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Freeware of the Moment- ShootMe for Android

James Kendrick — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 12:04:34 +0000

The Freeware of the Moment today is a simple utility for Android that fills a very specific need. Not everyone may have this need, but those who do will find this app to be very useful. ShootMe is a screen capture tool for Android that is simple to use. When the screen is displayed that you want to capture, you simply shake the phone. You hear a shutter sound and the image is captured to a ShootMe photo album on the phone.

The image quality of the screen captures is very nice, as witnessed in the snaps below of my seven home screens on the HTC EVO 4G. I simply popped up the desired screen, shook the phone and the image was stored. ShootMe is free in the Android Market and once installed it sits in the background waiting for a shake. It takes little resources on the phone and is always at your beck and call, err… shake.

I’ve seen reports that ShootMe also takes an image when you shout at your phone. It supposedly listens for a sudden loud noise and snaps the screen when it hears it. I haven’t tested this, the shake is good enough for me.

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Logitech TouchMouse App Controls Your PC or Mac With the iPhone

James Kendrick — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:35:29 +0000

Some of the best utilities are the ones that do simple things, but do them very well. That is the case with the Logitech TouchMouse for the iPhone. This free app connects with a Windows PC or Mac over Wi-Fi, and turns the iPhone into a big multitouch trackpad complete with three mouse buttons. The TouchMouse user is able to completely control the PC or Mac using the iPhone. There is even a touch keyboard for text entry if needed. I don’t even need to tell you how cool it is to scroll around on a Windows PC using multitouch on the iPhone instead of a trackpad.

Why is TouchMouse useful? A number of scenarios come to mind — controlling a media center from the sofa is one, or how about giving a presentation and using the iPhone to control the slides? I tested the latter on both my Mac and a PC and this worked flawlessly. I was able to get as far from the notebook as desired, since Wi-Fi requires no line of sight, and advanced the slides at will.

Logitech TouchMouse is free and in addition to the iPhone app — available in the App Store — a server application must be downloaded for the computer. There are Windows and Mac versions of the server software at the TouchMouse web site.

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Foursquare Unofficially Checks In on Windows Mobile

Kevin C. Tofel — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:46:31 +0000

I admit it. Just like Om, I’m addicted to Foursquare, the location-based social service I use several times a day during my travels. It’s not easy holding down the mayorship of 23 locations, so I rely heavily on my handsets to help me out with this hefty task. ;) Officially, there’s a Foursquare client for the iPhone, Android, webOS and BlackBerry platforms, plus third-party efforts for Maemo devices. So where’s the location of a Windows Mobile app for Foursquare? So far, there is no native client from Foursquare itself, but Download Squad found a usable third-party beta called WinMoSquare.

It might not be as pretty as the official clients, but WinMoSquare offers a solid option to the Foursquare mobile web site. Thanks to some Foursquare APIs, the software supports check-ins, adding locations and peeking in as to where your friends are. But there are some limitations, too. Namely, you can’t check the leaderboards, nor can you find or add new friends. I don’t think those are deal-breaking limits — I don’t believe I can do some of those things on the Android app; I often have to go to the mobile web site to approve friend requests, for example.

The developer, Anand Iyer, indicates that he’s looking to add new features as Foursquare exposes more of its APIs. Once he hits v.1 with WinMoSquare, Iyer intends to submit it to the Windows Mobile Marketplace as well. You might want to “check in” there occasionally to see when the app arrives for your Windows Mobile 6.1 and up device.

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Freeware Securely Takes Out the Trash on USB Drives

Kevin C. Tofel — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:00:52 +0000

If you’re anything like me, you likely have a good number of USB drives on hand. They’re all over our house actually — these little digital storage cabinets seem to multiply faster than Tribbles. So when the kids need to use one, there’s no shortage of choices. I simply grab the nearest one and hand it over without a thought. I generally assume there’s nothing on them, but occasionally the kids tell me that there’s little or no free space — that’s because residual data is there even though I’ve deleted it from the drive.

