RGdot

Month: September 2010

  • Top 10 Must Have Windows Freeware

    top 10 freeware

    PowerPro

    powerpro.webeddie.com

    Briefly talked about at http://www.rgdot.com/bl/2010/03/16/powerpro-is-the-ultimate-freeware/

    Does it all and some more. Create a bar to do everything from launching programs to saving clipboard items and to scheduling systems task and lots more.

    Photoscape

    www.photoscape.org/ps/main/index.php

    Reviewed at http://www.rgdot.com/bl/2009/04/20/photoscape-for-all-your-image-editing-needs/

    Photo and image editor and viewer with many features on a clean interface.

    VirtuaWin or Dexpot

    virtuawin.sourceforge.net or www.dexpot.de/index.php?lang=en

    Dexpot reviewed at http://www.rgdot.com/bl/2008/12/17/dexpot-virtual-desktops/

    Virtual desktop manager to create different desktops with different applications open on each. Organize your oft used applications on different desktops.

    Dropbox

    www.dropbox.com

    Backup and store your files on the cloud, easily access them and their older versions on your computer and online anywhere.

    Clipboard Help+Spell

    www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/clipboardhelpandspell/index.html

    Reviewed at http://www.rgdot.com/bl/2009/03/08/clipboard-helpspell-from-donationcodercom/

    Extend the capabilities of the Windows clipboard and keep unlimited number of clipboard and notes forever.

    Notepad++

    www.notepad-plus-plus.org

    The Notepad alternative and free source code editor of choice. Open source and a must for all who write code.

    CintaNotes

    www.cintanotes.com

    Reviewed at http://www.rgdot.com/bl/2009/03/22/easily-gather-and-collect-notes-with-cintanotes

    Grab text snippets, save and tag them for future reference.

    Writemonkey

    www.writemonkey.com

    Reviewed at http://www.rgdot.com/bl/2009/05/26/writemonkey-is-soul-food-for-the-modern-writer/

    Write without distraction and work with your writing in an efficient manner.

    Locate32

    www.locate32.net

    Reviewed at http://www.rgdot.com/bl/2009/04/07/locate32-quicker-and-easier-way-of-finding-files

    Quick and easy way to index a Windows drive to search for files within it.

    Stellarium

    www.stellarium.org

    Reviewed at http://www.rgdot.com/bl/2009/11/14/stellarium-is-astronomy-central/

    More than just a hobby software, a fascinating and feature rich look at the sky right from your desktop.

  • Image Tuner Is Your Basic Image Editor

    Image Tuner Freeware

    Image Tuner is a lightweight freeware which works on images or series of images and applies a set of basic but simple and useful tasks to them. Pictures or a folder of pictures are added by dragging them into the program window or by using the Add Folder or Add Images buttons. The images will then be listed and previews of them can be seen on the top right. On the lower left a destination folder is chosen and any of the available options checked.

    Pictures can be resized to one of many preset sizes in the available drop down or to a custom size by clicking the icon immediately to the right of the drop down list.

    Images can also be converted to and from *.jpg, *.png, *.gif, *.bmp and *.tiff. The icon to the right opens up the program settings relevant to each format.

    Images can also be renamed. In the text area one can for example type “picture_” (without the quotes). This will produce output images named picture_1, picture_2 and so on.

    The Add Watermark option allows the user to browse to another image which will be overlayed or watermarked on top of the ones in the image list.

    The program settings include options for each image format such as out put quality and others, as mentioned earlier, relevant to the image format. The settings also include positioning and transparency settings for the watermark option and also the option to maintain the proportions of the original images when resizing. Additionally the choice of filters and interpolations used to generate out put images are listed and can be chosen, these include the default and common Lanczos3 and others.

    Image Tuner runs on Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, Vista and 7 including 32 and 64 bit versions.

  • AH Note: Free And Simple Notepad Alternative

    AH Note Freeware Notepad Alternative

    AH Note is a young entry in the notepad alternative universe. AH Note’s capabilities are all visible via its icons around the program interface. Its features, those not common to all simple notepad alternatives are listed below.

    Copy options to copy the current file name and path. Indent selected text by 1 column increments. Add bullet points to selected text. Add images to any text document. Zoom in and out of pages. View the page in a browser and finally convert selected or all text to lower or upper case.

    AH Note can open many text files formats and save them in its own native *.aht format in addition to *.txt, *.rtf and others. AH Note is obviously a young project, one area which makes that clear is the tool tips (hover the mouse over menu buttons). As of this review – version 1.0 – some tool tips are not properly labeled and are still the likes of ‘ToolStripSplitButton’, a mark of the programming language used to code AH Note. AH Note is one self contained executable file that doesn’t require installation, just download it and run it.

