If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.
You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!
I keep my eyes peeled for free music creation software for my friends. When I saw a supposedly free program at a website I wasn't familiar with, I wrote to Jimi about it. It's a good thing I did. He is the maestro when it comes to freebies in music.
He tipped me off that the Fruity Loops program wasn't free. He clued me in on a fake program called Neosound, and finally, he showed me this new freebie called trakAxPC.
Thanks Jimi!
Here is a recent song that Jimi published.
Caution: If you've never heard space music, you may want to turn down the lights, light up some incense and turn up the volume to get the full effect. LOL
I haven't had a chance to mess with it yet, but it looks freekin awesome!!
Beware of neosound, it is Audacity in a poorly redone wrapper.
peace
jimi
Quote from the website
Buying music and video software for your PC can be an expensive and confusing experience for even experienced consumers. All that is about the change with the introduction of the TrakAxPC —the ultimate multimedia creation tool.
TrakAx empowers you to create professional music and video mixes in an easy-to-use and fun environment. Whether you are creating a music track for your MySpace page or a video for YouTube, TrakAxPC is the most powerful FREE application on the web.
CC pointed me to this virtual desktop manager that I thought was eerily similar to Yodm3d which I reviewed a few weeks ago. The site he pointed me to is has a very good review of the Shock 4Way 3D program.
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Quote from the review at Sinlung Tech-News:
Having used the Shock 4Way 3D for sometime now, I find it quite refreshing to look at - and plus, I get 4 screens to work on. Although the quality of the OpenGL animations isn't as good as Vista's Aero or Mac OS X, it's fine - considering the application is just about 600 KB and requires around 10 MB of system memory, as opposed to the GBs you'd be using for Aero. All and all, a neat little app that's certainly worth a shot.
This one is just to have a little fun with your relatives and the post office.
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Quote from the website
Poster Forge is a new software tool that allows you to quickly make your own inspirational, motivational, movie or old west "Wanted" posters without any efforts and totally for free! With the help of a special built-in utility, you can print big size posters and hang them on the wall. What is more, you can publish your new posters in the Internet (myspace, livejournals, flickr, etc.). Don’t wait, put your creative ideas in your new posters with Poster Forge at any time, any place and share them with your friends and colleagues!
reviewed by Anonymous on 30 Oct 2005, updated Oct 2007, Desktop Tools
Notes from Clif
I occasionally get emails from a person I know who tries lots of freeware programs out. He prefers to remain unnamed. This review was for Hott Notes 3. Since then it's been revised to version 4 and I've been told by CC that this program is even better now.
Review by Anonymous
I've been playing around with this for the last 3 hours. It's a must have if you need sticky notes outside of a professional office application. It's so simple that I did not believe it. Hott Notes is a 2.2mb download. Installation is a simple two clicks and comes with an uninstaller. Help files are extensive but well written and easy to understand.
hott notes is a sticky notes reminder program for the Windows desktop. It is completely free. No ads. No spy-ware. Not only can you post sticky note reminders, you can make checklists, set alarms, draw on your notes, and archive.
Remind
Place notes on your desktop, reminding you of important events everytime you use the computer.
List
Create checklists to keep track of what you've done and what you have left to do.
Scribble
Draw crazy pictures to decorate your desktop, or use your Tablet PC to write notes with a stylus. Scribble notes can be any size and stretched to your liking.
Style
hott notes have a simple, yet pleasant interface. Choose any color, font, or translucency level for your notes. Also, create and use themes.
Edit
Editing notes is easy and non-obstructive. Just double-click the note body, edit it, and hit "Done" when you're finished.
Manager
Managing a large number of notes is easy. A Note Manager allows you view your desktop, wastebasket, and archived notes and perform batch operations on them.
My wife first showed me this suite of portable apps for USB flash drives. I am really impressed with their offerings. They have four major collections for differing sizes of USB drives. The software collections come with a simple installation wizard and is offered in various languages. The suites can also be installed on your hard drive.
Quote from the website
The software contained in the PenSuites is stand-alone and doesn’t require installation; each program is easily launched directly from the pen drive and accessed directly from a menu that’s similar to the Quick Launch menu in Windows.
Just plug your pen drive into your PC’s USB slot and have immediate access to hundreds of free programs.
Carry it in your pocket or purse and have the right software for every situation. The PenSuite offers many software categories — for instance, security, networking, multimedia — enough that you could use a it on a PC that has just the operating system installed.
In one of the past issues of my "What do you need" section, somebody asked me for a good personal info manager that uses only a plain text data base. It took me a few weeks to remember the name but I had used this PIM a long time ago. It's simple but simply great. The text only database will allow power users to add their own special tweaks to this system and it's also a portable app. You won't find many PIMs like this one any more.
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Quote from the website
QeepIt is designed to organize ToDo-Lists very fast without clicking thousands of buttons. Forget paper and pen. It can be used in realtime during a telephon call. Set priorities by moving important notes to the top. A mask function allows the use as a small and handy data base application for addresses and any other stuff. Of course a powerfull search function included (engl./german/italian with manuals)..
1. QeepIt is FREEWARE
2. needs no installation (...simply start the exe-file for instant use)
3. writes nothing into your system (...that makes your system slow)
4. can be simply removed (...by deleting the program folder only)
5. has a small download size (no libs, fonts etc.)
6. comes with its own folder (not required to generate manually)
7. requires the msvbvm50.dll (normally present on each system)
Some of the guys at work were using a really old piece of shareware to merge and split PDF files. They were very happy to see this one when I showed it to them. Now they don't have to worry about licensing. It works great and is completely portable.
