Download Efficient Diary 3.0 Build 321 Free

Download Efficient Diary 3.0 Build 321 Free

Some people use their blog as a personal diary, and don?t mind other people reading what they're up to. For others, personal diaries are still something private that should be kept secret.

If you're among the latter of these groups, you're going to like Efficient Diary. With this app you can have your personal diary right on your computer, but at the same time keep it away from prying eyes thanks to its password protection.

Efficient Diary features a traditional interface design, with a folder structure on the left side to browse entries, and the right side reserved to display selected entries. It also has a rich-text editor to write your diary, which means you can apply text effects (bold, italics, colors) and insert images. However the editor fails to recognize web and email addresses like other similar tools do, and only accepts multimedia files as attachments.

With Efficient Diary you can organize your entries according to their data and also in customizable groups. The program features also a backup/restore utility with which you can easily create backup copies of your diary.

If you'd like to have a personal diary on your computer, this is the program you need.

Recent changes

• Bug fix: the software sometimes can not minimize to the system tray in Windows 7
  
• Added languages: Korean and French (Canadian)
  
• Other improvements are made and bugs are fixed

Pros

• Rich-text editor
• Protects your diary with a password
• Backup/restore tool

Cons

• The editor doesn't recognize web or email addresses
• No support for built-in multimedia files - except photos

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Download Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 theme for Windows 7 Free

Download Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 theme for Windows 7 Free

If you're a fan of Activision's legendary Call of Duty series, then you're going to love Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 theme for Windows 7.

This theme is comprehensive and, being for Windows 7, really easy to install. There's no need to mess around with installers and things - just double-click the theme pack and it will automatically install and appear in your theme options. By right-clicking on the desktop, picking personalization and then clicking on the theme, you'll be able to tweak it and see exactly what Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 contains.

And what does it offer? Well, by installing this theme pack, you'll get 48 high-resolution wallpapers, 3 system icons, personalized sounds, special cursors and the option to modify your start button. It's a real must for any Call of Duty fan.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 theme for Windows 7 is a high-quality, complete theme pack that will really bring your desktop to life.

Review last updated: 26/06/12

Pros

• 48 wallpapers
• Sounds and cursors
• High quality

Cons

• Cursors not very practical

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Download Types 2.0.6 Free

Download Types 2.0.6 Free

If you're anything like me then you're probably installing and uninstalling apps on a daily basis, which usually messes up all file associations in the system.

In that case, you can either repair them manually or run a program like Types. This simple tool lists all the file types available in your system and helps you view and edit their associations with certain apps. This means that, for instance, if you've always opened JPG images with XnView but this association has been taken over by another graphic editor, you can easily restore it with Types. Plus, it doesn't even require installation.

Besides file associations, Types also lets you edit icons, context menu, properties and other features of all file types shown in Windows Explorer. On the downside, the program is not very easy to use and doesn't include any documentation either, so you better know what you're doing before editing anything.

Types can help you restore broken file associations in your system, though it may not be easy to use for a beginner.

Recent changes

• Fixed extension listing crash
  
• Removed Special classes list

Pros

• Handles file associations, icons and more
• Support for many file types

Cons

• No help included

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Download PDF Converter Professional 8 Free

Download PDF Converter Professional 8 Free

PDF Converter Professional is a high-spec PDF suite that will allow you to do almost anything with your PDFs - and then some!

The PDF Converter Professional interface is accessible but sleek. There are bunches of options, reflecting the large variety of tasks you can perform with the software, but a little bit of practice should allow you to find your way around. The program also comes with excellent help documentation, so any queries will be easy to resolve.

PDF Converter Professional is both a PDF viewer and editor. For viewing and reviewing your documents, you have a full selection of layouts, views and commenting, marking, stamping and note-taking tools. When editing documents, you can either import material in other formats and work on them within the program, or create documents and forms from scratch.

Whichever option you choose, PDF Converter Professional provides all the text and editing power you might need. The software also has some pretty impressive security features, as well as good non-editing tools, like a conversion, batch processing and split, merge and compare tools. The PDF editing market used to be a fairly closed one, but tools like PDF Converter Professional will really give the giants like Adobe a run for their money.

