Picks: Bookmark Buddy, Picasa, Handy Address Book, Nitro PDF

December, can you believe it? Only 24 shopping days till Christmas. It's that time of year when friends and family get together for food, fun and sharing of gifts. Whether it's Christmas, Chanukah or Kwanza, it's a joyous time of year. With lights on the house and all the way to the top of a 60 foot Ponderosa pine, I'm good to go until we decorate inside this weekend. As usual, I've been looking at lots of great software and have some Picks to tell you about. Many of these have been featured in my Quick Picks and I'm coming back at you with the full reviews. So, sit back, relax, have a warm drink and lets take a look.

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• Bookmark Buddy
• Version: 3.5.1
• System Requirements: Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/2003/XP
• Get more info
• Download Bookmark Buddy NOW!
• View a screenshot

Bookmark Buddy, by Edward Leigh, is a very powerful program for managing your Internet Favorites as well as passwords. I have to say that it's one of the nicest programs of it's kind that I've ever looked at. I found the program to be very intuitive and extremely easy-to-use. And I really put it to the test. My wife has hundreds upon hundreds of Favorites that she accumulated while in graduate school. So, I felt the ultimate test was to see if the program could import them all. It not only imported all of them, but it did so without a hitch. Impressive. And it was just as impressive when it came to keeping login information for Web sites. Very nicely done.

Bookmark Buddy makes it easy to find all of the bookmarks you store in it because it utilizes a very logical approach. You can put bookmarks in categories and then have subcategories. That makes it very simple. The program also has a very nice search function that lets you quickly find bookmarks. You can also assign keywords and descriptions to your bookmarks which provides yet another way to find them. In addition, the program also has a feature called SmartFolders that contains sites you visit often, sites you've recently been to and sites you're scheduled to visit. That's right, you can schedule a visit to a Web site. You just set it up and the program puts a link in the SmartFolder called Due To Visit - very slick!

Bookmark Buddy makes it fast, easy and efficient to manage all of your bookmarks. And it's loaded with so many features that I don't have time to go into all of them. You can print, edit, delete and even encrypt your bookmark entries. And if all this weren't enough it will also keep track of your logon information for Web sites. And what's really cool is that you can just grab the information for a site and drop it in place. Impressive. So, if you're looking for a program to help you keep track of your ever-increasing number of bookmarks, this is it! Manage your bookmarks and your Web site logons, and do it easily. Give it a try, I recommend it.

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• Picasa
• Version: 1.618
• System Requirements: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
• Get more info
• Download Picasa NOW!
• View a screenshot

Picasa, by Google, Inc. is a slick program primarily for home users, for dealing with all of your digital photo. The program will search your entire computer and find every picture no matter where it lurks on your hard drive. It found some pictures that I'd even forgotten I had. Picasa makes it really easy to drag and drop pictures from one folder to another. That makes it much easier to get all of your photos organized. The program is extremely easy-to-use and has a very intuitive interface. That makes it perfect for both new and experienced users.

Picasa makes it a snap to rename your photos from the quirky names given to them by digital cameras. The program also makes it easy to put pictures into groups, like Vacation, Ireland, Graduation ... whatever makes sense to you. Another really slick feature is the ability to rate a photo. What a neat idea. It makes it really easy to find that favorite picture of your dog, Snoopy, your girlfriend, or your wife and kids. I used it to label some of my favorite pictures from Ireland for example. Really slick.

Picasa, from the folks at Google, is just loaded with handy and helpful features, many of which I haven't seen before in similar programs. For example, if you're making albums you can have the same photo in multiple albums. Hey and don't worry, it doesn't use up more disk space, it just creates another instance of the photo, kind of like a virtual photo. The program lets you password protect photos, add special effects, eliminate red eye, add captions and lots more. At this holiday time of the year this is one product you have to try out! I recommend it highly.

