Most people have at one time or another found the need to translate text from a Web page or document into another language. Although there are free tools that can help, the most popular being Google ...

Way back in my youth, I can remember TV guru Tony Buzan expounding the virtues of mind mapping, employing diagramming techniques to help visualise and (in theory) simplify complex ideas and concepts. You know the kind ...

If you've been misinformed, you might think that Google Docs is a site you can visit for medical advice to cure any ailments. Thorny problems such as: "Doctor, doctor, I feel like a pair of curtains, ...

When it comes to voice recognition, few are as experienced or accomplished in the field as Dragon. The NaturallySpeaking series now includes version 9.5, recently updated with all-important Vista compatibility and in this particular case, a ...

It's not often that you get something for nothing, especially when it's from a software giant like Microsoft. But that's exactly what's on offer if you sign up for the company's new online service, Office Live. ...

OpenOffice.org is an office suite you can download completely free of charge, which is quite the bargain, especially when you consider that it's not a load of old tat. Not even close, in fact. This is ...

If you're someone who wants to do their computing entirely on the move, then the growing proliferation of portable applications could be just what you're looking for. These are utilities that are stored, installed and run ...

Unless you're a natural linguist who can master half a dozen languages at will and get by in a dozen others, there's always going to be a time when you need a translator, whether to read ...

The name is a bit naff, but TOMMIE - short for 'Total Office Management Made Incredibly Easy' - does have a serious purpose. Moreover, if you're after shared office management tools in a format that's both ...

When last we looked at MYOB Accounting Plus we found it to be a very capable small business accounting package, best suited to users with existing bookkeeping expertise rather than complete beginners. Since then it's been ...

Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) has become such a standard for distributing documents that it's about to become an ISO standard. It's ideal for sharing documents you don't want people to alter, because unless you have ...

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) doesn't come cheap, especially packages from the likes of SAP and PeopleSoft which are aimed squarely at enterprise buyers with deep pockets. Mamut Enterprise, however, is an exception to that rule. Just ...

Among those of us who've worked in offices - or even just seen pictures of them - the paperless version has long been recognised as a cruel joke. Rather than turning the workplace into a paper-free ...

The open source world offers programs in most of the key application areas; for example, OpenOffice as an integrated office package and the Gimp as a bitmap editor. Now there's a desktop publishing offering, too, called ...

It's been four years in development, but it looks like Microsoft's Office developers have used their time well. Office 2007, in any of its eight editions, is quite a new broom and the almost-top-of-the-line Enterprise edition ...

When you make a telephone query to a national company and provide your name and postcode, you expect the person handling the call to have rapid access to every detail of your account. It's the way ...

PDF is now the most common format for document archiving and the distribution of electronic manuals, brochures and FAQs. Furthermore, it's rapidly becoming the preferred format for delivering finished copy to commercial print shops. Mind you, ...

TAS Zebra is an unusual name for an accounting program, but the program itself is a tried-and-tested implementation of traditional double-entry bookkeeping. Where it differs is in pricing: less than £50 for a program accredited by ...

FileMaker won itself a reputation early in its life as the epitome of easy-to-use, flat-file databases. Although it now has some relational capabilities as well, it's retained its simplicity of operation while adding in useful extra ...

If you think speech recognition might be the way for you to interact with your computer, there really is only one choice of product to try. That isn't an unequivocal recommendation but a statement of fact. ...