Recommended Downloads by Scientific Frontline A publication from SFL ORG Educational News Network

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Astronomy Software

Distant Suns

The award winning and one of the longest lived home software packages now in its 17th year. Distant Suns brings the Universe home.

"I'm really boggled - [Distant Suns] is beautiful... I am totally awed by what you've done!" - Arthur C. Clarke

“Incredible ease of use, yet packed with feature and astonishing graphics!” - Scientific Frontline®

Tested by Scientific Frontline

Cartes du Ciel Sky Charts

A large number of parameters help you to choose specifically or automatically which catalogs to use, the color and the dimension of stars and nebulae, the representation of planets, the display of labels and coordinate grids, the superposition of pictures, the condition of visibility and more. All these features make this celestial atlas more complete than a conventional planetarium.

“As close as one can get to 'The State of Perfection', recommended for the experienced user.” - Scientific Frontline®

Tested and Used by Scientific Frontline

Image Management and Processing

	Corel® Paint Shop Pro® Photo X3 Paint Shop Pro Photo X3 has everything you need to create stunning photos. The integrated Learning Center and a selection of one-click photo-fixing tools make it easy to correct common photo flaws such as red eye, color and sharpness. Unique makeover tools let you whiten teeth, remove blemishes and paint on a tan, so you can make everyone look their best before printing or posting photos online. Paint Shop Pro has met the challenge and replaced using Photoshop 99% of the time at Scientific Frontline. We just could not be more pleased to endorse this fine program. Tested and Used daily at Scientific Frontline
	Paint.NET Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins. Every feature and user interface element was designed to be immediately intuitive and quickly learnable without assistance. In order to handle multiple images easily, Paint.NET uses a tabbed document interface. The tabs display a live thumbnail of the image instead of a text description. This makes navigation very simple and fast. Highly Recommended by Scientific Frontline. Used daily and installed on all our computers Tested and Used by Scientific Frontline
	ImageWalker ImageWalker is a fast/lightweight image management and viewing application that runs on Microsoft Windows. Use ImageWalker to get organized with all those amazing artistic shots and photos of friends and family. Quickly view, find, share, print and make simple edits all from a single application. Download and try it now. You can be up and running in a few minutes. It has an unlimited trial period with no obligations! Tested by Scientific Frontline
	IrfanView It is trying to be simple for beginners and powerful for professionals. IrfanView is trying to create new and/or interesting features in its own way, unlike some other graphic viewers, whose whole "creativity" is based on feature cloning, stealing of ideas and whole dialogs from ACDSee and/or IrfanView! (for example: XnView has been stealing/cloning features and whole dialogs from IrfanView, for 7+ years). IrfanView was the first Windows graphic viewer WORLDWIDE with Multiple (animated) GIF support. One of the first graphic viewers WORLDWIDE with Multipage TIF support. The first graphic viewer WORLDWIDE with Multiple ICO support. Tested by Scientific Frontline
	GIMP The GNU Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP, is a raster graphics editor used to process digital graphics and photographs. Typical uses include creating graphics and logos, resizing and cropping photos, altering colors, combining multiple images, removing unwanted image features, and converting between different image formats.[2] GIMP can also be used to create basic animated images in GIF format. It is often used as a free software replacement for Adobe Photoshop, the most widely used bitmap editor in the printing and graphics industries; however, it is not designed to be a Photoshop clone. Tested by Scientific Frontline Not recommended for the average user, although a wonderful full featured image editor we find it not very user friendly for a beginner. We still use Corel® Paint Shop Pro® Photo X2 for major photo manipulations.

RSS Readers

	Omea Pro Bring all your information together That means your email, contacts, documents, files, blogs, transcripts, newsgroups, RSS feeds, pics, webpage bookmarks, tasks, and instant messages are all in the same place, so you don’t need to look through a slew of programs and applications anymore. Learn more » Quickly find specific details, quotes, and facts with Desktop Search functionality. Highly Recommended by Scientific Frontline. Installed and used on all our computers! Tested by Scientific Frontline
	Tristana RSS Reader free newsreader (does not contain adware or spyware) which allows you to pull content directly from the Web onto your desktop without email. Simply click and drag RSS feeds to Tristana Reader to view news, blogs, podcasts and online content in real-time. Now iPod friendly! With our latest podcasting release, now you can search and download music and media files while you sleep and even synch with your iPod! We've added a Downloads Manager to schedule and download up to five files to your desktop at once. Tested by Scientific Frontline
	RssReader RssReader collect news in the background at user configurable intervals and warn with a little popup in the system tray that there is a new message arrived. You can click the news headline to see a short description of the news and click or open the original news web page in an RssReader browser or default browser window. Tested by Scientific Frontline
	Awasu RSS Reader Awasu is a state-of-the-art feed reader that comes loaded with features for both casual personal use and professional, high-powered information management. Not yet evaluated by Scientific Frontline

