For years, we were able to enjoy celebrating traditional Halloween filling up our bellies with candies obtained at the “trick or treat” threat, the mere hearing of which would make our scared neighbors rush in search of any sugar chow that may satisfy our insatiable need of it.

As years went on, this celebration which has its origins in an ancient Celtic festival held the end of the harvest season, became more and more popular and was transmitted from generation into generation. And what began with simple scary disguises and carved pumpkins with a candle inside them has turned into a kind of creativity-contest.

With the arrival of the technological era, the popular Halloween celebration could not be absent from those apparatus that for many of us have become almost a member of the family, our computers and game consoles. And here again developers’ creativity is challenged when it comes to produce software specially designed for this popular celebration.

From Harvested Pumpkins to Java Ones
We surely agree that one of the activities which make the delights of everybody, both kids and big ones too, is decorating the house and the neighborhood with Halloween-related stuff, such as carved lighted pumpkins, masks, paper drawings of full moon nights and bats, witches, and so on. Of course, computers should also be decorated so as to be part of this great holiday that tells apart neither anybody nor anything!

There is a full moon! Enchanted Halloween is here! The haunted house, hidden deep in the woods, invites you to visit it. The daunting ghosts welcome you in the distance, skulls and fire will escort you to the entrance. The old raven has seen many visitors to this sinister place … How many of them have returned home? The Halloween pumpkins laugh with their sinister smile. Sure they are happy to see you. Bats and witches on their brooms fly across the sky, to complete this friendly welcome. Something happens in this house… and you can discover it with the 3D Spooky Halloween Screensaver… Are you brave enough to ask for candies in this place?

You can also make your fellow workers be scared to death by secretly installing in their computers, for instance, Halloween Night Screensaver, which offers different scenes: cemetery, haunted house and death swamps.

From Apples Bobbling to Helping Pumpkin Pete
Halloween has been also characterized by popular games played among friends and neighbors. Of course, PC gamers also have the chance to enjoy themselves by taking part in some funny Halloween adventures.

Halloween Heist is one of the games, which we can enjoy in this season of the year has to do with helping Pumpkin Pete collect all the Jack-O-Lanters on each level while avoiding spikes, slimes, and spiders, in a simple and childish game developed by Twilight.

It’s Raining Vampires!
In a suburban city of the USA west coast, people have been mysteriously disappearing at night. The fortunate ones has been found dead but others have been reborn by strange forces as Nightwalkers and are bound by instinct to compellingly recruit innocent victims into the Nightwalker army. Vampire Rain: Altered Specied is a really appropriate game to be played in creepy Halloween nights: intense and thrilling enough. You will take the role of John Lloyd a member of a US special government unit created to defeat the Nightwalkers…have the fiber to do so? Vampire Rain, developed by Ignition Entertainment, is available for PS3.

Buuuuh…
Halloween has been for years a good excuse to have a good time by exploiting popular morbidity and the attraction we all have for creepy things. And since nothing breaks away from technological advance, especially in what has to do with information technology, we have at hands the possibility of enlarging our capacity to get surprised and frightened. Let's exploit it and go in search of the million opportunities to have fun we can find in the screen before us!

When the end of October gets closer everybody remembers that Halloween is going to come. I will tell for those who ignore, that this celebration is very old and its origins lie in the ancient Celtic festival of "Samhain" (form the Old Irish: Sam + Fuin = end of summer) also known as the feast of the dead or the "Celtic New Year". If we take a look at the original meaning of this feast, it was to signalize the ending of the harvest and the beginning of the winter season which lasts till May, as a part of the tradition, they used to imagine that Faeries were particularly active at this season and the boundary between the living and the dead vanished, and the spirits become dangerous for the alive by means of sickness or damaged crops.

This celebration usually included costumes, masks, which were worn trying to ridicule the evil spirits or calm them down as well as bonfires, where people used to through cattle bones and many other features, which, in some more or less distorted way got up to our times passing through the filter of time.