Download Squad points out Curb, a free solution that cleans out the trash on removable drives with Mac OS X. I installed the small app this morning and it works as advertised. It couldn’t be easier to dump the extra trash bits from a USB drive either — simply drag the removable drive on to Curb and it takes care of the rest. The result is a squeaky-clean flash drive.

With Curb, you can be prompted for trash removal or have the software simply wipe data without asking. And the application supports three secure removal options as well — Single Pass, 7-pass and 35-pass — plus an option to zero out all blocks after overwriting. I’d love to see Apple build this type of functionality into the native Trash Bin. Instead of dragging a USB drive for ejection, the OS could securely wipe the drive. Until then, I’m using Curb which can be found on the MRR Software site.

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Organize Android Apps with Aptly Named Apps Organizer

Kevin C. Tofel — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:00:19 +0000

The good thing about smartphone applications is that they add extra tidbits of functionality to a handset. The not so good aspect is that adding tons of apps can overwhelm you from a user interface standpoint. Stock Google Android devices have a small number of “home” screens where you can place software shortcuts, for example. You could go old school and create home screen folders to contain apps, but that’s a pretty manual method. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were an app to easily organize your apps?

Android Guys points out that there is — it’s called Apps Organizer and it’s freely available in the Android Marketplace. With it, you’re essentially creating app folders, but with a twist. You can apply labels to your applications, which helps to automatically organize and group your handset software. Upon installation, Apps Organizer scans your Android device so it knows what apps you already have and lumps them together with standard labels like Android, Games, Internet and more. At that point, you can apply your own custom labels for organization. And adding a labels shortcut is a snap — just long press your home screen, choose shortcuts and you’ll see an option for Apps Organizer. Selecting it provides a list of your labels that can be added to your device.

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Microsoft Updates Free SyncToy Utility for Simple Data Synchronization

Kevin C. Tofel — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:00:40 +0000

I’m a sucker for nearly every kind of data synchronization tool on the planet — case in point: today’s news of Mozilla’s Weave Sync add-on beta for browser data. So when I read on Lifehacker that Microsoft updated their SyncToy power tool to version 2.1, I had to share the details. SyncToy generally does one thing, but it does it well: it replicates files and folders from one place into another. Using Echo mode, you replicate files on the left to files on the right, while the Synchronize mode syncs data in both directions. A third mode, Contribute, copies from left to right, but doesn’t delete any data.

Version 2.1 of the free tool doesn’t add much new functionality, but does include new features:

Better Performance: The speed of file copy operations is significantly increased across the board.
Improved Robustness: Much more resilient to transient network and file system errors and better error reporting which pin-points which file the sync failed on in case there’s a fatal error that stops the sync.
Folder pair configuration backup: Folder pair configuration is automatically backed up under %localappdata%microsoftsynctoy2.0. User can replace SyncToyDirPairs.bin with the backup copy to resolve last saved configuration.
Fixed the data corruption issue when using SyncToy with NAS drives.
Fixed the issue that prevented uploading files to SharePoint when using SyncToy 2.0.
Fixed the issue that prevented delete changes from being synchronized when the sync option is set to “Echo”
Fixed the UI issue where reported file time were off by the difference between local time and UTC when destination is a FAT volume.

The free SyncToy is avaialble directly from Microsoft and is supported on Windows XP, Vista and 7. I have it installed on my netbook and use it to keep audio files in sync between the Windows XP and Windows 7 partitions.

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Adobe AIR App Breathes Cross-Platform Life into Google Voice

Kevin C. Tofel — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:20:36 +0000

Now that I have two mobile phones and no landline, Google Voice is part of my daily life. The service helps me manage my calls, regardless of which number people use to reach me. On my iPhone 3GS, I simply use the mobile Google Voice site to manage devices or listen to voicemails — pressing play on a voicemail opens up the Apple Quicktime app so I can hear it. I use the free gDial Pro on my Palm Pre, which is nearly as good as the native Google Voice software on an Android device. It’s not perfect, but it meets my needs well enough.