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Quote from the website
The First Free and Open Source PDF Split and Merge utility
I've been hearing about Gadwin screen capture software for years. I'd never used it and last week I finally gave it a try. It is "LiteWare" and it does not have as many features as the last freeware version of FastStoneCapture.
I can't recommend it.
Quote from the website
Gadwin PrintScreen is an easy to use utility that allows you to capture any portion of the screen, save it to a file, copy it to Windows clipboard, print it or e-mail it to a recipient of your choice.
Here is a great find from Zia, which he posted at his CyberNirvana blog. I just tried it and all I can say is WOW! Be sure to check out his latest Firefox addon find called CLEO.
From Zia:
FEBE Firefox Extension
This is great...a back-up solution for all the Firefox add-ons, themes, bookmarks, cookies, etc.
This can only be a life saver for Firefox addicts like me.
The setup is clean and simple, with scheduling and restore options. The actual back-up was reasonably fast.
Just love it!
Quote from the website
FEBE (Firefox Environment Backup Extension) allows you to quickly and easily backup your Firefox extensions. In fact, it goes beyond just backing up -- It will actually rebuild your extensions individually into installable .xpi files. Now you can easily synchronize your office and home browsers.
FEBE backs up your extensions, themes, and (optionally) your bookmarks, preferences, passwords, cookies and just about everything else Firefox offers (it can even backup/restore your entire profile).
Version 5.0 allows for user-defined backups. Single files or entire directories can be specified to back up data for programs like Thunderbird, Greasemonkey, etc.
Backups can be performed on demand or scheduled for daily, weekly, or monthly unattended runs.
Clif asked me to write a little something about my recent hobby of downloading streaming movies/videos. The best browser to use is Firefox, since you’ll also need to add DownloadHelper. These are my two key programs, since I prefer to save, burn, and then watch video on a regular DVD player. It’s more comfortable than using the computer and monitor.
If your DVD player can also play DivX disks, then all the better because some movies/videos can be downloaded in this format. Otherwise you’ll need to get your hands on DivXtoDVD. This is an older version, but it’s still freeware. Newer versions have more features, hence you need to shell out money. The new versions are under $50 bucks, so not too pricy. Below is an extract from the freeware program's text file.
DivxToDVD by VSO-Software
This is a sneak preview of DivxToDVD, which launches development of new products in the future.
At this time the application is designed to convert files (AVI, DIVX, VOB, satellite streams, MPEG, IVX, WMV etc.) to a compatible DVD file structure. This can be useful if you want to watch a video file on your TV using a standard home DVD player rather than on your PC.
How it works:
Select your video file (only one in the current version), select the output folder, and press Convert.
During the process the preview window allows you to check if the file is correctly readable and not damaged.
The conversion time depends on your computer's speed and overall configuration.
Once finished, it will try to launch CopyToDVD to burn, which is the recommended burning engine to use, but you can also use other DVD recording products.
Here's comment from a reader named "$ man". He mentioned a problem and I thought I knew the answer to it.
From $ man:
I really did get use to 2k (Windows 2000). One of the tools I liked using the most had to be the folder comments. But after upgrading yet again, it seems that XP SP2 doesn't have it.
This rang a bell with me, because I'd swear I've used the comments on files in XP before. I did a quick google and ended up at Tech Support Alert. See the article below for details on adding comments to files (and maybe even folders).
Quote from the website
... there is another way of documenting files using an inbuilt but little-used Windows feature.
This involves the use of the "Comments" field. It's an attribute of all files and folders in Windows just like name, size and date created. Most users don't know about this field as the Comments field is by default not displayed in Windows Explorer in XP.
Gary at Internet Fixes continues to amaze me with hundreds and thousands of tips for your PC. Whatever your operating system, or how you use it, a visit to Gary's site will soon have you saying "So that's how you do this!".
I stumbled across this list of web apps. It's a great place to visit. You might find a real gem here.
Quote from the website
All Apps and services listed here are free (99.99%), or at least come with decent free account option. Unlike other similar directories this only lists tools that actually WORK, meaning that you won’t find a social networking website used by 50 users, or a community-powered website where there is no community. I guess you get the idea.
This guy is a fanatic about making his Windows system files "bullet-proof". The info here is great. Just use caution and keep your system backed up before you make serious changes that may be hard to reverse.
Quote from the website
On these pages I offer pictorial, step-by-step instructions for locking down the core of your Windows operating system to help prevent malicious programs from launching. Every single mouse click is illustrated, in effort to make this procedure as easy as possible to follow. Links are also provided at the bottom of each page for you to download the lesson in PDF form, allowing for easy printing and viewing offline.
COOLSITES is a list of safe, fun, useful, informative and just plain cool websites and programs that are FREE, FREE and FREE. All of the programs and websites I list are free. If I list anything that is so good but isn't free I will list the price with it.
You need a free 2.8 GB Gmail account to access many of the cool features at Google. After more than two years in beta testing Gmail is open to the public. Just go to http://gmail.com and sign up for an account.
I think Gmail works best in the awesome Firefox browser. It's free, easy to use, and it's way more secure than Internet Explorer. My favorite thing to do is to customize Firefox so that it does much more than IE ever could. You can select new button controls for your toolbars, install extensions to add new features, or change the look of your browser with themes - the way Firefox looks and works is under your control.
Wow! Over 800 people and still growing! I invite all of you to record your locations on this map. You can include as little or as much information as you wish. I think you'll enjoy seeing yourself there.
Here's a small look at my frapper map.
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