A maker of popular image and video editing software for Windows, Ulead takes a lead from Apple Computer's iPhoto with its new Mac version of DVD PictureShow. The program sports a simple single-window interface with three tabs for Organize, Make Menu and Burn.
You can quickly create one or more slideshows by importing JPEG, bitmap, TIF or Photoshop images and dragging the images around to arrange them. Import an MP3, WAV or AIFF sound file for background music, click Make Menu to create an iMovie-like menu of slideshows from a selection of themes or by importing your own image, then click to preview it. With a couple of additional clicks, you can burn the slideshows to video CD or DVD.
Images created on a video CD slideshow were quite sharp.
DVD PictureShow is intuitive and easy to use, as you would expect from a Mac application, but lacks finesse. For instance, there's no way to add transitions such as dissolves between slides or fades at the beginning or ending of a slideshow. And the background music ends abruptly with the last slide.
Despite its lack of finesse, DVD PictureShow is an easy way to share your digital photos with family and friends with DVD players.
- WILLIAM LAMPKIN
IHatePopups
System: Windows
Company: Sunbelt Software
Price: $9.95 (download)
Popup ads for Web surfers are getting as annoying as spam e-mail. And Sunbelt Software in Clearwater hates them both. Following the success of its iHateSpam software, the company has come out with iHatePopups.
Installation is fast and easy, and it basically configures itself. Unfortunately, it's not nearly as effective on popups as iHateSpam is on junk e-mail. Popups are not eliminated, as the front cover of the box promises. Over four days of surfing at home, it prevented about 100 ads from appearing on my screen. But I lost count on the number that did show up. That's not necessarily unusual in my experience of testing popup blockers.
What was worse was that Internet Explorer began freezing periodically, forcing me to shut it down. I uninstalled the iHatePopups, and the freezes went away.
So here's what I do when I want to avoid the popup onslaught: I use the Opera browser (www.opera.com) It's free, and it's effective on popups. Its main drawback is that it does not work well with all sites. When that occurs, I switch back to Internet Explorer - and the deluge of popups.
