Archive for the ‘Desktop App’ Category

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is a Twitter client that helps you keep track of everything on your timeline. It’s core feature is a multi-column view that lets you group your tweets together however you’d like. You can add friends to groups, so their tweets will always show up in a particular column. A column can also be configured [...]

Handbrake

Handbrake is a video transcoding application. Most people use it to shrink videos down to a size that their iPod/Phone can handle. For transcoding software, it’s very easy to use, with presets for a lot of common formats and handheld devices. Select the file and what you’re going to use it on and you’re ready [...]

VLC

VideoLan Client (VLC) is a media player that works with many OS’s. Unlike Windows Media Player, and many others, VLC has all of the codecs that you might need built in. So if you’re having trouble playing a particular file, give it a try. Also, there are several advanced features of the software that allow [...]

Bonus Tip: KeePass Password Safe

By putting the file KeePass generates inside a Jungle Disk, and then using Jungle Disk’s USB drive version you’ll be able to get to your passwords from anywhere. You can keep the KeePass software itself either on your USB drive, or on the Jungle Disk.

KeePass Password Safe

KeePass Password Safe is a password management program. Passwords are stored encrypted in a file, and are listed in a simple spreadsheet style interface within the program. In addition to user names and passwords, you can store additional notes and information about the service that they’re used for. It also has some nice features, such [...]

AllSnap

Working with multiple monitors and can’t get your windows to line up with the edges of them very well? I use AllSnap to do this for me. It makes the edges of all windows and monitors sticky so as you drag the border of a window to resize it, when you get close to another [...]

Taskbar Shuffle

Windows won’t allow you to rearrange the buttons on your taskbar. If your dependent on having something in a particular location, probably because you’re running it all the time and it’s always on the left side… until it crashes, then Taskbar Shuffle is for you. It allows you to drag and drop buttons on your [...]

TruCrypt

You can encrypt just a few files or your entire hard drive with the open source TruCrypt. In the file mode, TruCrypt works by creating a single file that, when unlocked with your pass phrase, mounts itself as a drive on your system. Anything going into this drive is then automatically encrypted. You can then [...]

Unlocker

Don’t you hate it when Windows says it can’t delete a file because it’s in use. This usually happens after an app crashes, but there are some other times I’ve seen it as well. The free utility Unlocker adds an item to your right-click menu to Unlock the file, or a group of files if [...]

Skype

Skype is a communications application. You can do instant messaging, video conferencing and voice chat with it all for free. In addition you can use their Skype In and Skype Out services to make calls to and from land line phones to your computer. The rates are quite competitive too, especially internationally. I’ve used it [...]

Filezilla

Filezilla is a powerful open source FTP client. It has plenty of built in features to appease any power user, but a simple file transfer is still very straight-forward. I’m particular fond of the nag-once-per-session options when determining which files to overwrite and how. This means when I’m updating WordPress or Gallery that I can [...]

Notepad++

Notepad++ is a replacement for Windows’ built in notepad. It supports multiple tabs and syntax highlighting for nearly any language. When it installs, it also adds an entry to the right-click menu for any file that reads “Send to Notepad++.” This is very useful for those of us who do a lot of programming and [...]

PDF Creator

Make your own PDFs with PDF Creator. Like the full blown Adobe Acrobat, what you’d typically need to use to create PDFs, PDF Creator installs itself as a printer, so it works with any application. When you want to create a PDF simply press print, and then choose PDF creator as your printer. Once you [...]

7-Zip

7-Zip is an open source file compression utility. It handles ZIP, GZIP, TAR, ARJ, CAB, ISO, LZH, MSI, and RAR among many others. Stop Win-Zip from nagging you to buy it now and get 7-Zip.

GMail Notifier for Google Apps

If you’re using Google Apps for Domains then you’ve probably noticed that the GMail Notifier doesn’t work with it. The nearly identical replacement that does work with apps is GMail Notifier for Google Apps.

Make your own PDFs

PDF Creator is an open source tool you can use to create PDF files. Using it is simple enough, it installs itself as a printer driver, so all you need to do to is change your printer in the print dialog box of any windows program. I often use it as a print preview for [...]

Free Photoshop

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is an open source image editor that is comparable to Photoshop. By no means is it a drop in replacement. But a lot of the core functionality is there, including layers, filters, plugins, paths and channels. There is a bit of a learning curve, especially because the majority of tutorials [...]

Video Transcoding

Media Coder is an open source video transcoding utility. It supports a large number of formats, and plenty of advanced options for tweaking all of the encoder settings. Fortunately, an extension that is included in the typical install makes it all very easy to use with various presets for small and large video outputs for [...]

Image Management

Google’s Picasa is a simple yet powerful way to store your photos. Once installed, it will scan your drive for images and present the chronologically by folders. You can then add your own tags to any image, and create albums of images, photos can even exist in more than one album. Once you’ve got things [...]

On-Line Backup

Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3) service coupled with Jungle Disk is an excellent, inexpensive solution for on-line backup. The Amazon service is $0.15 per gigabyte per month, and $0.10 per gigabyte transfered. It’s pay as you go, so you’re never paying for more storage or bandwidth than you need. Jungle Disk is a very user [...]