Monday, October 15, 2001		Downloads of the week

This is easy friendly and a complete time and data management tool. It remains active in the system tray and provides the following - combined calendar, diary and alarm clock. A Schedule can be displayed from your diary. Anniversaries, cancelled events and completed events are also supported. Alarms pop-up as a post-it style note on the desktop, optionally with sound. Hierarchical Notes Tree similar to a directory structure is provided. Each ‘page’ can either be normal text or a sortable data table. This typically includes address books, to-do lists, project information, handy data or whatever you like in any format you like. Automated Phone Dialling and e-mailing is provided. Scientific or engineering calculator (in reverse polish notation) providing trigonometric and logarithmic functions, factorial, hexadecimal, engineering multiplier keys and display with an 8-level stack is included. The calendar page shows a multi-month calendar and diary for the selected day. The number of months displayed depends on the size of the window and the position of the horizontal splitter bar. To scroll the months, just use the solid arrow buttons. The diary spans 12 months, starting with the beginning of the previous calendar month. Every new calendar month, the contents of the previous month are purged from the diary. Only locked items will be preserved, being moved forward by a year. Purged diary items are added to the file DiaryOld.txt. To view the Diary contents for a particular day, you can click on that day in the calendar. An alarm occurs when the time and date matches an event in the Diary. When an alarm occurs, a stick-on style notice, showing an alarm clock, the alarm time (if present) and the event’s description, is placed on the desktop. Also, an alarm is sounded every minute until the alarm is acknowledged or removed. These notices can be dragged around with the mouse. To acknowledge an alarm, select Acknowledge from the Pop up Menu commands. To remove the alarm notice, click on its alarm clock. To see a colour-coded list of all Alarm Events, past and present, click schedule (or select Schedule from the Pop up Menu Commands). To examine all events regardless of the Event’s state, tick the Show All Events field. To search for an Event, click on the Find button. This brings up the search window. Enter part of the Event’s Description and click on Find Next (or type Enter). Searching starts with the day after the selected day. All in all, a handy program. Download this utility from http://home.iprimus.com.au/applied/XDesk95S.exe

Adding Machine is designed for anyone who regularly adds columns of figures on a calculator. Unlike a calculator, Adding Machine retains all entered figures on screen and you can backtrack and edit any figure if you make a mistake. No more starting again if you are interrupted. If you regularly add figures for a fixed list of items, you can annotate each line with an item description. You can print your list and save it to disk for future re-use. Adding Machine is ready to add columns of figures with two decimal places, showing the currency symbol and thousands separator set in your Windows Control Panel. Just type in the figures. You can use the Enter Key, + Key or down arrow after each figure, whichever is most convenient. If you have more than 20 figures, the list scrolls to a new page. There is no limit to the length of lists you can add but there is a maximum number limit of 14 significant figures, i.e. at two decimal places the maximum figure is 999,999,999,999.99 and at 6 decimal places the maximum figure is 99,999,999.999999. To edit any figure you have entered, just move to it with the arrow keys or Home/End/PgUp/PgDn. Each figure has a line label. By default, this is "Item 1", "Item 2" etc. To enter your own line labels, press the Tab key and edit the defaults. When editing labels the direction keys move the cursor up and down the labels. To return to the figures, press the Tab key again. From the file menu, you can save and reload any list. If you use the same line labels regularly for different figures you can use save as to save a separate list of figures with the same line labels. At the bottom of the window there are two buttons. The right button (Reset) clears all data ready to start a new list. The left button (Clear List) clears all figures but retains the current line labels. If you prefer not to reach for the mouse, you can press the F12 or F8 keys. The preferences menu allows you to show or hide the currency symbol and the thousands separator. You can set the number of decimal places from 0 to 6. Please note that you can only change the number of decimal places when the list is clear. If you save a list with four decimal places, it will reload with four decimal places whatever setting you currently have. You will not find another adding machine like this for free. Grab it from www.easysoftwareuk.com/Download/AddingMachineDL.htm

Most of us do not know much about Feng Shui, Kua numbers and other elements of Chinese philosophy. But, a lot of persons are keen on it all over the world at the moment. Without going into whether it is good or bad, let us learn about one of the strangest programs the Net has to offer for free. It’s called Kua Number Generator. Different sites call it just as they wish (Feng Shui, Kua Generator etc.). You’ll have to choose your sex (male or female) and write the year of your birth. After that you should press the large button, and the program will count your Kua Number and tell you about your harmonious direction (West, for example), your luckiest element, luckiest objects and your luckiest colours. But the strangest thing in this program is in its characteristics for "Tui" and Career Tip". It may not be much of a utility program for those with a scientific bent of mind, but its fun. The program requests Win95, and you should definitely try it. Besides, it has been written by an Indian called Arun Nair. This is where you get it - www.sharppack.com/downloads/kua/kuagen.exe

There has always been a wealth of information available online but the Internet is literally flooded with news sources. Luckily, someone has developed a nice tiny ticker that can be configured to your liking. You know, so now all you’ll see is the news you want to read. Headlines scroll by slowly; all you have to do is double-click one when you see a story that looks interesting. To keep it from getting in your way, you can minimise it down in the System Tray. And yes, this application is skinnable. For 2k and XP users, the Window can also be made semi- transparent! It’s also free. You can download this from: www.e-integro.com/aminews/Setup.exe

 — TNS