Screensavers

	Boeing Paint By Number Windows Screen Saver The Boeing Screen Saver. Contains Images of the ISS, F-18, F-22, AH 43 and many others! Tested by Scientific Frontline
	The Distant Suns-Grand Tour3D A high-speed full motion solar-system simulator. In addition, this is a real-time clock. The positions and rotations of each of the planets and their moons are accurate to the current date and time! Tested by Scientific Frontline
	Mission: Apollo 2.0 Mission: Apollo is a fully functional slide-show screensaver featuring 15 fantastic images from the Apollo Moon missions. This screensaver is nag-free and doesn't come with an expiration date. All images are at 1,024x768 and come with an interesting description. Tested by Scientific Frontline
	Chandra Two Years (1999 - 2001) A collection of images taken by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory within its second year of operation. Some of the images featured include: NGC 4631, Vela Pulsar (Wide-Field View), NGC 7027, Arches Cluster, 47 Tuc, XTE J1118+480 and others. Tested by Scientific Frontline
	Subaru Telescope Screensaver With the assistance of the latest technologies, today's astronomers believe that they are close to seeing the edge of the observable universe, which will probably be found about 14 billion light-years from Earth. Tested by Scientific Frontline
	Spitzer Space Telescope Windows Screen Saver Windows users can download the Spitzer Screen Saver. Simply double click on the executable file that downloads in order to install. Tested by Scientific Frontline
	Cassini Screensaver Windows ScreenSaver. Every time your screen saver is activated, the latest daily image updates will be brought automatically to your computer. With the Cassini-Huygens Photojournal Screen Saver you will follow along on this historic mission. Tested by Scientific Frontline

Utilities

	UpdatePatrol This web page monitoring software makes following hundreds of web sites and blogs as simple and fast as checking your e-mail. It will visit web sites for you, as often as you like, and notify you when it finds a change. Stop wasting time in your browser - never visit an unchanged site again! Click the image to see a video on Update Patrol. UpdatePatrol is not just recommend but highly endorsed! This is by far the most accurate program for page change detection that we have tested. For those that want or need to know breaking information, this is a must have! Tested and used by Scientific Frontline
	MailWasher Pro If you need a spam filter, MailWasher will stop spam before it gets to your computer, letting you get only the email you want. Spam drives everyone crazy, but MailWasher is the easiest and most powerful way to stop unwanted email getting to your computer. It does this by allowing you to view all your email waiting at your internet provider. Now you can safely preview and delete bad email before it gets to your computer - never download another spam email to your computer again! Currently being tested by Scientific Frontline, The results so far are impressive! The setup was a breeze even without reading the instructions. Yet fully documented to assist.
	Free Meter FreeMeter has the features that most people need and is FREE. FreeMeter Professional has all the features of FreeMeter plus features intended for power users and system administrators. Visit the Features page for a full list of features in each version of FreeMeter. The current version of FreeMeter and FreeMeter Professional is v2.8.2. By TILER.com Tested by Scientific Frontline
	FreeRam FreeRAM is a program that frees up ram manually or automatically. It shows current memory status , memory load and CPU usage graphically. FreeRAM 4.0 BySoft (95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP) Tested by Scientific Frontline
	ClipMate ClipMate saves time and makes you more productive by adding clipboard functions that the Windows clipboard leaves out - starting with the ability to hold thousands of "clips", instead of just one. ClipMate has functions to edit, re-format, and manage your clipboard data. It can also print, re-format, and even spell-check. ClipMate 7 adds powerful drag/drop, integration with the windows taskbar, and makes pasting your data even easier than before. Everybody needs ClipMate. Not sure how you'd use a clipboard utility? Visit the Why You Need ClipMate page. ClipMate is highly recommended by Scientific Frontline, just a must have for anyone in website production. Tested and Used by Scientific Frontline
	Notepad++ Notepad++ is a free source code editor and Notepad replacement, which supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows environment. This project, based on the Scintilla edit component (a very powerful editor component), written in C++ with pure win32 api and STL (that ensures the higher execution speed and smaller size of the program), is under the GPL Licence. This project is mature. However, as you can see it's a one-man-project, there are still some bugs and missing features. This is a highly recommended by Scientific Frontline. I find that the author of this program underestimates how well written and useful Notepad++ truly is... which is a good sign that he will continue to improve this wonderful notepad replacement. Tested and Used by Scientific Frontline
	DarkRoom Dark Room is a full screen, distraction free, writing environment. Unlike standard word processors that focus on features, Dark Room is just about you and your text. Basically, Dark Room is a clone of the original WriteRoom that is an OS X (tiger) exclusive application. It is a child of necessity, as there were no viable alternatives in Windows to produce the same behavior. Sure, you can kind of emulate the behavior by jumping through a bunch of hoops in Word/Writer, but it isn’t the same. Also, you can do something similar in emacs, but who wants to learn a bunch of obscure keyboard shortcuts? Recommended by Scientific Frontline. Very simple, yet one finds dozens of reasons to use daily. Tested and Used by Scientific Frontline

