Software

When all you want to do is shrink or expand an image to a specific size, launching an image-editing application such as Adobe Photoshop, or even GIMP, FastStone, or Paint.NET is overkill. Unburdened by all those powerful effects engines, VSO Image Resizer loads quickly and does you the favor of popping open an image-selection window in the process. The nag screen reminding business customers to buy a license does drag you down each time you open, but it's smooth sailing after that.

VSO Image Resizer accepts hand-typed dimensions in pixels or percentages and offers presets from a drop-down … Read more

In the old days, parents worried how much time their kids spent in front of the TV. Now they worry about the computer, where kids can spend hours cruising MySpace or instant messaging their friends. User Time Control Center lets parents set time limits on computer use, turning the machine off after a specified number of hours or at bedtime.

Although it's aimed at home users, we found it a bit tricky to configure. It's set up to monitor individual Windows accounts, so it works most effectively if you and your kids have separate login names and profiles. … Read more

A strong iPhone app is one that's completely intuitive and transparent. IM for iPhone (and iPod touch) achieves both with its free multinetwork instant messenger. In the Settings screen you add your login credentials for your IM accounts. In the Status window, you'll be online, away, invisible, or signed off. Your contacts are listed alphabetically by status in their own window. You'll switch between multiple open conversations by tabbing over to the Inbox.

IM for iPhone is still light on the characteristic features--a pop-up emoticon list, support for buddy icons, and clear notifications of incoming messages--but it'… Read more

This set of system tools boasts a large and versatile feature set, replacing many standalone applications. Super Utilities Pro contains five main modules. Its tools remove junk files from your disk, the Registry, the start-up menu, program rosters, and RAM.

Privacy Protector lets you hide or lock folders, clean your system tracks, password-protect applications that hold sensitive data, quickly and securely delete files, and hide IE Favorites and Start menu items from view. System Maintenance includes Task Manager-like functions, Internet Explorer customization tools, valuable system information, and utilities for tweaking Windows. With the Special Tools module, you can schedule shutdown … Read more

The popularity of your site depends to some extent on the download time of its pages. By removing unnecessary tags and characters, HTML-Optimizer reduced page sizes by an average of 20 percent in our testing.

The utility handles HTML, JavaScript, PHP, and CSS scripting. Since the optimized code is hard to edit, HTML-Optimizer creates a duplicate site you can synchronize with the source. The Smart Handling feature lets you upload only the pages that have changed. Options let you choose what to optimize, as well as whether to block some folders and file types from optimization.

The standard version of … Read more

Simple, small, and free, Google Desktop indexes your hard drive the way Google's own servers index the Web. Your search results are returned in a Web-page format that looks very similar to the Google Web site. The application's sidebar regularly updates the status of your e-mail, photos, RSS feeds, and weather.

Although the initial indexing period can crawl--especially if you have a lot of e-mail, contacts, chat transcripts, and documents for it to parse through--it's well worth the wait to be able to search any of them from a text entry box that's installed next to … Read more

Although it delivers less than it promises, there's no denying that this program works very well as an automatic flash video downloader.

Moyea FLV Downloader's interface includes a very basic tree directory with only two options: Downloading and Downloaded. You can view either category in a spreadsheet-style window to the right. A toolbar holds all of the functions for operating this app.

During installation, there's an option to add a player. It's a minor quibble, but this is a primary function promised by the publisher and it should come with no extra steps. A converter is … Read more

The iPhone isn't robust enough to use as a physical scale, but you can still use it to watch your weight. Enter your goal weight into fitness app Weightbot and start logging your pounds (or kilos) for any given day. Weightbot will track the days for you and calculate your body mass index (BMI)--your personal percentage of body fat--based on your height and heft. If your BMI gets too high or low into danger zones, it reads red.

While Weightbot is essential a simple calculation app, it does its job nicely. We especially like being able to switch … Read more

Classics is a digital reading app that gives you access to more than 20 preset books in an inviting, intuitive interface. When you open Classics, you see a 3D wooden bookshelf with neatly shelved virtual books--all classic, public-domain titles such as "Call of the Wild," "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," the "Illiad," and "20,000 Leagues under the Sea." You can scroll through the bookshelf by flicking up and down, and red bookmarks show which books you've started as well as your progress (the shorter the bookmark, the further you've … Read more