Popularized in many of the highly acclaimed PBS documentaries produced by filmmaker Ken Burns, the technique of turning historic still images into something more palatable for a television audience (by slowly panning across the images, and fading in to new ones) has become a common technique for videographers with limited shooting budgets. PhotoFilmStrip (free) provides a one-stop application you can use to generate just such a video montage out of a series of still photographs.

The game is No-Limit Texas Hold'em, and Governor of Poker's attempt to build a story around it will make you long for a simple game of cards. As a cowboy in the Old West, you travel from tournament to tournament, playing for cash and property. Eventually, you can buy better modes of transportation to play in far-off Texas locales. Governor of Poker ($10, one-hour free trial) is a big idea that doesn't work in play.

The Ultimate Troubleshooter ($30; free, ten-use, feature-limited demo), as its name implies, promises to troubleshoot any and all problems you may run across when running your PC. However, it's not nearly as useful or powerful as similar programs, and the trial version is so lacking in basic features that you'll most likely want to stay away.

Many PC users in many lines of work will suddenly need to change the size or format of a whole bunch of images at the same time. It's really tedious to resize each image one by one, and it can take you all day--or longer. An app that can speed this process would be welcome indeed. SimpleSizer ($8, 14-day free trial) doesn't quite get there.

The more you use your PC, the more it gets bogged down with old, outdated, and incorrect, Registry errors. These problems slow down your PC and potentially lead to crashes and other problems. RegistryBooster 2010 finds those Registry troublemakers and fixes them for you, and helping your computer run in tip-top shape.

Seesmic Desktop is one of a number of apps that combine your social media feeds in one place. Operating under the theory that checking Twitter, Facebook, and so on for all your needed updates is cumbersome and time consuming, Seesmic attempts to streamline the process. It's only partially successful, so the question is whether it does enough to suit your needs.

You've probably seen the CalorieKing books at the grocery checkout line. The company is famous for its extensive cataloging of the nutritional values of thousands of foods. That's why so many dieters refer to their paperbacks to track the calorie, carbohydrate, protein or other values of the foods they have eaten. Or, you can keep the CalorieKing Nutrition and Exercise Manager ($45, 7-day free trial) up on your desktop to do the job for you.

Index Files Search Words Lite (free) is a program which does the job it's supposed to do--indexing files and letting you search for them--but really seems to be more a "demo" than a "lite".

Painting colors, lightness, saturation, and so forth onto photographs can be great fun. If done correctly, it can also produce some very attractive, creative pictures. Akvis MultiBrush ($49, 10-day free trial) is a very basic image painting program that provides some nice tools, but they are limited and require skill to be able to use them.

Want to automate common Firefox browsing tasks, such as logging into your Web-based mail, or tracking a package online? Then you'll want to give the free DéjàClick a try. It's a simple-to-use recording program that will record your actions, let you save them as a script, and then run them for you.

MD5 File And Folder Comparator Lite ($16; free, feature-limited demo) is a useful tool for doing two slightly-different tasks: Verifying that two versions of a single file are byte-for-byte identical, and determining what differences, if any, exist between two folders. Both of these functions are useful for security and especially for managing multiple versions of software.

If you're a hardware geek who absolutely must know every bit of information about your PC and attached hardware, including performance statistics, then Dr. Hardware ($30, 30-day free demo/trial with feature limitations) may well be for you. This program gives you an almost mind-boggling amount of data, including very in-depth and detailed benchmarking of your CPU, memory, video subsystem, hard disk, and more.