Favorite Software

Freeware, shareware, and commercial software

Below is a list of my favorite software and software that is worth mentioning. I'll add more over time, so be sure to check back here once in a while.

Computer Graphics and Animation

Easy GIF Animator

(Free Trial - Affordable Price)

Although Easy GIF Animator is a little primitive, it's still the best program I have used for creating GIFs so far. It also has built-in banner and button creators and you can add sound and export to Flash.

Easy GIF Animator (EGA) makes creating and editing GIFs more fun and less of a chore. When drawing your own animations, it helps to be able to draw an image, copy it to the next frame, change it a little, flip back and forth to see if it looks right, copy the second image into the next frame, change it, flip back and forth to see if it looks right and continue doing that until your animation is finished. That's how I made animated sprites on my Commodore 64 and Amiga 500 and now I can finally do the same thing using Easy GIF Animator. It's like having an old Sprite Maker from the 1980s or early 1990s again! I can use EGA to draw my own sprites for games or animated GIFs for my web site. It's also fun to play around with existing animated GIFs you find on the Internet.

You can't flip between frames using the average image editor and most GIF animation programs won't let you create images by drawing or painting in each frame; you can only import a collection of finished images. If you are creating an animation by hand, that's not very helpful. You need the ability to flip between the images while you create the animation as if you were a Disney animator.

Easy GIF Animator has some cool effects and it can create some nice looking bold text. You can also edit frames using your favorite image editing software. After you set it up in the Options, all you do is select Edit Frame under the Frame menu and EGA will send the frame to your other image editor (I use Paint Shop Pro X). You do what needs to be done, save the image, go back to EGA and click the OK button and the frame automatically reloads. A very cool time saver.

There are some things I hope they will add in a future update such as a keyboard shortcut for the Color Picker, the ability to paint the background color with the right mouse button, and letting us move a selection with the arrow keys.

trueSpace3.2 Full Version

(Freeware)

What is trueSpace3.2? It's a full, complete 3D modeling application; no time limits, no removed functionality, no crippled saves. This is the software exactly as it was originally sold when it used to cost hundreds of dollars. Be sure to check out their Resources Page for free tutorials and instructional videos.

3D Canvas

(Freeware)

3D Canvas is a real-time, 3D-modeling and 3D-animation tool that incorporates a drag-and-drop approach. Complex models can be constructed from simple 3D primitives or created using 3D Canvas's object-building tools.

This program is especially great for beginners. Within minutes of starting the program, I loaded in my own images, created a cube, and 'painted' the images on each side of the cube. It felt like click, click, click, click, done. What an easy-to-use dream come true! I've used a few other supposedly easy to use 3D programs and they were either too limited or too darn hard to learn how to use. For example, I tried Anim8or and it was nothing but hours of frustration and I couldn't even do what it took only seconds to do with 3D Canvas.

Mihov Background Tester

(Freeware)

Mihov Background Tester is a program used to test different images and see how they would look as a tiled background. This is very useful for testing background images for home pages. It can show you JPG and GIF images (for web sites) and also bmp images (for Windows background).

IrfanView

(Freeware)

Free graphics viewer which is better than most viewers you'd have to pay for. Trivia: IrfanView is pronounced 'Ear-Fan-View.'

Video Editing

AVS Video Editor

(Free Trial - Affordable Price)

Unlike Windows Movie Maker, AVS Video Editor can handle every file format that I could ever use and it lets me overlay text and graphics exactly where I want them. AVS Video Editor also lets me make more adjustments. Here is a list of some of them: Brightness, BrightnessEx, Contrast, Gamma, Equalize, Grayscale, Invert, AutoContrast, AutoLevels, Hue, Saturation, Posterize, Temperature, Colorize, and Threshold. I think Sharpen, BrightnessEx, Temperature, and Contrast are the most useful.

I'm not totally giving up on Windows Movie Maker since it still has a few transitions and text effects that I really like, but I use AVS Video Editor to do most of the initial work. I import my video, do all of the tweaking and add any needed text and graphics, save the file, then load it into Windows Movie Maker for the final polish if necessary. Sometimes I don't use Windows Movie Maker. It all depends on what is needed.

I like AVS Video Editor so much that I decided to become an affiliate. Click here to download the free trial or click here to order.

MPEG Streamclip

(Freeware)

Whenever I made my own DVD and then tried to use a VOB file from it in Windows Movie Maker, the clip would only play for seconds instead of minutes. I'd have to run the clip through some buggy, complicated program before it would work in Windows Movie Maker, but I found out that MPEG Streamclip was easier to use and it could automatically fix the timing problems of the VOB file. I could then save the video in various formats, sizes, and so on. I could adjust other useful things such as volume, brightness, and contrast. I also used MPEG Streamclip to convert any QuickTime videos from my digital camera so they would work with Windows Movie Maker.

Here's a cool thing. MPEG Streamclip is the only freeware program I have used that can crop a video. I'm not talking about trimming away frames, I'm talking about cropping the visible area of your video. When you go to export your video, you can have the program trim away everything outside of a rectangular area that you select with left, top, bottom, right numbers. There is a preview so you can see how much you are trimming. Now that I have AVS Video Editor, I don't have to use MPEG Streamclip for cropping. I figured out that AVS Video Editor can 'crop' videos too by zooming in.

Internet Related

AVG AntiVirus Free Edition

(Freeware or Pay for Better Version)

The best anti-virus software I've ever tried. Be sure not to install it with other anti-virus software installed on your computer. I've tried a couple of big name anti-virus programs that you had to pay for and I think that AVG is much better. If I was ever going to pay for anti-virus software again, it would be AVG.

MailWasher

(Freeware or Pay for Better Version)

MailWasher is a powerful e-mail checker with effective SPAM elimination. Bounce back unwanted e-mails so it looks as if your e-mail address is not valid. This will make the sender think your address is no longer active so your name can be removed from their list. Some people say that bouncing doesn't work anymore to fight SPAM, but after using MailWasher for a while, the thousands of SPAM e-mails I used to get have been reduced to a trickle. It works. Besides bouncing SPAM, I use MailWasher to alert me when I get a new e-mail.

Any FLV Player

(Freeware)

Simply use Any FLV Player as a player for .flv videos from places like YouTube, or make your own .flv files and let Any FLV Player output the files and code you will need to put a player and your video on your web site.

Game Making Software

batari Basic

(Freeware)

If you are of a certain age, there was probably a time in your life when you wished that you could make your own Atari 2600 games. That time is finally here. You can make games using a BASIC language, then play them using your favorite Atari 2600 emulator. If your game is good enough, you might be able to talk someone into putting it into cartridge form. You never know. Now that we have a Java emulator called JStella, you could also put your games online for people to instantly play on your own web site!

Multimedia Fusion 2

(Free Demo - Expensive)

Game making software for newbies and non-programmers that is supposed to be better than Game Maker from YoYo Games. Seems like Multimedia Fusion 2 Developer would be a good product to buy if you can afford it, but regular Multimedia Fusion 2 is more affordable. Soon Multimedia Fusion 2 will let you make Java games that you can put on your web site for people to play online instead of making them download that stupid Vitalize garbage. Who wants to download something special to play a game? I've wondered for a while if I should use Game Maker or Multimedia Fusion 2 since they are similar products and the upcoming Java feature of MM2 was the last thing I needed to help me choose. I'm going to buy Multimedia Fusion 2 as soon as I can after the Java feature is added and start making some of my own online games! Being able to make your own online games without knowing how to program is going to make a lot of people happy.

Miscellaneous

WordWeb

(Freeware or Pay for Better Version)

Quickly look up definitions and synonyms. I use WordWeb every day.