Selenium
“Selenium is a test tool for web applications. Selenium tests run directly in a browser, just like real users do.” Easy automated Web site testing — cool, and something I’ll for sure use the next time I make a major site update
Via Web405
May 1, 2008 in Da WebDa WebDa WebDa Web | Comment
What is 2o7.net?
2o7.net is a service that apparently tracks you for software vendors. Pretty disgusting, in that the URL is supposed to appear to be 2O7.net, so that an address like 192.168.1.2O7.net gets past filters and looks safe at a quick glance. Yech.
Via Daring Fireball
Dec 28, 2007 in Mac StüffMac Stüff | Comment
Uploading From Lightroom Windows to SmugMug using SendToSmugMug
Just started playing with Lightroom, and it looks super-cool… one-step export to Smugmug would be tons of fun, and yet another good reason to graduate from Picasa.
Nov 9, 2007 in Win Stûff | Comment
Safari for Windows!
Now Windows users can run Apple’s excellent browser as well. If you want something efficient, secure, and user-friendly, then there’s now a good alternative to Firefox out there. Hopefully this will drive people away from the deeply crappy IE7.
Jun 12, 2007 in Win StûffWin Stûff | Comment
Color Oracle
“Color Oracle takes the guesswork out of designing for color blindness by showing you in real time what people with common color vision impairments will see.” Nifty!
May 18, 2007 in | Comment
Tooler
“Tooler is a unique program that allows you to create special type of shortcuts. What’s so special about them ? They have all features of the typical shortcuts, so you can move them, rename them, or change their icons. But they also allow you to easy accomplish such tasks like turning off the monitor, restarting your PC or ejecting selected CD-ROM tray.” Sounds cool to use with Launchy.
Via Lifehacker
Apr 13, 2007 in Win Stûff | Comment
Top 10: Free Computer System Recovery Tools
“Don’t pay the extortionists at the computer repair shop 800 bucks to get your data back or start up your dead computer. Plenty of free tools can help you and are available for download right now.”
Apr 13, 2007 in Mac StüffMac Stüff | Comment
How to run a Disk Scan/chkdsk/fsck and Troubleshoot your iPod
Just in case.
Apr 6, 2007 in Mac StüffMac Stüff | Comment
GanttProject
Crappy Web site. Reasonably usable, free project management application. It gets a solid “eh” in my book, which at least means I can get stuff done with it.
Mar 30, 2007 in Win StûffWin Stûff | Comment
Open Workbench
Free, open-source project management software. Looks pretty full-featured; wonder if it’s easy-to-use? Update: no, it’s not, it’s got six unlabeled panes and doesn’t let you nest tasks, although you can nest files so you can create a new file for a new project to dig to a deeper level.
Mar 30, 2007 in Win Stûff | Comment
SPRINX PTimer
“SPRINX PTimer can count and analyse Your time which You spend on particular task. It´s possible to accumulate time spent to database account and assign to one of projects. You can monitor the type of some activity within any task.” English: not so good. Functionality: looks sufficient. Price: free!
Feb 15, 2007 in Win Stûff | Comment
Ready for a New Day Launch Tour 2007
Attend a Microsoft Office 2007 launch event and get a free Office 2007 copy. That’s actually pretty compelling, especially if — like me — you consider having support for time zones in Outlook a killer app.
Jan 12, 2007 in Win Stûff | Comment
Dual Monitors: Use a Different Wallpaper on Each Desktop
This is ridiculously complicated when compared with how it’s done on a Mac. I mean, seriously, did anybody ever test this out in the likey circumstance that the user has more than one monitor? Someone should be embarassed.
Jan 12, 2007 in Win Stûff | Comment
FaxZero
Send files for free via fax. This may come in handy.
Dec 15, 2006 in Win StûffWin Stûff | Comment
IE6 and IE7 Running on a Single Machine
“Microsoft has recently made Virtual PC 2004 a free download; we’ve taken advantage of that by releasing a VPC virtual machine image containing a pre-activated Windows XP SP2, IE6 and the IE7 Readiness Toolkit to help facilitate your testing and development. The image is time bombed and will no longer function after April 1, 2007. We hope to continue to provide these images in the future as a service to web developers.” Great idea!
