Handwritten Message

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Price: NA

Rating: Good

3.5/5

Features:

Performance:

Value:

Design:

PROS

• Variety of permutations and combinations to make the notes look cute
• Easy to create and send
• Once a paid app, but now its free

CONS

• Limited space to type the message
• You cannot save your creations

Summary

All in all, the app is a nice one to own. Sure, there a lot of apps that recognize you handwriting and can send it across as a message, but the customizable options of Handwritten Message app gives it a personal touch. Add to the fact that the app is now free instead of $0.99 and there is more incentive to give it a try!

Review

Leaving personalized hand written notes has been lost as a cute gesture thanks to the digital age of SMS, MMS, BBM, iMessage, What’s App and the plethora of other ways that people choose to stay in touch. Gone are the days when you’d find a posted note on the fridge telling you that your loved one has left the house or that message for the kids, “there’s food in the fridge”, So on and so forth.

Today we have with us an iOS app, Handwritten Message, that lets you send personalized messages that you can write on the screen using your finger. Is it the modern day version of showing cute gestures or are you better off sending the good old text?

Features: 

The app is really simple. There is a message box. You use your one finger to type and two fingers to swipe/move and pinch to zoom. The notes have a defined space, which cannot be expanded upon.

In terms of customization, there are 48 solid colour backgrounds and 30 textured backgrounds to choose from. These backgrounds are really nice and enhance the personal touch of the message. You can also change the colour of the text in the message.

For that extra personal touch, there are 60 shapes including smiley faces, roses and love hearts to choose from. To add to the finishing touches, there are 48 custom borders to choose from. With the permutations and combinations, you can really make each message look unique.

Click to enlarge

Performance:

Straight out of the box, the beauty of the message you create in the Handwritten Message app depends on how good your handwriting is. No matter how many of the available effects you apply, if your writing looks like crawling ants, your message will look bad.

One downside is that the place to write the message feels a bit cramped. But the developers have said that in the next update to the app, users will get a larger area to type in.

It is easy to type a message on the device especially since the gestures of typing with one finger and scrolling with two starts to feel natural after a bit. Beautifying the messages is also a lot of fun as you can add borders and colour the text. The only downside is that you cannot choose the location you want to put the smiley face or the heart images. Their location is fixed.

Also, you cannot erase specific text. You can undo your last typed word but if you want to erase the 1st word, you will have to undo the whole thing or clear the slate completely. You cannot save your creations either.

Once you’ve “written” your message it is very simple to send it. Hit “done” and then hit “send” and the message gets copied to the clipboard. You can then “paste” the note in iMessage, send it as an MMS or even e-mail. The message will not go via a regular SMS, as it is an image and requires to be sent as an MMS, so you may want to keep the cost of sending an MMS in mind before sending cute posted style messages to the entire world.

Specifications:

iOS only. Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation) and iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. 

Verdict:

All in all, the app is a nice one to own. Sure, there a lot of apps that recognize you handwriting and can send it across as a message, but the customizable options of Handwritten Message app gives it a personal touch. Add to the fact that the app is now free instead of $0.99 and there is more incentive to give it a try!

This article has been taken from Digit Magazine http://www.thinkdigit.com/ 

Icy Radio: Stream your favorite internet TV and radio stations

When it comes to internet streams, there are many software applications out there, freeware or paid, that handle this job pretty well. However, we are always happy when we find a small, lightweight free application that not only it does the job, but it performs and looks good. In the radio/tv streaming niche, Icy Radio is a small application that allows you to search and stream radio and TV stations with the possibility of adding them to your favorites.

In addition, Icy Radio allows you to record any radio streams in realtime, using the MP3 format. You can also add themes to Icy Radio, making it more attractive if you use it frequently or on a daily basis. And because I’m using Screamer Radio for a long time now, i think it’s time for a change, Icy Radio is exactly Screamer with several additions that are worth trying.

Edit: It seems that the TV feature is kinda week in Icy Radio, most of the TV stations offered are poor quality and frankly, it’s not worth watching TV with Icy Radio. On the radio side tho, I’m pretty impressed and I’m sticking with it at this point.