Irish immigrants carried versions of the Halloween festival tradition to the New World by 1800. Nowadays we celebrate Halloween performing some events like trick-or-treating, ghost tours, bonfires, costume parties, visiting haunted attractions, carving jack-o'-lanterns, telling scary stories, and watching horror movies. I think this takes the scent of past times as it is still a way of impressing a humorous view over fear or death issues which make us so frightened. Read the rest of this entry »

actiTIME 1.5
License - Demo
Publisher - Actimind, Inc

actiTIME is a time tracking software with intuitive and friendly interfaces.
If you need a clear and simple way to register time expenses, analyze employee performance, prepare timesheets for billing your customers - actiTIME is a tool of choice.
actiTIME time tracking software can be installed under any operating system and works with MySQL and MS Access databases.

With actiTIME you can
1 - Time expenses are recorded on by-customer and by-project basis
2 - Overtime and undertime calculations and reports
3 - Co-workers can share information using daily task comments
4 - Individual access rights management
5 - Entering/Modifying the time-track of other users
6 - Access to the system through a web browser

Features-★★★★
Operation-★★★★
Security-★★★★★
User Interface-★★★★★
CPU/Mem usage-★★★★



Download actiTIME NOW! Read the rest of this entry »

Email Extractor 2.6
License - Shareware
Publisher - Iconico

If you've ever lost a single email you know how frustrating it can be, but most of us don't back up our email and run the risk of losing it all.
Email Extractor from Iconico can easily extract and backup all your email from Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird and Eudora, giving you peace of mind. You can also extract email addresses too.

Key Features
1 - Easily backup your email from Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird & Eudora
2 - Extract and backup all documents and email attachments in one operation
Browse through email message stores and view email headers and source code
3 - Updated extraction mechanism to ensure full mailbox backup functionality
4 - Improved user interface, allowing for easy selection of mailbox files
5 - Full email extraction capability, which scans attachments for emails



Features-★★★★
Operation-★★★★
Security-★★★★★
User Interface-★★★★
CPU/Mem usage-★★★★★

Download Email Extractor NOW! Read the rest of this entry »

Halloween 3D Screensaver 1.1
License - Shareware
Publisher - 3Planesoft

Halloween (or Hallowe’en) is an international holiday.Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, ghost tours, bonfires, costume parties, visiting haunted attractions, carving jack-o'-lanterns, reading scary stories, and watching horror movies.
Halloween 3D screensaver brings the spirit of this strange holiday right to your computer monitor. Expecting a pumpkin? You will get a horrifying Jack O'Lantern served together with skeletons, skulls, shrieking sounds. Are you already scared?

Key Features
Lifetime technical support via e-mail
Free upgrade to new version
No time limit
No more annoying nag screens





Download Halloween 3D Screensaver NOW! Read the rest of this entry »

The following article about Turn Your Mobile Phone Into A PC Remote Control is from our content partner Ghacks.
MobileWitch Remote Control turns your mobile phone into a remote control that can control various applications on your PC. The software does have a few limitations and requirements though. Both the PC and mobile phone have to support Bluetooth which is being used to send and receive the data. The user installs a server on the PC and a client on the mobile phone. Both applications have been programmed in Java. The author is explicitly mentioning Nokia mobile phones but chance is good that it works on other mobile phone brands as well as long as they meet the requirements.

The PC server application has to be started first. A small notification area displays status information and error messages. Everything else is handled by the mobile phone application. It provides four different modes: Mouse mode, Keyboard mode, Application mode and Utilities.

Mouse and keyboard mode give the user control over the computer's mouse or keyboard which can be controlled with a joystick or the numeric keys. Application mode handles six applications that can be controlled using that mode if installed and on top of any other windows on the computer desktop.

The applications are Firefox, Winamp, Windows Media Player, PowerPoint, Internet Explorer and Explorer. The last mode Utilities provides access to running commands or sending messages.

The application does not require any configuration of Bluetooth or Java on both the client or server which will appeal to many users who usually shy away from such applications. It could be handy in several situations like business presentations, lying on the coach at home and listening to Winamp or Windows Media Player or starting a command without having to go near the computer.

