Id software is the name of an American company that produces computer and video games and that has its headquarters in Texas. The company's name is spelled with lower case letters and is pronounced id like in did, that is with a short vowel. The guys who founded and named the company said the name comes from the "id" term used by Freud in his works about the three parts of everyone's personality: the id, ego and superego.

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It was founded by four people working in the computer industry: two software programmers, a game designer and an artist. Their names are: John Carmack, John Romero, Tom Hall and Adrian Carmack. They founded id software in 1991 in Dallas, Texas. Now the company belongs to ZeniMax Media that bought it in 2009. Id software is famous for the computer games it produced, games that were rapidly spread all over the world, fascinating the young generation.

Most of their games were produced in series and they licenced the core source code of the game also known as the engine from the very beginning - in 1991. Some of the most famous game series produced by them are: Commander Keen, Rescue Rover, Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake,Rage etc. They had supremacy over the computer and video games for a while and they introduced the latest technological discoveries and innovations inthe later series of the games. They started with 2D games and, little by little, improved image, motion and graphics and introduced 3D technology, which was impressive at the time. They were kind of pioneers for the shooting and strategy computer and video games.

Even if now the company is bought , they still have kept their individuality, as it is too important a brand and is still developing the same work as always. They dominated the computer games market for a period of over seventeen years and have brought important contributions and made a lot of "firsts". Id software was the one to invent the "first person shooter" games and the multi-player death match game.

They were the first ones to use light maps and 3D technology, and more recently the unified dynamic pixel-per pixel lighting and a lot others. That is exactly why they were honoured with a lot of awards and prizes that are the equivalent of the Oscars in this field.

Some of the technology introduced by id software was also used in other computer games like Half-Life, Counter Strike, Medal of Honour, Call of Duty and a lot more. And since they have always known how to keep up the pace with the times they also released new versions of their games for the mobile phones, smart phones and palms. Remarkable, right?

I personally haven't heard of this company before, but i surely heard about all these games that influenced my generation. As soon as I could use a computer and the internet I could hear mainly boys talking about these games that fascinated them and made them play like mad for hours on end. But I guess all the ages have their fun.

Successful businessmen don't just happen to have all the luck in the world and their business doesn't grow out of anything and develop in no time because the customers like the guy or like what the store looks like. It takes a lot more than that. Usually the most successful businessmen have eyes to see and ears to hear, as they say. I mean they start a business only after they have done some research on the market and they saw a window of opportunity, something that is needed and lacks in the area. After the initial impact of the business, it must develop and also maintain its standards. And one can do that only if they have some serious feedback from the customers. They must know the customers' wishes, complaints, satisfaction degree and opinion about the quality and price of the products. Only when you have all this data you can analyze it and realize what is going on wrong and what could be done to make the business go better and satisfy the clients.

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Normally it would take a team of professionals and a lot of costs and equipment to do that, but now all this is done by simple purchasing and using a sales management software application. Here are some examples of such software you can choose from: Batchbook, BigContacts, Oprius, Highrise, Relenta, Pipeline Deals, ACT! by Sage 2010, Sage SageCRM / SageCRM.com , Sage SalesLogix, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Epicor - Sales Management
, NetSuite CRM+, SAP CRM 2007. Before purchasing any of those just follow the links and use the free trials to see which one is best for you.



Usually these sales management software applications are used by small or medium sized businesses, family businesses even, because large companies have entire departments covering this area. But these users need a strong data base first containing all their customers and staff and other more complex features like: sales opportunity management, communication, scheduling, reporting and document management.



This kind of software is also known as CRM and this can mean Customer Relationship Management or Contact Management software - it still refers to the same thing and has the same purpose - the management of your sales based on customer control of course. Sales are dependent on customers because if there are no customers there are no sales. So the only things you can do is try to keep a balance between the two and adjust the sales according to the customers' requests and preferences.

That is why it is so important to have all the contact data of the customers, including their email address, so that you can send them newsletters with your latest offer. This software application helps you deal with the clients and make them feel welcomed and valued. I mean you are reminded to send birthday cards and holiday cards either digital ones or real ones, so you get a reminder on the email with the upcoming holidays and the list containing the email addresses or a reminder of a customer's birthday and so on. Then you can manage all a lot better if you have immediate access to all the necessary data like who bought what, on what date and the cost in case there are some problems. This way you keep track of customers and avoid duplicated contact. You can also keep track of your orders and sales and schedule everything accurately. You can also synchronize the clients' requests to the merchandise orders you make and a lot of other details.

The bottom line is that it takes a bit of time in the beginning, but this software really helps.

I like taking photos when I go on holiday, especially if I have the chance to see beautiful places and landscapes. And I like taking pictures at parties where there are so many people that they don't seem to notice me and this gives me the opportunity to have some wonderful snapshots and the funniest photos.

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The problem is that I use very high resolution because I want my photos to be very clear and detailed, so , of course, they are very large files that take up a lot of space on my hard disk. And, as I have used only digital cameras for about ten years now, you can imagine what a huge amount of photos I gathered during all this time. And I am not willing to give up any of them. That is why I thought of a way of making them occupy less space somehow ( I know I can make a backup copy on DVDs - I did that, too - but what if the DVDs get damaged and I end up with nothing?).Not to mention the nerves and anger when I want to send an email to my sister with photos from my last birthday and I get the message :"The file you are trying to send is too large".



So I found these free zip software applications that make wonders. They compress the files appointed by you and shrink them somehow, so they will be take less space from your hard drive and you will be able to send them via email or instant messages anytime and anywhere. All these software applications are very easy to download, install and use on your computer and the fact that they are completely free comes as a bonus.



Once you have installed the software just pick the file you want to ZIP , right click on it and select "add to archive" and this is it. your file will be shrunk and will have a new extension: .zip, .rar, .cab, etc. If you send these zipped files to somebody else, they will be able to open the file and decompress it only if they have a similar software installed on their computer. However, some of the free zip software applications have an additional option , allowing you to make autorun or autoexecutable files that can unzip themselves and come back to their original dimension and form as soon as you double click them. These autorun files do not need the same software to be installed on the computer where they were sent.

Here are some examples of free zip software: CoffeeCup Free Zip Wizard, 7-Zip - Free File Compressors/Archiving Utility, Bzip2 - Free File Compressors/Archiving Utility, Freebyte ZIP - Free File Compressors/Archiving Utility, IZArc - Free File Compressors/Archiving Utility, Info-ZIP - Free File Compressors/Archiving Utility, StuffIt LITE - Free File Compressors/Archiving Utility, TUGZip - Free File Compressors/Archiving Utility, UHARC Media Compressor, QuickZip - Free File Compressors/Archiving Utility, ZipGenius - Free File Compressors/Archiving Utility, Petite - Free Executable Compressor and UPX - Free Executable Compressor.