Light Artist is a program that allows you to add realistic lighting effects to your photos. The cool thing about this program is that it allows you to easily make your ordinary and undistinguished photos sunnier, romantic and if it’s gloomy you want, it’s gloomy you’ll get, it’s all up to you.

With this program, you can modify the light color, add multiple light sources, change the surface qualities of the image and add various ambient illumination effects. But that’s not all, using one of the image channels as the texture channel you can add 3D relief to your images. Ain’t that Cool?

The latest version which hit the software market sometime towards the end of last month is Light Artist 1.5. If you’ve been using a previous version go get the new version fast, it’s free, not a trial version, but totally free.

Go to  http://vicman.net/lightartist/ for free download and more info.

In summary here are the features you will enjoy with Light Artist 1.5:

• Load and save jpg, bmp;
• Add multiple light sources to the image;
• Adjust light source type and parameters;
• Add 3d relief to the images.

Once again head on to http://vicman.net/lightartist/ for a free download.

PowerPoint to Video is a simple and powerful PowerPoint to video tool for your business and personal needs. It can convert PowerPoint presentations (ppt files) into video (AVI) files step by step. You just need to follow an easy step by step process for the required conversion. You have to add your ppt file, set the video size, just click on start, play and stop buttons to record your video file. Your presentations can be shared with everyone at your organization.

PowerPoint to Video can put all your original creations with animations and special effects in ppt files. You can also avail the facility to attach sound from any musical instrument including microphone, CD player, or background music, etc to your video file. This way you get a video file which you need to first burn on VCD/DVD disc that can be played on TV, VCD players etc.

(More info and download)

Need a tool for synchronizing and displaying lyrics? Minilyrics is up to the task.

Minilyrics is a fascinating lyrics viewer for synchronizing and displaying lyrics of the currently playing song. The good thing about this software is that it does this in many types of media players including Winamp, Windows Media Player, itunes, MusicMatch Jukebox, Quintessenial Player, foobar2000, and even RealOne.

Make your music come alive with streaming lyrics, check out Minilyrics. The latest version in the software market is Minilyrics 5.2.2760 and it has these latest changes and upgrades in its features:

New:

• Display lyrics in Windows Media Player Visualization area;
• Display lyrics in iTunes Visualization area;
• Support Windows Media Center;
• Support AlbumPlayer;
• Support XMPlay 3.4;
• Add downloads and rating info in the lyrics search result;
• Rate lyrics.

Fixed:

• Auto hide MiniLyrics on playing movie;
• Use Winamp 5’s default theme color;
• Other minor bugs;
• Auto search lyrics with incorrect song title.

Improved:

• Auto choose the file encoding when saving lyrics.

Go to http://www.crintsoft.com/  for more info and download.

This is for those who know what they are doing. ATI Tray Tools is a free utility that runs in the system tray and provides easy right-click access to all of your ATI video card’s crucial settings. With this software you can change anisotropic filtering + antialiasing levels in Direct3D and OpenGL.

That’s not all this application also lets you adjust image quality and turn on/off special driver features. And if all you want to do is to play around with your core and memory speeds, this is the right tool for you. With minimal system resources being used, this software is really worth checking out.

Go to http://www.radeon2.ru/atitray for more info and download!

English Version available here: http://www.guru3d.com/article/atitraytools/189/

Here is a file archiver that comes highly recommended, 7-Zip.

7-Zip is a file archiver with a high compression ratio. The program supports 7z, ZIP, CAB, RAR, ARJ, LZH, CHM, GZIP, BZIP2, Z, TAR, CPIO, RPM and DEB formats. Compression ratio in the new 7z format is 30-50% better than ratio in ZIP format. It also compresses to ZIP 2-10% better than PKZip and WinZip.

The cool thing about this open source tool is that it has an additional powerful command line version and FAR Manager support. 7-Zip in available in two editions: 7-Zip (32-bit) and 7-Zip (64-bit)

Want to check out 7-Zip, go to http://www.7-zip.org/

This is a video convertor that enables you to convert several different video file formats into the FLV (Flash Video) format. This is the popular format used on many video sites such as YouTube that enables instant playback of video files from a webpage.At the moment it supports AVI, MPEG, Quicktime, and WMV files. You can also choose the frame rate, bit rate, and audio-compression options. Conversion seems to work very fast too, always a plus! A useful detail is the several included presets, depending on your network speed type (dial-up or DSL, for example). You can also save settings for later use.

Overall, Riva is a great freeware tool for anyone looking for a reliable (and free!) way to convert video files for the Web.

You can get it right here and more info.

NetShareWatcher is designed for maintaining network security. It runs on Windows 2000/XP/2003 and even Vista and requires mimimum 128MB RAM. It has an additional functionality of administrative share creation and access permission type monitoring.

NetShareWatcher monitors network shares and folder permissions and identifies shares which are not secure to the organization. It alerts you every time a user changes the ACL of a share to a group that violates your data access policy. If a change is detected that matches your rules, it can automatically disable the share, send an email or network message or alert you from the system tray.

The software is handled easily. You need not worry about network sharing problems once configured properly. You just need to manage a list of restricted groups or users. Whenever NetShareWatcher monitors network shares and finds that list of restricted groups it performs an action against it.

NetShareWatcher has an easy to use interface. Once configured, it notifies you on network sharing detection regularly with restricted permissions.

(More info and download)

If you own a computer, chances are you have heard about spyware/adware by now. If you haven’t, chances are you have some on your computer, in which case you should really check out an anti-adware/spyware scanner.

Spy Sweeper is such a scanner, one with a very good reputation too! It also detects keyloggers and root kits and has multiple real-time Smart Shields to block sophisticated spyware threats before they can infect your PC. Spy Sweeper earns points by doing a fairly decent job of removing spyware with a user friendly interface, it’s easy to use, and has regular updates for paid subscribers.

It’s still recommended you run more than one scanner though, as they can’t all catch everything.But this definitely seems to be one of the best ones currently available. Check it out here where you can grab the trial version.

Want to play PC games easily with or without joystick support? You need to check out Xpadder.

Xpadder simulates keypresses and mouse movements using a gamepad, allowing you to use your controller to play PC games with poor or no joystick support.

Cool feature supported include:

• Play PC games with poor or no gamepad support;
• Add gamepad support to emulated, internet and DOS games;
• Play multiplayer games with each player using their own gamepad;
• Control video/music players using their shortcut keys;
• Use a gamepad with a web browser or any windows application;
• No installation needed – run straight from the Zip file;
• Designed for Windows XP and Windows Vista.

The latest version making the rounds in the software market is Xpadder 4.4, latest changes in this version include: (more…)

Tired of your regular boring basic Microsoft Calculator utility? Though it suffices to most users, some require that extra calculating power in the digital versions of their traditional calculators.

#Calculation Component is a versatile powerful calculation tool which integrates expression parsing and evaluation into your applications through an ActiveX component. The real power of #Calculation Component is seen in areas where the user is required to define a formula of his own which would then be used in calculation, and in areas where more than one formula are required to be defined and executed in real time.

#Calculation Component’s appetite for numbers is huge – it supports your regular mathematics, and then various functions, string, date, time, logical operators, and even matrix and array operations. And if that was not enough, various numerical systems, comments, and custom functions are also supported. The latest version has added some new features while ironing out some bugging bugs.

With such power to boot, you must be expecting a multi-MB download, right? There lies the catch – the download is just 522.5KB. Who says good things don’t come in small packages?

(More info and download)