Leave your mark

Signature tools are an efficient and increasingly popular way of personalising e-mail or documents that one sends across the Net, which has many ramifications -- from lending a personal touch to online activity to automating internal processes.

Unlike ``actual'' written signatures, online signatures can consist of favourite quotes, one-liners, pithy statements, et al. This week, we take a look at some signature generating tools for e-mail.

Signature Program 3.0a

This software lets you sign Windows documents such as those created with Word and Excel. The signature looks hand-written and can be stored, printed, and e-mailed as part of the document.

Anyone receiving the document can verify if it was you that signed the document. The recipients can also verify that the document has not been altered in any way after the signature was added.

Signature Program is intended to help automate internal company processes such as signing invoices, price authorities, doctor's orders, and other electronic documents.

It is particularly effective in organisations that have adopted electronic mail. Office, shop floor and hospital workstations are typical examples.

Embedding a secure signature provides complete security over who last approved the document, and allows auditors to verify that the document has not been altered in any way.

Shareware

0.85 M

Platforms: Win 95/98, Win NT 3.51, Win NT 4.0

www.regnoc.com

Sigfile 0.31

Sigfile is a short and simple random signature generator for Windows 95 that automatically includes your e-mail, URL, name and can spam-block e-mail for news postings.

Freeware

0.20 M

Platforms: Win 95/98, Win NT 4.0

www.come.to/fire-on-ice

Quotes 2001

Quotes is a fun utility that lets you manage your signature files, categorise and use quotations in your e-mail, and even display a changing quotation on your screen saver.

Freeware

1.87 M

Platforms: Win 95/98, Win 2000, Win NT 4.0

www.qliner.com

Quotable Quotes 3.0

Quotable Quotes is a smart e-mail signature customisation program that allows you to insert a famous quote as part of your e-mail signature.

You can browse through the database of over 2,000 quotes and select one of your liking. The program also supports text and rich text format signatures.

Shareware

4.86 M

Platforms: Win 95/98, Win NT 4.0

www.geocities.com/neotech

QuipSig 2.0

QuipSig is designed to change signature files for any Internet e-mail clients that use an ASCII/Text file for the signature. These include Eudora, Netscape Mail and News, News Xpress, Pegasus and Outlook Express.

This version includes .rtf file support in order to use QuipSig with Microsoft Outlook's autosignature file. A random quip can be inserted in the signature automatically at timed intervals or after each message that you send.

You can also search the quip file for just the right one for your upcoming message and manually insert it. The unregistered version includes a 50-quip file.

Shareware

2.61 M

Platforms: Win 3.x, Win 95/98, Win NT 4.0

www.enc.yk.net/

onSign 1.0

With onSign, you can personalise your Microsoft Word 97 and Word 2000 documents by adding your handwritten electronic signature. It is as easy as putting pen to paper, and onSign works at the speed of the digital world.

onSign is also claimed to be intelligent, as it knows exactly what you have signed, when you signed it and where. Using industry standards such as RSA and Secure Hash Algorithms, it binds your signature to documents to help prevent tampering, giving you freedom to exercise your online identity.

Freeware

3.80 M

Platforms: Win 95/98, Win 2000

www.gratisware.com

Compiled by C. Ramesh