Windows Live Messenger 14.0.8064.0206

Reviewed by: ifr Staff

This program improves on its predecessor, MSN Messenger, with the ability to share folders and files locally with fellow users. Windows Live Messenger also serves up the standard emoticons, multiplayer-only gaming, free PC-to-PC calling, mobile phone messaging, and video chatting in a full 640x480-pixel screen. VoIP capabilities allow you to call telephones around the world for a fee, although you can't receive inbound calls from landlines or cell phones.

During the quick installation, Windows Live Messenger offers optional shortcuts, a sign-in assistant, and Rhapsody music software, as well as the ability to change your Internet Explorer home page to MSN. You can store up to 600 contacts, integrated with your Windows Live Mail account. We found the integration a bit heavy-handed, especially when links opened in IE rather than our default browser. Also, like most dedicated chat clients, the program is a memory hog.

The Sharing Folders feature lets you and your buddy transfer files by displaying a mirror of each others' files. You can drag and drop files into the chat window or Sharing Folder. Microsoft includes a free scanner for checking files for viruses, but it didn't recognize our Symantec AntiVirus. It's unclear whether the shared files are stored on both computers or on Microsoft servers, but you can access the files offline. We wish help were offline, too, especially since the online help is so general. While Windows Live Messenger isn't yet the ultimate communications hub, it's a solid, fun, multimedia chatting tool.

The Baby Web eBook 1.0

(From Chestnut Lane Design ):

From the developer: The Book You Are Downloading Is Something Unique. The Baby Web is the world's first e-directory of baby-related websites, an interactive, online yellow pages' that helps young parents make surfing the web child's play. It's the e-version of the highly-reviewed paperback available now on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com , as well as prominent regional booksellers. Over 1,000 companies listed in thirteen illustrated chapters with live hyperlinks for instant access to their websites, plus customer service numbers and brief descriptive copy of what each company has to offer. Plus, it's a totally dynamic directory that never goes out of date, with new websites being added as they are launched and researched. Your free download of The Baby Web is made possible by the companies that have enhanced their website listings. Show your appreciation by visiting their sites. Happy Surfing!

EMailerID 2.1.1

(From NetAvatar ):

Like caller ID on an answering machine, EMailerID lets you know who's sending you a message before you decide to allow the message into your in-box. Simply allow your family, friends, and business partners into your e-mail client, and EMailerID technology handles the rest. EMailerID software works with any POP e-mail client and protects an unlimited number of POP accounts from spam while still allowing legitimate senders to easily contact you. There are no complicated filter rules to understand or set up, and you won't see the subject and/or contents of any message by default.

New in this version are support for an unlimited number of POP accounts as well as for Windows 98/Me; automatic checks for free Web updates; support for e-cards, e-vites, and e-mail lists; the removal of an incompatibility with Norton AntiVirus; and the resolution of a conflict with support for dynamic ports

FrostWire 4.18

FrostWire is a fork of the LimeWire source code, and as such, it functions exactly the same. When you search for a file using FrostWire, you get results from LimeWire, and vice versa.

However, the user experience differs in two ways. One is that the code is actually based on LimeWire Pro, the paid version of the popular P2P client, so users don't have to worry about simultaneous download restrictions, and they won't get bombarded by ads. Also, befitting the name, the interface has changed from green to blue and has been slightly improved. Tabs have rounded corners, and there are two additions, as well. Connections monitors your outgoing and incoming connections by host name, but also provides bandwidth information, the vendor and version being used, and more. There's also a built-in community chat.

When we tested it, the built-in media player in FrostWire didn't work with MP3s or MPGs, although those files worked fine in LimeWire and elsewhere. The app also comes bundled with the ASK toolbar, but you can opt out of that during the installation process. While some people have experienced faster download times with FrostWire compared with its parent, others have not. FrostWire and LimeWire are practically indistinguishable, although the lack of ads is a big plus

Google Toolbar for IE speaks your language

Updated July 2 at 10:30 a.m. PDT: The full list of supported languages has been added to the bottom of the story.

Toolbars have long been an effective way for software publishers to add several features to a browser at once, and the Google Toolbar has long been among the most popular of these. Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer introduces revamped translation tools, giving users one-click powers of conversion over many languages.

Google Toolbar for IE now offers one-click page translation.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

The toolbar now detects your default language setting and using the Translate button will attempt to convert the page to it. Clicking a link will automatically translate the new page, as long as its part of the same domain as the original. Forty-one languages are supported so far, from Spanish, French, Italian, and German to Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew, Hindi, Ukranian, and Vietnamese.

Not all words on a page will be translated, but from my tests that seems limited only to text that's been embedded in logos and other art. If you need a lot of on-the-fly translation, this could be a major time saver. The feature has not been extended to Google Toolbar for Firefox, although Google said on its blog post announcing the feature that it hopes to implement it soon.

The new feature supports Albanian, Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.

MicroOLAP Database Designer for PostgreSQL 1.2.8

(From MicroOLAP Technologies ):

Database Designer for PostgreSQL is an easy CASE tool with an intuitive graphical interface allowing you to build a clear and effective database structure visually. See the complete picture (diagram) representing all the tables, references between them, views, stored procedures and other objects. Then you can easily generate a physical database on a server, modify it according to any changes you made to the diagram using fast ALTER statements. Database Representation: Place objects of your database on a diagram, a virtual sheet of paper. See and realize the structure of your database and its objects: tables, views, stored procedures, functions and relationships between them. Construct schemas, domains, tables, indexes, columns and triggers. You can import already existing databases to a diagram by reverse engineering. Easy Database Generation and Maintenance: With the database designer, you can quickly create a ready-to-use PostgreSQL database with just a few clicks, and then keep its structure up-to-date by synchronizing it with the changes you made to a visual diagram. Simply change the diagram, and the Designer will generate the complex SQL statement for database modification to bring it to the state of the diagram, keeping the data safe. Moreover, you can synchronize several databases to the state of your diagram. Documentation: Printing, Generating Graphics and Reports: Generate powerful reports that describe all the database objects within your diagram. You can export a graphical representation of the diagram to EMF, JPEG, PNG, GIF and other popular formats or print the diagram out on multiple pages.

Version 1.2.9 includes support for sequences added. Wine compatibility introduced. Diagram objects drawing algorithms significantly improved.