Every once in a while I might add small tutorials to some of the reviews I am writing, and such is the case of the GIF Construction Set Professional 3, in order to extend the examples and the reasons for using such software. The need to create animated images has become quite obvious when the development of the websites has evolved towards a more dynamic content.

<-125x125 Button - left->The GIF Construction software has a very simple and quite intuitive interface, that integrates easily with windows Vista and it has even a wizard that can help you create animated GIF images. The Graphics Interchange Format files were introduced in 1987 and this format has been supported ever since on the World Wide Web due to the portability, transparency and support capabilities that it has to offer.

Due to the limitation of the format to 256 distinct colors from the 24-bit color space, it is recommended only for simple images, such as logos and small animated banners. I must say that this piece of software does what it was designed to do very well, but it needs the very cool collection of plug-ins that can be found on the same website where you can get the Gif Construction software.

Applicability: Well, here we are at the small tutorial part. I’m going to tell you how you can create a very nice small and interactive banner for your website. First you need to make some frames for your animation. The first step is to choose correctly the software that will create them. I have chosen Photoshop by default as it is the application I trust most when it comes to web-image graphics creation. I have created a simple PSD file that has a transparent background (150 pixels height, 60 pixels width) and then inserted a centered text. But not all the text at once - one character at a time, and I saved the image as a PNG file each time I added a letter. And so I came up with about 20 PNG static frames. Then, I used the GIF Construction Set to join them together in an animation as you can see in the screenshots above. After joining the frame-images, I saved the file as a GIF animated image and, as expected it looks very well and it doesn’t even have a big size (about 20 KB only!). You can see the final result at the beginning of this paragraph.

Pro(s): The GIF animation builder has a lot to offer in terms of software value – you can easily regain your investment by creating animated banners and integrate them into websites or simply sell them. You can also export the animations into the flash SWF format, AVI or MOV video files with sound!

Con(s): I wish I could see the interface a bit changed in future versions, even if this software is not new –actually it has been on the market for some years. There weren’t any significant changes when they adapted it for Vista as well. At one point the software just crashed and closed down, but it was probably under “heavy pressure”.

Official website
Buy: $24.99
Download trial

If you own a small or medium business, and your clients' data is still stored inside various notebooks, or you're using Excel sheets to store information about them, it's clearly time for a change! The best part of the deal is that you don't need any database programming knowledge, since if you know how to use a computer, that's enough to work efficiently with Customer Backup, the program I want to show you today...


Setup

Created by Reohix Corporation, Customer Backup reached version 2.3, and its system requirements are pretty low - a 400 MHz CPU and 64MB of memory, with any printer for reports, if you want to use that feature. Priced at $30, Customer Backup is also available as a free to try software, of course.












The MSI installer available for download has 4MB in size, and installing it is very easy, but I have to mention one thing that I don't like here... Once the files are sent to the folder you have chosen and all changes to your system are done, you should be able to select an option called "Run the application when I press Finish" or something like that, but you don't get that choice here...Interface

Customer Backup has a tabbed interface with a fixed size, and some may complain because it would have been better to be able to maximize the main window. The way things are, if your computer's monitor is set to use a high resolution, the window of this program will be really small, but the good part is that despite the fixed size, Customer Backup's interface is easy to work with and all the graphics look very good.

Features

As you run the program for the first time, you're required to enter the details of the database administrator, so be sure to remember them and store the user name and password in a safe place. If more users are going to use the program, having a safe password would be a good idea (it's always better to use "1iJm_0iAf2" as password instead of "JaneDoe"...).












The usual workflow is at it follows - you create customers, enter their details, add products that were sold to them, and the status of the payment. Once your database has at least one entry, you can get charts generated for earnings and gender statistics. I wonder about only one thing - I know this program is not aiming to be used by large companies, but what about a company that works with other companies? Is it possible for a company to have a gender? That's pretty odd...Reports can be generated only to the printer, and that's one of the main drawbacks of the application. While the Business Scheduler and the Quick Note Creator are two nice additions to the feature list of Customer Backup, but there are also a lot of things missing. For example, I would like to be able to send email warnings to clients that have pending payments, and some export features would also add a lot to the value of the program.

Anyway, as I see things now, Customer Backup can help you keep track of your customers, and if we have a little imagination, we could also use it to track loans or as a basic appointment scheduler. Of course that I won't spoil the fun of discovering how to do these, so I'll move on and draw the conclusions now...

The Good

The best things about Customer Backup are its ease of use, its looks and the ability to help you schedule your meetings. Using more databases it's very easy, and there is also possible for an entire sales team to use this program on a single computer without breaking a sweat, as long as they don't try to use it at the same time...

