Windows Software

Imagine a work space with three monitors standing side by side, each displaying a different work environment. E-mail and IM are pulled up on one monitor, Word processing is open on a second, and a spreadsheet graces the third. Now imagine the cursor flitting effortlessly between the screens, clicking, copying, and pasting from one to the other. One keyboard sits on the desk, and just one mouse.

This is no multimonitor setup; each screen here is controlled by its own computer. It isn't remote access software, either, since the controlling console is linked to the satellite computer. It's Multiplicity, and minus one rather large and glaring kink, it's pretty close to a multitasker's dreamware.… Read more

With summer here in the northern hemisphere, many people are packing their bags, grabbing their plane tickets, and hopping a flight for a well-deserved vacation. Once on the plane, most of us face cramped seats, crying babies, and maybe a couple of bags of peanuts (if we're lucky). Most of the time, the promise of the destination is enough for us to deal with a long flight, and if all else fails, there's always the sweeping view of the country from the window seat.

This week, I rediscovered (it's now in version 2.0) a great screensaver … Read more

Killer Download is a new feature on Download.com in which we'll present a new program each week. Most will be free, but some might be good enough that paying a low registration fee is well worth the cost. If you find you have a better option than the software featured, let us know in the comments!

What method do you use to get the news? For a long time, I used my Web browser and grabbed bookmarks when I found good news sites. But before long those bookmarks multiplied, making it difficult to find particular sites; I realized I had to find a way to organize them all. The most obvious method was to continue with a regular Internet browser and put similar sites into folders, calling them "News" and "Blogs" and "Software," or whatever category fit the bill. This method worked fairly well, but I never knew when any of the sites updated without actually going to the site and checking. Naturally, all sites don't update according to a schedule, so I quickly figured out that I needed to try something else.… Read more

When you first look at 3D Mailbox, it almost seems like a joke, or an article from The Onion. "The world's first 3D e-mail client!" the Web site proclaims. Well, there's a reason for that. Most of us struggle with too much e-mail these days. Taking the time to add 3D animations to each message seems ludicrous...and it is!

3D Mailbox delivers almost exactly what it promises. It creates a 3D world in which your e-mail messages can live...and walk, shower, swim, or even shuffle about aimlessly. When you receive mail in 3D Mailbox, a 3D character representing each message walks in the front gate and talks to the bouncer (who decides if he or she is spam).

By default, the gender of the new avatar is determined by the (supposed) gender of the sender (it thinks Vladimir is a woman's name), and any questionable senders default to female. If the bouncer lets him or her through, the 3D character for each message takes a disinfecting shower, then walks extremely slowly over to the pool, climbs the high-dive platform, jumps in the pool, and swims laps until you decide to read it.… Read more

We all goof, but we don't all do it as visibly as CNET TV star and executive editor Molly Wood, nor do we often relish fessing up. Molly does both with wit, charm, and FotoTagger, a handy digital-photography freeware tool for annotating digital photos via movable captions.

Read Molly's hilarious confession, Anatomy of a Buzz Report screwup, to see why FotoTagger has become her "new favorite thing." While you're at it, try it out.

Taking digital pictures is simple; transforming them into a constructive project is a whole 'nother story. Web services like Flickr, Picasa, Shutterfly, Webshots, Snapfish, and countless others let you create photo galleries that are hosted on their servers, but what if you want to create a gallery for your own Web site?

Personally, I'm the sort of guy who wants to start with my raw images and my trusty NoteTab Light text editor, but I seem to have lost my patience for HTML and CSS (not to mention JavaScript and XML) over the last five years.… Read more

Spybot Search & Destroy has for years been a household standard in free antispyware protection. Originally winning respect for offering comprehensive malware-slashing features that competing software lacked, Spybot Search & Destroy has lost this advantage, as most reputable antivirus programs have added similar features. This First Look video takes you on a features tour, and hits upon the pros and cons that may have you standing by the sought-after program or searching for a spyware-busting alternative.

"Google Maps is changing the way we see the world," journalist Evan Ratliff declares in a June article for Wired magazine. I couldn't agree more. Google's universal mapping project isn't just changing the portals for viewing the world online, it's also changing offline understandings of how the world is best viewed--from Google's services, of course. Google has gained influence fast, by ambitiously developing innovative, interactive mapping software; integrating multiple online services into the majority of desktop and online apps; and familiarizing users with a particular Google-branded aesthetic.

In creating a suite of map apps to encourage users to contribute to Google's greater project and personalize locally-stored versions of a map, Google is not just bringing cartography to the masses, Ratliff points out, but is getting users to help build out its universe. This, of course, makes complete sense. With Google Earth, Google SketchUp, and MyMaps (watch the CNET News.com "how-to" video,) Google's mapping software has surpassed competitors like NASA in digitizing the world. In so doing, Google has captivated the imagination of loyal users who will return to the company's Earth and maps programs to find business listings, explore culturally significant architecture, and plant personal photos and videos.… Read more

The math is incontrovertible: at $2,500, Adobe's Creative Suite 3 Master Collection non-upgrade is extremely expensive. However, once you start looking at the cost of the individual pieces of the suite, getting more than two of the major components--say, Photoshop and Illustrator--on their own isn't cost effective, either.

Just those two applications together cost $1,600 for their non-upgrade editions, and that same chunk of change will get you the CS3 Web Premium, which contains Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver, Acrobat Pro and all the little ancillary apps that Adobe has been giving away.

But let's say you're only interested in editing photos, or you think your copy of Illustrator CS2 will work just fine with Flash CS3, but you need that Flash upgrade? Is there more going on than a new palette layout? Let's break down Adobe's powerhouse gestalt and take a look at the more popular parts that make up the whole: Photoshop for image manipulating and printing, Illustrator for drawing, Flash for animating, and Dreamweaver for designing Web pages.

… Read more