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• Handy Address Book
• Version: 2.0
• System Requirements: Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/2003/XP
• Get more info
• Download Handy Address Book NOW!
• View a screenshot

Handy Address Book, by Beiley Software, is a high-powered address book that's simply loaded with features. One really slick one is the ability to share address books across you Local Area Network. That means that Mom and Dad, or boss and secretary can access the same address books. You also have the ability to limit access by giving different users different access levels. Another cool feature is the ability to put your address book up on the Internet and do it easily. Essentially the program puts your address book into an HTML file and you can view it on your desktop or upload it to your Web site. Cool!

Handy Address Book lets you have more than one address book so you can have separate ones for home, business, friends and the like. Another nice feature is the ability to put your contacts into various categories. That makes it easy to find exactly the group of addresses you're looking for -- golfers, Scout troop and so on. The program support vCard, and also allows you to import and export addresses. It can import entries from a Windows Addresss Book, Outlook and others. If you set it up to do so it can even dial your phone for you. Nicely done.

Handy Address Book will let you print out addresses and will even show you a preview of what the printout will look like. It's easy-to-use and has a nice user interface. It offers a powerful search feature, can send e-mail to your contacts and lots more. So, at this time of year when many people are digging out addresses so they can send holiday cards, this seemed like a perfect program to pick. Check it out for yourself ... very nicely done.

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• Nitro PDF
• Version: 1.7
• System Requirements: Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP
• Get more info
• Download Nitro PDF NOW!
• View a screenshot

Nitro PDF, by Nitro PDF, is a cool tool that lets you create PDF files quickly and easily. I'll tell you right from the start that it has so many cool features that I can't possibly cover them all, but I'll try to hit some of the high points. I've tried a good number of similar products and this one is really much easier to use than some others. What's really cool is that you can drag the files you want to convert into PDF right onto the icon. Slick. And the program supports a wide range of file formats including Word, HTML, Excel and Powerpoint. These aren't surprising, but the program also converts JPG, BMP, GIF and Photoshop files.

Nitro PDF will integrate right into the various parts of Microsoft Office so you can use it from within programs like Word, Excel and the like. Another slick feature of this product is that you can create profiles that contain different settings for PDF creation. This is a great feature if you find yourself using different criteria for different types of files. It is a real time-saver because you can set each type of conversion once and then save it to a profile to use over and over. Nitro PDF also offers a batch mode for converting files so you can do many all at once and that's a nice feature to have.

Nitro PDF can really do some cool things if you're converting Word documents to PDF, which is what I do the most. Unlike some other similar programs, Nitro PDF can handle hyperlinks, footnotes, headings and more. Very slick. Among some of the programs other features are the ability to easily deal with text, edit graphics, apply watermarks and lots more. You can add comments and feedback to your PDF documents, and lots, lots more. This product is impressive with all of the unique features it has. So, it's not only a Pick, but I'm also making it a Dr. File Finder Favorite and those are few and far between. So, if you're looking for a way to create PDF files, this is a program you want to try!

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• FileStream TurboBackup - 5.0 by FileStream, Inc.
• Check it out!

FileStream TurboBackup is a tool for backing up all of your important files and folders. The program lets you pick exactly what things you want to backup and you can even schedule your backups. You can back up to CD, DVD, floppy, ZIP disk and so on. And if you need to recover anything the program makes it easy. In fact, the entire program is easy to use and intuitive. So, take the time to check it out and I'll get to a full review as soon as I can.

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• CreationWeb Personal Edition by IntroWizard
• Check it out!

CreationWeb Personal Edition is a nifty program for creating Web pages and no programming experience is required. Pick out a category, then pick out a template design. From there you can start entering your text, graphics and so on. The program has 3 versions - Personal, Business and Studio Edition so you can find the version that suits your needs. Take a look for yourself!

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That brings us to a close for this week. I hope you enjoyed reading about these cool software products. Take the time to give them a try and see how you like them. I'll be back next week with more great programs to tell you about. And, since we're coming up on the end of the year, I'm devoting the last 3 weeks of 2005 to a specialFavorites of 2005 Roundup! In these I'm going to revisit 10 programs each week that were my personal favorites from 2005. So, stay tuned for that. I'll be back next week and until then, have a great week, a wonderful weekend and happy downloading.