The Bad

As I was trying to backup my database, the program crashed. Fortunately, it happened only once, and I wasn't able to make it crash again. Having a resizable interface could make Customer Backup's interface better, in my opinion. At last, having some export capabilities is another thing that I would really appreciate.

Conclusion

When I see advanced management software, I always end up thinking about how many users really get to use all their features, but this time everything is normal. While there are still things missing, Customer Backup has most tools required to easily manage a small number of customers and perform basic payments tracking and appointment scheduling. Since trying it is for free, you know what to do...

Developer: Reohix Corporation
Price: $30
Trial Link: Download

Information is quite a weapon these days, and if you're the first one to find out about a good Internet domain that's free for purchase... you may get filthy rich, sooner or later. Of course that it's harder and harder to find good domain names, but think about this - the most expensive public sale of a domain was www.porn.com (what else?), for an impressive amount of $9.5 cash (!!).

Since every day, thousands of domains expire, and some of them can prove to be interesting in the future, finding the right domain name for your business or simply gathering the best free domains from a category needs to be done as quick as possible, and the only way is to use a specialized software. Today's pick - Available Domains Professional, an application for the Windows platform coming from AlphaCom Software.


Setup

Valued by its producer at $59, Available Domains Professional reached version 4.1.1, build 2172. The funny part is that while the About screen shows a copyright period that ended almost 5 years ago (1999-2003), the last major update of the program, 4.1.0, was released on the 6th of September 2007, and the current version is dated on the 12th of October, offering "improved Vista support", according to AlphaCom.












The setup files come inside an archive that has exactly 1MB in size, and there's nothing special for you to do, apart from unpacking the files, launching the Setup.exe one and following the instructions on screen. Once you finish this part, you'll be asked to set some basic options, but that's also pretty easy, so let's talk a little about the interface now...Interface

As you can see in the screenshot to the left, this program's interface doesn't look really fresh, but it's well organized, and a beginner should be able to find the way pretty easy while working with it. The various areas of the main window can be hidden and resized as you wish, but there's no eye candy here, and no matter how long you'll look for it, you won't find anything to please your eyes with... apart from the good results that may be returned by the program as you work with it, but that takes us to the next part already...

Features

Since the main task of this program is all that you need to know, I won't waste time telling you about all the tiny features that can be found inside Availabel Domains Professional. What I want to offer you is a quick hands on tutorial about finding some good domain names with this program. Are you ready?












First of all, you have to decide about what you are looking for, and a couple of hot keywords that need to be included in your domain name(s). Usually, the shorter it is the domain name, the better, but sometimes even sites like iwonderwhereismybrain.com could be successful, if used the right way.Next, choose what to search for - maybe you only want to look for .COM domains, or maybe you want to get all possible domains, including .ws or .vn, it's your choice.

For me, the easiest way to find new domain names was the Quick Mode - I entered 3 keywords, I selected the Themes to use, I changed settings (I am sure you don't want 99-word domains...) and I pressed Generate. This is where it all crumbled like a castle made of sand, because the trial version can only check 15 domain names... so I'll quickly draw the conclusions, because I've seen what I needed to see.

The Good

Available Domains Professional is a program that does its job quickly and offers a lot of details about the taken domains, including Google, DMOZ or Alexa ratings, as well as a wider range of customizable information. Considering all that you can find in no time with this piece of code, its price is also quite a deal.

The Bad

While working with it, the program crashed once, and the interface really needs a facelift, as I was saying earlier!

Conclusion

Even if you're not into the domains market, trying this program can make you join the club, so there's only one thing left for me to say: hit the download link below... and don't forget to get back here and share your impressions with us!

Developer: AlphaCom Software
Price: $35
Trial Link: Download

An operating system is like a huge machinery, having thousands of components, and so when you are using the Task Manager included in Windows, you only see a tiny part of what's really behind the fence. This is the main reason that lead to the development of more and more alternatives to Microsoft's Task Manager, and today's one is simply called TaskInfo.


Setup

Created by Igor Arsenin, TaskInfo is a program with a pretty long history, since its current version is 7.1.0.232. Priced at $35, this software is also available as a 30-days trial, with some nags and minor limitations.

The setup package has only 2.1MB in size, so it shouldn't be hard at all to download it and install the application, since there's nothing special to do, apart from clicking some "Next" buttons, as you can see in the screenshots above...