  • A Nissan Leaf Ad And A Word On Clean Power

    Nissan Leaf

    Nissan Leaf (Leading, Environmentally friendly, Affordable, Family car) begins its US roll out very soon and it will be available in some other world wide markets before a more widespread roll out. It is Nissan’s all electric car with a range of 100 miles (160 km). It has a top speed of over 140 km/h (87 mph). Its motor is rated at 80 kW (110 hp) and 280 Nm (210 lbft).

    Some responses to electric cars can be paraphrased as such:

    The electricity you are using to charge your car is produced in a non environmentally friendly manner, such as coal, so you are still polluting

    That shouldn’t diminish the importance of electric cars and additionally it is the job of the consumer and the voter to make sure electricity comes from clean sources. That is done by voting for the politicians who would make sure clean energy happens and also those would make sure that electric cars, such as the Nissan Leaf, make it to dealerships near you in mass numbers and are not dismissed or removed from the market place altogether.

  • Simple Freeware: Screenshoter And Easy Image Modifier


    Screenshoter is a basic, no-install utility to take or capture screenshots quickly and easily. Double click the program executable, choose full screen or area – to capture an area click on the area button, after choosing the area radio button, then click and hold the left mouse button and drag to choose a rectangular area – and then simply click the screenshot button. The image’s format can be changed from the default *.jpg to either *.png or *.bmp and the destination directory can be chosen too. Screenshoter’s options include controlling the name of the captured image and the quality of the *.jpg.

    Easy Image Modifier from the same author is also no-install and works by either dragging images into the program window or by using the load option from the File menu. Images can be realigned, that is they can be rotated 90 and 180 degrees or flipped horizontally and vertically and resized by pixels or by percentage. The out put format can be one of *.jpg, *.png or *.bmp. Output file name can be configured to include any combination of a numbered sequence, it’s original name or size. The destination or output directory is configurable as well. The settings menu includes options to exit the program after processing images or to load or launch the output images. There is also an ‘Additional’ option where one can choose to sort images by such criteria as date and file size. Plus other options to maintain aspect ratio when resizing, to remove meta information (such as EXIF) and to reduce or increase the output image quality.

  • Freeware FileSieve 3 Sifts Through Files And Folders


    FileSieve 3 is a small program which organizes files and folders into highly configurable destination folders. As with software of its kind it is best used for organizing large amounts of files that accumulate on a system over many download and similar sessions.

    The process or work flow of FileSieve 3 is well defined in a five numbered step process (see image). A profile and/or a list of directories can be created, saved and loaded for future sessions. These source folder(s) would contain all the files that will be sorted using FileSieve. Then a destination folder is chosen where the sifted and sorted files will be placed in. The third step is to choose method(s) and if applicable modifiers.

    A method, one of 13 that FileSieve 3 supports, defines how the chosen files are sorted and processed. These methods are themselves very configurable and it is very easy to come up with complex criteria to operate on the chosen files. Methods include:

    Sorting by attribute: Subfolders in the destination directory will distinguish files that are Read Only, Hidden, Temporary, Offline, Compressed, Normal and more.

    Biggest: The biggest file from the source directory is placed in the destination directory.

    Consolidate: All Files from the source directory are placed into the root directory of the destination folder.

    Date Stamp: Files separated into dated destination folders.

    Delimiter: Files sorted based on delimiter characters in their names, for example “-” in the file name.

    Extension: Files are separated and sorted based on their extension. Likely the most used feature of the program.

    MP3 Tag: MP3 files are sorted based on their tags such as album and song name.

    Owner: Files are sorted based on the Windows account or domain they belong to.

    Parent Rename: First or biggest file in the source directory is renamed after it’s parent directory name and placed in the destination folder.

    Smallest: Opposite of Biggest!

    A-Z: 27 directories are created (for file names starting with numbers and those starting with A to Z) and files are placed into them based on their names.

    Substring: The user chooses which position of a file name is the ‘StartIndex’ and how many characters to read from there, files are then sorted based on ‘substring’ matches.

    Word: Files are sorted based on words contained with their names.

    Once method(s) are chosen modifiers can be added to change the way the path, file name or extension of files are written in the destination. These include all lower case, word capitalization and others. Step 4 is where the user chooses to move or copy the source files. Here one can also create a simulation and preview the results in the simulation window. Step 5, the final step, lets the user limit the sorting to files within the ‘root’ of the source directory, to all files or just folders residing in the source directory.

    FileSieve 3 should run on all Windows systems, even Windows 95, but requires the .NET Framework 2.0.