Via Slashdot
Dec 1, 2006 in Win Stûff | Comment
Enhanced Data Visualization Charts in Excel
“Combine data visualization principles (Cleveland, Few, Robbins, Tufte, Wilkinson) and advanced Excel charting techniques to make enhanced Excel data visualization charts. Global environmental trend charts are used to demonstrate these data visualization principles and and enhanced Excel charting techniques.”
Via Juice Analytics
Nov 18, 2006 in Win Stûff | Comment
Tips and Tricks
Ways to get more done in Excel and Word.
Via Juice Analytics
Nov 18, 2006 in | Comment
Moneydance 2006 - The Most Intuitive Personal Finance Application
Looks much like Quicken, but perhaps easier to use and — I hope — less susceptible to data file corruption.
Nov 6, 2006 in Mac StüffMac Stüff | Comment
Buddi - Personal budget software for the rest of us
“Buddi is a personal finance and budgeting program, aimed at those who have little or no financial background. In making this software, I have attempted to make things as simple as possible, while still retaining enough functions to satisfy most home users.” But is it too simple for me? No online banking, from the looks of it.
Nov 6, 2006 in Win StûffWin Stûff | Comment
Doing more with Outlook filter and SQL DASL syntax
How to go beyond the awful Outlook filter interface and use an even more awful, but powerful, language to do things manually. Also see the follow-up.
Oct 24, 2006 in Win Stûff | Comment
cvs2svn: Converting a CVS repository to Subversion
Directions on how to do this with CVSNT, the version of CVS that I use.
Oct 7, 2006 in Win Stûff | Comment
Using Subversion Through SSH On Windows XP
Correct instructions that actually work, always the most useful type.
Oct 3, 2006 in Win Stûff | Comment
CmapTools
Windows concept or mind-mapping software, free, looks handy.
Sep 20, 2006 in Win Stûff | Comment
Introducing LightZone
“Based on photographic principles and the Zone System method, LightZone is a more natural and intuitive approach for photo retouching, allowing you to focus on what to do with your images rather than how to do it.” Hmm, sounds like an easier way to do 85% of the stuff I do in Photoshop…
Aug 18, 2006 in Win StûffWin Stûff
The PC De-Crapifier
“The PC De-Crapifier is designed to remove a specific list unwanted software in an unattended fashion. Before running, the user may select exactly what software should be removed. Currently, it is targeted for use on most Dell machines; however it will theoretically run on anything…”
Launchy
A keyboard-based launcher for Windows. Type and launch.
Colibri
A keyboard-based launcher for Windows. Type and launch.
Tasks and Time Management in Outlook
“I am proud to announce that Outlook appointments and meetings now have time zone controls, allowing users to schedule appointments and meetings in the context of another time zone.” This alone might be worth it for me to grab the beta — nothing like having correct time events on my calendar during my vacation!
Outlook, Appointments and Time Zones
“To many people, Outlook really seems really bad at handling time zone changes, and that’s being kind. This is in part because people don’t understand that Outlook uses UTC time for appointments and adjusts the time using the time zone offset configured on the computer.” For complete information, read Microsoft’s snide KB article on this issue.
Mindola SuperNotecard
“SuperNotecard is a writing application that uses virtual notecards to capture and organize content. This approach focuses on the basic parts of the composition while keeping the structure flexible so that it can change easily.”
Free Antivirus Reviews
“Most new computers come bundled with a free antivirus solution, but sooner or later you have to start paying to get the latest virus-definition updates. When the subscription lapses, your protection evaporates. Don’t let that happen! If you don’t have the funds or inclination to maintain a subscription, try a free antivirus utility. We looked at three that provide full system scanning and also scan all files on access.”
VAKCER Project Tracker
Automatic time tracking, with billing, built in Outlook.
Outlook Journal All Contacts Add-In
Much easier than checking the box next to each contact to journal them (although, worth $20?).
