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WWD Screencast: Spring Cleaning Your Mac With OnyX

Simon Mackie — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 21:00:56 +0000

If your Mac has been feeling a little sluggish of late, now would be a good time to do a little spring cleaning to get rid of some of the cruft that’s accumulated on your hard drive. One freeware utility that can help do that is Titanium Software’s OnyX; I made a quick screencast showing how it works:

What tools do you use for cleaning your Mac?

Confessions of a Freeware Junkie

Doriano "Paisano" Carta — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:00:57 +0000

I have to come clean and admit that I love freeware. Yes, I know that everyone likes getting something for nothing, but I’m talking about a lifelong addiction here. I think it started many years ago when I first started using BBS, then progressed to CompuServe and AOL. While most people were excited about hearing “You’ve Got Mail,” I was most thrilled about all of the freeware programs that I was pilfering (legally!) from its libraries. It was just like I was some kind of addict getting a fix every time I downloaded a new freeware utility that I didn’t even need.

Over the years, my addiction didn’t stop, it merely morphed into new platforms and technologies. When the World Wide Web took off, I found nirvana with web sites like Moochers.com (sadly no longer around) that hosted tons of freeware programs. I couldn’t believe it — sites dedicated to free stuff. It only confirmed that I was not the only one with this addiction.

Fast-forward to recent times and, thanks to the Web 2.0 era of the “freemium” services, I’ve found myself signing up for services I didn’t even need. Yes, as a technology writer I sign up for many apps in order to review, but I have to admit that I still sign up for many of them that I have no intentions on writing about. I guess old habits are hard to break.

Here’s my list of places to find the best free stuff — from freeware software to free web apps and services — now.

My Favorite Places to Find Freeware

There’s a major difference between freeware and shareware/adware. For me, freeware is the good stuff that comes without the usage restrictions or crippled features that are hallmarks of shareware. Freeware is also devoid of the advertisements that riddle their adware brethren. Here are my favorite places to find new freeware treasures that are safe from annoying ads and potential spyware.

Tucows has been around forever and has amassed a large collection of good, clean freeware.

NoNags is probably the oldest resource in this bunch, having started in 1995! The site hasn’t changed much in appearance, but it continues to provide top-grade freeware.

Snapfiles has been around since 1997, and has an impressive freeware section, organized into categories.

FileHippo doesn’t have a freeware-only section like the other sites in this round-up but I’m including it because I love its Update Checker tool that auto-updates a ton of applications installed on your system.

Kids Freeware does exactly what it says, provides a vast collection of freeware programs, games and more for kids.

SourceForge is the best place to find open-source applications.

My Favorite Places to Find Web Apps

Go2Web20 is the ultimate directory of Web 2.0 apps and services. Its new interface actually makes it fun to find just about any kind of web app you’ll ever want or need. Most of the apps include free basic plans with options to upgrade to premium packages if/when you’re ready to do so.

KillerStartups is another impressive index of available web apps. It’s not as easy to use as Go2Web20, but it does provide helpful mini-reviews for countless web apps.

My Favorite Places to Find Free Mobile Apps

Appolicious maintains a massive list of mobile apps available for the major mobile platforms such as the iPhone, Android and more. However, its specialty is the iPhone. You can filter any of their categories to display only free applications which is quite handy indeed.

Yappler is another favorite of mine not only because it makes it extremely easy to find good free apps for the iPhone but also because it lets you create lists of your favorite apps and games that you can share with anyone via email or on social networks. You can also embed a visual list of your favorite apps on your blog or web site.

Those are my favorite places to find cool free apps. Where do you look?

Photo by stock xchng user Sarej

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Report: The Real-Time Enterprise

ActiveHotkeys: Hotkey Help at Hand

Simon Mackie — Thu, 07 May 2009 16:00:58 +0000

One of the problems with having a lot of apps installed on your PC is that it’s hard to keep track of all the hotkeys that might be in use — testing them all manually would be a very laborious process. New freeware Windows utility ActiveHotkeys can quickly list all of the hotkeys that are currently active, helping you to figure out which are used and, importantly, which might still be available for apps that you might like to use.

ActiveHotkeys is a standalone .EXE (no installation required, which is great as it’s not something you’re likely to want to use very frequently). Select which key groups (alphabetical, function, numeric keypad, etc.) and modifier keys (Win, Alt, Ctrl, Shift and combinations thereof) you’d like to test and hit “Test active hotkeys.” ActiveHotkeys will return a sortable list of the hotkeys currently in use.

Unfortunately, ActiveHotkeys doesn’t tell you which app each hotkey is reserved for, which would make it more useful. This comes down to a limitation of Windows, however, rather than a fault of ActiveHotkeys, so you’ll need to do some further investigation if you want to know what each hotkey actually does.

ActiveHotkeys is free to download and use and works with Windows 95 onwards.

Found any nifty freeware apps like ActiveHotkeys recently? Let us know in the comments!