If you need advanced PDF editing power, PDF Converter Professional is a great option.

Pros

• Integrates into Outlook and Word
• Excellent editing options
• Very good security features

Cons

• Long installation process

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Download Shaiya Phoenix Free

Download Shaiya Phoenix Free

Shaiya Phoenix is a free to play fantasy massive multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG).

If you were a fan of the classic Shaiya, you have the opportunity to return to that world in Shaiya Phoenix. You can opt to play a solo game as you immerse yourself in a war between Light and Dark forces, or else collaborate with other players.

Collaboration is one of the best aspects of Shaiya Phoenix, in that it allows players to more readily tackle larger and tougher monsters. Every time a challenge is won, your efforts are rewarded with new weapons and armor that will help strengthen your character's abilities to take on new challenges.

Shaiya Phoenix features new servers that are separate from the original Shaiya game, which helps avoid lagtime. Economic structure of the game has also been improved to avoid gold inflation and other imbalances in the in-game market.

Graphics in Shaiya Phoenix are good, as are fight physics. The ability to choose your own difficulty mode also makes the game more accessible to newcomers, although the sheer amount of information might overwhelm some at first. If you're a seasoned gamer looking for a challenge, Ultimate Mode is where you'll want to focus. That mode offers permanent death to up the ante.

Shaiya Phoenix is a fun game that will attract fans of the original Shaiya, as well as newcomers to fantasy MMORPGs.

Review last updated: 19/06/12

Pros

• Huge amount of players
• Solo or player vs. player options
• Variety of different game modes available
• Improved in-game economic system

Cons

• Complicated for beginners to learn

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Download Dishonored Preview Free

Download Dishonored Preview Free

In Dishonored you play Corvo, the ex-bodyguard of the Empress in the city of Dunwall. Wrongly accused of her murder, you are forced into hiding and become an assassin driven to expose your accusers. Corvo has some help with this as he's been given supernatural powers by a mystery force called 'The Outsider'.

Dishonored's Dunwall is a mixture of British Victorian and steampunk styles, so you have classic architecture with Jules Verne-like retro-futuristic machinery. The design in the game is fantastic, and really give Dishonored an interesting atmosphere - Dunwall is ruled cruelly, with the poor segregated and policed by violent steampunk man-machines.

Creative gameplay

Playing Dishonored takes some getting used to. Corvo's powers complicate the controls, but are great fun once you get used to them so are worth the trouble! You can stop time, possess people or animals, see through walls and teleport short distances. Add traditional weapons to this, and you have a fantastic arsenal at your command that you can use really creatively.

The level design is both ingenious and beautuful, especially during the earlier levels. While it's not a fully open world, each level is big, and there are a ton of things to see and places to explore in every one. Finding stealthy routes into a target is really fun, and can get extremely tense as you wait for the right moment to silently slip behind a guard, undiscovered.

Like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, you are encouraged to play the way you want. You can be as stealthy as you want to be, and as violent. The more violent you are, the more chaos you create, which means more rats, more guards and an even darker atmosphere. It may even be possible to beat Dishonored without killing anyone, if you can use your powers intelligently enough.

Style

Dishonored looks great, but its stylised graphics may not be to everyone's tastes. The people have exaggerated features, making villains look more villainous and so on. There's a lot of blood, but it comes in cartoonish spurts. The city of Dunwall is the real star though, full of details that enrich the story. It's a complicated complex of streets, ledges, tunnels, buildings and more. Unlike typical first person shooters, Dunwall is an environment you won't rush through, but rather you'll get to know it intimately.

Campaign
The length of Dishonored really depends how you play it. You could zip through, but that would miss the point. Enjoying Dishonored comes from taking your time, and using all the tools at your disposal.

With all the different ways you can play Dishonored and the multiple endings, Dishonored is a game you'll be able to play through more than once. It's great to have a brand new title to play in a season filled with sequels.

