Posts Tagged With: Software Help
· February 3, 2008 at 5:00 am · Software Help, Web Development
Want to see how popular you are on the Web? I recently found a pretty neat program that checks your popularity against some other web sites that you might be competing against for eyeballs out there on the Web. Link Popularity Check does an alright job and giving you the facts and figures you need.
Once you get Link Popularity Check installed, this is the type of readout they deliver to you:
The positive of this program is it gives you a nice visual representation of where you stand out there with some of your competitors. It searches Google, HotBot, AllTheWeb and MSN search. The downside is that you have to put up with some advertisements and be careful not to give your e-mail address to their “newsletter”. As you can see a lot of information there to comb through to find out what is working and what you might need to work on.
· January 25, 2008 at 6:32 am · Software Help
I ran into a problem yesterday, because I got a .docx file e-mailed to me and I could not open it. Why? Well from what I could tell this seems to be one of Microsoft’s wacky file formats that you can only open using their products. Since I use OpenOffice.org as my word processor, spreadsheet, and more of choice I needed to find a quick fix.
That is when I stumbled upon this neat tool provided by Microsoft. Get read for this name… the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats.
(Try to say that ten times fast!)
I downloaded and installed it, now I can right-click the oddball files, pick “Open With…” and choose this new download. When you do it pops up with a box asking you what you would like to convert it to. With my .docx file I just turned it into a regular .doc file and I was done.
· January 17, 2008 at 6:31 am · Software Help
WebRipper might be the best tool to use if you need to take pictures or media files from the web and save them to your own PC. The program is totally free and offers several filter options to allow you to control where, when and how the files are downloaded.
The downside is that it will take a little ‘bit of tweaking before you get things just right - and that might frustrate some people. The good side is, this program was once thought to be forgotten about but was just updated recently.
It also supports more than just picture formats. Here is the full list of file types supported.
Supported file-types:
Images: JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP
Videos: MPEG, AVI, QuickTime, Real Video, WMV
Audio: MP3, WAV, Real Audio, MIDI
Documents: DOC, XLS, PPT, PDF, TXT
Other: Flash, EXE, TORRENT, ZIP
The hidden gem of this program is the search function that will allow you to scrap the Web for images tht meet your keyword and size requirements.
Now there are perfectly good reasons to use this tool. Lets say you wanted to save a long list of photos your sweetie sent you of your Christmas vacation together? Saving each one, one by one would be a pain - but using this to take them from the Web makes the job much easier.
· January 4, 2008 at 6:38 am · Desktop, Software Help
Need a better way to capture the images on your desktop? Now anybody using Windows for more than five minutes can tell you that this is what the “Print Screen” button is for, right? Well true - that does get the job done but some of us need a little more. Here are my best suggestions for desktop image capturing and web site image capturing.
…for the Desktop
MWSnap - this is a powerful free tool that puts your screen capturing ways on steroids. If Microsoft ever released a power toy for screen captures, I have a feeling this is what it would look like.
Here are five MWSnap features I like the most (in no specific order):
- 5 snapping modes
- Support for BMP, JPG, TIFF, PNG and GIF formats
- System-wide hotkeys
- Clipboard copy/paste
- Auto-start with Windows and minimizes to system tray
…for the Web
WebShot - By far, WebShot is the best web site screen capture freeware package you can get. You can capture full size or thumbnail screenshots in a number of different image formats. Wish the documentation was a little better, but it really isn’t that hard to figure out.
Here are some of the features WebShot provides that I really enjoy a lot:
- Automatic determination of page width and height that captures the whole page accurately. Does a great job every time.
- Browser size specification allows you to capture the whole page or part of it.
- Image encoding to JPG, GIF, PNG, and BMP with image quality control to save on disk space. Everybody should have a format to love.
There are a few other options out there too but these seem to far out weight their alternatives from head to toe. So next time you need to grab an screenshot of something on your desktop you should be more than prepaired to meet that chore head on with these freeware goodies.
· January 3, 2008 at 6:31 am · Software Help
Looking for a replacement to your favorite burning application? There are many out there, but a new one to catch me by the nose and take me for a ride is BurnAware Free Edition. The package of disk burning tools is simple, but has enough to make it powerful enough to replace some of the classic crapfests that you can buy.
Thanks to companies bundling over thirty or forty different tools in with the big burning sofware packages (I’m looking at you Nero) I have been left to look at BurnAware Free Edition as an alternative. What does it deliver? Read the rest of this entry »
· December 31, 2007 at 6:09 am · Software Help
Tired of not having your bookmarks when you move to a new machine, or go visit your friends, relatives of people you don’t really like but they have a nice PC that you love to play with? Wouldn’t it be nice to fit all your bookmarks on a USB thumb drive so that you could take them with you no matter where you go?
TrayURL is a tiny program that will get that job done for you.
Totally portable, this application is simple to master and will not take long to learn at all. Here are some of the features of TrayURL I am sure you will love:
- 100% “Portable”. Does not depend on any system files (ie. DLLs, OCXs, etc) nor does it reply on the system registry. Everything is in the program directory.
- Compatible with Windows 95/98/98SE/ME/NT/2K/XP/Vista.
- Runs with most browsers and your USB flash drive.
- Runs from the system tray for convenient access.
- Support for web site logins and passwords with handy “Paster” utility.
- Import and export utilities.
- Multi-user support with multiple configuration files.
- Up to 50 categories.
- Up to 80 bookmarks per category.
On the negative side, some people have complained about not having an import option which does kind of suck. I would use this more as a way to carry around important bookmarks I need to have on hand - and not every bookmark from my browser. If you got a new thumb drive for Christmas and your looking for something to use it for, this program should be a must have.
Carry TrayURL around like you would your wallet or car keys, and never be without your favorite bookmarks.