GTD and Outlook
By David Allen, the GTD man himself. Also see Managing GTD Projects in Outlook, and the related Creating and distributing custom forms with Outlook.
Software for information organisation
“[A] compendium of software that supports knowledge management and information organisation in graphical form. Includes mind mappers, concept mappers, outliners, hierarchical organisers, KM support and knowledge browsers, 2D and 3D.” So far Mind Pad looks nifty and Draw Magic looks affordable.
Anagram
“anagram™ instantly and intelligently translates the meaningful text from any application into Outlook® Contact, Calendar, Task and Note items.”
Automating/scripting iTunes on Windows
Self-explanatory. Also see Driving iTunes from Python on Windows and iTunes Javascripts. (Yes, I am getting at something with this!)
EverNote
“With EverNote® 1.1 you can easily store and quickly access typed and handwritten memos, webpage excerpts, emails, phone messages, addresses, passwords, brainstorms, sketches, documents and more!” It’s like free OneNote!
Updated Google Desktop!
Looks nifty!
QMailer 2005
“QMailer is about registering email contacts and mailing campaigns. Contacts are segmented and mailings are personalized. The mailing and contact registration process can be scheduled automatically. The contact manager supports hierarchical segmentation, making it possible to do multi-step mail campaigns. QMailer campaigns can follow multiple steps, for example you can keep track your invitees and send a reminder in a later stage.”
QLiner Hotkeys
“It is the first product of it’s kind that is usable by computer geeks and non geeks alike. Hotkeys builds on the concept of Windows shortcut keys but takes this concept to a whole new level. Do you think key combinations are hard to remember? Just hold the Windows key for three seconds and up pops a Onscreen Keyboard with icons on the keys that are configured. This you can you use , not only to remind you of hotkey combinations, but also for Drag and Drop Configuration.”
AutoHotkey
Basically, make a hotkey for anything. Could use this w/AppRocket. Bonus points if you can figure out how I could make it work w/notes (or any other useful) files on my Treo.
Command Line Completion in CMD.EXE
How to enable tab completion in the “DOS Window” in Windows. Almost as cool as discovering what happens when you hit F7 in said window.
Word Redaction v1.2
“Use the Word 2003 Redaction Add-in to hide text within Microsoft Office Word 2003 documents. You can mark text to redact and then create a new, redacted version of the document in which the marked text is replaced with a black bar that cannot be converted back to text.”
RSSPopper
“RSS Popper is a news aggregator add-in for Outlook & Outlook Express. News items delivered directly to Outlook as e-mails. No need to use a separate program for reading RSS anymore. All RSS/RDF/Atom formats are supported.” Hmm, I might actually try RSS now! People who read this via RSS, this might be good news for you as I actually start to care about your format of choice.
The Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 Update
If you have trouble with your wifi connection dropping all the time, this may be the fix for you. Not included in regular updates, so you could’ve missed it.
SpeedFiler
“SpeedFiler integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Outlook to make it easier to file your incoming and outgoing messages, helping you keep your mail organized. If you send and receive lots of email, like to keep it filed, and have many folders in a hierarchical structure, SpeedFiler will save you time.”
DHS: Sony rootkit may lead to regulation
“A U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official warned today that if software distributors continue to sell products with dangerous rootkit software, as Sony BMG Music Entertainment recently did, legislation or regulation could follow… In November, DHS assistant secretary for policy Stewart Baker warned copyright holders to be careful of how they protected their music and DVDs. ‘In the pursuit of protection of intellectual property, it’s important not to defeat or undermine the security measures that people need to adopt in these days…’” If you have one of the CDs with Sony’s rootkit, visit this site to get the CD replaced, for free, with a safe one, thanks to a class-action lawsuit filed by the EFF.
Dell Internet Explorer Scaling Utility
If you have a Dell and, like me, notice that the size of the images in IE is wacky, then this is the download you need to make things right.
TCD Bill'Em FREE!
Nifty little free program for time tracking, if, like me, you now have time you need to track!
