I don’t know if you have noticed, but we have a new image size option in Google Images.
Besides the known sizes, Small, Medium and Large now there is an Extra Large option too.

How new do you think it is? Have some of you seen it in the last three months? I’ve heard that it wasn’t there in May.
Here is a screenshot with it.

The optical media of today, like CDs and DVDs are really sensitive to touch and they can easily get scratched or damaged on the optical reading side. If a CD gets a small damage (while containing about 700 MB of data) – and it becomes unreadable, you can only imagine what the smallest rough touch can do to a 4.7GB (of data) DVD. Virtual CD is one of the programs that are “old in the business” – it has been on the market for a long time and each new version has brought new functions and improvements over the years.

<-125x125 Button - right->Since the “trend” for all software in the latest version is to work wonderfully under Windows Vista, Virtual CD makes no exception in its latest version 9.1.0.0. I remember how this program worked in its early days – when it was not so complicated and it had less function. If you look at it now and know some things about its history you cannot but wonder if the developers really wanted to implement everything you could possibly imagine and need while working with virtual CDs.

As you may notice, the newest feature that is meant to facilitate your access to various functions of the program is the Virtual CD Sidebar. It might be annoying though under Vista as it tends to go over the Vista Sidebar and thus over the gadgets as soon as you move the mouse towards the right edge of the screen. Putting that aside, you get access to the Tool Box – which represents in its own way another set of shortcuts to the various applications and functions of Virtual CD.

Although the program became famous under the Virtual CD brand name, it handles DVDs just as well, either by creating DVD images, loading them or simply by burning them onto the DVD burners. In the tool box shortcuts you will find a series of CD/DVD tools meant to facilitate and offer various pieces of information about your system – you can even manipulate/edit and save virtual images of removable discs.

The settings for the application can be tweaked and enhanced from the settings panel in the Tool Box. When you create virtual CDs, you can password-protect them, so that you would prevent unauthorized access. The life of the CDs/DVDs can be extended if they are well kept in their box, because it is enough to create a virtual image for each of them that can be used for unlimited periods of time.

Applicability: This type of software can be used in both home and corporate environments, especially those where handling and swapping a lot of CD/DVD discs is a daily task as it can improve and increase the productivity.

Pro(s): I really liked the list of functions and options that are available: unlimited number of virtual CDs, creating virtual CDs with any content, automatic recognition of title, album, and artist for audio CDs, virtual CDs can be organized in folders, supports up to 99 audio tracks per virtual CD, editing of existing virtual CDs with the Virtual CD Editor – and these are just a few!

Con(s): The sidebar was a good idea but also poorly implemented as it goes over the Vista Sidebar too much. The cluster of options and functions could be easily arranged in a more simple manner – because they look a bit randomly “thrown in”.

Official website

Buy: the price starts at $35.95

Download trial

The new tendencies of today when it comes to web-mastering a site is to bring something new and interesting so that you can have many visitors. Lately the videos from you tube have been embedded into web pages, but also audio players. The Flash Music Studio application gives you the possibility to create a very cool audio player that can bring a lot of audio features to your website.

  

The interface is very simple and effective – you do not need any special skills or knowledge to take some mp3s, load them into the application and build up the player with the interface of your own choosing and then putting it on your website. Of course, you can view the page on your computer too before you upload it onto the server of your site. 
 The only thing that should be taken into consideration is that you need to own the copyright for the MP3s you will be putting onto your site.

  

The first thing you will do is to load them into the application by using the green “+” button. After you have loaded the songs, you can reposition them or listen to them to decide upon the order in the playlist. In the settings panel you will manage the sound and player settings – you can adjust the quality of the sound and the shape and the colors of the player – you can use the default one or you can go with the stylish iPhone model – any way you choose you can’t go wrong.

 

If you wish to embed a typical sound watermark on the videos, you can choose one you previously created with the help of an audio file editor. Next, you’re given the saving options in the Publish panel – you must decide upon the path and the filename. The Audio swf files will be named after the original audio files.

Applicability: Bring some of your music on the website you own – that is the main purpose of this application: musicians, singers, digital audio artists who wish to present to the web public their audio creations will very interested to use such a program.

Pro(s): The interface is Vista compatible and it has simple options that make you think of little secrets that bring big effects on any website.

Con(s): I would have liked to see even more options that could help in customizing the player, and not to use just the existing templates.

Official website

Buy: $29.95

Download trial

Today's Web browsers add more and more download management capabilities with each new version, but there's still a long road ahead to that moment when genuine download managers would be obsolete. No matter if your connection is fast as a shark or you can go to the seaside and back while downloading a large file, a good download manager should have enough features to make things right in both of these cases.

