The Hat

Many people probably remember to, at some point of their life, resorted to methods like picking a name of a hat or chossing a paper from someone's hand in order to decide the order of something in their lifes like, who will go first or who gets who in multiple events.

The Hat is the electronic equivalent of that, using software to decide who goes first and who goes last in a series of names, where the only thing you need to do is write the names of the participants and decide whether to draw individual names or pairs of names for raffles, sweepstakes, and ongoing contests.

The interface is simple to use as it comes with a icon based toolbar with buttons to add, edit and remove, as well as the traditional Help and Options ones and a large button with shuffle on it on the bottom, though you need to remember that it will only accept .txt files, so no PDF's or anything like that.

The biggest disapointment came in the shape of it's visual and sound effects that bother the eyes and annoy the ears, with many users chossing to turn these off before using the program, furthermore when importing names from local documents, the program automatically removes the old names from the list and adds the ones from the imported file.

So, while visually it's a great failure, it's basic function is the best in all similar software using code to simply the process that's normally done manually and annoyingly, so whether your a teacher checking student's presentations or a coach deciding the order of practices or just a parent organizing groups of tasks, this software is perfect for you, so use it and enjoy it.

Rating: 4/5

http://www.harmonyhollow.net/hat.shtml