Songbird: The iTunes alternative

Songbird is an advanced media player that offers both audio and video playback, a built-in browser, tons of features and a vibrant developer community that contributes to the program constantly. There are lots of add-ons, skins and other customization options available for Songbird, everything is kept up to date and of course, with no cost.

Songbird - Main

Installation & Requirements

Songbird is a freeware media player that comes with no adware or useless features. It’s very easy to install and  you can run the program without having to worry about paying for a license or having to deal with any ads.
Songbird is very flexible at its core, making it available on both Windows and Mac. There is also a different version that can be downloaded and used on some of the latest Android devices on the market.

The system requirements for Windows are: Windows XP SP3/Vista/7, 1.5 GHz Pentium 4 or equivalent, a minimum of 512 MB of RAM and at least 150 MB of free HDD space.

The system requirements for Mac are: Mac OS X 10.5 or newer, a Macintosh machine with an Intel x86 CPU, a minimum of 512 MB of RAM and 100 MB available space on your HDD.

Interface

The Songbird user interface is self-explanatory, easy to use and the best part about it is that it’s highly customizable, not only through the use of skins (which come in huge numbers) but also via add-ons.

The internet browser is one of the key features of Songbird, allowing the user to easily browse for music or watch videos on streaming sites like YouTube,  search for skins or buy concert tickets. Some add-ons give you the ability to listen to radio-stations, watch podcasts and buy music from online stores. It’s also vital to mention that the built-in browser supports tabbed browsing, something that clearly separates Songbird from iTunes.

Managing your playlists, media library, song metadata and album artwork cam be easily accomplished and it shows how user friendly the interface can be. Songbird offers great multi-language support and also benefits from a helpful setup Assistant which will make it easier for you to get started.

Pros

- Very stable
- The program receives constant improvements thanks to its supportive community
- Highly customizable in both looks and features via skins and add-ons
- Great support
- Easy to use and self-explanatory user interface
- Available on multiple platforms
- Tabbed browsing

Cons

- If you are expecting to be able to play a great deal of video formats from your computer then you will be disappointed

Songbird Alternatives

There are quite a few well known Songbird alternatives out there, one of which is iTunes, offering pretty much the same thing as Songbird but with some differences. For one, although the interface is not ugly in the least, some users might find it a bit old and boring. On the other hand, iTunes is well known for its great, powerful playlist that comes with a few extra features compared to the one found on Songbird. One of these loved and well-known features is of course the automated song assigner that will automatically keep your playlist very well organized.
If both Songbird and iTunes are not what you’re looking for then you might give Winamp a try. Winamp has been around for years and it has grown in popularity due to the fact that it’s a powerful and easy to use media player. Although playing movies or browsing the internet on Winamp is not the best experience, Winamp is a friendly and customizable music player, with tons of skins and a decent support from the developers.

Conclusion

Songbird is a great media player and it offers so many advantages that makes its flaws are almost invisible. It’s very customizable, it has a great developer community and it’s constantly updated mainly because it’s supported by the giant Mozilla. The huge number of add-ons allow users to personalize Songbird to a great extent and the built-in Mozilla browser might deliver the best experience in media player browsing yet.

Snag It: The clever way to grab screenshots

Taking screenshots is a common need for most computer users, but sometimes the default PrintsScreen function is not qualified to grab images the way you want. Over 20 years ago, TechSmith Corporation came up with an answer to satisfy this demand by developing SnagIt, and after all these years of  improvements it became a powerful screen-capture utility with some mind-blowing features that allow you to capture and edit screenshots in ways you never thought possible.

SnagIt Window

Installation & Requirements

The installation process of SnagIt certainly lives up to modern standards as it completes in just 1 or 2 minutes and doesn’t require any troublesome settings. You can choose a typical install for the program or select the custom mode and uncheck any feature you might not desire.

We were glad to see no useless toolbar or adware-like options such as a default search engine were present as choices during the installation. Installing SnagIt is a fast and highly automated task with no special knowledge required, making it easy to be carried out by anyone.

Derived from the fact that SnagIt is a screen-capture utility, its system requirements are fairly low (at least a1.0 GHz processor, 512 MB of RAM and 60 MB or free space) and is compatible with Windows XP, Vista and 7.

