RGdot

Month: November 2010

  • 5DFly Free Photo Editing And Viewer

    5Dfly Free Photo Editing And Viewer

    5DFly is a freeware image viewer with a set of basic and few extra and useful features. It loads single images (after double clicking them) into a tabbed interface making working with several images easier. It supports creation of slideshows in powerpoint (*.ppt and *.pps) formats. 5DFly also has built-in support for uploading pictures to Flickr and Facebook.

    5DFly can convert an HTML page to an image. Here the user enters an URL which the program fetches to an internal viewer and generates an image from. This, in effect, is an alternative method for grabbing web page screenshots, one which grabs whole pages all the way to the bottom without the need to scroll down for longer pages.

    The more readily available elsewhere features of 5DFly are batch processing for resizing photos and others like converting to gray scale, cropping freely or to predefined sizes, rotating, removing red eye and others.

    Of further note are the history features available in the individual image view which lets the user undo any operations done on the image and also a web page history to keep tab on sites visited (for the *.html to *.jpg operation for example) using the program. Copying images to the clipboard and setting them as wallpaper are also possible with 5DFly.

    Upon installation 5DFly associates itself with *.jpg and other image formats without prompting the user for input and it sports a Mac-like theme or skin. These two shortcomings will not be held against it today however!

    5DFly runs on Windows 2000 and newer versions.

  • Freeware UK’s Kalender Helps You Stay Organized

    UK's Kalendar

    UK’s Kalender is a no frills program that is a calendar, to do list and event reminder in one. It presents a list view for to do items independent of events that can be entered into the calendar which itself is available in week, fortnight, month and year views.

    UK’s Kalender minimizes into the system tray to always be available for reminders and their associated popups. These alarms also have a snooze function. Events can have templates – complete with icon and color choices – and categories associated with them and UK’s Kalender supports recurring and multiday events. Tool tips, when hovering over events, show the complete event information.

    Double clicking inside any day or in the to do list triggers the window to enter the details of an event and choose its looks, start date, end date, alarm settings and for the to do list also its priority setting. Both the to do list and calendar events also support attachments which will be opened or executed with the event and therefore turn UK’s Kalender into an automatic task scheduler.

    UK’s Kalender has a useful search and filter function to pin down specific events, it can do text back ups and export to a comma separated value (*.CSV) file or an HTML file. It supports holiday information via additional downloads. It runs on Windows 98SE up to Windows 7.

  • kuView: The Lightweight Image Viewer

    kuView

    kuView is a free and opensource lightweight image viewer which tries to aid the user in collecting and managing photo and image collections. The version tested for this review, admittedly a ‘pre’ (1.7pre [178]) release, is not bug free and not the fastest. For example the thumbnail panel (available via the Panel menu) is not always populated with the images of a highlighted or chosen directory.

    kuView supports copying, moving, renaming and printing images. Re-sampling algorithms such as Lanczos and reading metadata and EXIF information associated with a photo. It can also rotate and set an image as wallpaper. One can also view directories as a slideshow, favorite a directory and move between directories, not only levels up and levels down but in ‘history’ mode as well, all using the Traverse menu.

    Two additional features less common to image viewers is the ability to manage a Picasa Web album or gallery from within kuView and also to view, complete with thumbnails, images inside an archive (*.zip, *.tar, *.gz). It also supports reading RAW images.

    kuView is unicode capable, has a set of command line interface options and is availabe either as an executable or a full blown installer. It should run on all recent Windows versions.

  • Freeware P2Do Is A Simple To Do And Task List


    P2Do is a lightweight to do and task list that also provides a monthly calendar view in addition to its main list view. Tasks can be added and placed into categories and assigned tags or subcategories. After adding a task double clicking its entry in the list view will launch the window to add the aforementioned categories, tags or due date. Assigning priority and choosing icons are also done in the same window. The default and limited category and tag options (‘Main’ and ‘Relax’ just to name two) can be expanded within the program settings (lower left of the program interface) by adding one’s own.

    The calendar view is capable of showing only tasks that are given a due date, at first thought this is perhaps a limitation but it is ultimately obvious why. It is also possible to search through tasks, P2Do should run on all recent versions of Windows and is available in both 32 and 64 bit versions and a portable version as well.

  • Freeware SE-DesktopConstructor Customizes Your Desktop

    SE-DesktopConstructor

    SE-DesktopConstructor is a simple no-install tool that help you customize your desktop and add a few extras to it.

    SE-DesktopConstructor lets you to change your wallpaper in minute to day increments. A wallpaper folder comes with the program where one can use the default pictures or gradients that come with SE-DesktopConstructor, add one’s own pictures to that folder or just use another folder altogether. There is a color fader available to play around with the wallpaper and for example to make it seem brighter or dimmer in different regions. Using paint shapes one can add shapes (ellipse, rectangle or round rectangle) with customizable colors and borders to the wallpaper itself so as to create a virtual desktop area where a number of icons may be grouped together.

    SE-DesktopConstructor also features a set of clocks and calendars in different shapes and formats which can be positioned anywhere on the desktop with their own customizable colors and fonts.

    SE-DesktopConstructor is an attractive addition to a PC and runs on Windows 2000 and all later versions, it is also portable.