Archive for the ‘M@’s Picks’ Category
The Core Pocket Media Player
The Core Pocket Media Player (TCPMP) is a replacement for Windows Media Player for your phone. It’s much less bulky than Windows Media player and has a lot more options for controlling how your media is played back. Make sure to download and install all of the plugins for it so it can play nearly [...]
Slick
Slick is a Windows Mobile instant messaging client that supports ICQ, Yahoo, AIM, MSN, Google Talk, and Jabber. It’s very light weight so it tends to stay open in the background without being shutdown by the OS often.
Google Maps Mobile
Google’s popular Maps service is also available for your phone. Point your phone’s browser at http://m.google.com/maps and you’ll get the download that’s right for your phone. The app is GPS enabled so you can search nearby, or use it for turn-by-turn directions. They’ve also integrated satellite view, street view and traffic. I’ve noticed that the [...]
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.
ForecastFox
ForecastFox puts a highly customizable forecast inside Firefox. You can include up to a 5 day forecast with temperature, precipitation type, wind speed and other information as well as the current conditions including heat index or wind chill and the current radar image for your location. ForecastFox will also pop up severe weather alerts, such [...]
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.
Audible
Audible is the internet re-incarnation of books on tape. They have over 50,000 books to choose from. Once you’ve selected your book, you download it and sync it to nearly any portable audio player, or one of thousands of PDAs, smart phones, GPS and other devices that support Audible. Books typically run about $10 to [...]
TWiT
This Week in Tech (TWiT) is a weekly podcast hosted by Leo Laporte and an ever changing panel of guests. The show discusses the week’s tech news. Guests are often former TechTV personalities or technology journalists. The format is a round table discussion where Leo typically gives a summary of the news event and then [...]
Google Reader
Google Reader is a great way to aggregate all of your RSS feeds and view them from anywhere. I use it in combination with Yahoo Pipes (see yesterday’s post) to keep tabs on news, tech and some of my favorite comics. There’s also a mobile interface for Google reader for your phone. The two keep [...]
Yahoo Pipes
Yahoo Pipes can take some getting used to. The slogan for it is “Rewire the web.” What it allows you to do is work with RSS feeds to combine or filter them to create your own custom feeds. Instead of having to write your own program in PHP, or something similar, to do this, Yahoo [...]
Security Now
Security Now is a weekly computer security podcast hosted by Steve Gibson of Gibson Research Corporation with Leo Laporte. The content typically alternates between a technical discussion of some aspect of internet security, a recent security threat, or questions from listeners. The content can get technical at times but the conversation between Steve and Leo [...]
Adblock Plus
Firefox is fast, but you can squeeze a little more speed out of it by not having it draw all those ads that are on almost every web page. I use Adblock Plus to keep them from showing up. It works great, blocking nearly every ad and not messing up the page layout. If you [...]
Tips From the Top Floor
Tips From the Top Floor is a photography podcast. I started listening to it about a year and a half ago. At the time, I wasn’t sure just how you could describe photography tips and techniques through an audio podcast, but Chris Marquardt, the host, does an excellent job. There’s also an occasional video podcast [...]
Total Commander CE
Windows Mobile has a built in file manager, but it’s slow and doesn’t give you all the features you’re used to in Explorer. Total Commander CE fills this gap. In addition to letting you view hidden and system files and having a search feature, there are also included plugins for FTP and registry. These allow [...]
PockeTwit
I finally decided on PockeTwit for posting to Twitter from my phone. The app has an Iphone like interface with smooth scrolling menus and a full screen display. The developer is actively adding features to it and is very quick to respond to bug reports and general support questions. There’s just one trick to getting [...]
Opera Mobile (Bonus tip)
Opera Mobile also has some built in keyboard shortcuts for common tasks. Since I couldn’t find these documented anywhere very well here’s what I’ve found through trial and error: 1 – Open URL dialog (also includes history and bookmarks) 2 – Window list 3 – Home page 5 – Toggle images (requires page refresh) 6 [...]
Opera Mobile
After trying to get Pocket IE (the Windows Mobile version of Internet Explorer) to behave nicely, and display web pages quickly and in a usable format I finally gave up. I switched to Opera Mobile. It’s not free, but with Firefox Mobile still a ways off the $25 is well spent. Some things that it [...]
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 [...]