Interface

At first glance the slick grey interface displays all the main features in a readable and organized layout within 3 distinctive areas.

The main content area provides all the predefined capture profiles, viewable as large descriptive thumbnails or as a classic list, enabling easy access even for first-time users. The default capture profiles supply multiple ways for taking screenshots: the classic Full Screen mode, Copy to Clipboard, Web Page as PDF with links, Free hand, Menu with time delay and last but not least the All-in-One mode. Besides the Full Screen mode which is a basic function, all the other capture profiles give us brilliant ways to copy and paste our screenshots within other applications, easily share web pages as PDF documents and still keep the contained links active, grab images as freehand shapes or delay the screen capture and have enough time to navigate through folders and applications to the desired object.

The All-in-One mode is an innovative feature, not present within other screen-capture programs, that combines the Region, Window and Scrolling Window modes into a single profile, in many situations eliminating the need to create custom profiles, thus a precious time-saver.

Below the main content area lie the Profile Settings for Input, Output, Effects and Options, providing even more ways to take, save and edit screenshots. Besides the custom region and freehand capture the Input options lets us choose other shapes to capture images, such as ellipse, rounded rectangle and others. The vast array of settings places at our fingertips a virtually unlimited number of possibilities to customize the way we capture images. By allowing users to choose output formats and add effects even before taking screenshots SnagIt prevents a great deal of manual post-editing and is a remarcable way to increase your productivity. Placed to the left of the Profile Settings, the large Capture button provides through a small blue arrow all the basic contents you can opt to capture: Image, Text, Web and even Video capture which is highly limited though.

The left sidebar displays a Quick Launch panel, enabling speedy access to the SnagIt Editor and Image Organizer, and another panel for Related Tasks such as image conversion, print settings, profile organizer, accessories manager and SnagIt OneClick, a useful feature that grants one-click access to the program’s main functions. SnagIt OneClick is basically an auto-hiding menu that you can quickly activate by clicking or hovering your mouse over it (depending on how you choose to set it), while SnagIt is running in the system tray and make quick screen captures without having to open the program’s interface.

The SnagIt Editor delivers a comprehensive set of tools for modifying and enhancing our images. Make no mistake about it, this image editor is useful in any line of work, providing all the basic editing functions, multiple markup tools such as arrows, speech-bubbles, stamps and others, support for transparency, custom graphics functions that allow combining multiple captures, a spotlight & magnify tool to draw attention to specific portions of your capture and dozens of filters and color or graphic effects to let your creativity run free.

Deeply inspired from the graphical layout of the Microsoft Office suite, the interface of SnagIt is highly intuitive, managing to provide piles of features in a well organized visual manner.

Pros

- Powerful screenshot utility containing over 40 different ways for capturing images, multiple output formats and a wide variety of filters, effects and markup tools.

- Enables easy sharing for your captures as URLs or via e-mail, Skype, FTP or adding them to other applications such as Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and MindManager.

- The integrated batch processing function enables conversion of multiple captures simultaneously, adding effects and auto-renaming.

- Excellent support service based on the short response times from the SnagIt support staff and an online catalog of free tutorials, besides the standard FAQ and manual.

 Cons

- For a long time there was only a Windows version available and even if a Mac version has been released recently, it lacks many features present within the Windows version and still needs a substantial amount of improvements.

- Video capture capabilities are very limited, this application mainly focusing on image captures.

- SnagIt can be considered as a fairly expensive product, not just because of the 50$ initial purchase fee but also because only minor upgrades are free, the major ones being priced at 25$.

Alternatives

Many screen-capture applications are attempting to compete with SnagIt, some of them relying on a lower price and/or acceptable amount of features such as FullShot, HyperSnap and Easy Screen Capture, others providing a rather limited collection of functions but accessible for free such as Jing, also developed by Techsmith, PicPick, FastStone Capture and EasyCapture. However none of the programs listed above are as complete as Snagit which holds some innovative features you won’t be able to find anywhere else.

Conclusion

For frequent users of the screen capture function that are striving to improve their workflow and save precious time, SnagIt unquestionably delivers the goods, as the most complete screenshot application currently available.

