Reviewer, 2008-08-25 08:52:00

Minos Album turns a set of photos into an attractive 3D realistic page-flipping musical album.

Pros: This application is quite a useful one, when it comes to create any type of e-publication, e-brochure, e-book and digital photo album. You can easily develop a 3D album without any HTML or programming knowledge using this tool. Unlimited number of pages can be added to the digital album and can use pictures with 15 different picture effects. Best part of the application is that it provides flexibility in terms of input file format and supports 45 different picture formats. The application comes with an array of feature and functionalities viz. page-flipping, thumbnails, enlarging photos, printing photos, stand alone execution file compiling, web embedding, adding music, adding icon for output executable files, photo jpeg quality control, compressing the album to a .zip file, adjust flipping speed, password protection and adding text on pages to make your own customized photo album. The application also provides the facility to add flexible alpha pages inside the album and move easily between pages by providing the page number at the top. A wide range of page sizes are available to look into. You can also customize the keyboard keys, like "Right arrow key", "Left arrow key", "Enter key" and "Backspace key", for flipping the pages in the album. The application transforms the set of photos into a single Shock Wave File (.swf) format, making a complete album out of it. The album can be of great help where some blog websites allow only one file to be uploaded. You can test and play the album`s background music or a flip sound file directly using this tool. You can easily update new languages using the language editor. The application also allows you to have picture name or picture title appear on the page in the album.

The tool runs on Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista and requires Pentium 400 MHz or higher, 64 MB of RAM and 30 MB of disk space.

Cons: The application only takes picture files as input files. It does not allow text or any other sort of data as input.

Overall: Quite an exciting experience, having all photos in a single .swf file, working like an electronic album, this tool is quite useful and simple to use. The application is very much user friendly and fast, deserves a 4 stars rating.