Since the download manager I have here is one of those notorious progras that a lot of people used and even more heard about it from their friends or in the press, let's leave the introduction aside and get straight to the subject: Internet Download Manager (not quite an original name, isn't it?).


Setup

Released on the 28th of September, the latest version of Internet Download Manager is 5.11 Build 7. The trial version can be used without any functional limitations for as long as a month (well, 30 days, to be more accurate), and the price of a single user license is $29.95.

The setup package of this program is a bit smaller than 2.5MB, so downloading it shouldn't be a problem, even for those with a slow connection to the Internet. As you can see in the screenshots above, installing the application is really easy, but I must advise you to close all Web browsers during the process (you'll be warned by the setup program about this anyway, but it's better to know it from this moment).


Interface

While a download manager is a program that works in the shadow most of the time, you also have a lot of things to do inside its various windows, and I must tell you that while Internet Download Manager didn't make me fall off my chair, it looks pretty good and is very easy to use. Anyway, some additional eye candy wouldn't hurt at all, but for now, I declare I'm happy with what I got. Everything is clear, well organized, and the interface is not cluttered at all, considering the large number of elements present.

The toolbar can be customized as you wish, by adding and removing buttons and separators, you can use classic or 3D icons for it, and even download additional icon sets. The bad part is that I found only 4 such icon sets to download, which is a pity, but let's leave this behind and see what can be done with this program, shall we?


Features

According to its producer, Internet Download Manager easily integrates with virtually any browser available on the Windows platform. As you can see in the General tab of the configuration window, accessible from the Downloads menu - by clicking Options, IDM can be integrated into all major browsers, and additional ones are also supported. To add such browsers, you should press the Add Browser button below the supported browsers list, but be sure that you're not using a IE based browser first, because those are integrated by default.

When you click on Add Browser, you'll be required to select the executable file, and the program will retrieve that browser inside its database and apply the right settings. If your favorite browser is so obscure that it can't be found in the database, you can try to use the advanced browser integration mode, but that requires a system restart, first of all, and I don't have any browser that anonymus to make me use this.

What I really love about this download manager is the fact that while you are selecting the download location, the program is already downloading the file selected, decreasing the waiting time. Even better, a batch downloads tool is included, allowing you to easily grab groups of files from the same location, when their names are similar (for example, to download 10 files called data01.dat...data10.dat, you have to use http://path/data*.dat as the address).

Taking things a step further, the producers of this application also included a Site Grabber that allows you to download entire websites, or simply grab the files you need. Since setting options for such a task can get pretty tricky for beginners, IDM's Site Grabber has a few built in project templates to help you achieve your objective easier, and the wizard-style interface leaves only a little room for mistakes.

Other than the above, we have a very well done Scheduler with a very useful feature that enables you to set download limits (no more than x MB in x hours), and detailed, yet easy to use settings, of which I will only mention here the ability to choose a maximum connections number between 1 and 16 and to store user names and passwords for servers and sites you are using on a regular basis.

These being said, I'll leave the rest of the IDM treasure for you to discover, and I'm going to draw the conclusions, as usual...


The Good

Internet Download Manager is more than just a download manager, including an excellent Site Grabber and having outstanding browser integration abilities. The feature set is almost complete, and the ease of use and pricing are also just great!

The Bad

While similar products have remote administration capabilities and can download using the BitTorrent protocol, IDM still doesn't have them yet, but I hope it's only a matter of time until we see them included in its feature list.

Conclusion

Internet Download Manager is a very good deal, and since you can also try it for free, there shouldn't be anything stoping you from clicking the download link below. I don't want to say big words, but I can guarantee that this program works like a charm, doesn't kill your computer and your downloads are going to be faster and more reliable than before.

Developer: Internet Download Manager Corp.
Price: $29.95
Trial Link: Download

The researchers at the University of California-Davis have developed a technique of fast program debugging, this involving automatically "chipping" the software into smaller pieces, which will isolate the bugs easier.

The common method of debugging is breaking the hundreds of lines of code into smaller pieces, until the error is identified.

Professor Ron Olsson and the graduate student Chad Sterling from UC Davis have automated the debugging process by isolating the pieces of code and in the same time preserving the program’s structure.

Professor Ron Olsson said “The pieces have to work after they are cut down. You can't just cut in mid-sentence."

The researchers demonstrated how to reduce large programs to 20 percent to 35 percent of their former size in less than an hour, with the program developed for Java language, called ChipperJ.