Essential Freeware

 

Essential Freeware are set of software that you will find useful for various tasks. Though I prefer Open Source software, these applications listed here may or may not be open source.

Opera Browser

The most innovative browser and the most neglected freeware is the Opera Browser. We will not discuss much on why it does not gain market share, what went wrong, blah..blah… that does not matter in this blog. There are many to discuss those.

Opera 10.53

Major reasons to use the browser:

• Most secure browser – Recommend this browser at least for banking and other financial / confidential transactions on net
• Built-in Email client (POP3 and IMAP) – Easy configuration and multi accounts support. If you are worried about accessing Yahoo mail and  your account (like .com domain) does not support POP3 in free Yahoo, use the freeware freePOPs.
• Leader in innovation – Many features that other browsers have copied are initially from Opera. So you get to experience the good and the bad features first, before others see it.
• Multi-device (computer, mobile) browser – Allows you to keep your bookmarks, notes, history in central location on opera home page.  You can access all this information, either on office Laptop, home desktop or mobile phone.
• Opera Unite is a great feature to share content like pictures, video, songs online. Simply put, the browser acts as a HTTP server too. You can also host a chat server and post-it wall for people to drop a line for you (on fridge).
• Form Filling feature lets you enter your personal details one time in the browser. It will prompt you every time you are filling a form online – to create any account – say twitter, blogger, etc.
• Auto Fill login password details. When you allow browser to store passwords, browser will hint you about it next time you visit the same page. It will display the fields with yellow border. Just enter CTRL-ENTER. This is equal entering login password and clicking on submit button.
• Block content – like videos and images. Some web designers add lot of animation with flashy images to grab attention. At times that is annoying. Also you will find some sites that start a video (Ad) as soon as page loads. This can be annoyance and also consume bandwidth. Opera has capability to block images or video from other sites.
• Custom search engine – lets you add a search engine using the URL. For example, CUIL is another search engine that has good grouping of Internet search results. To add this search engine to my Opera search bar, I need to add this URL http://www.cuil.com/search?q=%s. The last “%s” is replaced by word I give it in the search field. If you have not tried CUIL earlier, it is worth using.
• Visual tabs – lets you view all open tabs in miniature version top of the browser.
• Speed dial – makes it easy to access frequently browsed sites like your favourite newspaper, Internet email, stock market page, etc.
• Opera Turbo features makes web page access faster for low speed connections. It has cool features of compressing the images that makes data transfer lower and hence making it faster.
• Search word in a a page. All browsers have this feature. But the cool UI of search is worth the mention. In a page, when you search for a string (say “Internet”), the whole page is greyed out and the ‘search word’ is highlighted in special font and background.
• Fit width feature lets web pages with tables or page width more than screen size to shrink to fit to your window size.
• Opera Link is a great little feature that makes Opera data available across computers and devices. Opera as you might be aware, is a desktop browser and also a mobile browser. Opera link gives you space in Opera server to store your bookmarks, speed dial, notes, history on net. You login into browser once and your data is synced to be available on any other computer or device. Where I use it mostly is for notes. I store lot of information like interesting excerpts from web pages and also links. If you are working on project / thesis, you can make use of this notes feature to collect all information in one place. I access my bookmarks on my mobile phone using Opera Mobile 10.0 version.
• Opera widgets are not as extensive as other browsers like Firefox, but they do have some good extensions like Google Calendar, Stock charts, timer (reminder), clocks, etc. Since the browser has rich features in-built, I do not see lack of extensions as a handicap.
• Address book – If you are using Opera as your email client, it lets you store addresses as part of your browser. Some cool aspect of the address book is, you can click on a contact and you will get all conversation (email) relating to that person.
• Dragonfly – I have not used this feature much. This is essentially for web page developers. They can dissect the web pages and find issues in compliance and also debug.
• Bookmark search – in the left panel you get to access bookmarks, mail, history, Unite, Notes, downloads, Address book. In the left panel, you can search your complete bookmarks by typing a word. You will give filtered list of bookmarks matching the word.
• Feeds – essentially RSS feeds from net. This is part of your mail panel. When you see an RSS icon in the address bar, you can make the feed as part of your monitor list to track updates (like news, score, etc).
• Download manager is integrated with the browser. It will allow multiple downloads to be tracked, paused, restarted, stop.
• Torrents – Opera is capable of downloading torrent content. I never was successful in downloading content using Opera. But possible due to restrictions on ports or service provider.
• Themes – Opera has capability to modify skins to change look and feel.
• Newserver – along with email you can subscribe to news servers.
• Print preview feature in Opera is good. Press CTRL-SHIFT-P.

Memento

memento is another freeware utility, very small and quick note taker. Install it. Then type Ctrl-Alt-N to type a new note. Click on ‘X’ button to close it. All these notes get listed in your system tray, when you right click on the small ‘post-it’ icon.

Time snapper (classic)

Does your boss expect you to write daily or weekly report to account your accomplishments or productivity? Or you are in need of a Time Management course, as  you do not know where your 8 or 12 hours in office go? This is the tool to use.

Time snapper (classic) takes screenshots of your computer periodically. End of the day, you can watch like a movie what all (useless) things you have done whole day. As I type this blog, my Time Snapper is busy taking pictures. I can always retrieve the content and the time when i wrote this blog, without visiting the blog again.

The concept is screen capture is very simple. It is only limited to your imagination how you use it.

RxTx32

Bandwidth measurement freeware tool. Small and simple. I have tried many other freeware for same purpose, but was not convinced the measurement shown was accurate. This tool does not need installation. You can download RxTx32.zip file from Internet, unzip and execute RxTx32.exe.

For modifying settings, right click on the graph window. It will open a window. Select ‘Options’ to change graphical display settings and graph update period. You can also get the data on total MB downloaded from the start of the tool.