This blog is from our content partner 1stwebdesigner.
Ok, it’s time for new tutorial. I wanted to create dreamy scene in the sky, learning different effects through all tutorial. We will use Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and cloud stock image. Again we will use 3D effects to get the job done. And yes, if You can use, Xara 3D for this step - it will get a lot better results then using simple Illustrator’s Bevel&Extrude options. If You don’t know what Xara is , check out tutorial using XARA 3D to get cool 3D effect. Let’s begin!

At first we need to find the background with the cloud. I found this one image, you can save it:

Step 1
Now I wanted to get more brighter colors, so get Your image settings window with Image–>Adjustments–>Brightness/Contrast. Play with the settings, I got something like this:

Step 2
Now I wanted to get wave effect, so the cloud will look like more whirlwind. Go to the Filter–>Distort–>Twirl, Zoom out a little bit to see the preview window with -/+ and use settings like mine to get this effect. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article about Google Chrome Dual View is from our content partner Ghacks.
Google Chrome Dual View makes it possible to split the Google Chrome browser into a left and right part that can each contain and display a website. Since there is no extension engine yet for Google Chrome the functionality is provided by a bookmarklet which has its impacts on usability.

Users with large computer monitors on the other hand will love the feature which is also available for other browsers. Firefox users can install the Firefox Split Browser extension which provides even more options and ways to split the browser.

The bookmarklet can be moved to the bookmarks so that it can be opened whenever it is needed. It will display a Javascript prompt upon execution for the first website and a second prompt after sending the first website that will contain the second url.

Both websites will then be displayed next to each other in the same Google Chrome window. Usability suffers quite a bit because of the Javascript prompts and no way of changing the contents other than following links or using forms that are visible on that site. It’s ideal on sites like Google Search but becomes a problem if the user wants to switch between sites that are not connected by links.

This blog is from our content partner Gamers Platform.
If you are still having problems playing Socom: Confrontation because of the bugs and glitches you've encountred, the patch that will be releasing at midnight might remedy some of them and allow you to play a smooth tactical online match. Starting this Midnight, v1.20 will be available for download upon logging in to the Playstation Network. The patch will be around 50MB for those who have downloaded the previous patch, but if you just got your game, you will be greeted with a huge 500MB+ install.

The following will be fixed upon completion of the download:
* Fixed many issues which would cause the game to crash, hang, disconnect and exit to the PS3 XMB.
* Fixed an issue which would cause large numbers of players in a high player count game to be simultaneously disconnected.
* Fixed an issue which would cause players to be invincible.
* Fixed a physics issue which would cause players to occasionally “warp” around on the map.
* Fixed an issue where a “corrupt save data” message would be incorrectly displayed after updating the game.
* Fixed some player model issues related to team swapping.
* Client/server optimization.
* Fixed an issue where the scope camera had an incorrect offset from the barrel of the gun while prone or leaning/peeking.

Maybe I have to start getting on again in Socom… Hmmm are you playing?

The following article about Installing Winamp Plugins In AIMP is from our content partner Ghacks.
If you look around and ask your friends which media player they prefer you will most likely come up with many different answers. Winamp, Windows Media Player and iTunes will surely be on the top of the list with lesser known players mentioned by some of the friends. Most are perfectly happy that they can play music on their computer without having to think about configuring the service first or tweaking it for maximum effectiveness.

AIMP is a music player that might not be mentioned that often. The main reason why that is the case is surely the Russian website that is keeping lots of users at bay. Some might spot the player on download portals like BrotherSoft and those are usually the ones who stick with it after installing and testing the player.

AIMP comes with an impressive design and functionality that leaves most music players behind. It is low on resource usage, provides an impressive sound, great design, an audio converter, CD ripper and Internet radio ripper among other things.

The official website contains a few plugins and skins that can be added to the player but one feature that the player excels in is the compatibility to many Winamp plugins.

A quick research revealed that it was possible to add the plugins to AIMP as well. It mentioned the following three plugins: Minilyrics, DFX and Ozone. Read the rest of this entry »