DAEMON Tools Lite: Essential disc image emulator

Inserting CDs and DVDs in and out of your optical drive can be a tiresome process, especially if you find yourself doing that a lot. Considering that modern hard drives have increased storage capacity, it’s hardly a problem to keep the contents of your disks in your computer, instead of using them repeatedly and as a result causing a great amount of wear and tear. DAEMON Tools Lite, is one of the utilities that allows you to do all of the above, in the form of creating and emulating disk images plus some extra features that might also come in handy, at no cost whatsoever.

Installation & Requirements

Sadly, we can’t state that the installation process of DAEMON Tools Lite is clean as it comes bundled with some adware features (toolbar, home page and search) and even if you could easily opt out of having them installed, this type of behavior could bother a lot of potential customers. Except for the issue stated above, the installation is uneventful and fast with the sole mention that a system reboot is required to complete the process (the reboot is only needed when using the installer bundled with SPTD).

The minimum hardware requirements are rather hilarious for a modern-day computer, only 500MHz CPU, 256MB of RAM and 30MB hard drive space for installation, so anyone can use this program with no worries.

Concerning system requirements, DAEMON Tools Lite was designed for Microsoft Windows operating systems and works on the following versions: 64-bit version of  Windows  XP, Vista and 7.

Interface

The interface is just as the program’s name states, as “Lite” as is can get. DAEMON Tools Lite resides in the system tray providing a small menu, accessible through a simple right-click, from where you can open the GUI or the built-in features: Disc Imaging (with which you can create image files from your CD/DVD/Blu-ray disks), Burn Image to Disk (using a 3rd party program named Astroburn), Virtual Devices (displays a list of all the virtual devices and mounted image files, if any are present with an option to add more virtual drives and images) and Recently Used Images ( from where you can quickly mount the last used image files).

The graphical interface contains the same tools as the right-click menu, except it displays them as medium-sized illustrative icons, right under the main content area that supplies a list with all virtual drives and their mounted images. Regrettably the adware Burn Image with Astroburn option is present here also, but the issue becomes minor if you can simply ignore this feature. The only useful menu item that is not present within the right-click menu is the Preferences button, from where you can perform a variety of adjustments, such as the useful “File Associations” that will allow you to define the image types you wish to be recognized as DAEMON Tools files, giving the possibility to mount them straight from Windows Explorer. For power users the “Advanced” tab from the Preferences menu holds check-boxes for all the copy protection types that DAEMON Tools Lite can override.

As a whole, the interface of DAEMON Tools Lite has a “Spartan” look and feel, but that only makes it more intuitive and easy to use as it supplies us with three different ways to mount images: from the right-click menu, from the “regular” interface and from Windows Explorer with the help of file associations.

Pros

- Small and highly stable program.

- Low resource requirements.

- Simple and functional interface.

- Multilingual support.

- Extended technical support via FAQ, Help Manual, Forum and contact form.

- Free to use for non-commercial purposes.

Cons

- Adware is present not only during the installation, but also within the program’s interface.

- Just 4 virtual images can be mounted at the same time.

- Only for the Windows platform.

Alternatives

DAEMON Tools Lite is a reliable CD/DVD emulator, but the related software industry has a few other similar products that are also highly capable applications.

A dangerous competitor of DAEMON Tools Lite is the popular Magic ISO Virtual CD/DVD-ROM, also known as MagicDisc, a free program that offers pretty much the same features as DT Lite, but can also burn ISO files. However the interface is a bit more complicated than the one of DAEMON Tools so it’s not the best choice if you want to keep things simple.

Another free image emulator that’s worth mentioning is Virtual Clone Drive, a powerful utility characterized by its ease of use and might suit your taste if you don’t need to create virtual images, as the program lacks this option.

If none of the free image emulating programs manage to satisfy you than maybe you should check the paid versions of DAEMON Tools, Pro Standard and Pro Advanced, that deliver far more complex capabilities than DT Lite. There is a range of other commercial alternatives that are highly appreciated, for example Alcohol 52% (which also has a basic free version) and PowerISO.

Sadly, the above mentioned programs only work on Windows operating systems, so if you are a Linux user then you should try Furius ISO Mount, a trustworthy and free program with native support for this platform. Mac users are a bit more fortunate as Mac OS X has built-in support for image files so most of the time, the default system capabilities will deliver all the tools needed for disk image emulation.

