RGdot

Month: October 2016

70 Ways To Save The Earth

As a follow up much earlier post here on RGdot I was contacted about an extended list that we can all use as reference. Some very simple like turning off lights when not in use to sometimes not so easy ones like using organic products the list includes 70 things we can all do. A few like using less packaging requires more consumers becoming conscious and vocal to influence change but doing even one or few of the list will help the environment.

The full list, courtesy of Greenmatch UK, is at http://www.greenmatch.co.uk/70-ways-to-save-the-earth

October 31, 2016
Notes With AnnoPad Google Chrome Extension

AnnoPad (version:1.5.3) or URL Specific Notepad – AnnoPad to mention its full name is a Google Chrome extension that saves notes in a drop down accessible via its icon much the same way as many other extensions.

The interface is simple, click on the icon and add a new note. The URL of the current page is automatically saved with the note. The note can be formatted in bold or italic and be an unordered or ordered numbered list. Notes are saved automatically and clicking the back button takes the user back to the notes list.

It is possible to assign a category to a note however the notes list interface does not show the category. The category is therefore only currently useful in the as you type incremental search. The same search of course finds text in the notes’ content as well. When a page or site is open notes can be filtered to those with a matching address. Saved notes can also be displayed by newest, oldest, page ascending and page descending. The latter two refer to the URLs associated with saved notes.

AnnoPad’s settings are Export to TXT, Export to PDF and Delete.

October 31, 2016
(Un)colored Is A Modern Text Editor

(Un)colored (version: 0.9.1) is a cross platform open source freeware or donationware text editor. It is currently tagged as beta.

It provides a distraction free interface with a toolbar or menu only becoming visible when the user hovers near the top of the window. It also features shortcuts to type or move through a document like Ctrl+1 for a XL header type text and Ctrl+Shift+C to clear formatting. A list of the shortcuts can be seen via the top menu.

Selecting any text will also highlight the toolbar to format the text. Clicking Alt is the alternative method of doing the same.

What makes (Un)colored more modern is support for emojis and its embed feature. Youtube, SoundCloud and others can be embedded directly into a document.

A document can be saved in HTML or markdown format. The former supports themes, as in the saved HTML document can have different font sizes or colors. Currently there are four themes, Attitude, GitHub Style, Horizon and White Room.

As the author warns that (Un)colored can trigger antivirus warning, it did so on the Windows 10 machine it was tested on. Avast Virus Lab analyzed and returned a false positive (see screenshot). The more people use it the less likely this will happen in the future.

It is available for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows 7 (installer or portable) or newer and only in 64-bit format.

October 28, 2016
SaMotion: Minimalist To Do List

SaMotion (version: 1.11 Build 325) is a minimalist and portable task manager or more simply a to do list. Just download and extract the exe, then double click it.

The program offers a dark or light theme and nothing else except categories and tasks indented. Hovering shows the + icon to add either a category or task, only one level deep. Clicking on an existing category or task makes its title or text editable. The other program settings are docking to the left or right and staying on top. The .sm file extension can be associated with the program as this is the format the lists are saved in. A task can be color coded to any one of green, orange or red colors by clicking immediately to the left of an item.

Lists or projects as they are called are encrypted (Blowfish 448Bit) and the list can be exported to a password protected PDF.

The program could use enhancements that still keep it minimalist. Two such features or improvements could be support for dates and better handling of longer text. In the screenshot above the longer item just disappears without any indication.

SaMotion runs on Windows 7 and newer.

October 26, 2016
TreeProjects is now free!

TreeProjects is a notes organizer, a very powerful one, that I became a fan of many years ago. It had started life as the free Smereka and grew to a full featured outliner and organizer. I wrote a brief review of it in 2011. It has many features that made and make it complete like tagging, linking nodes, global search and reminders.

After years of no development Yaroslav has made the last version, 2.9.4, freely available and paying for a licence becomes optional, if you want to help him.

October 10, 2016
Light No Frills Clipboard Capture With clipLogger

At version 0.3 clipLogger is a new, beta software that takes a no frills approach to capturing and storing clipboard content.

Download and extract contents to a folder, the program will create a clipLogger_settings.ini file in the same folder. Using the usual Ctrl+C text content is captured and listed with a time stamp. Files copied or dropped into the program widow will have their full paths captured. It is possible to uncheck one or the other so only text or file names are captured.

The interface is very minimalist. The program settings include system settings like fonts and start up and close to tray behaviour. The program can also backup to a text file but that is of little use as the backup file resides in the same folder with no way to configure location or back up schedule.

A bug seems to duplicate (or more) captured content and the developer does allude to it. clipLogger is one to follow and hope that it continues to be developed.

clipLogger does not requires installation and is around 130KB unzipped. It requires .NET framework.

October 4, 2016