Month: January 2011

  • My Calendar: Freeware Calendar And Date Utility

    My Calendar: Freeware Calendar And Date Utility

    My Calendar

    My Calendar is a small and lightweight program that shows a three month calendar and features other tools to set up and keep a schedule and birthday dates.

    Upon launch My Calendar presents today’s date. One can add notes for each day, sort of like a diary, by clicking on the date on the calendar and start typing in the Note area. When done clicking Add/Replace will save the note for that day. The note area makes it easy to paste or copy text from and to the Windows clipboard. Categories can also be assigned to notes or entries. MyNote is the default but more can be added by clicking the small + button just under the category drop down. There are further buttons to delete or rename categories and a check box to make one the default or auto selected category for new notes.

    The My Schedule tab is used for keeping a list of tasks. One chooses a time and day(s) and adds an event which is in turn added to a list. All events or schedules are shown in a simple list. Events can be removed by highlighting each and clicking the remove button.

    The Birthday Manager is easy to use and perhaps easier to organize. Birthdays are added and shown in a list but each birthday can be assigned a group (family, friends and co-workers perhaps?) A group is created much the same way as a category is created in the My Note tab described above.

    The Time Zone Converter is a simple tool to choose the current or other time zones and then get a list of times around the world. However in my test not all times were correct, specifically time differences between northern and southern hemisphere cities were off.

    The Date Time Tools provides days in between and a handful of other information between two chosen dates.

    The Digital Calendar tab lets the user switch to another view of My Calendar. This view is one that includes a digital clock and optionally a list of upcoming schedules and notes.

    Even though there is no specific information on the program’s site My Calendar should run on most Windows versions and at less than half a Mega Byte and using little RAM it can prove to be a useful download.

  • JShot: Freeware Screen Capture And Upload

    JShot: Freeware Screen Capture And Upload

    JShot

    JShot is useful if often capturing (parts) of a screen and needing not only a program that does the capturing but one that automatically uploads it to the web. JShot can capture full screens, active windows, rectangular sections, the task bar and the desktop among others. It has a built-in editor with undo and redo support in addition to adding text and other effects to the captured image. The image editor does a lot more including but not limited to lines and shapes and other operations like resize, rotate, crop, merge and blur.

    JShot comes pre-configured to upload anonymously to imageshack but out of the box it also supports uploading to FTP, Skype, Twitter, Picasa and Dropbox. These require setting up login details using the configuration wizard (accessed via the Ctrl+F12 keys by default). For example the Dropbox plugin tries to open the dropbox site and add the capture to the your Dropbox’s private or public folder. The aforementioned configuration wizard (also accessible via the tray icon) includes settings for such things as capture delay – how long after clicking to capture does it actually happen – output format – default is *.png – and multi-monitor support and more.

    Plugins can be developed to support other sites to upload to. JShot keeps a history of of its captures (View—>History). When installing the user can choose to integrate it to the Windows right click or context menu. JShot requires Java Runtime Environment 1.6 and is free for personal use.

  • Makagiga: Multi-Featured Free Open Source Utility

    Makagiga: Multi-Featured Free Open Source Utility

    Makagiga

    Makagiga has a simple interface where it attempts to provide an everything at your finger tips type of experience. It comes with widgets to populate its window. The widgets include To-do, Notes, Calendar and Internet Search. Additional widgets can be downloaded (Edit—>Get More Widgets) and include the likes of a Digital Clock and Countdown timer, among others. Somewhat confusing it also supports plugins and no real distinction is made with its widgets. A separate menu (Tools—>Add or Remove Plugins) and window is used to download and use plugins such as an advanced text editor but then to get even more plugins one can click the Get More Plugins link on this same Add or Remove Plugins window. These additional plugins include such things as a chart generator, a Wolfram|Alpha query and others.

    The ability to subscribe to RSS feeds comes already built-in and therefore Makagiga can be used as a news feed as well.

    Makagiga requires Java and Windows XP at a minimum. Separate portable (use the run-portable.exe file) and Linux versions are available as well.

  • Calendar Magic: Useful, Fun And Educational Freeware

    Calendar Magic: Useful, Fun And Educational Freeware

    Calender Magic

    Calendar Magic is not a new program, it is at version 17.7 now and its history can be traced back to 1995. Its interface is not the most elegant but that doesn’t detract from what it offers.

    Some of its features follow but there is more and playing with the program indeed reveals lots more.

    Quick Notes for holding text. 15 numbered sheets are available which can be renamed to more descriptive titles.

    Reminders. Three types are available, one which defines a repeatable day and month alarm. A second that lets the user pick things like every first Sunday of the month and lastly a third type to set alarms for day(s) of the month.

    A reaction timer and stop watch (See Time menu)

    A ‘This is your life’ feature (see Dates menu) which provides a lot information about any birth date.

    Gregorian and 30 other calendars from the likes of Persian Astronomical to Baha’i and more. These can be viewed in ‘dual’ or ‘comparison’ mode to compare days with the Gregorian. Additionally a date conversion tool to show what any date would be in other calenders. Also a ‘number of days between’ calculator.

    A list of holidays or ‘observed’ days for many countries.

    Several ‘Planning Calendars’ that lay out dates in a way useful to bankers, teachers and others.

    Solar and lunar phase and eclipse data for any year up to the year 3000. Sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moonset for many locations.

    World clock to show up to 12 world times together. Many more current local times including distance calculations.

    A rather comprehensive unit converter. Many calculators (scientific, fraction, statistic, Body Mass Index, Ovulation and others) in the Utilities menu.

    Discovering Calendar Magic’s features is a fun exercise. Virtually every screen can be printed and Calendar Magic should run on all Windows versions going back to Windows 95.