Interface

For a beginner, the interface of this program can be really confusing, but if you don't want to be assaulted by the large amount of information available in the default layout of the main window, there's nothing easier than choosing what to display and what should be hidden. Some parts of the interface need to be updated to the eye candy standards of the yar 2007, anyway, but since this program is more about information than looks, let's move on and see what can be done with it, shall we?


Features

I know you may be overwhelmed by the graphs that don't seem to explain anything, but try to hold your mouse above one of them. Now, that's better, isn't it? By default, the program displays virtual and physical memory usage, swap file usage, memory mapped IO operations, file IO, network transfers and, of course, CPU load.

In the processes list to the left, simply right click an item to see the impressive list of options. I especially appreciate the feature that allows you to search a certain file on the Web, but the best thing here is the wide range of options that allow you to control the CPU usage of a certain process.

To the right of the process info pane, there's the system information that you didn't even dream of, with intimate details about the threads, processes, interrupts, network transfers, loaded drivers and many more.

TaskInfo is more than just another Task Manager replacement, since it can even alert you when your system's resources are running low, and there's even more than this... but I'll leave the rest of it up to you, because I don't want to spoil your treasure hunt!


The Good

TaskInfo is simply amazing, offering an outrageous amount of information about your operating system, while managing to remain fairly easy to use and highly customizable.

The Bad

This program's interface should get a facelift, and a "basic" interface layout would be appreciated by beginners, I am sure!

Conclusion

While some may consider that TaskInfo is too expensive, I only wish to have all the knowledge required to use it efficiently and take full advantage of the information provided. Other than that, it's a matter of taste, but I think you'll also enjoy this program at least a little... but I guess that, in the end, there's no middle path - you should either love TaskInfo, or hate it! What's your choice?

Developer: Igor Arsenin
Price: $35
Trial Link: Download

When talking about search and replace tools, I must confess I am not crazy about them at all, and the main reason is that the file managers I used during my long years spent so far as a computer user always provided me with decent such capabilities, but what about people that need more? Well, they can start writing scripts to do perform advanced search and replace operations, or simply grab a specialized program like the one I have here, called simply Advanced Find and Replace.


Setup

Advanced Find and Replace comes from a French company called Abacre, and its last version is 3.0. The trial version can be used without any functional limitation for 21 days, but after that you'll have to register the program or stop using it. The registration fee is $29.99 for a single home-user, but other licensing options are also available on the official site.

The setup package of the program has only 1.2MB in size, and comes as a ZIP archive. All you need to do is unpack the contents of the archive and run the Setup.exe file, follow the instructions and the program will be running for the first time in an instant!

Interface

Being a program with only a few needs from its interface, Advanced Find and Replace (we'll call it AFR from now on, to save space) has a well organized interface with an "all out" approach. All its main features are exposed in the main window, and the menus only have a few additional actions available. Despite the fact it wasn't needed, AFR even has a bunch of visual themes, and I can't say this is a bad thing, but on the contrary, I really enjoyed this little eye candy offering from Abacre!

Features

As I said before, my file searching and text replacing tasks are not hard at all to accomplish, but what about looking for a certain text that appears in 10 out of 10,000 files and replace it? Now, that's where a program like AFR is needed.

Before saying anything else, I must confess that the thing that impressed me most was the speed of this program, especially since I wasn't looking just a certain file, but a certain phrase inside all the files on a drive. This is what I called "specialized tool"!

There are 3 search types to be performed - Folders, Files and Results, and 3 main tasks to accomplish - Find, Replace and Batch Replace. Binary operators can be easily used for your searches, and there is also support for creating advanced regular expressions to enhance your search tasks.

The best thing is that normal queries people use with Google or AltaVista on the Web could be employed for finding stuff on your own computer. For example, if you type "+ "www.SoftDistrict.com" Internet -marketing", the results will be documents that contain www.SoftDistrict.com, possibly have the word Internet and that don't include "marketing".

These being said, I am sure you got the idea... AFR is a small program that can prove a great helper to those that really need it, but let's draw the conclusions now, shall we?

The Good

AFR 3 is a small yet powerful utility that has 3 main advantages: speed, flexibility and ease of use. Its documentation is extremely well done, and the trial version enables you to experience the full potential of the program.

The Bad

Most home users won't pay $29.99 for a program they use only from time to time, and I think that a lite version for such users would be a really good idea.

Conclusion

Advanced Find and Replace should find its place in every power user's tools pack, as long as they work with large number of files and need to perform quick find and replace tasks. For the rest of us, it depends on the needs and tastes of each user... so hit the download link below and start your 21 days trial period now!

Developer: Abacre, SARL
Price: $29.99
Trial Link: Download