Andrew Brandt

Most of us don't back up our files nearly often enough. I'm not sure I like living on the edge--after all, one wrong move with a coffee cup or one misstep at the airport security line could lead to a laptop disaster. I'm not sure why I don't back up as much as I probably need to, but at least some of the reason is the inconvenience and intrusiveness of backup software.

I recently bought a new computer and needed to move a lot of customizations, programs, and data files to the new machine from the old one, which I would then reformat and wipe clean. I needed something that was, most important, reliable, as the original copies of the backed up files would no longer exist when I finished. I wanted a tool that didn't just try to copy everything from point A to B, but checked to see whether the file at the destination was different from the origin before wasting all that time copying and overwriting the very same files. Finally, it needed to be easy to customize and quickly run on a regular basis, to eliminate that final inconvenience issue.

PCWorld's reviewers examine so much software for desktop and Web, it can be easy to miss some of the reviews. Our most recent finds: three mindmappers, a differential tool for coders, and a space empire-building game. For downloads and full reviews, follow the links.

TheBrain

What if you were able to put your entire brain into one computer program? Every thought, work-related or personal, with links to Web pages or files on your computer, and any additional notes you'd care to make. And what if you could then link those thoughts together, weaving them into free and complex associative patterns, much like an actual train of thought going through your head? That's what TheBrain ($249, 30-day free trial) tries to let you do.

It's been about two years and a major release since I last looked at ExamDiff Pro. This differential program inhabits a narrowly defined niche used by programmers, Web site coders, and others who need to compare different versions of long, convoluted documents. A differential, or a diff for short, highlights the differences between two documents, both from the 35,000 foot view and down to the line and character level of detail. Typically, such a program compares two files, but more advanced differs are capable of diffing three files at once. Differs usually display the documents under scrutiny tiled next to one another, and highlight differences in lines, whole sections of the document, and even character-by-character differences. ExamDiff Pro is perhaps the most versatile such product available.

ExamDiff Pro 5.5 is a very versatile diff tool.But that doesn't mean there isn't competition. At the low end is the free, open-source KDiff3, which offers a lot of diffing functionality albeit with a slightly less polished appearance. At the other end of the spectrum is UltraCompare, the $50 differ published by IDM Computer Solutions, maker of the excellent text editor UltraEdit. UltraCompare's user interface is much more polished and sleek-looking. UltraCompare encircles modified sections and literally draws lines between the related sections in adjacent documents, can compare two or three files simultaneously, and color codes character-level differences as well. However, it has a more cluttered toolbar and lacks the file processing plugins ExamDiff Pro uses that will allow you to compare the text inside of PDF documents, for example.

If you subscribe to an online music download service or frequently purchase from one, you might find that your music comes in a wide variety of formats--some playable by all models of digital music players, some in formats that playable only on specific models or on the PC itself. If you've ever wanted to convert the multitude of formats--such as Apple's AAC, Windows Media's WMA, or RealAudio's RA--into something more easily recognized by the vast majority of players, SoundTaxi Professional can convert not just single files but entire music collections to an open format (or multiple formats) of your choice.

SoundTaxi Professional hooks into most common media players, including Windows Media Player, iTunes and/or Quicktime, and RealPlayer, in order to grab the audio output from these programs. Then it records the output to individual files in formats such as MP3 or M4A that are supported by virtually every portable digital audio player on the market. Capable of converting up to sixteen files at once, SoundTaxi can whip through even massive music collections in a few hours, depending on the speed of your PC. I found it very easy to point the program at a directory full of files and let it do its thing.

Vendor Ramka Ltd. doesn't try to hide the fact that SoundTaxi Professional is also suitable for converting large archives of music or audio protected by digital rights management (DRM) into a non-DRM format. Their Web page lists the 34 different paid music services which provide DRM-protected audio files the program is capable of converting.

Almost everyone has a mobile phone with a camera that can record both still images and video nowadays. The only problem is that mobile video codecs don't exactly produce video of the highest quality. In fact, phone video is typically blocky, out of focus, shaky, and, well, pretty much useless for anything other than showing grandma your latest kid-spitting-up-strained-peas masterpiece. So I had really high hopes for this nifty-sounding tool from Stoik Imaging, makers of the very well-received Imagic and Panorama Maker image editing and management applications. Their work on techniques that improve the quality of marginal still images is really out on the cutting edge. Could their free demo do the same for mobile video? Unfortunately, in this first version of Stoik Video Enhancer ($49, free demo with watermarks), the answer is a resounding no.

Video Enhancer offers a wide range of options designed to clean up most of the problems with mobile phone videos.I certainly wasn't expecting the kind of fantasy, CSI Miami-esque super resolution enhancement that's only possible in the world of television and movies, but almost anything would be an improvement. The software supports a wide range of mobile video codecs, which is good because most desktop PC media players or organizers offer spotty coverage to replay video from phones. That's about where the good news ends.

Mezzmo turns your laptop or desktop PC into an on-demand streaming media server. The software organizes your media collection, and it can play music, video, or slideshows of digital photos through a wide range of media-streaming receiver boxes (also known as Digital Media Players, or DMPs) that support either the DLNA or UPnP standards for AV products--a long list that includes the Xbox 360 and PS3 game consoles--hooked up to TVs or home theater receivers.