Conclusion

There are so many disc image emulators to choose from, that you will have to rely on your personal needs when it comes down to making a decision. Bottom line, if you require mounting virtual disk images at a moderate level, DAEMON Tools Lite is a highly qualified solution that can make all related tasks a child’s play.

Tutorual

So people if you ask me its sometimes difficult for some of us to understand some softwares so if one of you have a problem using this software, then you can refer to the YouTube video link given below, this tutorial is based on easy to follow steps that would make it all clear for you!!

Internet Download Manager (IDM)

Internet Download Manager is a program that integrates with your internet browser and replaces the default download manager in order to provide a better downloading experience and a 500% increase in download speed. Aside from the massive speed boost, Internet Download Manager -or IDM for short- offers a few extra features on the side, like the download scheduler, the possibility to resume broken downloads and a few more goodies that might just convince you to never go back to “stock”.

Internet Download Manager - Main

Installation & Requirements

The installation process for Internet Download Manager is fast, simple and clean of any toolbars, additional programs or nagging windows. The bad news is that IDM is not a freeware program so it actually comes in the form of a 30 days trial, after which a paid license is needed in order to be able to use IDM further. A great thing about buying a license is that the full version actually benefits from even bigger boosts in download speeds.

As for system requirements, Internet Download Manager is available exclusively for the Windows platform and it supports the following versions: 98/2000/XP/Vista/Win 7.

Internet Download Manager supports proxy servers, ftp and http protocols, firewalls, redirects, cookies, authorization, MP3 audio and MPEG video content processing. IDM integrates seamlessly into Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape, MSN Explorer, AOL, Opera, Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Firebird, Avant Browser, MyIE2, and all other popular browsers to automatically handle your downloads. You can also drag and drop files, or use Internet Download Manager from command line. Internet Download Manager can dial your modem at the set time, download the files you want, then hang up or even shut down your computer when it's done. 

Interface
The Internet Download Manager Interface doesn’t offer anything special in terms of looks. You would expect to see a nicer design on a tool that integrates with your latest version of Chrome or with Firefox 5 but all you get is a plain interface that resembles the Windows 98 theme. The big icons on the top are not that bad and they actually feature a bit of animation whenever you hover the mouse cursor over them, but other than that there’s nothing much to admire.
On the other hand, looks are not everything and IDM definitely proves that right. Overlooking the simple design you will most likely be surprised of what the software has to offer, not only in terms of improved download speed, but features such as the highly customizable download scheduler or the Grabber which is a tool that enables the user to easily download videos from video-sharing sites such as YouTube. To keep your archive of downloaded files organized, IDM will automatically detect what type of file you are downloading and place it in the appropriate download folder.
There is one weird thing worth mentioning regarding the buttons on top, and it’s this one icon in particular named “Tell a Friend”. This button is a shortcut that once pressed it will create a Microsoft Outlook message that’s meant to tell your contacts how “cool” IDM is. Perhaps complaining about this feature seems like nitpicking, but it would’ve been better for this option to be more out of sight and not right next to the neat tools such as the grabber or scheduler which are actually useful.
Pros
- Very powerful and low on resources
- Lots of useful features such as the Scheduler, Download organizer or the Grabber
- Clean installation process with no toolbars or adware
- Easy to use interface
- It easily integrates with pretty much any browser available
Cons
- The user interface is a bit disappointing in terms of design
- Shareware, available only for 30 days of trial
- Available only for Windows OS
- There are free alternatives
Alternatives
Internet Download Manager is a very powerful tool that will definitely leave a good impression after the very first few uses. However, for those who prefer another platform besides Windows, or for those who would prefer a freeware product, there are a few options out there besides IDM.
One of these alternatives is Free Download Manager, a tool similar to IDM that boasts with 600% increase in download speed and useful tools such as the  scheduler, resume of broken downloads and pretty much everything else that can be found on IDM. Free Download Manager is available only for Windows as a freeware product.
Another alternative to IDM could be DownThemAll, a free Mozilla Firefox extension that offers new downloading capabilities and features to Firefox users. Unlike IDM,  DownThemAll is unfortunately designed to work only with Mozilla Firefox, but on the brighter side it offers support for Windows, Mac and Linux altogether. And of course, there’s DAP (Download Accelerator Plus) – one of the best managers and accelerators out there – or FlashGet, a complete lightweight download accelerator and download manager.
Conclusion
Internet Download Manager is a very powerful download manager offering an extensive array of features that will definitely improve your downloading experience. It has its small flaws and there are some minor options missing which can be found on other freeware alternatives, but overall IDM can be described as a good product and for those who would prefer using IDM after the 30 day trial period the good news is that the program is not greedy at all and buying a license is not really expensive.

