Editor's review for from soft32.com for Winfilter :
Winfilter can help you hide desktop icons, files, folders, and even drives on your computer. It can also restrict others from modifying your settings like the wallpaper, screensaver, resolution, and so on. This program does a very similar job to the Group Policy Editor program that's distributed along with Windows XP Professional.
Winfilter's user interface is quite easy to use. The items which you can customize are displayed as a tree. The first level of this tree represents the category of tasks that you can accomplish using Winfilter. There's a separate category for customizing program items (from the Start menu), Start menu, desktop items, quick launch, etc.
The features which seem to be the most useful are the possibility to disable Active Desktop, to remove tabs from the Display dialog (Control Panel), to prevent users from viewing hidden files and folders, and to disable Task Manager. Another rather simple feature caught my eye. It's possible to protect the program with a password.
Pluses: Winfilter supports monitoring the current policy settings. When you press the "Monitor" button, the program becomes invisible, but it continues to monitor the current filter policy. You can re-activate the program anytime by pressing CTRL+F12. Since I'm talking about policies, you should also know that it's possible to load or save the program's filter settings.
Editor's review for from soft32.com for NewsMonitor :
NewsMonitor is an application designed to help you keep up-to-date with the news in all your areas of interest.
This program can be used as an automated news reader. You can use it to retrieve the latest news from around the world as soon as they have been published.
Using the program is quite simple: fist of all, you need to specify a list of keywords according to which the crawler will search for news. The program will start searching for the latest news as soon as you add a new keyword or change a keyword. The news will be retrieved from some websites. Unfortunately, I couldn't find an option where I could customize the list of news Websites. The keywords can be exported or imported from XML files, but they can't be edited. You can add, edit or remove keywords.
The news will be displayed in a list containing the time of publishing, title and the exact URL. Underneath, in a larger space, you will be able to read the news' abstract. You can set the program to pop-up a balloon tips containing news. Clicking on it will open the original URL where you can read the news in full.
The news can be acquired using a scheduler which will automated the process as often as you want it. When updated news have been retrieved, the program can play a sound or display a desktop alert.