Features

• Using a set of Smart Wizards, users can easily create new letterhead, business cards, posters, flyers and more
• Multiple clip art images and fonts make your publications fit your personal style
• Powerful word processing tools allow for multi-page text flow, spellchecking, word wrap, justification, tabs, indents and more
• Customizable templates help you get started creating the great-looking documents and brochures you need to keep your business growing!

Amazon.com Product Description

Turn your business card into a multimedia experience. These business-card-size CDs are writable on your own CD writer, and readable in any audio CD, CD-ROM, or DVD player. Put up to 50 MB of text, photos, video, and audio on each CD, and use the included labels to create photo-finish-quality labels on your ink-jet or laser printer. You can use these CDs to promote your business, complement a presentation, present your résumé, or create a memorable invitation.

Included are 10 business-card CDs, 10 protective sleeves, an assortment of photo-glossy and matte labels, CD labeler software, and a label applicator for perfectly centered labels. ... Read more

Features

• Easily create CD business cards for business-related networking
• Use video, sound, text, direct links to your Web site, and more
• Perfect for multimedia presentations, resumes, sales proposals, brochures
• Comes with label applicator and photo-glossy and matte labels
• Includes 10 business card CD-Rs and 10 protective plastic sleeves

Reviews (2)

Here, let me show you . . .
How many business cards do you collect only to throw away later? This one will be kept.

This kit is a tool for marketing yourself in a dramatic professional manner. The business cards are small CD-RW blanks, which hold up to 50 MB of storage. The shape of these disks intrigued me. They have two straight sides, and two that are curved, and they are only slightly thicker than a traditional business card.

Use the software that came with your CDR or any other favorite. The media does not require a specific program.

The labeling software makes it simple to design professional labels. It does not support the gif file format, but jpeg works just fine. There are plastic coves to protect the cards.

Included are ten blank disks and labels that can be printed either on a laser jet or an inkjet printer. I prefer the impact of color, especially since I am a writer, editor, and graphic artist. I can use the logo that I have created for myself, plus all other business card information.

Business consultants can create presentations designed for a specific client; that is powerful.

Incorporate a portfolio with documentation or artwork, along with information links to your web site. If you are making a presentation, show it from this disk, then hand the card to your prospective client. This is perfect for today's fast paced market.

In short, you get a powerful marketing kit that relegates normal business cards to the status of quaint relics. 5 stars.

Victoria Tarrani

business card kit
the label software was great but i thought this would also contain some informationv or software for the cd its self which is what i was looking for. It could have been made more clear that it was mainly just a label kit with the blank cds ... Read more

Features

• Create and print professional business cards in minutes
• Thousands of background designs
• Dozens of pre-designed text layouts
• Vertical and horizontal designs; insert logos, photos, and clip art
• Includes 2.5 million photos and images; works with Avery

Features

• Layouts, clip art and fonts are all included -- start working as soon as you install
• Select from multiple layouts, images, backdrops and patterns for truly distinctive fonts and headlines
• Import artwork and designs from other programs and store them in a searchable database
• Create an eye-catching business card in 3 easy steps -Chose a Business Card Type, enter your info and print it up
• Includes thousands of fonts for Mac and PC

Amazon.com Product Description

HyperCard 2.4 is a powerful development tool created by Apple for theMacintosh. Notable for its versatility, HyperCard is a dynamic tool for creating custom software solutions for users at all levels of skill and experience. HyperCard features like navigation, hypertext, media integration, and scripting have greatly influenced the evolution of the World Wide Web. HyperCard organizes information into easy-to-use "stacks" of cards through which users can navigate and search for the information they need. By simply clicking on a button, they can view related text, see a graphic, hear a sound, watch a QuickTime movie, or listen to text out loud.

HyperCard 2.4's new features include a suite of new commands and properties allowing users that write HyperTalk scripts to have unprecedented access to QuickTime functionality. HyperCard 2.4 has the ability, via a HyperTalk script, to loop a movie providing continuous play for unattended applications like multimedia kiosks. With QuickTime's ability to synchronize a text version of a movie's script with the movie, HyperCard 2.4 now allows the user to immediately navigate to any point in the QuickTime movie text using a simple find command. In addition, HyperCard users can also resize, flip, mirror, rotate, or skew a QuickTime movie. HyperCard allows developers to create new interactive applications for the classroom, for entertainment, or wherever the need for multimedia presentations exists. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

The MOST intuitive of all creative solutions!
I started with Hypercard 1.0 when it was bundled free with the first mac computers. I kept updating it until I felt that I had to move on and learn some of the new programs like LiveMotion. Still I kept going back to Hypercard to work on various ideas. I had written some of my own scripts -- some of them amazingly complex and nothing else could suit my needs. Other people have not been able to explain why Hypercard is so wonderful and I can't either -- all I know is that it is the MOST intuitive of all creative solutions! There is nothing like it! I wish the original Hypercard designers would read some of these reviews and begin updating it again by popular demand. But never mind, Hypercard 2.4 is exceedingly powerful.