Download Internet Download Manager now

Comparision between Internet Browsing Softwares

Hello again....lots of people get confused when they have to choose b/w the web browsers. Every browser has to be carefully rated in the so called battle of the web browsers. The comparison here is b/w Internet Explorer 8, Opera, FireFox, Chrome.

Internet Explorer( ver. IE8)- Even though there is newly added color-coded tab system, new exclusive security features & private browsing but it is quite the underdog. Speed is very slow and pages take a lot time to open. It is the least preferable of all the browsers. The lack of a download manager & robust extension ecosystem hold the browser back. But it has good integration guidance i.e. it can be integrated with software's like-Bitcomet, Download managers etc. Also you can keep the browsing private if you like.

Opera(ver. Opera10)- It is a very stable browser, no crashes. Also it comes loaded with a very good pop-up blocker. It has a new speed dial feature which is similar to favorites toolbar but gets displayed in the new tab option.....But the speed is very slow....Also it cant be integrated with other softwares. Also there is a new feature Opera Turbo which is awesome. It allows you to browse in even very little speed. it will open those pages which all other browsers cant open due to inadequate speed. Widgets is also a new exiting feature and the download manager also works fine. But it doesn't have any private browsing mode

FireFox(ver. FireFox3.5)- Though it is better in speed than the above two but the pop-up blocker doesn't work at all. There r a lot of plugins available for making the browsing interactive. These can be a lot of customization to make the browsing more private. tabs are good and the integration also works very well. But the speed is slower when compared to Chrome. Smart Location bar is also a very helpful feature. But overall it is a good and reliable web browser.

Google Chrome(ver. chrome4.0)- Its is surely the fastest browser in town. With unmatched speed and blazing site browsing it has a very good download manager. It amongst all the other browsers is the lightest. Uses very little memory. Google has given the word a solution to the web browsing problems. The InCognito feature enables you to browse privately and no history records r made. But it is still in Beta mode so it might crash often but it has a crash manager which restores the pages in case of a crash. Third party downloads r still little less. But it has lots of skins which can be used to give a very pretty look to the browser. It has all the features which a person need for browsing. Chrome lives upto its hype.

Comparision b/w Media Players

Well we have seen a lot of people switching between different media players.....the most common are Windows Media Player, VLC Player, Media Player Classic...so i m gonna compare all 3 for you guys!

Windows Media Player(Latest ver. WMP12)-its a very reliable player but it doesn't come with pre-installed codecs which r required to play the .avi, .mp4 files & many more. Although you can install the K-lite codec pack but its takes time to load everytime you open the media player, so there is a delay when you r playing your movies.....But you can get plugins which display your current music track on G-Talk which is a unique feature.Also you can customize the player according to d color u like which is also a very cool feature. it comes with a nice equalizer too.

VLC Player(Latest ver. VLC1.0.3)-its the fastest software of the three,it comes with pre-installed codecs. so u dont need to install anything......a unique feature is the sound boost. sound boost increases the volume of your movie by 400% so you can increase the volume of movies that have low voice recorded. Also you can increase this 400% by another 100%. You have very easy options of adding n removing the subtitles. If you want skins then u have to download them from the internet......It also has good keyboard shortcuts for forwarding the movie & inc/dec the volume.

Media Player Classic(Latest ver. WPC6.4.9.1)-it is a very good software which never hangs unlike the other two. It comes with pre-installed codecs. The plugins have to be downloaded. Although it is a very good software for preview of partially downloaded files which come with the Torrent downloads. Although less on features but u just cant ignore a player which works on a very simple and glitch free principle.