Software

By Jeff Zbar
www.chiefhomeofficer.com

I was on a cruise this past week. With a ton of writing to be done, and little motivation to do it, replicating the home office on the high seas would be a challenge.

But even if I was motivated, I was stymied. My HP Tablet laptop had no CD drive, so I hadn’t installed Microsoft Office before leaving (sure, I could have logged on and downloaded it, but at nearly half a gig for the whole app, who has the time or needs the hassle?).

And do you know what it’s like to write completely in Notepad or Wordpad? Talk about laborious…

But then I had an epiphany. What about installing Sun Microsystem’s OpenOffice 3.0? Free and open, it’s another example of spry guys sticking it to The Machine. I’m not alone. According to the OOo “Thermometer,” the app has had five million downloads from Oct. 13-25. Even Pamela Anderson doesn’t have that many downloads! Read more

Rob Glaser, RealNetworks CEO, hasn’t had a lot of winners lately so we bet the idea of helping you copy your Hollywood DVD sounded like a great way to strike it rich…again.

And to ensure you hear about his offer he chose to sue Hollywood before they sue him for his RealDVD copying, backup, archiving, ripping, whatever software. Nice quiet way to deliver the message!

Sounds great. The $30 software lets you rip a DVD movie to your computer hard drive. Read more

Does your computer take forever to load programs or change pages when you're surfing the Internet? Have you ever been in the middle of writing an e-mail only to have the screen freeze and force you to reboot and lose all your work? There are few things more frustrating than a slow computer, but it doesn't need to be that way.

Having a professional look at your system can be costly and buying a new computer is often unnecessary. There are some steps that you can follow to keep your system running at its best. Read more

The Political Machine 2008, recently released by Stardock Entertainment, capitalizes on election year excitement and frenzy to put you behind the wheel in a campaign for the presidency. By allowing the player to utilize numerous political tools and undertake a wide variety of activities available to candidates, Stardock successfully imitates one of the most realistic aspects of a campaign: an excess of things to do contrasted with a dearth of time and money. Inundated with information and decisions, you must make crucial choices within your resource budget to maximize the probability of winning the White House. Though this may be unappealing to some, the task is far from unachievable and rewards those meticulous enough to use to their advantage the wide array of campaigning possibilities.

As you probably have already discerned from the game’s title, The Political Machine 2008 focuses on the United States 2008 presidential campaign, though that is not all it offers. Furthermore, the game is not so linear as to force you to play as McCain or Obama versus the other; historical accuracy is flexed here for the purpose of increased variability. Players can choose to control Republicans such as John McCain, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Representing the Democratic Party are Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, Al Gore, Bill Clinton and Bill Richardson. In addition to these characters, extra politicians on both sides of the aisle are unlockable through the course of the game. If that is not enough to satisfy your appetite for variety, you can choose to create custom characters and alter them to your liking! Read more

The fine people at Brighter Minds Media contacted me recently with news on a new, unique brain training software program for kids (and adults!) of all ages. Brainiversity is a brain training game that stimulates your brain with 16 different activities covering Language, Memory, Math and Analysis. But not only does it provide you with the tools to give your brain a workout, Brainiversity can track the progress of up to six different users on the same computer. Don’t have someone to challenge? That’s okay too. Test yourself daily to see how much better you have become!

Brainiversity was intended primarily for maintaining mental fitness for aging adults, but in the development process it was discovered that kids love it too – which I’m sure my 9 year old would agree, as a day doesn’t go by that he doesn’t ask “When are we going to train our brain today, Mom?”. Read more

Ever wake up one day to find out that one of your favorite bands was performing in town last night, only you didn’t know about it? Miss out on buying tickets for a show because you didn’t know when they went on sale? Frustrated with having to pay outrageous prices on StubHub?

It is estimated today that nearly 50% of concert tickets in the United States go unsold, and the #1 reason people cite that they don’t go to more concerts is, “I didn’t know they were playing.” Read more

PC security software is a necessity for any PC connecting to the Internet. However, deciding which PC security software to use can be tough. Major PC security software companies have deals with the large PC manufacturers to include trial versions of their software in the hopes that when the trial is over, you'll hand over your hard-earned cash for continued protection. The tactic works: People are so confused over what to do, they just pay the money. Who really wants to figure out how to replace the security software that came with the PC or what to replace it with?

Norton and McAfee antivirus products are the two most popular and most widely used. However, their PC security software has become so complex and complicated that it cannot only be difficult to understand and operate, but it can also severely degrade a computer's performance. Security suites have become so bloated they can even cause computers to crash upon installation. And uninstalling them can render a computer completely unusable if the uninstall does not complete correctly. Also, even after being successfully uninstalled, many files, folders and registry entries related to the PC security software are often left behind, requiring a manual clean-up to actually rid yourself of them completely. Read more

Whenever I have a chance, I love to sit and play with the color, quality and dimensions of my favorite photos and share them online with friends and family. Picture taking is much more than just a great way to chronicle special moments, for a lot of people it has also become a satisfying hobby. Adobe has noticed this as a growing trend and in response to the high demand for sophisticated (yet easy to use) editing tools comes Photoshop Elements 6 and Adobe Premiere Elements 4. Available separately or together in a single package, Photoshop Elements & Adobe Premiere Elements software give photo and video enthusiasts more creative ways to organize, edit, create and share digital photos and home movies.

In Photoshop Elements 6, you can finally take a flawless group picture with new Photomerge technology that allows you to select the best facial expressions and poses of each person in your group and combine them into one picture perfect image. It also includes adjustable editing modes which allow you to choose the level of difficulty from beginner to expert. Other new features include a Quick Selection Tool which reduces a (once time-consuming) select-and-adjust task to a single click, a Guided Edit mode walks you through the steps of improving a photo, and the Organizer makes importing, tagging and retrieving photos easier than ever. Read more

With Toshiba finally leaving the next generation DVD battlefield and moving on to more profitable ventures such as solid state and hard drive storage, we can safely purchase a new computer with a blu-ray disc (BD) burner/player.

The challenge though comes in finding software that will provide superior BD high definition playback as well as the ability to produce video content people will want to watch on the new high capacity (25GB single sided) discs.

In our search of the internet we were able to find only one software package that would support both writing and playback of BD-Video – CyberLink’s DVD Suite 6 Ultra.

Simply finding a package that will let you take advantage of some of the new BD movie features such as the picture-in-picture and video commentaries is good. But being able to produce your own BD movies is a big plus since we can now do videos with our own interactive content. Read more