Month: August 2014

CherryTree Excellent Cross Platform Notes Organizer

CherryTree is an open source cross platform notes organizer with numerous features. Crucially it stores notes in xml (or sqlite) files and has numerous export and import options.

CherryTree is two pane and hierarchical. Nodes and subnodes are used to organize notes. A wide range of formatting options make it possible to change the look of everything stored and kept. If it is used for programming code many syntax highlighting options are present with the option to have the notes in a “codebox” as shown in the screen shot above (Edit—>Insert codebox or Ctrl+Alt+C). Everything from C++ to php, LaTex … Read more

CopyQ Clipboard Powerhouse

CopyQ is one of the more powerful clipboard utilities available. It offers several ways to manage and work with clipboard items, be they text or images.

Working with the usual Ctrl+C CopyQ keeps items ordered in a list. This can disabled via it’s tray icon or Ctrl+Shift+X. Click on its tray icon to see the program’s main window. The last item copied is always on top and of course in Windows’ own clipboard. The items stored can be moved up and down to bring them to the top and clipboard items can be moved to new tabs (drag them) as … Read more

Linux Not (Never?) Ready For The Desktop

The idea that Linux is to be an alternative to Windows for the desktop is mentioned every so often. It is said that an average user can cut ties with Microsoft for good and plunge into the world of Linux at home. This has been the subject of 1000s of articles and tutorials. Times have changed and it is of course much easier to get (download) Linux iso files, burn them to a CD and try or install one of many Linux distributions. The old geeky days of command line installs and indecipherable screens are mostly behind us. Once installed … Read more

Silly Name Cute Sticky Notes

Despite the perhaps silly and generic name Cute Sticky Notes is a useful desktop sticky notes freeware. The install process is a bit different and somewhat overkill in that it checks online to verify the md5 hash of  its own exe just downloaded and also deletes the setup file after installation is complete, to – as it says – reduce chances of malware.

A default note is launched with the program, new notes can be added by clicking the + on the top right of a note, right clicking on a note or the program’s tray icon. Notes can fold, … Read more

Honeyview Is An Useful Image Viewer

Honeyview is an image viewer made by the developers of the Bandizip archiver. Therefore it is not surprising that it is possible to view images inside zip, rar, tar, alz, lzh or 7z archive formats without extracting them.

Honeyview requires the user to load a folder via a right click anywhere in the program window or the left most button on the bottom controls. Then it lets the user view the images in several way, like fit in window and fit to width but also “Smart double page” which made no difference or didn’t work in testing png and jpg … Read more

Notation Is A Simple Note Taker

Notation is a lightweight and simple note taker not too dissimilar to CintaNotes. Its interface can be called minimalist and its features focused on one task. Perhaps crucially Notation doesn’t insert text via a shortcut, it only creates a new note.

At first install the program checks if its default ‘New Note’ shortcut or hot key is used by the system and offers the user a change from the default Win+N. The New Note and Search (default Win+Shift+F) hot keys can be changed anytime and even disabled in Notation’s settings (Edit —> Settings).

To add notes one starts by typing … Read more

ClipMe To Manage The Windows Clipboard

A new entry in the clipboard management software category is ClipMe (not the first software or app to use that name?). It is currently at the 0.1.0 beta stage and there is potential for development and lots more to come. At this time ClipMe is basic and does not do all that much. However it is functional even as is.

Use Windows’ usual Ctrl+C to capture text, files and images that are stored in ClipMe’s database. Bring up the manager (Ctrl+Shift+O by default, configurable via the Preferences) to view them and their size. Hover over any captured image in the … Read more

Hddb: Search Done Quickly

Hddb is another option for those seeking to have a lightweight search utility. Hddb stands for Hard disk database and similar to Locate32 in that it builds a database and uses it to present results. The program interface is similar to Everything however.

At first start a database is built and this takes seconds only. There is an option to rebuild the database any time and also to clean it as if to start over. Folders can be set to be ignored by Hddb by adding an empty file called _hddbignore in them. In Tools —> Options —> Database there … Read more

PhotoDemon Is A Full Featured Image Editor

PhotoDemon is a portable and relatively small – less than 17MB unzipped – image editor which happens to be open source too. Most, if not all, features expected when working with images are present here. Plus there is also a Batch process mode available via the File menu (or Ctrl+B). A film strip area shows all open images.

PhotoDemon can import directly from the clipboard, cameras and scanners and also from URLs. Mouse and keyboard shortcuts for zoom make it easy to view details. The Image menu features most of what is expected like Resize, Crop, Rotate, and Flip plus … Read more