We want to continue the tradition this year but instead of just writing to software companies that we think might fit we would like to do it different this year. We are asking you to leave a comment with software that you would like to see in the giveaway. We will take your suggestions and contact the companies that produce these software program to see if they are willing to participate in the giveaway.

We cannot guarantee that the software companies that you mention will donate some of their products but we will do our best to convince them that it’s a win-win situation for all sides. Leave a comment below if you would like to see a software program or developer included.

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That’s a tough field to compete against and any email client would have to offer something unique to the user. It does not necessarily have to be a feature that no one else has, it can also be great support or great automatism or anything else that is seen by a user as something that makes the software invaluable.

The Bat is a professional email client. This becomes obvious for the first time during installation where you will be asked where you want to store the account data which should not be confused with the installation directory of the email client. Every account can be placed in a different location. Support are POP3, IMAP4 and MAPI protocols.

One of the most important aspects of email clients is the ability to import settings and emails from other clients. The Bat provides an extensive set of import and export options. It can import email messages from generic eml, msg or unix mailboxes but also from specific email clients such as Mozilla Thunderbird, Microsoft Office Outlook or Microsoft Outlook Express. Extensive import options are also available for the Address Book which can import contact information directly from Microsoft products and various other formats like LDIF (Thunderbird can export into this format), vCards or plain text.

You need to add the email accounts manually on the other hand. Most settings however are automatically filled by The Bat. It is for instance possible to add a new Gmail account in a few easy steps with minimal user interaction.

The Bat has been designed for power users and professionals. Yes, regular users can make use of the email client as well and they will be perfectly happy with it but its options to automate and configure excel most – if not all – other email clients.

Here is but one example. Each mail folder in The Bat can be configured with its own unique properties. This can be email templates but more importantly a unique identity. It is possible to set a From Name and From Address for every folder in the bat so this is always being used for mail in that folder. (no more having to remember to picking the right email account before sending the mail)

Email templates are another interesting feature. Unlike signatures email templates can be used to fill out parts of emails that are used regularly. The Bat comes with a few predesigned templates for replying, forwarding or reading confirmations but also with the means of creating sophisticated email templates for virtually any purpose.

What else do you get?

• Hardware Tokens: The Bat! Professional is an email client that offers secure authentication on POP3/SMTP servers using hardware tokens and transparent, on-the-fly encryption of the email message base, address books and configuration files.
• Built-In Backup and Restore: Automated email backups can be configured in the email client.
• Plugins: Plugins expand the functionality of the email client further.
• Internal PGP implementation based on OpenSSL.
• Anti-virus defense: The bat does not start scripts automatically and uses its own html rendering engine.
• Smart Sorting Office: A powerful filtering system.
• Message Parking: Protect messages so that they can not be deleted.
• Microsoft Exchange Connectivity

The Bat offers a wealth of features that you cannot find in other email clients. It is highly configurable and can automate many processes to aid the user in his daily routine.

You can download a free fully working trial version of The Bat (Home or Professional) from the company’s website. This is probably the best way to test the client to see if it suits your needs. My bet? It will.

You can win one of five licenses for The Bat Professional by writing a comment. Let us know which email client you are using currently.

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Display Fusion can be downloaded as a free version from the developer’s website with limited functionality. The pro version of Display Fusion can be ordered as well on the same website. The version comparison between Display Fusion and Display Fusion Pro list the features that are only available in the Pro version including wallpaper rotation, custom hotkeys or the fine tuning of the background image position.

The main feature of Display Fusion is to display wallpapers on multiple desktops. The user may display different wallpapers on each desktop or use one wallpaper that spans across all of them. Each computer monitor connected to the computer system is displayed in Display Fusion’s main interface.

The user can load wallpapers from his computer or Flickr and make them the default wallpaper for the computer monitor. Display Fusion Pro provides access to background image positioning which can be used to fine tune the location of the wallpaper on the monitor. It’s also possible to use one of the seven display modes that range from stretching the image to fitting the width or height while maintaining the aspect ratio of the image.

Users of Display Fusion Pro can enable wallpaper rotation in the same interface. They can either add a list of wallpapers from their computer or get their wallpapers directly from Flickr.

Images can be grabbed from Flickr users, groups or by searching for text. The wallpapers set will then be used to rotate the computer’s wallpaper in a time interval specified by the user. One interesting option is to freeze a wallpaper. This will stop the process of rotating wallpapers and make the current one the default wallpaper.