Review last updated: 09/10/12

Pros

• Freedom in how you play
• Beautifully detailed environments
• Original

Cons

• Abrupt ending

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Download Cyanidely Free

Download Cyanidely Free

Cyanidely is a desktop app webcomic reader that runs on the Pokki platform.

If you can't get enough of the sarcastic and often irreverent webcomic Cyanide & Happiness, Cyanidely will help you get your fix. The app lets you read the popular webcomic from your desktop.

Cyanidely is a simple app with an easy to navigate interface. You can browse the webcomic in chronological order or randomly at your discretion. In addition, the app lets you bookmark your favorite strips so you can read them again and again whenever you like.

If you find a comic you just can't keep to yourself, Cyanidely gives you the ability to share it with friends and family on Facebook or Twitter. In addition, you can also choose to open the comic in an actual browser if that's more to your liking.

It would've been nice if the app had included the ability to view more webcomics all in one place. At least Cyanide & Happiness can keep you busy and amused for hours on its own though.

Cyanidely is a simple but nicely designed app for reading the Cyanide & Happiness webcomic from your desktop.

Notes

Clicking on the 'Download' link will take you to Pokki's website where you can install Cyanidely.

Pros

• Read Cyanide & Happiness webcomics from your desktop
• Share your favorite comics on Twitter and Facebook
• Option to open comics in a browser

Cons

• Doesn't include other popular webcomics

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Download Balabolka 2.5.0.526 Free

Download Balabolka 2.5.0.526 Free

Balabolka is a free text-to-speech engine that boasts quality and flexibility worthy of a paid app.

What make this app stand out are its options. Text-to-speech apps generally produce speech that clocks in at around the same quality level ? sometimes it?s fine and other times, it falls pretty far from the mark. What other apps don?t have, however, is Balabolka?s great speech configuration options and excellent selection of settings.

Balabolka allows you to save text as WAV, MP3, MP4, OGG or WMA. It can also read the clipboard content and view text from documents saved as DOC, EPUB, FB2, HTML, ODT, PDF or RTF files. It will automatically detect any TTS voices you have installed on your computer and, of course, you can download more voices, both free and paid, from the internet.

It?s worth taking your time to check out all of Balabolka?s options. It?s really useful for file management, even allowing you to split and convert documents. It also has a timer, so you can set it to read before bedtime, for example, and can completely be controlled by hotkeys. There are bunches more ? the options that will interest you will surely depend on what you intend to use Balabolka for.

The quality of the speech produced by Balabolka varies greatly, but you can have a major influence by picking the reading voice carefully and tweaking the settings so that you deal with pauses, speed and unusual words in the most efficient way. While Balabolka?s not perfect, it?s very good, and in many cases is just as good, if not better, than similar paid apps.

Balabolka is a seriously flexible and entirely free text-to-speech engine.

Balabolka supports the following formats

Text: TXT, DOC, DOCX, FB2, PDF, HTML, RTF
Audio: MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG

Pros

• Excellent configuration options
• Timer
• File management tools
• Supports a large range of file formats

Cons

• Text-to-speech quality can vary

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Download Desura 100.53 Free

Download Desura 100.53 Free

Desura is an online games platform from where you can download, purchase and play games similar to the hugely popular Steam platform.

In Desura you'll find some free to play games plus some mods to popular games like Half-Life and Red Alert. Unfortunately however, you won't find many major titles on there - it's very limited when compared to Steam.

Desura does however also provide tools and hosting for game developers, as well as a useful forum for the gaming community to exchange opinions and tips. Desura is free to register for and within a few clicks you will be able to play and download games with the rest of the Desura community.

Desura is an interesting alternative to Steam although it lacks many really big games.

Review last updated: 27/06/12

Pros

• Easy to use
• Good selection of games
• Inlcudes game Mods
• Tools for developers
• Useful forum

Cons

• Does not include major games titles
• Limited compared to Steam

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Download video.NET 0.7.0.0 RC3 Free

Download video.NET 0.7.0.0 RC3 Free

video.NET is a simple, lightweight application for encoding DVDs or Blu-ray images into different formats.