ClearType Tuner
“With Windows XP, ClearType delivers improved font display quality over traditional forms of font smoothing or anti-aliasing. ClearType improves readability on color LCD displays with a digital interface, such as those in laptops and high-quality flat panel displays.” Set it up so that it’s easy for you to read your screen!
Cropper in C#
“Cropper is a screen capture utility written in C# on the Microsoft .Net platform. It makes it fast and easy to grab parts of your screen… No more ‘Print Screen’… open image editor… paste from clipboard… crop… export. Just double-click the form or press enter, and whatever is visible below the form is captured.”
SiteAdvisor
A browser plug-in that tells you specifically, and in simple language, exactly how bad of an idea it is to visit the site you’re visiting, give them your e-mail address, and/or download and install the software? Also with an educational blog.
Send To SmugMug
“SendToSmugMug will add a contextual menu to the Windows Explorer Shell and allow you to quickly create a new Album and upload the photos in the folder, or add the photos to an existing Album.”
Shortcut Keys
Sep 11, 2005 in Win Stûff | Comment
Wireless LAN security guide
“One of the most common questions that people ask me about Wireless LANs is ‘are Wireless LANs really safe?’ immediately followed up by ‘what kind of security do I need for my Wireless LAN?’ The answer to the first question is ‘yes, if you implement good security measures’ but the second question forces me to resort to the old ‘it depends’. It depends on what level of risk is acceptable to your home or organization.”
Aug 5, 2005 in Win StûffWin Stûff
PureText
“Have you ever copied some text from a web page, a word document, help, etc., and wanted to paste it as simple text into another application without getting all the formatting from the original source? PureText makes this simple.” My hero!
Temptation Blocker
“So, have a major deadline looming or ripe opportunity closing and just don’t have time to waste playing Half Life 2 or checking Bloglines one last time? Well then, add Half Life 2 and Firefox to the list of programs you want to block in Temptation Blocker, set the timer for how long you want to block them and then hit the “Get Work Done!” button.”
CapsUnLock
Do you accidentally hit the CapsLock or, worse, Insert keys all the time? If so, you’re just like me. If so, you probably hate it too. This small, free program can disable both or either of those keys.
Append to scratch file v.3
Use a hotkey combination to create a note and save it to a text file.
Process Library
“In the recesses of your computer, 20-30 invisible processes run silently in the background. Some hog system resources, turning your PC into a sluggish computer. Worse yet, other useless processes harbour spyware and Trojans - violating your privacy and giving hackers free reign on your computer. ProcessLibrary.com is an invaluable resource for anyone who wants to know the exact purpose of every single process.”
Unlocker
Ever get that error “Cannot delete file: file in use”? This’ll fix it.
MAPINotify
Get notifications of events in Outlook, including updates to Public Folders!
Onfolio
A not-bad-looking online research organization tool. Clever, but not next-generation at all. Still, I’ll be trying it out.
Burning Through Napster's Collection, Free
Claims it’s legal, although I’d be surprised. Probably some kind of a DMCA violation, insofar as everything is a DMCA violation
1-Click Answers
“Download 1-Click AnswersTM and then Alt-Click on any word in any program on your screen for instant, accurate facts.” Get the new engine behind Google’s definitions on your computer, all the time!
Symantec Flaw Leaves Opening for Viruses
“Symantec has issued a patch for a flaw in its scanning software that could cause a virus to run, rather than catch it.”
ClearContext Inbox Manager
Keep your Outlook inbox clean by automatically coloring messages based on complex rules that determine how important the message is likely to be to you!
Bill Gates's "Teen Beat" Photospread
It’s really real. Check out the old skool Microsoft logo.
Do Not Deliver Before
Tell Outlook to deliver an e-mail long after you send it — maybe a reminder to a cow-orker long in the future, maybe to make it not look like you’re working on vacation, etc.
Getting Things Done Outlook Add-In
If you buy into the whole GTD thing, this is a good way to implement it.
Life Balance
“Life Balance is award winning coaching software that provides a dynamically ordered To Do List driven by the importance of your goals, your desired allocation of time and effort, and feedback from what you get done each day.”
