Net by Matt » Desktop App

TweetDeck

Matt Walsh — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:00:33 +0000

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 for search, so you’ll see any tweets with your search term in them. I often use search when watching a prime-time TV show live, to see what other people are saying about it, or to see if anyone picks up on some subtlety that I may have missed. It can make TV watching a very interactive experience.

Handbrake

Matt Walsh — Sun, 17 May 2009 16:00:36 +0000

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 to go. The software also has all of the nitty-gritty options that you could possibly need to fine tune the video output you get from it. Finally, it’s multi-threaded, meaning that it will use all of the available processors on your system which gives it a huge performance increase.

VLC

Matt Walsh — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 17:00:54 +0000

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 you to do transcoding, live streaming, and video capture.

Bonus Tip: KeePass Password Safe

Matt Walsh — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:00:35 +0000

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

Matt Walsh — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 17:00:54 +0000

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 as creating strong a password for you automatically when you add a new password to your safe. KeePass will allow you to copy any password from the program to the clipboard, and it will then automatically clear the clipboard after 10 seconds, helping to keep your password secure.

AllSnap

Matt Walsh — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:00:34 +0000

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 window or screen edge, it will stick to it, making easy to line things up. This also works very nicely when Window’s default tiling of windows doesn’t leave you with an arrangement you like, just do it yourself and leave a narrow sliver for one window, and make the other take up the whole screen.

Taskbar Shuffle

Matt Walsh — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:00:40 +0000

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 task bar to any location. It also lets you drag and drop the icons in your system tray in the same way. Better yet, it can hide it’s own icon from the system tray so it’s not taking up any valuable screen space.

TruCrypt

Matt Walsh — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:00:03 +0000

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 dismount the drive at any time. You can also use it on a flash drive with their own built in utility so you can keep an encrypted file on the flash drive and open it with any computer. I use this in combination with Portable Firefox on a flash drive that I keep on my work computer. I then use it when I’m traveling and need to visit a secure site, such as my bank or credit card. This keeps all of my passwords, account info and all of that sensitive data encrypted and off of my work computer while still leaving me very safe access to it.

Unlocker

Matt Walsh — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:00:55 +0000

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 you have several selected. It’s as simple clicking unlock and then going back and deleting the file.

Skype

Matt Walsh — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 17:00:54 +0000

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 numerous times when I travel to Canada. Pair it up with a Bluetooth headset and I was able to call home for only $0.021 a minute. Much cheaper than my cell phone would have been.

Filezilla

Matt Walsh — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:00:19 +0000

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 tell it to overwrite everything and it will continue to do that until the next time I fire it up.

Notepad++

Matt Walsh — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 17:00:17 +0000

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 don’t have all of the file extensions set up yet, or those nosy people who like to see what makes their applications tick.

PDF Creator

Matt Walsh — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 17:00:17 +0000

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 click print a pop up will guide you through the process of adding a title and author to your PDF and then ask you where to save it.
I find it especially useful as a print preview function for applications that don’t have it. Or in Firefox when I want to preview how a selected section of of a web page will print.

7-Zip

Matt Walsh — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:00:41 +0000

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

Matt Walsh — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:00:21 +0000

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

Matt Walsh — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 04:20:28 +0000

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 programs that don’t have one built in.

Free Photoshop

Matt Walsh — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 04:12:24 +0000

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 on image editing are based on Photoshop. But with a lilttle legwork you can find the comparable features and create the same effects in GIMP without the price tag of Photoshop.

Video Transcoding

Matt Walsh — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 04:07:30 +0000

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 various formats. It also has presets for various media players such as an Ipod.

I’ve have yet to find a format that it can’t work with, and have had great success creating videos for use on my 5th generation Ipod and my Motorola E815m.

Image Management

Matt Walsh — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 04:02:41 +0000

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 tagged and organized, the search function lets you quickly find any images within Picasa. There’s some simple editing and tuning tools, one of which is “I’m feeling lucky.” From a technical standpoint it’s a level adjustment algorithm, but like a Google search by the same name, it almost always makes the photo look better.

It’s integrated with Picasa Web Albums, so you can publish your photos online. Picasa is also integrated with various on-line photo finishers, so you can upload to them directly from the program. Finally, it has tools for creating web pages from a selection of photos, based on a customizable template.

On-Line Backup

Matt Walsh — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 03:54:42 +0000

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 friendly front end for the Amazon service. It creates a new network drive on your system that is your access to your storage. Use it just like it’s a local drive in any application. It also includes a customizable backup utility that will backup at a scheduled time and keep archived versions of changed files. Finally, it’s free to try and only $20 to buy it. The license is for every one of your computers, including a USB drive friendly version that you can run on any system without needing to install it.