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Fred Showker
This week it's all about Writing, Painting, Printing, Surfing with something new from each of our shareware/freeware libraries. ...
StoryWritingAssistant 1.0 makes it easy to produce well thought-out fiction by taking formatting concerns away from the user. StoryWritingAssistant provides the ability to add notes and to-dos at any level of the text, as well as a place to keep track of characters and their appearances.
Ambient Design last month introduced ArtRage 1.1 for Mac OS X. ArtRage, which contains the same feature set as its Windows counterpart, provides easy-to-use, realistic painting solution. It is designed provide a "natural" environment for producing art: "By providing realistic tools such as oil paints and pencils, and simulating the real world dynamics of those media, ArtRage allows any user to play around with paint without the expense and mess of its real world counterpart." It also offers tracing tools to allow users to produce paintings based on photographs or other existing images, supports "zooming," features larger canvases, includes a color sampler, and offers the ability to import normal images as a background canvas. It is available for free and runs on Mac OS X 10.2 or later.ArtRage is a free painting package that lets you play around with realistic painting tools in a simple, intuitive environment. ArtRage lets you paint your own picture from a blank canvas, or load an image to 'trace' using any of its painting tools, letting you recreate your own images as paintings.
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System Requirements * Windows 2k/XP. Windows 95/98/Me should work but are unsupported. * Macintosh OS X 10.2 or higher on a G4 or faster. * ArtRage works with a mouse, but it works best with a graphics tablet or on a Tablet PC. Download for Windows
Steve Becker has released PrintMagic 4.0, a "completely rewritten" version of the system utility that offers several advanced print options. PrintMagic offers a system-wide shortcut for printing, supports drag & drop printing to a desktop printer, or one-click printing. It also lets users create on-the-fly print "projects" in which users can collect any number of selections of text or images, which be saved, edited, or printed. In addition, PrintMagic offers clipboard printing and annotation features, including time-date stamps, a URL stamp, and user notes. Version 4 adds more preferences for customization, saving of the PrintBoard, image support on the PrintBoard, the ability to automatically add dynamic or custom annotations to print output, and more. The full version is $25, while upgrades are $13. Download PrintMagic 4.0 For OS X Demo
"You've got mail... Hello?" MailPop is a Dashboard widget that not only announces new mail but lets you see snippets of all the unread messages in your inbox. This version works with Google's Gmail service. Support for .Mac is coming soon. Key features: * Compact. Click on the flag to expand and collapse MailPop. * Secure. MailPop uses Keychain to store your password. * Talks. MailPop verbally announces new mail when it's hidden. * Keyboard-friendly. Use the Home, End and arrow keys to move around your inbox. Press Enter to open Gmail in your browser. See the SWF movie.
MacPoker Pro is a Java-based online poker tracking and analysis solution that provides realtime info users and their opponents; it helps maker game-time decisions during poker hands and also collects and stores info for each opponent. This release includes support for 7 new Mac-compatible online Poker casinos. The free version is limited to 1000 hands.
Wx 2.5 is an update of the app that displays weather information from the US National Weather Service in a transparent main window and the dock. Version 2.5 adds watches, warnings, and advisories, a floating "MiniWx" remote panel, faster processing of XML observation and forecast data, font smoothing, and many other minor improvements. Wx 2.5 runs on Mac OS X 10.3/10.4.
ToDo X is the latest version of the dedicated to-do list application for Mac OS X. The new version adds a "Make New ToDo Item" service to the Services menu; provides instant access to your to-do lists from a status item in the menu bar, similar to the existing dock menu; and more. (Click for a Picture)
TidyUp! 1.1.2 searches out duplicates in the iTunes and iPod songs databases. TidyUp! requires Mac OS X 10.3 or later and iTunes 4.0 or later, and is Mac OS X Tiger compatible.
Proteus is a free update for registered users of this multi-protocol instant messaging application supporting AIM (including .Mac accounts), MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Jabber, iChat Rendezvous, Gadu Gadu and Sametime. Improvements include the ability to know when users are logged in with a mobile device, bringing back status floaters and the ability to send ICQ file transfers. Numerous bugs are also addressed. (Don't go there if you're not running a CSS compliant browser.)
LazyMouse updates the system utility for saving time mousing to dialog boxes. LazyMouse is a Preference Pane that moves the cursor to the default button whenever a dialog box appears on the screen. The update now recognizes when a user already using the mouse, offers application-based exceptions, fixes a compatibility issue with the Tiger Finder, and more.
ClamXav 1.0g is a new virus checker for Mac OS X that uses the popular ClamAV open-source antivirus engine as a backend. It does not yet offer support for Mac OS X Server; new features include support for five languages (Danish, English, French, German, and Japanese), drag & drop support and the ability to monitor folders for changes to their contents.
See previous Software Manager...
Check these out and let us know how you like them. Remember, all UGN readers would like to know your opinion on the best shareware and freeware... send in your reviews and have them published here in the User Group Network!
Fred Showker, Editor/Publisher UG Net News
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