Mezzmo's interface resembles iTunes on steroids. The familiar framed layout is bounded with additional buttons and controls that let you import or create playlists from other media organizer applications (such as iTunes) and from networked media servers or network-attached storage devices. It can also add metatags to media files, rip music CDs to MP3 files, and burn your collection to CDs or DVDs with the PC's recordable media drive. The player supports all the major audio formats, including mp3, Windows media, Ogg-Vorbis, and WAV files, and will play back any digital video format, provided you have the appropriate codec installed on the server end.

Unlike competitor Snapstream, who have a similar offering in their Beyond Media application, Mezzmo doesn't require you to hook the computer itself up to your home theater system. That's the beauty of it all--with the computer in the office (where it belongs), you can still access and enjoy its contents anywhere on your home network.

--Andrew Brandt

Since I reviewed the previous version of Ashampoo Photo Commander, it has undergone a major revision, adding a boatload of new features as well as some user interface changes. It's a capable tool for quickly doing the kinds of minor image adjustments most people need, but I found a number of flaws. Individually, they don't cause much trouble; collectively, they create frustration.

Ashampoo Photo Commander 9 aims to be a soup-to-nuts photo adjustment, creativity, and management tool. It's capable of organizing large collections; generating projects like cards and panoramic composite shots; or editing, cropping, and adjusting the color and contrast of individual photos or entire directories full of images. Ashampoo Photo Commander 9 supports virtually every common image and video file format, and also can organize MP3 audio files (though I'm not sure why you'd use a photo manager for that).

Ashampoo Photo Converter ($15, 10-day free trial) acts as a tool to perform bulk operations on large numbers of image files at once. The program accepts BMP, JPEG, PSD, and TIFF files as input, can manipulate the images in a number of ways, then export the finished images to any of eighteen file types. While it is capable of accomplishing many of the common bulk actions you'd want to apply to an image archive, insufficient levels of control in some tools, a lack of a preview mode, and small quirky aspects of the user interface make using Photo Converter a less than satisfying experience.

Ashampoo Photo Converter can resize photos with originals larger than the post-processed files.Among the modifications Photo Converter is capable of making, you can add watermarks; apply brightness, contrast, and gamma correction; modify image color depth; add visual effects like sharpening, blur, drop shadows, or borders; resize, rotate, invert, flip, or mirror images. However, I found myself forced to make undesirable compromises at nearly every step.

It's very easy for people to steal photographic work that has been posted online, without crediting the author, unless that work has been watermarked (overlaid with semi-transparent text). Watermarking is a feature so common among photo editing and management utilities that it's essentially a bullet-point on the list of things virtually any photo management tool can do. So the mere existence of this eponymous product is a curiosity, but only just that. Alas, the primary function of TheBatchWatermarks is to, well, watermark large numbers of images all at once.

Depending on where you orient the caption text, TheBatchWatermarks may change the text contrast.As an additional feature, TheBatchWatermarks can generate output files in a reduced size. The program accepts original files from, and outputs watermarked images in, the common image file formats--JPEG, TIFF, BMP, PNG--as well as PPM and XPM uncompressed bitmaps.

Multiple monitor setups aren't easy to manage. It takes tools like UltraMon (and close competitor Actual Multiple Monitors) to give you more control over that expanded desktop space by adding new user interface elements to the desktop, buttons to the title bars of Explorer, and program windows that let users quickly switch an app's window to another desktop.

Like AMM, UltraMon's principal feature is to extend the Windows task bar to all monitors. (By default, Windows displays the task bar only in the primary display.) UltraMon's extended task bar shows only the applications or windows that are within a particular display's desktop space. For example, if you have four programs running, two on each display, then each respective display's task bar will only show the programs running on that particular display. As a long-time user of "old fashioned" multiple displays, this took some getting used to. Occasionally, I'd forget that a program was already running (minimized) in the secondary display, and didn't look at that display's task bar before attempting to launch another instance of the same app.

Multiple monitor setups aren't easy to manage. It takes tools like UltraMon (and close competitor Actual Tools' $30 Actual Multiple Monitors) to give you more control over that expanded desktop space by adding new user interface elements to the desktop, buttons to the title bars of Explorer, and program windows that let users quickly switch an app's window to another desktop.

UltraMon's main feature is to extend the Windows task bar to all monitors, instead of showing it only in the primary display. UltraMon's extended task bar shows only the applications or windows within a particular display's desktop space. For a long-time user of "old fashioned" multiple displays, this took some getting used to. Occasionally, I'd forget that a program was already running (minimized) in the secondary display, and didn't look at that display's task bar before attempting to launch another instance of the same app.

In the seven months since I last reviewed Ashampoo Photo Commander, the product has gone through a major revision, adding a boatload of new features as well as some user interface changes and less prominent tweaks to the way the program used to work. Although the new Ashampoo Photo Commander 9 is a capable tool for quickly doing the kinds of minor adjustments most people will need--for example, automatic red-eye reduction and image rotation--I found a number of flaws that individually don't cause a great deal of trouble, but collectively could create a lot of frustration.

Batch resizing is easy to do with Ashampoo Photo Commander 9's wizard, but other wizard-driven options aren’t as smart.Ashampoo Photo Commander 9 aims to be a soup-to-nuts photo adjustment, creativity, and management tool. It's capable of organizing large collections; generating projects like calendars and panoramic composite shots; or editing, cropping, and adjusting the color and contrast of individual photos or entire directories full of images. Ashampoo supports virtually every common image and video file format, and also can organize MP3 audio files (though I'm not sure why you'd use a photo manager for that). All of the tool's features are organized under tabs labeled Common, Quick Fix, Edit, Create, and Organize.