Getting DVD and Blu-ray video to work with all of your devices can be a real pain. video.NET attempts to make it easier - but with one fatal flaw. While video.NET does encode DVD and Blu-ray images into different formats, it doesn't rip your optical media. This is a huge caveat as you'll need to use video.NET in conjunction with a DVD or Blu-ray ripping app.

Once you do have an image of the disc, point video.NET to its location and choose an output format. There are tons of options to encode. It supports Matroska codecs, as well as the more popular .mp4 for using with your iOS devices. There are advanced user options to configure in the settings but novices should probably leave them alone, as they don't provide any explanation about what each tweak does.

Overall, video.NET is good at what it does but we wish it included the ability to rip discs so we wouldn't have to use multiple applications.

Recent changes

• Added custom x264 preset
  
• Many internal changes

Review last updated: 04/07/12

Pros

• Tons of supported formats
• Good performance

Cons

• Doesn't rip DVDs
• Intimidating advanced settings

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Download Quantum Conundrum Demo Free

Download Quantum Conundrum Demo Free

Quantum Conundrum is a first person puzzle game, where you have to use three different dimensions to escape the game's rooms. Despite the cartoon look to the game, it's impossible not to be reminded of Portalwhile playing.

In Quantum Conundrum, you have to puzzle your way through your crazy scientist uncle's house to rescue him. He's manages to get dimensionally lost, but he's still able to talk to you to help you through the game.
There are three dimensions you will use. Fluffy makes everything really light and, well, fluffy, then there's the Heavy dimension, and finally the slow time dimension.

Quantum Conundrum would be an excellent game if Portal didn't exist. The gameplay is smooth, and everything works as it should, but it's just not anywhere near as good as Valve's game. The slow time dimension can be a lot of fun, but the other two mean you spend a lot of time moving blocks to activate switches, and that was never the most fun part of Portal.

Despite not comparing well to Portal, Quantum Conundrum is still a fun puzzle game with some good ideas. It's fun to play and has a cute, cheerful atmosphere that gives it a unique feel.

Review last updated: 05/07/12

Pros

• Controls and gameplay are solid
• Challenging puzzles

Cons

• Some puzzles aren't very fun

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Download Fresh HTML 3.69 Free

Download Fresh HTML 3.69 Free

Fresh HTML is a free HTML editor for people with next to no previous experience in hand-coding websites.

Ten years ago, creating a website was a complicated process. Knowledge of HTML, JavaScript, and other web design languages was almost always needed in order to make anything even remotely workable online. That's not really the case any longer, which is great for would-be web designers who don't have time to teach themselves every coding nuance out there.

Fresh HTML takes away that hassle and lets you design the website you've been envisioning, even without any knowledge of the process. The narrow right-hand program pane has a variety of different options you can click on to insert anything from an image to a complicated HTML table. Fresh HTML lets you define factors like width, height, and location on the web page.

The middle window pane on Fresh HTML gives you alternating views between what the page will end up looking like and what the actual HTML code you've inserted looks like. Fresh HTML's text view is also color-coded, making it even easier to see what's been inserted to make the page and where it's showing up, in terms of the actual coding. This is great for website makers who want to teach themselves a little bit about how the coding actually works.

Unfortunately, there's no dual pane view for the web page preview and HTML code page in Fresh HTML. If you want to look at both windows, you're forced to click between tabs to see them. For complete HTML beginners, Fresh HTML also does take a little time to get the hang of.

Fresh HTML doesn't come close to professional HTML editors, but for beginners it's great entry point to the world of website creation.

Pros

• Easy to use and navigate
• Many different code insertion options
• Color-coded HTML code page

Cons

• Difficult to edit your code if it comes out wrong
• No dual view of the HTML editor and page preview

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Download Minecraft X-Ray 3.6.2 Free

Download Minecraft X-Ray 3.6.2 Free

Minecraft X-Ray helps you in the search for raw materials by mapping landscapes in 3D and revealing valuable resources that may not normally be visible.