HyperCard: The "Swiss Army Knife" Nobody Knows
   HyperCard is an application unlike most others. What it does is, it lets you build your own tools. For your own purposes. The way you want them to work. It wouldn't be inappropriate to compare HyperCard to MS Visual Basic, because both of them *do* pretty much the same thing; the difference is *how* they do it.
   Visual Basic veils its power behind cryptic dialog boxes and unforgiving syntax; HyperCard goes out of its way to make its power *accessible* to the user, with a minimum of fuss and bother. With Visual Basic, you're pretty much *required* to muck around with a semi-arcane programming language if you want to get *anything* done; with HyperCard, the English-like language (HyperTalk) is something you can *choose* to delve into when you decide you want to do *more* than you were already doing.
   Here's a concrete example of the HyperTalk languge; a "handler" (mini-program) which lets you move something around by clicking and dragging.

  on mouseDown
    repeat until the mouse is up
      set the location of me to the mouseLoc
    end repeat
  end mouseDown

   As I said, HyperTalk is rather English-like. If you can figure out how and why this handler does its thing, congratulations -- you're ready to start "rolling your own" with HyperCard! Bad news: Sadly, Apple Computer has never really known what to do with HyperCard, and has never made any serious attempts to publicize nor sell (nor even support) the program. Good news: Feed the keyword "hypercard" into google.com (or whatever other search engine you prefer), and you'll find any number of links to the community of HyperCard users.
   Q: So after all that, what can you do with HyperCard?
   A: What do you *want* to do with HyperCard? People have used it to build games (most notably Myst), educational software, personal information managers, utilities, multimedia presentations, productivity applications, and God only knows what else.
   HyperCard. It might just have a place on *your* hard drive.

Software Erector set - easy to use, powerful results
This is a great piece of software for many uses:

- learning fundamentals of programming

- creating your own custom software

- developing applications for profit

Very easy to learn:

- You can create simple software without writing any code

- The scripting language built-in is very powerful and also very intuitive (the syntax is very english-like)

- All of the objects and code are re-usable so you can repurpose works you have made and share (or borrow) from others

Polished, and powerful features:

- Integrate color graphics, sound, and quicktime movies (Myst was created with HyperCard)

- Control other software and share data

- Extend the language with a wide range of external commands and functions

Oh, HyperCard!
Oh, HyperCard! Alas, HyperCard! Poor, misunderstood, underappreciated HyperCard. It's a floor polish. It's a salad dressing. It's...(SNAP!) oops, sorry. Got a bit carried away there.

How to describe HyperCard is a problem which has perplexed better minds than mine. Suffice to say that if you're looking for a better way to create specialized applications for your Macintosh, you could do worse than to try HyperCard, Apple's amazing "Software Construction Kit". At first glance, HyperCard is a remarkably flexible database manager built on the "index card" metaphor. But with the judicious use of HyperTalk, HyperCard's built in scripting language, it's much more. Using myself as an example, with little prior programming experience I put together a simple but elegant application which I use to track and sort qualifying results and starting lineups for my local Speedway, and I'm currently working on an animated game to help teach my five year old son how to draw his letters. Others have done much more, and plenty of examples can be found all over the Internet. Most of these "stacks" you can use for free; such is the HyperCard developers' ethic.

Yes, HyperCard does have its limitations. Its color tools are somewhat lacking, and its last significant update was quite some time ago. Reports would have it officially "dead" as far as Apple is concerned, which for all intents and purposes means no further development. And while HyperTalk is rather intuitive, it is still a programming language with at least a slight learning curve. And programming can be WORK. Intellectually challenging, yes, but work nonetheless.

