A heady mix of ever plummeting digicam prices, larger memory card capacities and more capacious hard drives means that it’s easy to end up with photos and videos scattered to the four corners of your PC, making it nigh on impossible to find your pictures.
Although the basic image viewer that comes with Windows is fine for looking at a few photos, when your collection grows you’re going to need a more efficient way of indexing, organising, sharing and archiving your precious shots.
ACDSee has long been one of the favourite cataloguing tools for keen amateur snappers and prosumers, with version 8 adding a refined interface, sophisticated management features, upgraded image retouching tools and a powerful new Quick Search bar for finding photos fast.
A start-up screen gives new users an overview of features to help them get started while upgraders will be glad to see the program sticking to the tried and trusted three-paned interface, coupled with a useful ‘image basket’ function.
Photo collections can be organised and searched via customisable folders, categories and keywords, with the software able to create photo albums, HTML albums or slide shows for sharing.
Collections, archives and back-ups can be burnt to CD, DVD or the new VCD format from within the program, negating the need for external software.
Unlike many other image management programs, you don’t have to ‘import’ images into the program before they can be viewed, so the program also doubles up as an excellent image file browser.
ACDSee now offers fully integrated support for IPTC metadata, including Captions, Keywords, Categories, Credit, Origin and others – this industry standard ensures that keywords added to images stay with them shared.
For tweaking images, the program offers an impressive collection of image-editing tools including histogram-based levels and curves commands, healing/cloning tools, colour-cast controls, red-eye removal tools, an Unsharp Mask command, 21 new image effects, image resizing, and lossless JPEG rotation.
Although the image editing tools are unlikely to send Photoshop shares plummeting, they collectively make up a powerful suite which should be more than adequate for all but the most demanding of photographers.
At times, the sheer weight of features can prove a little overwhelming to new users, but for keen photographers keen to keep a vice-like grip on their growing photo collections and looking for a strong, all-round image management solution, we strongly recommend ACDSee.
Price: $49.00 (~£28, ~€41)
Stars: 89% 
According to figures released by French Web metrics firm XiTi, the open source Mozilla Firefox browser has now grabbed a massive 20% average market share in Europe, creating a growing challenge to the current leader, Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Over here in Blighty, it seems that the Brits are yet to be wooed by the might of Mozilla, with the country recording one of the lowest proportions of Firefox users in Europe – just 11%.
Other Web metrics companies have produced somewhat less spectacular estimates of Firefox’s market share, with OneStat.com reporting in November last year that the browser had notched up a global market share of 11.5%.
In its submission this week to an MPs’ inquiry into Digital Rights Management (DRM), the influential National Consumer Council (NCC) spelt out its concern at current self-regulation, and called for new laws to ensure consumers’ rights to use digital content are protected.
People are finding they can’t play the DVDs they’ve bought abroad or make compilations of material that they have purchased for their own use. The NCC believes that the use of DRM can and is already constraining the legitimate consumer use of digital content. It is also undermining consumers existing rights under consumer protection and data protection laws.
Jill Johnstone, Director of Policy at NCC said; “Because of the current situation, consumers face security risks to their equipment, limitations on their use of products, poor information when purchasing products and unfair contract terms.
The expected has happened – Apple have unveiled their new Intel-basedMacs.
Most of the keynote was about the new version on iLife, which you won’t be surprised to hear is called iLife’06. It continues to contain thestandard iTunes, iMovie HD, iDVD and GarageBand, but they’ve all had somemajor reworking.
As 
Like a pub drunk wanting to take on the entire world, Google have gone over to Microsoft’s table, knocked over their pints and invited them out for a scrap.
Marissa Mayer, VP of search products and user experience at Google commented, “The pack has been created to give users a way to painlessly install all the essential software they need – pre-configured in a sensible way – in a matter of minutes. Better yet, users don’t have to keep track of software updates or new programs – we maintain and update all the software for them.”
Josh Bernoff, a media and internet analyst at Forrester, a technology research company, described the move as a “direct action to challenge Microsoft,” adding, “Google is saying, ‘We can manage the browser and other elements of the computer-desktop experience better than you’.”
Happy New Year!!Since the New Year has just begun, a piece focusing on last year, the one that has just begun and the developments suspected to emerge during it seemed justified.
You might wonder why I am so confident in this prediction: Afterall, Microsoft has been pushing out 
There were of course 
However, this has always been on quite specific Mac-related Websites, and not in main stream media.
Web browser company Opera today announce they’re bring their Web browser with AJAX support to chips for use in Consumer Electronics (CE) applications.
They’ve been putting their browsers on different platforms for a while, like the 
Clearly looking to tread on Intel’s toes, Sigma say the SMP8630 family of chipsets can be used in digital media adapters, IPTV set-top boxes and networked DVD players that OEM’s may want to build.
We’re sure you, dear reader, know what AJAX is, but just incase – it stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. This translates to being able to use a Web browser more like a computer-based application.
The most often cited example is Google’s Gmail.
Anti-virus software vendors McAfee Avert Labs have released a dire warning about impending doom for smartphone users, claiming that mobile security threats are expected to triple next year.
Schmugar claimed that the consumers’ lack of interest in applying security software to their mobile devices (i.e not buying their software) is likely to compound the problem.