Up to now, I’d access Google Voice on my Mac or netbook right through my web browser. But over the weekend, I started using a nice Adobe AIR implementation of Google Voice called GVoice. Even cooler is the fact that one of our own readers created it! RStoeber is a regular here at jkOnTheRun, and he pinged me to share the app. I’ve been running it nonstop ever since he told me about it — you can find it here, along with a few other projects.

In this early version, the app is exactly like the mobile version I see on my iPhone. Voicemails even play within GVoice — I tested it with a message James left me because Google’s translation went awry in a few spots. Since GVoice runs on Adobe AIR, it’s cross-platform so I can run it on either my Mac, my PC or a Linux box. While I could just leave a tab open in my browser for Google Voice, I like this standalone implementation better. It refreshes the Inbox every minute, so I’m always up to date on my voicemails and text messages without having to look at my phone. Of course, I can send texts from it or initiate a call to a contact from one of my two phones, as well. Developers started to add Growl support to Adobe AIR last November, so a future version of GVoice could support instant notifications of messages, too.

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Update Your Netbook’s Look and Feel For Free With XPize

James Kendrick — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 19:42:59 +0000

That shiny, new netbook you’re using does everything you want it to do, but Windows XP is definitely showing its age with the old-school interface. What you need is a free utility that adds lots of features with updated graphics. That’s where XPize comes in, as it adds lots of pretty bells and whistles.

XPize is the product of a project run by volunteer developers, and it updates many of the UI elements in Windows XP to make them look fresher. It adds a number of nice visual styles that don’t change Windows XP; they just make it look more modern. It is perfect for netbooks, most of which run XP. Give it a try if you want to spruce up that old XP interface. There is also a Vize for you Vista users, and the group plans a Sevenize once Windows 7 is released.

(via I Started Something)

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Add a Battery Meter to Your Cursor

Kevin C. Tofel — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:01:05 +0000

Phil Ferris, our man in Cornwall, England, got the jump on me today. I normally read Business Hacks during my daily routine, but Phil beat me to it. Of course, he’s several time zones ahead, so I’m going to have to visit him and have a local RSS reading challenge soon. ;)

Phil pointed out another useful battery meter utility, and since I’ve been taking a closer look at Windows 7 on my UMPC (more on that later), the timing is perfect. I’m always looking at different battery meters because I like to auto-hide the Windows taskbar on the small screen. That, in turn, hides the native battery icon in the Windows system tray. Business Hacks thinks that BattCursor could work for folks like me. The free app adds your remaining battery level percentage to the cursor on your screen.

That might sound annoying, but you can customize the transparency level of the notification. And your cursor can be configured to turn yellow or red when the battery level gets close to the critical level. The software can even turn your Aero Glass windows yellow or red as you approach a low battery level. The BattCursor devs say this uses an undocumented feature of Windows, so that function could disappear. As your battery levels decline, the utility can auto-dim your screen and disable Aero Glass in order to save a wee bit more juice.

BattCursor runs on Microsoft Windows Vista and 7, at least up to the Release Candidate of the latter. Thanks, Phil!

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Carry VLC in Your Pocket to Enjoy Portable Media on Any PC

Kevin C. Tofel — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:50:46 +0000

So maybe you’re not ready for a web-based operating system but you still like to flit from computer to computer. That’s great for hitting up the web but not always so great for playing media files. Sure, if you’re sticking with Flash-based vids or a common file format, you’re likely in the clear. But you can’t expect every major codec installed on every PC you come across, can you? Lifehacker says that with VLC Media Player Portable, you don’t have to.

The highly flexible media application is part of the Portable Apps suite, which means you can carry VLC on a flash drive in your pocket. The download is 20MB, but will only take up to 37MB on your flash drive. The portable version has may of the same features as the latest desktop version and supports MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg and many other media formats.

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