But so what? If you use only the stacks that come with it, you'll get your money's worth from HyperCard. And I suspect you'll do more, lots more. Its capabilities as a multimedia presentation tool should be more than obvious, and consider that the fabulous "Myst" was created using HyperCard. You'll likely find a use for it in most every portion of your computer life. And when you do, you'll question as so many already have how such a far-sighted company such as Apple could ever neglect such a useful, powerful, and--let's face it--inexpensive tool such as HyperCard. ... Read more

Amazon.com Product Description

FlipAlbum Suite 4.0 is a sweet bundle that combines FlipAlbum 4.0, FlipAlbum Design Libraries, and CD Maker 2.0. You've got everything you need to create entertaining digital photo albums with colorful, custom pages that flip with the click of a mouse. Not to be overlooked is the fact that this album won't crease with use or deteriorate with age.

A range of full-page layout capabilities lets you design pages with multiple photos, images, and annotations. Add a table of contents, index, or even a thumbnail preview. The included Design Libraries delivers more than 3,000 graphics to your FlipAlbum. Choose from unique book spines, colorful backgrounds, and fun clip art. Retouch red eye and add special effects using the built-in image-editing tools. You can even import sound clips from the library or add your own.

CD Maker 2.0 lets you burn your digital album on CDs--a great gift for family and friends. A step-by-step wizard walks you through the process. Or, upload your album to your Web site or e-mail it. FlipAlbum Suite 4.0 software supports standard image, music, and video file formats. And, if you must, you can print these albums, too. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Order 4.1 from website
If you order this suite 4.0 you will have to download a 15 mg upgrade to 4.1 and also download two design CD's. In the end you spend more money when you order this outdated new product.

FlipAlbum
This program is the best one I've found for viewing photos. I've scanned all of my old photo albums and created CDs to give to family members, and it's been really easy cataloging new photos as I take them (digital). The mp3 feature in the new version has been great. Some people have complained that the program doesn't have a photo-editing feature, but I already have Photoshop (and I think most scanners and digital cameras come with some sort of software).

No Frills - Meets the Goal though
I use this for distributing photos on CD to others without having to spend time/effort explaining how to get at the photos. FlipAlbum is a nice solution for taking your .JPG's of any size/resolution and getting them quickly into a FlipAlbum which works like a simulated photo album where anyone can easily figure out how to click between pages, view thumbnails and hav a slide show.

FlipAlbums work well enough for posting on the web where others use the same simple method for viewing as FlipAlbums distributed on a CD.

4.0 Suite includes the CD utility which works easily enough to create files for a self-launching CD(when the destination PC has autorun enabled for the CD drive). This utility relies on your existing CD burning software and simply creates the files and give simple instructions what files to put on the CD.

The flipalbum itself is aimed at viewing your photos and includes no photo editing/adjustments like brightness/contrast, redeye features. You are expected to have decent files before copying them into FlipAlbum. You can however, change orientation of the pictures. I would hope future versions add some rudimentary picture enhancement features.

Also the look and feel customization in FlipAlbum is rudimentary (i.e. change the text on the cover, change colors/backgrounds of the pages and add .MP3 or .WAV music to different sections of the album. I found all of these features, cute enough but not very robust or extensive. But that's not the purpose of this software.

If you want a simple, fool proof way to get your photos on the web or especially to send a CD to grandma so she can pop it in and then painlessly flip through all of your recent photos, then I recommend FlipAlbum 4.0 or FlipAlbum 4.0 Suite (w/ CD creation). ... Read more

Amazon.com Product Description

In just six years, Visio set the standard for business diagramming, so it only makes sense for the company to change the product name to Visio Standard. Given the new flow-charting tools, Internet capabilities, and dozens of other dynamic features that have been added, Visio Standard 5.0 will continue setting clear, effective communication precedents--across your organization and the world! This software allows users to quickly create flow charts and business diagrams to enhance business communications and manage information, processes, and concepts. Visio's pioneering approach to drag-and-drop drawing and its tight integration with Microsoft Office puts powerful graphics capabilities within reach of the mainstream business user. ... Read more

Features

• Find fonts by file name
• View fonts in 5 different categories
• Choose from headline, modern, script and more

Features

• Choose from over 200 professional templates that fit a variety of career categories
• Headline Type Manager turns simple fonts into beautiful pieces of artwork for your business card
• Add any of the 2500 included black and white clip art to instantly personalize your cards
• Publish your cards to the Web instantly with InstaNet Web Publishing
• Attach your business cards to an email and send them out for easier distribution!