Display Fusion comes with window management features as well which have been specifically designed for multi-monitor systems. Windows can be easily moved between computer monitors including maximized windows. It is furthermore possible to position windows on the same computer monitor. It is for instance possible to center a window on the current monitor or to snap it to one of the monitor’s edges.

One main benefit of Display Fusion Pro is the ability to configure custom window sizing and moving hotkeys. Other interesting features include Window Snapping with the option to exclude applications from it or maximized window dragging between computer monitors.

The newest Beta of Display Fusion Pro enabled another long requested feature to the application. Users can enable a taskbar on every computer monitor. The feature is still beta but it already provides two possibilities for users. The first is to display a Display Fusion Taskbar on additional monitors that is showing all windows like the taskbar on the main computer monitor. The second option is to only display the windows that are open on each monitor.

Jon Tackabury is regularly updating his website Binary Fortress with new information about Display Fusion and other software projects.

Five licenses for Display Fusion Pro are up for grabs. Just reply in the comments and let us know that you want one.

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Today’s giveaway is one of the few software products that I have bought. I usually rely on free software but this one is in my opinion the best of its kind. Newsbin Pro is a binary newsreader. It handles downloads from the Usenet. I really do not want to get into details about the Usenet in this thread, only this much: You do need access to a Usenet server to work with Newsbin Pro. One reliable (and many say the best) Usenet provider is Giganews which I use for several years as well.

The Newsbin Pro client has been developed over years and several useful features have been added to it. But first things first. If you start the Usenet client for the first time you have to add a Usenet server and some groups of that server to the client. The useful options begin right at this stage by providing SSL support, slave and fill servers and header compression. The maximum amount of connections can be configured during server setup as well.

Groups can be added in the Groups > Add Groups menu. The client will download all groups available on the server and provides filters to find the desired groups easily.

The interface can be customized beyond what is usually possible. All window elements can be positioned for maximum screen estate. Newsbin Pro uses tabs to display the additional data. The bottom window can for instance contain the download queue, downloaded files, failed files, status, thumbnails (if you are downloading images) and more. That’s very efficient because everything is accessible in the main interface.

Newsbin Pro provides access to several features that reduce the work of the user. It includes for example automatic rar and par processing, split-file processing, automatic header updates, extensive options to sort downloads into folders, support of mp3 id3v2 tags, an image viewer and download prioritization.

It obviously supports the common features of Usenet clients like nzb integration, speed limits, extensive filters and ban options.

Support is fast and good. I did encounter problems after moving from one computer to another but they were quickly solved by the support team and the crowded forum. Linux users will be happy to know that the forum has a Linux section as the client is apparently running fine under Wine. Windows users with 32-bit or 64-bit editions of 2000, XP or Vista will also be able to run the software.

Five licenses for Newsbin Pro are up for grabs. All you need to do is reply in the comments. It would be nice if you would mention your current Usenet provider and client that you are using and what you think of them.

Update: The guys at Giganews spotted the post and are sponsoring five one month Diamond accounts. These accounts will be given to five additional users who commented on the thread.. Please note that you need to signup at Giganews and mail me their Giganews username which I pass on to make sure that they do not pay for the first month (there is no obligation to after that month). You should also note that you need to be at least 18 years of age to signup for the account.

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We will start tomorrow with a review of Kaspersky Internet Security 2009. Yes that’s right, you can win copies of this excellent software program tomorrow.

We have 20 confirmations so far from software companies who have donated their software for the Christmas Giveaway and are confident that we will be able to fill the last four spots easily. Those users who suggested software programs to include in the last article will be delighted to hear that we were able to get some of them for the giveaway.

The easiest way to follow the Giveaway is by following the Ghacks Christmas Giveaway tag which will be used to tag all posts of it.

A friend of mine is currently designing a logo for the competition which will hopefully be ready in the coming days. Make sure you spread the word about the Giveaway to help making it a huge success for everyone.

The best aspect of it is that I do want to win most programs of the giveaway myself, hehe.

Rules:

Well there are not many rules for the giveaway. Anyone can participate only once per day. The winners will be drawn randomly from the list of commenters and notified the next day per email. Some information is required for the registration process that I will submit to the software developer. This usually means the email address and a username. By participating in the giveaway you allow me to do that.

Winners have 48 hours to claim their prize. If they fail to do so the license will go back into the pool and be given away again on December 24.

If you have any questions or suggestions let me know. You can still suggest software products that should be part of the giveaway.

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