E-Musings Mon Immorata

New Ways of The Web Popcorn goes from shareware to limited feature demo but ePrompter and PopPeeper are worth successors, plus software updates including Opera 7.5 Beta 1 The "smartening" up of shareware developers is inevitable especially after they see their creations assaulted and assailed by warez producers. The best way to review how good (or bad) a particular software is to check the warez sites for crack, serial numbers, and the ultimate tool: key generators (keygens). The really popular boxed applications are often available in a complete archive conveniently cracked and ready for use! This is the Way of the Web and despite the best efforts of government, and of the shareware community, continues to grow. The latest software to go to separate free restricted demo and full registered versions is the low-overhead (fits-on-a-floppy) PopCorn 1.68 Beta. This version as released to the Web is the freeware demo that's restricted to a single user account. According to a Popcorn Forum thread the change was made because warez site were linking direct and stealing bandwidth. In my book a really useful software will be pirated. Or someone will develop their own clone that remains free. A great example of this approach is MyIE2 which is the best IE-browser wrapper ever. Soft ICE is the king of reverse-engineering tools. This debugger for Windows applications was used to hack a copy of itself. Recently when I searched on Google while researching this column I found 140,000 listings; most of which were for the warez version! If you absolutely can't do without the latest Popcorn version but remain unwilling to register a copy then consider the free PopPeeper. I learnt about it courtesy the Popcorn forum! Developed to read web mail like Hotmail, Yahoo and Rediff Mail. PopPeeper also supports POP3 and there are separate plug-ins to read HTML-formatted messages, access SSL-secured accounts, and a PopPeeker Tweaker to customize additional settings. PopPeeper also imports Outlook, Eudora and Mozilla/Netscape Mail settings but you need to enter the account passwords. Included is an embedded plain/rich text viewer, but to reply or forward messages PopPeeper uses the default email client. The menu and navigation are a bit clunky, but in this age of spam, PopPeeker's a great freeware to check your Inbox contents. ePrompter another super Web-mail checker too has been updated to v2.0 SR1 Beta 12 (EPX 1.0.35.0). The interface is a bit clunky with a non-resizable window in which you can read messages received to a specific account as plain text. Hyperlinks make it through safely, but scripting doesn't. However, I have been unable to read any POP mail. But can send messages after right-clicking the account icon. Yet ePrompter when updating 4+ web mail accounts uses less bandwidth that 4 separate browser windows! In other updates Spybot Search and Destroy 1.3 RC4 has been released. The difference in this build is that you get to choose whether to install the resident IE protection and the system settings control. However don't uninstall an older version as you risk losing your custom settings. Instead install the new build over the previous version. I wasn't able to find a download link on the developer's site. And the only resource available for updated Beta is Betanews.com. Last week I promised quick preview of WinNC. Just forget it! I found it among the lousiest software tested. The FTP client failed every time I tried using it through a SOCKS4 and HTTP 1.1 firewall. Overall, this is software the world can do without. Instead use Total Commander which remains a great tool. The most interesting software release this week is of Opera 7.5 Beta 1. This has been visually re-engineered and looks very neat and organized. The usual Beta glitches persist however and you can't customize toolbar layout using drag 'n drop. Instead either add, or delete an icon. That's not all. Opera still crashes if you try and go back to a previous web page while the current page is loading. So stop (Esc) the current page loading before going back. M2 has been considerably improved. And now handles email (POP3/IMAP/SMTP), news groups (NNTP) and RSS news feeds. The latter is an impressive inclusion. Since its part of M2 you view feeds in a mail-style window with feed entries in the upper pane and details in the lower. Each new feed link clicked open in a new window and if you aren't careful you can open too many windows! As RSS readers go I much prefer the FeedDemon approach of opening all feeds in the same window. However my age-old problem about importing Outlook Express messages into M2 remains. The latter imports settings, contacts and messages. However I have not been able to import just my messages so far and hope a reader can help me out with a step-by-step guide. For a complete list of changes made between v7.23 and 7.5 Beta 1, read the changelog. Yet personally, in spite of M2 being a configuration horror. And despite minor glitches like Macromedia's site claiming that my browser version doesn't support Flash and Shockwave. Plus the occasional lockup followed by a crash (see workaround above). And some page rendering and system resource use issues. Overall Opera 7.5 is my default browser. I adore its intelligent pop-up blocking that effectively suppresses pop-up and -under ads. The ability to display Java applets (requires Sun JRE installed). The true multi-document interface. Built-in search with an ability to customize search engines used. And most importantly the ability to save a particular window's browsing history makes Opera 7.5 my browser of choice. Now don't delay and download your copy today. If you don't want to pay (Opera's offering a special 25% discount on new purchases) you have a choice of ads -- single image ones that like consuming toolbar real estate. Or simpler test ads from Google (which I recommend). And once you've installed a copy consider implementing these excellent performance tweaks. That's it for this week. Stay Safe! Click Here to Email Me