Video Editing and Production

	Movkit Batch Video Converter Pro Movkit Batch Video Converter Pro supports almost all popular video conversion among each other so as to meet your needs of particular formats. Movkit Batch Video Converter Pro contains the output file formats of AVI, MPEG1, MPEG2, WMV, RMVB, RM, MOV, MP4, 3GP, 3G2, FLV. Movkit BVC pro. Is used at Scientific Frontline on almost a daily basis. Never a sync problem. Great for converting formats such as M4V to enable for optimized formats for editing. Use built in codec or system installed. Tested and Used by Scientific Frontline
	Corel VideoStudio® Pro X3 Corel VideoStudio® Pro X2 is all-in-one video-editing software for creating high-quality HD and standard-definition movies, slideshows and DVDs. Edit videos or photos quickly and easily using the Movie Wizard, or take full control with hands-on creative tools. Even paint, write or draw on your video. Burn your movies on DVDs or high-definition AVCHD™ and Blu-ray discs. Share on PSP®, iPod® or iPhone®, and upload directly to YouTube™. Then watch your movies on set-top players or with Corel® WinDVD®, DVD player software that’s also included. Corel VideoStudio® Pro X3 has become the editor of our choice at Scientific Frontline. Corel... does one need to say more! Tested and Used at Scientific Frontline
	SWiSH Max2 SWiSH Max2 is a powerful Flash authoring application. Flash is a multimedia format for playing animation, video and audio on the web, mobile devices and more. SWiSH Max2 enables you to create Flash movies in a simple timeline based authoring environment, dragging and dropping video, audio, effects, images and more to create stunning multimedia movies. Highly Recommended by Scientific Frontline. Creating flash with such simplicity... Outstanding Support. All flash programs on Scientific Frontline is created with SwishMax. Tested and Used by Scientific Frontline
	SWiSH Video3 SWiSH Video3 gives you Complete Control over Creation of Flash Video Content. Import AVI, QuickTime, MPEG or Windows Media videos. Export to Flash MX Video, or High Quality Flash 8 Video with Chroma-key Transparency. Skinnable Custom Player Controls that can be Created with any Flash Authoring Tool Add Overlays to Brand all your Flash Videos with a Linked Watermark Use Chroma-key Transparency to Overlay other Videos and Images. Highly Recommended by Scientific Frontline. Creating videos ease. Outstanding Support. most videos on Scientific Frontline is created with Swish Video3 Tested and Used by Scientific Frontline
	Video Edit Magic v4.47 Video Edit Magic makes it easy to join, split, crop, trim, modify color, and merge your video files. It includes more than 150 professional quality transitions and visual effects. Some popular ones are Rotate, Green Screen, Picture-In-Picture, Pixelate, and Wipes. A unique feature of Video Edit Magic is the volume track, which you can use to adjust the volume of audio clips from 0% to 400% at any point. You can create fade-ins, fade-outs, and merge sound from the two audio tracks for almost any volume effect. Recommended by Scientific Frontline. Great ease in editing video. Average support. Most videos on Scientific Frontline is edited with Video Edit Magic. There is issues with 64 bit Vista, but we have found ways to work around. Tested and Used by Scientific Frontline
	Flash Video MX Pro Flash Video MX Pro is for converting video to Flash, FLV encoded by Flash 8 with alpha, AVC/H.264, Flash 8, and Sorenson Spark video codecs, together with dynamic video compression and audio settings! Recommended by Scientific Frontline. There is several functions that we prefer with this product over the others. The batch converter is used to maintain the Solar Videos. Customer support is very flawed though, and in many occasions have seen them give very inaccurate information on the support forums. Several of their customers now contact us to solve issues, which we are more then happy to help. Tested and Used by Scientific Frontline
	Prism Video Converter Plus Prism Plus is a video file format converter for Windows and Mac. It can convert video files from avi, wmv, 3gp and more into avi, asf, wmv, mp4, 3gp and others. It can also convert your DVD discs into many different formats. Use this program to convert video files into the formats you need to watch on TV, load to a cell phone, put on a website, create a presentation, watch on your portable device and much more. In fact, the possibilities are endless using this powerful video file converter. Prism is one of the most stable and comprehensive video converters available and it is very easy to use. Highly Recommended by Scientific Frontline. It can actually compress and decompress about 14 different formats. When everything else fails... Here is the answer A good first step before taking a project into editing. Tested and Used by Scientific Frontline

