Desktop effects like snow, water or stars are not for anybody. There seems to be a connection between users who like those effects and other things that annoy most users like animated gifs or a house decorated with blinking Christmas lights. If you belong to the group who likes those effects - or want to give the kids something to play with - you might want to check out Znow Desktop.

It is a software that can produce a variety of desktop effects and even comes with an editor to create new effects. The default application comes with about 15 desktop effects that range from snow to stars and more unique effects like northern lights, an aquarium or beer.

The effects take place on part or all of the screen and several additional visual effects can be added to make them more interesting. Three main effects can be added: Water Drops, Pixelate and Inverse.

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Today is the 20th day of the Ghacks Christmas Giveaway. We have handed out an incredible amount of software licenses already and will continue to do so until December 24. Up for grabs is Returnil Premium today which is available to anyone. Yes, that is right, no lottery today. If you want it you get it. Here is how it works out. You download Returnil Premium and visit this page that has been specifically created for the Ghacks Giveaway. There you can fill out a form to received your Returnil Premium license.

Returnil Premium is a program that can emulate the operating system in a sandbox - a virtual environment - so that changes have no effect on the system itself but only to the sandboxed copy of it. It does not require lots of computer knowledge to run, the only thing that’s out of the ordinary is the (optional) creation of a virtual partition that will be used to store data when the sandbox is active. Here are the steps on how to use the security software:

• Installation: You get some options here most notable to run the system on the hard drive or computer memory. There is also the optional setting to create a virtual partition on the computer system to store data. An alternative would be to use online storage space.
• Running Returnil: You can start Returnil after a restart. Once Returnil is started it will redirected access to the virtual system so that the actual computer system will not be harmed. You can then use whatever application you like. Keep in mind that any changes that have been made to the computer system will be undone after a restart as they have only been made in the virtual system and not the actual one. Here is an example:

  If you bookmark a page while Returnil is running it will show up in the bookmark manager. It will however be gone after a restart of the system.

• Stopping Returnil: The only way to stop Returnil is to reboot the computer system.
• Saving Data: Two ways to save data. The first is to use the virtual partition to store the data on as it will not be erased after a reboot on that partition. The second is by utilizing online storage space. You can sync bookmarks online, save files there, edit Word documents and basically do most things online.

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Creating graphics on a computer affordably can prove a difficult task, especially for images besides rasters. Some people need to create images which can be expanded on massive scales; they need a vector editing application. Adobe Illustrator CS4, the leading vector editor for Mac and Windows, costs £567… a pretty high price tag, you must agree!

Expensive software like Illustrator appears to make editing vectors simply unaffordable. Fortunately, this is untrue! Inkscape is a free, open-source and cross-platform vector editor. Whilst it will no doubt lack behind Illustrator in certain aspects, in my opinion it suffices the requirements of any non-professional graphic designer. Inkscape, for example, cannot utilise gradient meshes or have multiple strokes, or fills, for one object. Yet, it has much better support for the SVG format (utilised by Wikipedia) and beats Illustrator on several minor usability issues (Inkscape, for example, allows anchor points to be edited with a keyboard). Key features, such as the ability to trace bitmaps, are also included.

Inkscape’s interface, like that of most graphics programs, is quite complex but I find myself being able to adopt to its much quicker than I adapted from PSP to Photoshop.

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Hooking up additional input devices like keyboards, mice or tablets might not be as popular as using one set of input devices on multiple computers but it is still something that is requested quite frequently. Why would someone want to do this? There are actually a few reasons why this might be desirable. The most obvious reason is the ability to connect whiteboards, tablets alongside the usual keyboard and mouse combination. It could also be interesting for presentations where every user would get his own input device or situations that require more or less precision. Think of a gaming keyboard / mouse and a work keyboard / mouse combination.

One of the most popular solutions is the Teamplayer software by Wunderworks which is free to use for non-commercial uses. It can be used by up to three users on the same computer which means that each of them would be able to control a mouse and keyboard independently of each other. The collaborative software can be installed on computer systems running Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Each mouse pointer will be visualized by a small color dot so that they can be distinguished from each other. This is obviously not possible for the keyboard as the input will always be at the same location on the computer screen. The software does not have to be configured in any way. It places an icon in the System Tray which can be used to turn it off once it is not needed anymore.

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Five days to go before the Ghacks Christmas Giveaway ends. We have given away lots of licenses to many popular software programs and today’s program is no exception to that rule. FinePrint is a printing software that can be used to manage print jobs before they are send to an actual printer on the computer system. It is basically a tool to reduce paper and ink usage on a computer system without reducing the quality of the prints.

If you regularly print out websites or documents you must have noticed that they do not fit perfectly on paper all the time. Websites are usually to large to fit correctly on paper which will move some elements - usually those on the right side that do not fit on the print - to a second paper. This could leave you with menus that will be printed on their own paper, something that is not normally needed at all.

FinePrint offers ways to deal with those pages and a few additional features that make it an interesting software for everyone who prints out those documents regularly.

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