To get the most out of Minecraft you need to search high and low for rare commodities. Minecraft X-Ray gives you the power of X-Ray sight so that you can more easily discover gold, diamonds and pumpkins. Minecraft X-Ray display a 3D flyover view of the world with highly visible luminous markers to indicate the route to the precious minerals. Be warned however that this is heavy on CPU and RAM and it's not recommended to have any other applications open.

Minecraft X-Ray is perfect for beginners to the game or for those that want to get more out of Minecraft.

Review last updated: 10/07/12

Pros

• Highlights precious resources
• 3D flyover view
• Change resolution
• Saves games automatically
• Runs parallel to the game

Cons

• Hogs CPU and may slow down your Mac

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Download FileMenu Tools 6.3 Free

Download FileMenu Tools 6.3 Free

FileMenu Tools is a great addition to your context menu and a tool that will help users in the battle for increased efficiency and functionality.

When you right click on almost anything on your computer, a menu appears. FileMenu Tools takes this menu a little further, adding a whole bunch of extra functions. In addition to the long default list, FileMenu Tools also allows you to create your own actions. These range from copying, moving and deleting files and folders to changing file attributes and emailing a file to a third party.

Some of the FileMenu Tools options require extra interaction with the program, when renaming files for example, and if you want to do serious reconfiguration or add your own commands, you'll have to open the main FileMenu Tools window.

Here you can modify any of the options, removing the actions you don't use, re-ordering the ones you do and creating sub-menus and separators. Adding your own commands to FileMenu Tools is a little complicated, but there's a good help file that will get you moving towards the more advanced functions.

FileMenu Tools is an excellent tool for users who want extra control and functionality on their desktops.

Recent changes

• FileMenu Tools can automatically check for new versions (never, every day, every week and every month). This can be configured from "Options" menu
  
• Advanced Renamer: two new variables to add in the file name: RANDOM and SEQ
  
• RANDOM adds a random string
  
• SEQ adds a numeric sequence, starting in 1
  
• Two new variables for the arguments of the custom commands: RELPATH y FOLDERNAME
  
• RELPATH adds the path of the parent folder without the drive letter
  
• FOLDERNAME adds the name of the parent folder
  
• Calculate and Verify Checksums: now the checksums can be appended to a existing file
  
• Fixed bug in Change Time: an error was displayed when the time was near to 24:00

Review last updated: 12/07/12

Pros

• Command line execution
• Advanced rename for folders and files
• Totally customizable

Cons

• Adding commands is a little complicated

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Download Kestrel GX 1.3.0 Free

Download Kestrel GX 1.3.0 Free

Kestrel GX is a photo library manager as well as a photo editor that allows for touch ups.

If you take a lot of photos, it can be a pain to manage them all. Kestrel GX is a well designed app that will help you manage all of your pictures and edit them as well. The interface of Kestrel GX is very intuitive. Browse to the location of your photos and it will load them all up for quick and easy editing.

Kestrel GX is simple enough to use for novices and powerful enough for the professional photographer. Its interface is reminiscent of Adobe Lightroom and Apple's Aperture programs. If you find Kestrel GX fits your needs, it's a lot cheaper as it's completely free. Commercial users will have to purchase a license though.

There are tons of tweaks you can perform on your photos with Kestrel GX. You can change temperature, crop, tint, saturate, and even put a watermark. These are all great features that will help your photos to look their best.

Overall, Kestrel GX is a great, free photo editing and management application for Windows that is easy enough to use for the novice and powerful enough for the professional.

Recent changes

• Improved loading speed for RAW files
  
• Image rotation based on EXIF info is now possible
  
• Fixed bug: Software crashing when trying to open .WMF files
  
• Fixed several other minor bugs

Kestrel GX supports the following formats

TIFF, GIF, JPG, PCX, BMP, ICO, CUR, PNG, WMF, EMF, TGS, PXM, JP2, J2K, WBMP, PS, PDF, DCX, RAW, BMPRAW, PSD

Review last updated: 09/10/12

Pros

• Intuitive interface
• Powerful features
• Speedy performance

Cons

• Not as powerful as competitors

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