(via Freewaregenius)

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5 Free, Simple and Useful Windows Apps for Web Workers

Celine Roque — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:00:51 +0000

The first thing I look at when looking at a new application is the feature list. Many of those feature lists tend to be really long, and most of the time I find myself using an app without taking advantage of its lesser-known features.

A program’s usefulness isn’t necessarily proportional to the size of its feature list. There are some apps out there which have only one function and a minimalist interface. This doesn’t mean that they’re less useful than their feature-rich brethren.

I’ve compiled a short list of free, single-function Windows apps that web workers can add to their toolbox. They’re worth looking at if you want some added useful functionality without putting too much strain on your computer’s resources.

PushPin

What it does: PushPin gives you the option to have any window “always on top”. This means that you can have inactive windows on top of your active window.

Why it’s useful: It’s a helpful tool when you’re copy-pasting text or code from one window to another: you don’t have to go back to the taskbar to choose another window. This is especially useful if the source of the text can’t be copy-pasted and you have to retype it, such as text embedded in PDFs, image files, etc.

Details: You can learn more about PushPin here. According to the web site, it runs on Windows 95 to NT4, but I’ve used it on both Windows XP and 7 without any problems.

Texter

What it does: Texter is a text substitution app that allows you to assign abbreviations to phrases or lines of code that you commonly use. Since I started using it, I haven’t found a single application that it won’t work with.

Why it’s useful: As a blogger, I often find myself typing long lines of code to format my blog posts. Since the code I use is repetitive, I can just save them onto Texter and use the abbreviations to type them automatically onto a WordPress text box.

I also use Texter for template messages and signatures which I use in Gmail, LinkedIn, and other social networking accounts. Although I use Gmail’s Canned Responses feature for email-specific signatures, I use Texter to save those template messages that I use across several communication tools.

Texter has some advanced uses, too, but I find that the basic uses are more than useful enough make the app worth downloading.

Details: You can download Texter from this post at Lifehacker. There’s an embedded video that shows you how it works, too.

Taskbar Shuffle

What it does: Taskbar Shuffle allows you to rearrange items on your Windows taskbar and system tray, so you can put relevant items close to each other.

Why it’s useful: Windows usually arranges taskbar items chronologically, which isn’t very useful if you have lots of programs running and you need to switch between windows often. With Taskbar Shuffle, you can just drag and drop these items in an order that complements your workflow.

Details: You can get more info about Taskbar Shuffle from this site. The app runs on Windows 95 to Vista. Windows 7 users don’t need Taskbar Shuffle, since this feature is already built-in.

Sizer

What it does: It allows you to assign a different display resolution to a particular window. Available resolutions include 640 x 480, 800 x 600 and 1024 x 768.

Why is it useful: Web workers who want to see their blogs or web sites in different resolutions can do so automatically. You don’t have to change your monitor’s resolution or view your designs from different computers.

Details: Click here to access Sizer’s official web site. Although it works with older versions of Windows, Sizer doesn’t work with Windows Vista and Windows 7.

USB Disk Ejector

What it does: USB Disk Ejector does exactly what its name implies. It allows you to eject USB devices more smoothly.

Why it’s useful: It’s a hassle-free way to eject USB devices such as memory cards, external hard drives, and flash drives. I hate it when Windows tells me I can’t eject a device because it’s currently in use (even if it isn’t, as far as I can tell).

Details: You can download USB Disk Ejector from this site. It works on Windows 2000 and later versions.

Do you have other simple but useful apps to add to this list? Share your suggestions in the comments.

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FlexCal for Mac Adds Events to iCal Easily

Kevin C. Tofel — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 15:00:25 +0000

Love it or hate it, iCal comes with the Mac OS X operating system, so I’m always on the lookout for how to use it better.

Once Google added synchronization support for iCal back in July, I did integrate the basic scheduler into my web work, but I always found it cumbersome to add events quickly. For a while, I actually found it easier to just create events in my Google Calendar since I already had my browser open. Then I stumbled onto FlexCal, a freeware utility that’s not glitzy, but does the trick.

Essentially, FlexCal appears on your Mac in the System Preferences as a preference pane. From here you configure a few items in the utility and then you forget it’s running; Until you need to add an event to your iCal, that is. To use it, you simply press a pre-configured hotkey of your choice and up pops a window to create a new event or task to your calendar. It’s that easy.

I use “cmd e” for my hotkey: “e” being for event. Tapping that allows me to enter the event name, choose the calendar I want the event assigned to, start / end time, location and an alarm if I so choose. After the information is entered, a quick hit of the Return key on the keyboard sends the info to iCal, and in my case, to my Google Calendar as well. You can also use FlexCal to add tasks to iCal, however I’m still a Remember The Milk fan. I’d never say that iCal is an end-all, be-all calendar solution, but with free add-ons like FlexCal, it’s getting better.

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