Features

• Create corporate, educational, training, and professional videos
• Streamlined interface; full-screen teleprompter; 6 new graphical styles
• Multiple camera support; broadcast video to the Internet in real time
• Live full-screen output to a second monitor, projector, TV, or VCR
• Publish video-integrated Web pages; add charts, graphs, and slides

Reviews (1)

Lame product by Smith Micro Software is very close to ....!
Completely misleading representation of a product that is nothing but a lure for web hosting services.

The software is noted out of date right on the disc (inside) and they tell you must "upgrade" on their site (on a sticker).

What they do not clearly describe is that you are limited to only 50 items to sell, and that it will only create a basic text order form that the user would have to print for postal mail or fax. This program does not even give you an option to email the order with or without credit card!

What they also do not tell you is that if you want to have more than 50 items, you could list more if you pay them [price] a month. Which is something you can do securely online, without software, for much less with various hosting services.

And finally, the final page result looks like a child created the "catalog". Formatted for screen resolution of 800x600 only. If your screen resolution is anything but, the text will overflow onto the cheesy background images, and juvenile buttons.

It is a completely inferior product that should be avoided at any price. You do not want this garbage on your hard drive. Smith Micro Software will be on my black list forever.

A completely unprofessional product and company. I of course returned the software as "incompatible" as there is no way I will be stuck with such garbage.... ... Read more

Amazon.com Product Description

Illuminatus allows anyone to quickly and easily combine words, pictures, video, animation, and sound into interactive multimedia publications. Illuminatus combines an extensive range of professional features with ease of use. Publish to Windows 3.x, 95, and NT 4.0; the Internet; or the Windows 95 screensaver. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

illuminatus 4.0 is a simple step forward
I have been using Illuminatus since version 2.0 and grown to like it very much. While there are gigantic products like Macromedia Attain and Asymetrix Tool Book. It would take a year to learn how to use them, with the Illuminatus the learning curve is short while the list of features is pretty big. Downolad a demo and give it a spin. There is a version 4.5 available. ... Read more

Features

• Easily produce professional-style DVDs
• Capture video directly from camcorder to DVD or CD
• Archive and share movies, photos, business presentations, and more
• Edit +RW and -RW DVDs again and again
• Create CD labels and case covers

Reviews (13)

Nice, but could be Much Nicer
First of all, this program is worth its price. It's straightforward, stable, and creates very nice DVDs -- once you get used to it.

Major gripe: It cannot accurately calculate file sizes. It may show that a certain DVD program will fit on a DVD after file conversion when it actually won't: it ends up creating files which are too big, ultimately giving you a notice saying "will not fit onto disk" after hours of transcoding.

Minor gripe: It will not let you set the default font type, size, and color for project menus, meaning that if you have 6 clips (titles) with 6 chapters each, you have to manually set the font and its properties individually 36 times, not including the top menu.

Don't let Movie Factory do your video encoding. What I do, and recommend, is using another program to edit and prepare each clip, including the encoding to DVD-ready MPEG. (I use Ulead Video Studio 7, and it does a great job.) Then import the MPEG files into Movie Factory and have it make the DVD. That's what works great for me.

It's a combination that's inexpensive and gives impressive results.

Stay Away
Take my word, stay away. This program has bugs.

It can create VCD on a CD-R with a CD-R drive.
You don't need a DVD burner to create movies you can view on your DVD player; A VCD is burned on a CD, you can only burn about an hower of video but you don't need a DVD burner. If you burn several short videos it is easy to create a custom interactive menu. This program doesn't do anything but burn videos, it doesn't burn music CD, it doesn't burn a data CD, it does what it does well and I'm glad I have it.

Don't waste your money
I wish there was an rating option of less than zero. After spending hours trying to make this piece of crap work and upgrading my DVD-RW to a SECOND ULEAD compatable device, I've given up trying to copy VHS tapes to DVD using this. If its not telling me my input device isn't compatable then its telling me it can't calculate the space. I went back to Sonic MYDVD and in about 30 seconds I'm copying VHS tapes. Its obvious the world of computer video software is in its infancy and there's bound to be problems but when you have vendors like ULEAD claiming that their products are all things simple, then the industry will have problems converting more people.

