From...

December 14, 1999
Web posted at: 11:29 a.m. EST (1629 GMT)

by Max Green

(IDG) -- The holiday season is in full swing, and this collection of files will help you get control over the chaos. It features two shopping agents that search hundreds of sites for the best prices. If you're looking to bid on bargains, other files can help you shop at online auctions. You'll find card creators and party planners as well. And decking your desktop with a holiday screen saver could help you stay in that festive frame of mind. To browse all our holiday-theme files, click "More holiday files," link below.

Top 10 festive holiday downloads

1. Shopping Explorer: No time to hit the malls? Tell this shareware tool what you're looking for, and it searches hundreds of online shopping sites until it finds it.

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2. Click the Button: Select a product you're interested in and this free Internet shopping companion gives you price comparison from more than 300 online stores. It supports over a million products and can be automatically updated with new vendors.

3. Auction Explorer: Get in on the excitement of Internet auctions with this free search tool. Auction Express simplifies finding, watching, and bidding on items at the eBay, Amazon.com, and Yahoo auction sites.

4. Auction Tamer: This utility’s built-in browser lets you keep track of multiple online auctions by monitoring remaining time, last bid, number of bids, highest bid, quantity, and seller. It works with Amazon.com, eBay, Yahoo, MSN, Excite, and other sites.

5. FunE-Cards: Christmas Set 1: Why send the same old boxed greetings when you can create personalized holiday cards that include clip art or your own images, fonts, and background colors? You can even attach sound files. When you're finished, send your card electronically.

6. Barking Cards: With this electronic greeting-card maker (you’ll be downloading a 15-day trial version), you can sample predesigned cards or import your own graphics, text, sound, and animation. Finished cards are small enough to send by e-mail or on a floppy disk.

7. BarBack for Windows: Throw a swinging holiday party with the help of this $40 shareware program, which lets you search through more than 3000 drink recipes using any combination of name, liquor, ingredient, glass type, and recipe.

8. From Scratch: Keep track of your great-grandmother’s holiday cookie recipes with this $35 recipe database, which looks like a three-ring binder. It lets you enter an unlimited number of recipes and ingredients. You can print recipes and search by recipe name, ingredients, keywords, origin, time to prepare, instructions, notes, or nutrition information.

9. Winter Impressions Screen Saver: Have a White Christmas, even if it’s still warm enough to wear shorts where you live. See polar bears, seals, caribou, and bear cubs in typical wintery scenes, or Christmas images with this free screen saver. You will see a promotional message on your screen when the screen saver activates.

10. Twinkle Bulbs: String animated Christmas lights all around the border of your display with this $15 shareware. You can select from a variety of bulb shapes including holly, snowflakes, and snowmen. The light bulb shapes can also be changed to decorate for many other holidays.