Note: I am looking for a freeware that can give bandwidth measurement per program / process. I have not succeeded to find one. For example, sometimes I see that when I am not actively browsing on my computer, I still see my modem lights blinking. I go to netstat to find all active connections. I can know which programs are accessing the net, but I would like to know which application is using how much bandwidth. Especially software like Adobe or Microsoft OS, the patches and updates get downloaded automatically and utilizing bandwidth. I would like to kill or postpone them to another hour, so that it does not affect bandwidth. If any of you know of such software, please drop a comment in my blog.

Windows desktop search

On my office laptop, soon after OS (Windows) installation, immediate software I install after that is “Windows Desktop Search”. I have compared with other desktop search tools Google Desktop Search, Copernic desktop search. Windows desktop search stands out with some very good features. Two most important features are – search results display and search keywords support. Only thing I like about Google Desktop search is the ‘Ctrl-Ctrl’ to get the search strip to type. That is cool.

I would recommend this software to anyone who are lazy to create folders (emails, documents, etc) and whose computer has 1GB or more RAM.

If you use Microsoft Outlook (for official purposes) on your computer, recommend you to add your GMail, Yahoo accounts to Outlook. Then you can search all your email communication using Windows desktop search. For those Yahoo users who don’t have POP3 access free, please refer to my earlier post – FreePOPs. Easy to use and effective.

Will add examples of search keywords and use of Windows Desktop Search in another post later.

DeepBurner

CD and DVD burner freeware that can burn content in multiple sessions. Interface is simple and you can drag and drop files from Windows Explorer to burn CD/DVD.

DeepBurner has capability to burn CD/DVD, create an Audio CD or burn from iso. If the content you want to burn is less than capacity of CD / DVD, choose the option of multi session disk. If the CD/DVD is already burnt with some content, be careful to choose ‘Append session’.

Taskbar Calculator

Simple calculator in the task bar that appears as simple text field. You can enable and disable appearance in taskbar, by right clicking taskbar, choose ‘Taskbar Calculator’ in the ‘Toolbar’ menu item.

Mathematical functions supported are, basic arithmetic, square root, Inverse, percentage, Decimal to hex conversion. Refer to README for special keys and mapping to function.

Screenshot of taskbar calculator. My taskbar is vertical and to the left of the screen. I have an analog clock instead of default Windows digital clock.

Folder Guide

Microsoft Windows creates ‘My Documents’ folder for each user and sub-folders like ‘My Pictures’, ‘My Templates’, etc. Usually users might have different directory to store files, which necessarily not be under ‘My Documents’. For operations such as ‘Open’ a folder and ‘Save As’, users needs to navigate to sub-folder deep inside.

For example, my frequently accessed directory could be:

D:\JANARDAN\DOWNLOADS\TORRENTS\BOOKS\

You can see that every time I need to access my sub-folder BOOKS, I need to navigate in GUI from D:, then JANARDAN, then DOWNLOADS, then TORRENTS, then BOOKS.

Instead with Folder Guide, you can right click in Windows Explorer the sub-folder BOOKs and ‘Add to Folder Guide’. Folder Guide software helps you to make ‘BOOKS’ folder available quickly either right clicking on Desktop or right click in ‘Save As’ window to select ‘BOOKS’ folder.

Very useful and convenient software. I recommend users to try it.

dirLock

This freeware help you keep your password files, personal pictures, confidential folders well protected. There are many other uses for boys, but I will stick to utility of the program :-)

This program can make folders ‘locked’ and even ‘hidden’ with password protection. You can Lock/Unlock folders from Windows Explorer context menu. Small and simple.

Blaze – Automated Desktop Experience

This freeware is an enhancement over the Launchy. This is much more superior in functionality. The key feature is to launch a program, just by typing few key strokes. No need to use mouse. Press the short-cut key, default is CTRL-ALT-SPACE. You will get a small pop-up window of Blaze. Type “Inter” to launch “Internet Explorer”. Blaze is smart. It will remember history and can suggest you “Internet Explorer”, just even by typing “I”. It will expect to application “Internet Explorer” if that is the most used.

Second biggest feature is the ‘File Search’ functionality. It not only suggests programs, but also file name. You can choose to ‘catalog’ a directory where you store your documents. By typing few characters, Blaze will suggest you set of files that you may want to open. Best match should more probably what you want to open. This could be your miniature program if you do not want the overhead of dedicated desktop search applications like ‘Windows Desktop Search’ and ‘Google Desktop Search’.

Now comes the cool feature. The program helps you type frequently types text with a short cut. For example, I type my post address in most emails to my family or friends, I can use Blaze to remember that text. I can store is under keyword (say) ‘address’. To type that text in any window next time, I press the key combination CTRL-ALT-SPACE to invoke Blaze. Then type ‘insert address’. insert is a command followed by the keyword. In the window I am in, say Notepad or Email, it will insert my address. Many other cases you will find it useful are for storing frequently typed phone numbers, or template in emails. I write lot of complaint letters to telecom and utility service providers. Most of the times I forget to add my account number or phone number. So, I prepare a template including my signature and contact number.

Next is the coolest of features. It is still not it perfect shape, but a leap towards ‘intelligent’ applications. Blaze keeps monitoring of key strokes you are pressing. If it sees a pattern or a cycle. For example, in an Excel sheet you are deleting every third row. So, you press ‘down arrow’ twice and press ‘delete’ a cell. Blaze recognizes and the tray icons becomes YELLOW. It is an indication, it sensed a pattern. You can press CAPS-LOCK twice and a window pops-up giving sequence and number of times you want to repeat it.

It is not easy to find Blaze EXE with simple google searches. You will get all except this application. Directly go to below link and start BLAZING !!

http://blaze-wins.sourceforge.net/