Good author/burning, basic menu/editing, pitiful transcoding
Ulead's Moviefactory 2.0 (MF2) is among the cheapest DVD authoring tools available. The same price group also includes Cyperlink's PowerProducer and Sonic's MyDVD. But MF2 has the best features and is the most reliable among the three. I've been using it to record TV programs and burn them onto DVDs, and the results looked very close to the original broadcast with no audio sync problems. It has worked perfectly with my DVD rewritable drive (Sony DRU500AX) and has not created a single unreadable disc. I've used several brands of discs: Memorex +R 1x and 4x, -RW 1x, and +RW 2.4x, Verbatim -R 4x, Ritek -R 4x, and also generic brands like Meritline -R 2x, Princo -RW 1x, and Leda -R 4x, and they have all been burned successfully. The readability of the burned discs is also what I would expect. The more compatible -R discs were playable on all my DVD players and drives, while the +R, -RW, and +RW discs were playable on only some of them. (The compatibility of recordable DVDs is a known issue in the industry.)

To use MF2's built-in capture tool, you need a video capture card. (Mine is an ancient Pinnacle Studio PCTV tuner/capture card with BT878 chipset, with generic WDM drivers for Windows ME). MF2 is able to capture MPEG files with DVD-, VCD- or SVCD-compliance. For DVD-compliant MPEG capturing, you can only choose among the preset bitrates: CBR or VBR, 4000, 6000, or 8000 Mbps. You can choose between MPEG Layer II or LPCM audio, but you can't set the audio bitrate. You can choose between interlaced or non-interlaced capturing. Since most TV broadcasts are interlaced, capturing at interlaced mode is preferred; but be sure to choose the correct field order, or jerky motion will result. You cannot adjust advanced settings such as GOP count, number of I-Frames and P-frames, etc. to improve your capture. There is, however, a "quality" setting to improve picture quality. Set it as high as you can, but without burdening the CPU so much that it would cause dropped frames. On my Intel P4 2.4MHz, while capturing at VBR 8000 Mbps with MPEG Layer II audio 384 Kbs (my preferred settings for high-quality captures), I could set quality up to 12 (max is 15) without dropping frames, with CPU utilization at about 85% during capture. It is a good idea to monitor CPU utilization (with a tool such as CPUIdle) during capture. If it is near or at 100%, dropped frames would be very likely. Also, any activity that would increase CPU utilization, even as minor as moving your mouse, should be avoided in order to achieve no dropped frames. Video capturing is the first and most important step in DVD creation. Without a video source with good quality and DVD compliance, it would be necessary to re-encode, or transcode, the MPEG source, which is a laborious and time-consuming process.

MF2's own transcoding ability, however, is horrendous (and PowerProducer and MyDVD are even worse). Transcoding is done automatically whenever a non-compliant source is detected, or you can force MF2 to transcode. The resulted video is often filled with skipped frames and audio sync problems, indicating MF2's inability to alter video resolution and resample audio bitrate reliably. When I need to transcode, I use an external tool like TMPGEnc, and pass the resulted MPEG file back to MF2 before authoring the DVD. The best way is, of course, to avoid having to transcode altogether by obtaining a high-quality, compliant source material.

Thankfully, MF2 can author and burn DVDs reliably. You can author and burn to disc directly, or you can author to hard disk first and burn it to disc later. You can also create an ISO image of the authored files, and later burn the DVD from the image file. MF2 can also reliably detect the burning speed of a disc.

MF2 lets you add chapter stops and design menus for your DVD, but they are for the most basic purposes only. Menu design is template-based, and there is no "free-form" design. Chapter stops are added after video capture, either manually or automatically at an adjustable time interval (some software can create chapter stops during capture, but not MF2). You are only limited to adding a main menu and a chapter menu on your DVD. You cannot create additional screens for your own special purposes. You can, however, create "slide shows" -- a series of static images. There are a lot of menu templates to choose from, with a variety of background graphics and button placements. You can also import your own background graphics and add background music for your menu screen. You can also omit the menus altogether (which I often do, because the menus created with MF2 surely aren't going to impress anybody).

There are certain advanced functions that MF2 and other products in its price range cannot do, such as adding multiple audio tracks, subtitle tracks, multi-angles, 5.1 audio tracks, AC-3 audio processing, and more sophisticated menu designs. Software with these features usually cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. Software with advanced video editing tools cost even more.

And MF2 is also very basic in video editing. It doesn't let you combine two video clips into one, insert transition effects, nor manipulate the audio. About the only useful thing it lets you do is extract portions of a clip.

A trial version of MF2 is available at Ulead's web site. It is fully functional for 30 days, with a limit of 20 pictures per slide show. The full version has no such limit.

Ulead also released a patch for MF2 on 8/22/03, notably adding PAL capture ability and fixing a few bugs. ... Read more