Monday, March 2, 2009

Technobrief #6

Summary: Recent (and not so recent) discoveries of software, articles, and more.

I haven't posted latest findings in a while, so here some of the goodies I've found since the last Technobrief post.

Software
  • 3DP Chip: Shows a summary of devices -- CPU, audio card, video card, hard drive, DVD drive, etc. -- installed on the computer along with device drivers.
  • Ammyy Admin: Remote computer access and desktop sharing.
  • Analogy (screensaver): Typographic clock which fuses the immediacy of digital with the visual-spatial quality of analogue into a hybrid format (beautiful).
  • ArsClip: Windows clipboard manager (good alternative to ClipX and Ditto).
  • DriverBackup!: Backs up and restores drivers.
  • DVD Flick: DVD authoring tool; supports custom audio tracks, subtitles, and navigation menu.
  • DVD slideshow GUI: Import photos and burn them as a slideshow on a DVD (supports music, transitions, effects, subtitles, and more).
  • Gizmo Drive: Mounts ISO, BIN, CUE, and NRG files to a virtual CD-ROM drive.
  • Inkscape: Vector graphics editor with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X.
  • JPEGCrops: Crops images without quality loss (very handy when preparing images for printing, i.e. 4x6 aspect ratio).
  • jZip: WinZip alternative that supports many compression formats including Zip, TAR, GZip, 7-Zip, RAR, and ISO (think of it as 7-Zip with a better GUI supporting different languages).
  • MKN VolWheel: Changes system volume via the mouse wheel or a hotkey.
  • Quick Media Converter: Converts files between multiple video and audio formats.
  • RIOT - Radical Image Optimization Tool: Resizes and optimizes JPEG, GIF and PNG images in a simple, clean user interface (offers a nice plugin for IrfanView).
  • RocketDock: Slick, Mac OS X Dock-like program that gives quick access to programs and Windows features (can replace the default Windows Quick Start toolbar).
  • SketchPath: XPath editor and XML analysis and testing tool supporting XPath 1.0-2.0, which provides an integrated graphical environment for viewing XML files, developing and testing XPath expressions against them and managing the expressions in file libraries.
  • SoftMaker Office 2006 for Windows: Free alternative to Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org (it's smaller, and reportedly faster than OpenOffice.org).
  • Tail for Win32: Windows version of the UNIX 'tail -f' command.
  • TeamViewer: Remote control your partner's PC.
  • Ultimate List of Free Office Software from Microsoft: Lists many FREE software titles offered by Microsoft.
  • UndercoverXP: Prints CD and DVD covers.
  • Windows Essentials Codec Pack: One of the most comprehensive collection of media codecs, filters, splitters and other tools that will enable you to play 99% of all the movies, music, and flash files you download off the internet.
WebArticlesFirefox add-ons
  • iMacros for Firefox: Records and replays repetitive tasks like filling out forms.
  • FireRainbow: Javascript syntax highlighting for the Firebug add-on.
  • SwitchProxy Tool: Easily switches proxy settings.
  • YSlow: Analyzes web pages and tells you why they're slow based on Yahoo's rules for high performance web sites.
ReferencesTutorialsPhotos

Posted by Alek Davis at 9:48 PM

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