Nexuiz is a 3d deathmatch game project, developed by a team called Alientrap. The project is being developed entirely online based on an advanced Quake1 engine that has been tweaked to its new form - Darkplaces. The game is available as a totally free download for Windows, Mac and Linux, though donations are appreciated.

This project emphasizes on game-play and therefore will not require a high end system. There is also an off-line single player campaign made available, allows one to frag "human-like" bots.


• http://nexuiz.com/

while BioShock is making waves on the mainstream gaming, i found this independent project with a similar horror theme whose full game has been picked up by a publisher but the tech demo is available as a free download..

Penumbra is an adventure horror game, in which the player finds himself in an underground base on Greenland, searching for his lost father. Unlike a classic FPS, the player interacts with his surroundings, exploring and solving puzzles in order to escape alive.


• http://www.frictionalgames.com/penumbra

Actually PrintConductor (free) can batch print more than just pdf -- it uses the native programs to do the main work.

PrintConductor can batch print 16 document types: PDF, DOC, WRI, WPS, RTF, TXT, XLS, PPT, PPS, POT, VSD, DWG, DXF, SNP, HTM, HTML.

PrintConductor supports any printer installed on your computer and provides you with instant access to the settings of the specified printer.

Add documents to the list using drag & drop, Open dialog box or auto-scan a specified folder and its subfolders for documents of needed types. Sort documents by name or type, preview before you print, and/or print any document(s) from the list.

A progress bar keeps you informed of the '%complete' status of the job. And, the job can be easily cancelled at any time in processing.

http://www.print-conductor.com/

I'm guessing there are other tools like this available, but this is the first one i've seen and it does a terrific job.  Very fun and easy -- if you ever wanted to have a "userbar" in your forum signature or on your blog, look no further.

Ever wanted to make a Userbar, but never knew where to start? Well, this Userbar Generator is going to change all that! Userbar Generator by DanSoft Australia is an easy-to-use program designed to help you make good Userbars, without the need for Photoshop.

http://www.dansoftau...products/userbar.htm

One of the members on our forum posted this question:

I was wondering if anyone can recommend a utility that could easily let me know when some program or process takes over a machine.

For example, I was at a client site and unbeknownst to me or the client, something slowed things down to below a crawl.  In fact, the client said this happens periodically and they end up rebooting.  I explained it was not a good idea and that something was running in the background to the detriment of anything else.  In this case it was a Quickbooks POS background download, but it could have been anything.  There was no obvious notification that this was happening (other than broadband activity).

On my development system, I had a recurring issue that completely tied up my mouse cursor.  I was dead in the water for as much as 30 minutes several times a day.  It went away after I removed the disk backup agent software. 

I wish there was some type of WTF (what the f---???) key for this purpose in Windows.  Does anyone know of anything better than using task manager to identify ill-behaved software?

App Name	Direct Access
App URL	http://www.nagarsoft.com/
App Version Reviewed	1.6.6
Pricing Scheme	$39.95

Nagarsoft's Direct Access came onto the text expansion and application launcher scene just over a year ago and went head to head with the likes of ActiveWords and Quickeys. These are all applications that allow you to type a word, phrase, or abbreviation in any window and have a discrete dialogue pop-up offering to launch a file, open a folder, launch an application, launch a webpage, send an e-mail, insert boilerplate text or complete a phrase.

Direct Access is visually stunning and does what it is designed to do very well.