Software

Claymation Stop-Motion Studio

Gaming & Toys, Gizmo of the Day, Software / By /

claymation-studioStop-motion videos are two-a-penny on YouTube at the moment and some of the biggest advertisers in the world are picking up on them. The Claymation stop-motion Studio 2.0 from Honestech will get your budding Steven Spielberg on his/her way to movie producing with this very simple to use piece of software. Think of the fun that could be had with LEGO and a digital camera.

This product aims to teach children about photography and movie production in a world that is becoming increasingly dependent on multimedia. With it being so simple to use, we might even see some more grown up kids (40+?) using this to create their stop-motion films with great ease. All that’s needed is a digital camera and this relatively cheap piece of software, and you can make excellent standard stop-motion videos with lots of effects, including the option to add a background of your choice to your images.

By the way, we reviewed the excellent VHS to DVD 3.0 package from Honestech a while back.

Buy Now!

More info from the manufacturer

Price: $44.99
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)

GigaTribe File Sharing Application

Networking & Internet, Software / By /

GigaTribe is a new file sharing service that allows you to share files between friends. The major difference between GigaTribe and other file sharing applications is that it’s secure; you only share files within your ‘personal circle’ which means that you can control who can receive them, whereas usually in file sharing everyone around the world would have access.

There are many applications of this, from being just an easy way to share holiday snaps between friends, to handing out invitations, and everything in between! It would essentially make your life so much easier as you don’t have to travel to distribute files, or post them to each other.

GigaTribe is free for the base version which just includes just the basic features to get you going. However, if you want your software to support simultaneous and multisource downloads, web browser access. support by email and more, then you might want to consider the ‘ultimate’ version. For just £2.99 (approx. $4.30) per month or £19.99 (approx. $28.60) per year, it really is worth the upgrade.

Microsoft Windows XP copies still available

Gizmo of the Day, Software / By /

As you know, Windows XP isn’t going to be around forever, and let’s face it, technology is constantly changing, so you may not want to run it forever. However, we can’t blame you if you don’t care for Vista, and who knows if Windows 7 will really be a ‘cure’? So while you’re waiting for W7, don’t wait to snag a last-minute copy of Windows XP. Home and Professional editions are still available right now.

Google Mobile – Sync

Phones, Software / By /

Perhaps a bit like MobileMe is Sync from Google Mobile. This new application for your phone allows you to synchronise your contacts and calendar entries with your Google account. Operating via a ‘cloud’ this interaction takes place wirelessly, also adding sounds and vibration from your calendar alerts to your phone.

Sync synchronises your data with dual interaction, i.e. any changes made to your phone are applied to your Google account and vice versa. Whilst MobileMe is currently only available for Apple products, Sync can be used on a variety of phones wide enough to cover all the major types of up-to-date handsets, including iPhones, Blackberrys, Windows Mobile and Symbian devices.

This video provides a pretty good overview of its uses in just over a minute:

The Read it Later Firefox extension

Networking & Internet, Software / By /

Sometimes I just want to turn Gizmos for Geeks into a cool productivity tools blog. Fear not readers, we won’t be doing that, but there really are so many cool software & Web tools being introduced or improved all the time.

Take for example, the Read it Later Firefox extension which helps out you news and info junkies. Ok, I’m definitely one of you! Right. So the RiT extension lets you quickly mark articles/URLs for later reading, even letting you simultaneously mark a bunch of open tabs. It also lets you mark articles in your favorite news reader and even sites like Digg. Perhaps the best feature may be the ability to sync your reading list across multiple browsers/computer.

The video sums up the features nicely in 2 mins:
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Gmail’s latest Lab feature: Multiple Inboxes

Networking & Internet, Software / By /

Gmail’s latest Lab feature, Multiple Inboxes, is a doozy. I had to try this the minute I saw it. The name is a tab bit misleading, but Multiple Inboxes (MI) lets you get a glimpse into your other Gmail folders, labels or saved searches by providing additional boxes on your main Gmail screen.

Here’s an example – you want to always see the latest 5 starred items in a separate list without having to click on the Starred link in the left pane. Easy, create a separate pane in MI that shows exactly that. The screenshot shows 3 additional panes to the right of the Inbox.

What’s funny about this is quickly discovering that my 19″ monitor just isn’t wide enough to show enough of the e-mail preview that I want. No worries, I just placed the preview directly under my Inbox. And yes, time to get new monitors!

Google GDrive – could be real, or not

Networking & Internet, Software / By /

The Interwebs can be a funny place. Take for example, the rumored Google GDrive which would essentially be your own hard drive in the sky, umm… cloud. You could store all of your data on Google’s servers and have it accessible anywhere as long as you had a browser (presumably).

So what’s funny about that? Nothing. Sounds amazing really. No, the funny part is that Google hasn’t announced it. It’s just a rumor. However, a blogger called Brian Ussery noticed a comment in some Google code that he downloaded that mentioned it.

Funnier still is that Wikipedia already has an entry for ye ole GDrive. Nice. The Internet – even ahead of itself.

Actual Window Manager for Windows

Gizmo of the Day, Software / By /

Here’s a nice productivity tool that can help you manage your chaos of open windows especially if you’re one of those folks who has tons of windows and browser tabs open (like me!).

It’s a Window Manager that has way more features than you can shake a stick at. Just for starters, you can minimize unused windows in various ways – rolling up, make semi-transparent, closing or to the tray. You can place and size windows exactly where and how you want them.
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Review: GoodSync – Backup and Sync Tool

Computers, Gizmo of the Day, Recommended, Reviews, Software / By /

Almost 3 years ago, Gizmos for Geeks reviewed GoodSync with the intent of using it to backup important data from a user’s desktop computer to USB thumb drives. Fast forward to today where hard drives have grown tremendously in size and so has data storage and you have an even tougher backup issue. For those of us who also perform a lot of work out of our own homes, backing up data is crucial and backing it up to offsite locations is just as important. I’ve personally decided to test using Amazon’s S3 service to backup my computer’s data and GoodSync has been recently updated to include S3 support. We put the latest version of GoodSync through its paces and in particular, focused on its S3 support.

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CES 2009: CMS Products shows off latest backup software: BounceBack Ultimate

CES, Computers, Software / By /

CMS Products introduced the latest version of their BounceBack product, called BounceBack Ultimate which has some very interesting new features. As a couple of sys admins, we were impressed by what BounceBack is able to do, mainly backup an entire Windows 2000/XP/Vista system to an external hard drive and then boot off of that drive without any need for the internal drive.

BounceBack can be set to run continuously and it can back up everything – files, OS files, even the BIOS. CMS has figured out how to backup even OS-level files while running. The backed-up system is bootable from that external hard drive regardless of hardware and/or BIOS.
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