Events

August 8, 2004

Welcome to the latest issue of Argentum Newsletter. This issue will bring you up to date with what we have done over the recent weeks to further improve our software and services. As always we would love to hear your feedback at .

Sincerely,

Argentum Corporation,
http://www.argentuma.com/
(206) 337-1724

MoodBook 2. Exclusively!
A quick note to web-masters and web-page owners.
Argentum Backup. Keeping Zip files manageable.

MoodBook 2. Exclusively!

There've been a lot of development work with respect to MoodBook for the recent few months, and we're now ready to publicly present a pre-release version of MoodBook 2. This newest release features numerous improvements along with a number of important innovations:

Pictures

MoodBook is now able to draw JPEG images on the desktop. This prepares MoodBook for a traditional oil-painted fine art. Soon you'll be able to download the world's best works of painted art, and place it on your desktop easily. The fine art paintings in JPEG format are imaged with a surrounded black and dark gray frames to create natural look and feel of the art exposition, just as in the art gallery.

Additionally, MoodBook now comes with a built-in 1.2 MB fine arts basic pack which includes 25 fine art images for your desktop, ranging from renaissance to baroque to impressionism to modernism and more. Leonardo da Vinci, Sebastiano Ricci, Nicolas Poussin, Vincent van Gogh, Vasily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, and more! Unfortunately, this pack has increased the installation package of MoodBook up to 2.5 MB. Fortunately, the art in this pack looks great!

Colors

We have changed the way backgrounds are colored. By default, they are now less saturated and less luminated, and overall less contrasting. We tried to match the default settings to as many monitors as possible. Let us know () if you like the new backgrounds and how they can further be improved. Unfortunately, different monitors may have different gamma settings, and for some monitors these new settings may look rather dark or dim, so let us know if you like the new coloring!

Additionally, the main image from the center is now embossed into the background to create a nice artistic effect. It visibly fills the unused blank areas of the background. Still, we tried to make it as non-intrusive as possible.

Why wait? Download now!

http://www.moodbook.com/mb.exe

A quick note to web-masters and web-page owners.

You can get full versions of MyFiles, Backup, and Coolbase, and any of MoodBook art packs for free if you link to our web-site from your web-site. You can get the full version of any of our products for free, in exchange for a permanent link to the product page from your web-site, which must first be approved. If your site is information-intensive, and is listed with popular search engines, especially Google, then there is a good chance that your link will be approved. You will have to place a few short lines of text along with the link, and optionally a small picture. There are additional requirements for this option, so you first need to contact us to discuss specific details about your link. For additional information take a look at:

http://www.argentuma.com/notices.html

Argentum Backup. Keeping Zip files manageable.

When you set a task to compress files, Argentum Backup creates a Zip file in the destination folder that contains all the compressed source files. It is best to keep these Zip files smaller than 1 GB in size.

Efficiency. If you have a backup task that is compressing lots of files into a single Zip file, the Zip file will get quite big. This makes the future compression and decompression activities on this Zip file take longer. The length of time needed to update files inside a large Zip file grows with the size of the Zip file.
Safety. If one of the files inside the Zip file gets corrupted during update, there is a danger of the entire Zip file becoming unusable. Keeping the Zip files smaller, you will reduce the risk of losing other files.
Space. When updating files in the Zip backup copy, Argentum Backup makes a copy of the original Zip file into a temporary file and makes the updates to this file. On successful compression, it deletes the original Zip file and renames the temporary file to the Zip file. So you need enough space on the destination drive to hold the original Zip file and the temporary file. For all removable drives Argentum Backup uses the Windows temporary folder for the temporary Zip file instead of the destination drive. For some devices this may slow down the process since the temporary file has to be copied to and from the drive, however this makes backups to CD/DVD writing devices much faster. This also enables you to use the full capacity of the removable drive. The latter is especially useful when backing up to low-capacity storage devices such as the USB flash memory drives.

Regards,