the clipboard or any one of the preset texts. Further, one can choose the number of paragraphs to generate as well as the length of those paragraphs. Another useful benefit is the ability to generate texts in a variety of languages. The chosen text is then sent to the clipboard  for easy pasting into the layout under construction.

Basic Info

App Name	FILEminimizer Pictures from balesio
App URL	http://www.balesio.c...ctures/eng/index.php
App Version Reviewed	3.0 (free version)
Trial Version Available?	This is a free version. Commercial use is not allowed.

Intro:

Compression tool for JPG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PNG and EMF images


Who is this app designed for:

Those who have large collections of images and who want to reduce storage requirements.
Those who move images, or versions of images, across the web in some manner (posting to collections, email, etc.)

The Good

Simple interface:

• collect files for compression by browsing or by drag and drop
• handles individual files or batches of files
• facilitates emailing of compressed files (compress and email in one step)
• pre-set compression levels for those wanting a little help
• custom compression levels for those with specific levels in mind
• optional context menu entry

Basic Info

App Name	Clock-on-Desktop from Positbolt Software
App URL	http://www.posiboltsoftware.com/
App Version Reviewed	Extended Edition

Intro:

Clock-on-Desktop is a pretty good name for this product really, since that's exactly what this software does: it provides you with any number of very elegant-looking clocks that sit right on your desktop. The software comes bundled with over 50 skins which means you'll probably find several that are to your personal taste.

I chose it since I'm always on the lookout for ways to make my desktop 'just so' and I am a fussy old stoat. The clocks are skinnable, scalable and support any timezone. I have ended up with a fairly plain, very clear skin that complements my rainmeter theme nicely. This in itself is quite surprising since I am a terrible one for fiddling with the desktop.

Anyway, initial impressions are good: the interface is very nicely designed, with smooth-looking icons and a reasonably intuitive GUI for setting up the basics. The guys clearly have a pretty talented artist working with them, and it's this that makes the software quite appealing. It's verging on the slightly-chubby, soft, Mac-like look and feel. Luckily we stay just on the safe side of twee.

App Name	Realtime Landscaping
App URL	http://www.ideaspectrum.com/

Intro:

Realtime Landscaping is a software program for helping you design and visualize landscaping ideas.  It's used mainly to plan walkways, fences, flower beds, and other outdoor structures. 

While it has some support for 3d building model constructions, it's not meant to do interior modeling, and cannot support the kinds of detailing building architectures that the serious building modeling tools can (like Chief Architect).  However it does excel at letting you super rapidly sketch and render quite complex outdoor landscaping plans, and the 3d walkthrough rendering is quite pleasing.

I've been trying to get a CRM in place at my company for years. We're a small software business, specializing in logistics, and in the past we have not had a very coherent strategy for tracking leads, scheduling appointments, tracking customer requests or bug reports. Each of us used different approaches. To be fair, for the most part we got away with it. But as customer base grows, you suddenly reach that "tipping point" where there's just too much to track using an ad hoc approach. This year I finally sat down and really focused on trying to get something that would fix it.

After trialling quite a few low-end and mid-end systems, I settled on Centerbase. Please read this review for why.