Tasks
“Tasks 2.0 is a powerful web-based personal task manager. Keep your tasks and ideas organized in a hierarchical format and access them over the internet from any web browser.”
Netcraft Anti-Phishing Toolbar
If you use Internet Explorer, you absolutely must install this toolbar, along with the Google or Yahoo. For whatever reason, you’re choosing to use a gigantically insecure browser, one of whose major bugs is that a malicious site can change the URL in the Address line to pretend to be another site (for instance, http://stealcreditcards.ru can change its URL to http://citibank.com, without you knowing). The Netcraft toolbar helps you to see such spoofed URLs.
How To Fix Mom's Computer
“For future reference, here’s a laundry list of steps I took to get Mom’s computer working and secured from evil software.”
Is This Software On Your Hard Drive?
“How one of the Internet’s largest and most secretive adware companies really operates. With new regulations coming, will it really reform?” You could wait for it to reform, or you could get Firefox and be safe.
Spyware on My Machine? So What?
“Not all web surfers think spyware is a problem. Some say the snoopy software is a fair trade-off for free applications, even with the intrusion into their computers and lives.” If you’re using something with spyware, there’s an almost 100% chance that there’s an equivalent spyware-free application out there. Just look a little!
Default Password List
When I assuredly lose the password to my hardware item, I will find it here.
Consistency
We all have these things that we need to do periodically but maybe not every day — exercise, call our friends, water our plants, etc. Some days you’re just too busy, but other days you have some free time and these things should be at the top of your list. Sciral’s Consistency helps you keep track of these tasks and establish ranges of days in which these tasks should be done, and track your completion of these tasks.
Mycroft: Mozilla Search Plug-Ins
Mycroft is a source for search toolbar plug-ins for Mozilla-based browsers like my favorite, Firefox. Add a bunch of new, quick, easy searches to your browser. Doesn’t work in IE, because IE sucks!
Word 2000 Tips
Google Desktop Search
Search almost everything on your computer!
GMail Drive
Use your GMail account like a network drive!
Add A Custom Folder To The Look In Section Of The Open And Save Dialog Boxes
Want to have actual useful folders in that sidebar in open and save dialogs? Now you can! The description is for Visual Studio.NET but it works in any Office XP application. No effect, however, on other apps — to do that, you must use TweakUI)
Spike: A Shared Clipboard
Ever wanted to just copy something have your colleague paste it into a document on their computer? Spike does that.
Florian Freundt Wallpapers
Incredible desktop wallpaper (ok so they’re for Macs too… I didn’t have a better category to put this in).
MacIco
Convert beautiful Mac icons to Windows icons so your computer can stop looking so much like crap and you can start picking things out visually, quickly and easily, like you’d be able to if you didn’t use a crappy operating system.
DeskLook
“DeskLook is a program that reads data directly from your Outlook and displays them on the desktop which becomes interactive. It resembles Outlook Today data view with addition of a calendar for three months: current, next, previous.”
Email control center
Email control center lets you control and access Outlook from your system tray, without switching to Outlook.
How To Save Yourself Hours By Uing Word's Outline View
Outline view is one of my favorite features in Word, but nobody uses it! Here’s how you can use Outline View to be more productive, particularly with long documents.
Run Multiple Versions Of IE On Windows
Run IE 5, 5.5, and 6 on Windows, all at the same time!
DOSBox
Run old DOS games on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X!
Audoiscrobbler
I’m probably the last person to know about this, but it transparently builds a list of what music you like and suggests other songs you might also enjoy.
Firefox Google Pagerank Extension
Fix Firefox Double-Window-Opening Bug
Does Firefox, when set as the default browser, open two windows each time you click on a link in your e-mail or IM client or in a document? Does Firefox throw an error? This patch fixes that behavior.
Using Outlook AutoArchive
Outlook can automatically archive or delete your old e-mail for you. See how to take advantage of this!
Disable shell: protocol In Firebird
Critical flaw in Windows: found
Turn-around for Mozilla team to patch access through Firebird, Mozilla: 1 day
Turn-around for MS: not yet fixed
AppRocket
A ripoff of LaunchBar, for Windows.