This month I continue sharing my software, shareware and freeware finds with you, again not focusing on any particular genre. I keep looking for tools to make my own computing life easier, but am not against helping out my friends and neighbors.

But looking back at what I’ve done for the last half-year I see signs of verbiage spread. The difference between short, mostly once over reviews and the more detailed review where I spend lots and lots of time with a product is shrinking.  The reviews this month, listed below, are alas an examples of what having a gift for gab, insatiable curiosity and a lack of self discipline can do to a software junkie. But do what it’s worth, enjoy the reviews. To make things worse, I’ve checked my “interesting software folder and there are a 100 items in it and more things of interest post-up each month. On the good side, I’ve only chased permission to review for about two-dozen items.  So stay tuned in, June will be interesting from a software perspective. You ask why July? Well, next month is book review month.

Do check out the guest review of business card software written by Joe Kissell by Joe Kissell joe@tidbits.com with a PS by Harry {doc} Babad. The products discussed are Business Card Composer (now v 3.2) [4.0 macC’s] and SOHO Business Cards(now v. 1.6) [2.5 macC’s]

As is usual, I continue to pursue my interest in shareware esoterica and somewhat eclectic tidbits… so read on! Remember, there is no rhyme or reason for my choices other then what appears interesting, amusing, or heavens forbid, useful.

As you will note, I found a few winners and one disappointment.

Summary of Items Reviewed for May

Creating Business Cards with PrintShop 2  — A flexible product that makes business card creation easy for the novice and allows a more sophisticated user lost of room to design attractive cards. In addition, of course there are 19 other kinds of projects ranging from Calendars and booklets to envelopes and greeting cards that you can create with PrintShop 2, that are not available in a business card only software package. [3.5 macC’s]

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DiscBlaze 6.1.5 — A Disc Burning Alternative to Apple’s Offerings. Rewritten in Apple’s Cocoa application development environment for OS X Tiger, DiscBlaze 6.0 features a more new user-friendly redesigned user interface. On top of that, the software is fast and flexible and the new interface is easier to use than the old. [3.0 macC’s]

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DropDMG 2.7.6 — The easiest way to create Mac OS X disk images. Easy to use product to Create and convert .dmg disk images as well, as Zip and StuffIt archives. It has intuitive preferences that allow great flexibility when creating custom disk images for a variety of uses (e.g., dmg files.). [4.5 macC’s]

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Fidget Menu 1.5.9 (A re-review) — A menu bar item you can configure and personalize. Fidget Menu is an easy to use and very powerful launcher menu that runs on the right side of the menu bar. It can also be configured to run from the Dock. However, the lack of a manual, the software’s inability to display multiple embedded folders make this product less useful than it should be. [3.0 macC’s] With the ability to deal with nested folders and a better manual this would be a 4.0+ macC’s product.

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myNOTES 1.1.1 — A note-taking program that lets you create, manage, retrieve and print notes and clippings of all kinds. This is a great note-taking product. It is easy to use, flexible, elegant and stable that takes advantage of the Panther and Tiger operating system’s native software. [4.5 macCs]

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