Web Site Management and Production

	GoodSync GoodSync is a file backup and file synchronization software. Maintain files within a network, or use to keep website files up-to-date and backed up. Synchronize between desktops, laptops, servers, external drives, and Windows Mobile devices, as well as remotely through FTP, SFTP, WebDAV GoodSync by Siber Systems, Inc, is highly endorsed by us at Scientific Frontline. Our “Space Weather” section data in maintained by using GoodSync connections to our local network as well at government FTP servers. Tested and Used by Scientific Frontline
	Cute FTP Professional CuteFTP Professional is an award-winning FTP Client for securely and reliably transferring files over industry standard protocols including FTP, FTPS, HTTP, HTTPS and SSH. It's the right choice when you want the ultimate in power, performance and security. Provides easy-to-use yet powerful tools for tackling the complex challenges of data management and helps achieve HIPAA, GLBA and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. Cute FTP Professional is highly recommended by Scientific Frontline Tested and Used by Scientific Frontline
	OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org the product is a multi-platform office productivity suite. It includes the key desktop applications, such as a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, and drawing program, with a user interface and feature set similar to other office suites. Sophisticated and flexible, OpenOffice.org also works transparently with a variety of file formats, including those of Microsoft Office, and the vendor-neutral OpenDocument standard from OASIS. Highly Recommended by Scientific Frontline, just too many uses to mention. Although, we still are using an older version due to a conflict we just have not yet worked out. Tested and Used by Scientific Frontline
	Tristana Writer RSS Editor Tristana Writer RSS Editor is an easy to use tool for quickly creating valid RSS or Atom feeds to instantly distribute content over the Internet. Web feed distribution 100% guarantees delivery of your messaging directly to your subscribers' desktops, without email. Creating RSS and Atom feeds gets around all of the problems with delivering content using email, such as declining delivery, open and click-through rates, increased email clutter as well as false-positive SPAM email filtering. Recommended by Scientific Frontline. A very well thought out, updated, and supported product. Tristana Writer RSS Editor is used for our RSS Feeds. Tested and Used by Scientific Frontline
	A1 Sitemap Generator Rich template support for generating sitemaps and near-endless scanning options. The scanning engine stores vast amounts of data so that you can, among other things, view full report on broken and redirected links. This data is e.g. used when generating Google XML sitmaps. Bonus tools include an integrated FTP client. This allows you to FTP upload your sitemaps. Highly Recommended by Scientific Frontline. With 29 Google news sitemaps updated several times daily, this product exceeds all expectation! Fast response from developer, always a plus. Tested and Used by Scientific Frontline