May 2, 2007

Secrets of the Ark (**** out of four) is a mystery/adventure game where players search for the source of a deadly secret weapon that unleashed a terrible plague during the time of the Pharaohs. The secret of this weapon has been lost—until now.

The game takes place in the present time and begins at the docks in the harbor area of New York, where the main character, George, works as a legal aid in a bail bond agency. One night a beautiful blonde woman appears in his office and asks him to help her flee the hoodlums chasing her. George has no choice but to help her escape, and there the adventure begins.

You control the actions of George and Anna Marie as they escape from the hoodlums. Then you discover that Anna Marie has a manuscript that describes the secret of the deadly weapon. You must pick up clues, find objects for your inventory, use some of the objects to take you where you need to go, solve puzzles and find a way to protect yourself, Anna Marie and the manuscript. Then you need to translate the ancient manuscript and solve the mysteries described in it so you can locate the source of the secret weapon. Along the way, you’ll travel to Rome, Istanbul and other exotic locations as you discover ancient mysteries and conspiracies, including those of the Knights Templar.

Graphics are very good, the music adds to the mysterious setting and the characters are realistic and believable. As players explore the complex mysteries and puzzles of this game they will find plenty of clues and challenges for hours of gameplay.

Movavi VideoSuite 4 (***) provides videographers with several tools to maximize editing, sharing and archiving their videos. The program supports a wide variety of input and output formats and readily converts between different formats. Want to transfer your DVD to your iPod? Easy. The program will rip (copy) your DVD, automatically converting it to an iPod video, PDA, cell phone or ZUNE format--ready to load into your device. The same for AVI, MPEG, WMV, ASF and other formats. You don’t even have to know what format your input file is, since the program figures it out for you and converts it to your desired output format. You can even mix formats for conversion. Easy and advanced modes provide quick and easy conversions or additional options for those needing them.

Movavi VideoSuite 4 can also optimize video files for Web streaming by reducing the size and converting them to a suitable Web streaming format such as WMV, RM or MOV. The program can also do a single frame capture from your video or separate the soundtrack from your favorite DVD movie and save as an MP3 or WMA file. If you want to send your video as a video message, the program offers more than 20 professional templates to create a video postcard.

You can also split a video file automatically or manually or splice multiple files into one file. VideoSuite 4 can do automatic enhancement for brightness, contrast, color saturation and white balance and has de-noise or de-block filters to help repair damaged images. The program also offers live DV capturing form your DV camcorder. Additional features allow you to burn video or audio or data CD/DVDs.

Movavi VideoSuite 4 offers these and other useful utility features at an affordable price.

iphotoMEASURE (***) allows you to measure with 99.5% accuracy any item or structure in a digital photograph. This tool will find uses in a wide variety of home and business projects.

To use the iphotoMeasure, just place the included target sheet in a plane parallel to the region to be measured and take a digital photo perpendicular to the target (including the area to be measured). You can write on the target sheet to document the time, date and location of the photo. Open the photo in iphotoMeasure, set the calibration from the target sheet and then click and drag to measure anything in the photo. The measuring lines and lengths of each line remain on the photo. You can adjust the length and position of each line if necessary and use different colors for different lines. English and metrics units are supported. Do as many measurements as needed and save, print, share or archive.

You can use your cell phone camera to take a photo and e-mail it back to the office for doing the measurements in iphotoMeasure. This can be very useful in situations where accurate physical measurements are difficult or dangerous to perform.

There are some caveats in using this program: the pictures must be taken 90° to the wall or object to be measured, the target must be in the plane where measurements will be made and only items in that plane can be accurately measured.

From iphotoMeasure (www.iphotoMeasure.com, Windows or Mac, $99)

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