Description: DocShield is a program that runs in the background and monitors files and folders that you specify for changes. It will create compressed snapshots of your files whenever it detects any changes, enabling you to retrieve your files in case of data loss, and providing a retrievable version history of your files and/or data.

You may or may not be regularly backing up your most important files and/or archiving the most important version changes, and saving your backups into compressed archives to keep your files from growing too large. But chances are that you do this in fits and starts and/or are not as consistent as you like to be, or even have simply given up on this. Wouldn’t it be just great if there were a program you could run in the background that would automate do this for you and manage the process automatically? DocShield is exactly this program.

Although there are a number of freeware programs that do this (e.g. File Hamster, previously featured on Freewaregenius), DocShield features mature functions such as archive management, on-the-fly compression, and FTP backup. Here are more notes on this program:

• The user interface: is very well designed. The main configuration screen is split into 4 tabs and is very easy and intuitive to work with.
• Files monitored: can monitor local files or files on the network. You can point the program explicitly to the files you want it to monitor (drag and drop is supported), or you can define a folder/folders and tell it to scan for certain file-types (you can include or exclude subfolders and use wildcards to exclude certain files). I would strongly encourage the former approach as I have found that pointing the program to a folder that contains a large number of big files can sometimes be problematic.
• Monitoring activity: the program will check for changes in your files and folders at 5 minutes periods by default, but you can set this to anything you like (seconds/minutes/hours). If it finds that a file has changed from the latest version of it in the archive it will add that latest version to the archive. Any changes or versions that may have been created between the monitoring intervals will not be recorded. (You can also trigger the monitoring action manually by pressing the “Shiled Now” button)
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Description: RecentFilesView is a small, no install freeware program that can retrieve and save the list of the most recently accessed files.

If you’ve ever needed a list of the last opened files on your machine, RecentFilesView is for you. It provides a much more comprehensive list than the one in the "Recent Documents" folder. Here are some scenarios I could think of where you wil find this program very useful:

• If you are working on a project and for whatever reason need to create a list of all the relevant files for that project. With RecentFilesView you can export a comprehensive or partial list to a text or CSV files and edit that as needed.
• If you are uncertain as to which files or file versions you were using when you were working on a project 5 days ago. With RecentFilesView you should be able to survey that history in a snap.
• Please post other uses you might think of in the comments.

Here are more notes on this app:

• Sorting: you can sort by created time, modified time, executed time, and filename.
• Which files will be listed?: those files that were either opened from the desktop or from an application. It will list folders that were opened as well.. It will display your file activity, not files that were created or accessed by programs, such as temp files or cached files saved by your browser. Files that are deleted will also be listed, although it will indicate in the list that the file is no longer available.
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Description: PhotoMesa is a free tool for managing image libraries. Dubbed a "zoomable image browser", it employs an innovative method for browsing a large number of images by zooming in and out of folders in a sort of "bird’s eye view". It also offers the ability to browse image collections by folder, category, people, year, and month, and for adding searchable tags and captions stored within the image files themselves using the IPTC standard.

This program was apparently developed based on research that was done in the University of Maryland’s Human-Computer Interaction Lab, and the end result is a very intuitive way of browsing image libraries. What you will immediately notice when you first start using this program is its unique (and quite pleasing) way of scrolling through a large number of images in "zoom mode" (I will attempt a description of this below, but if you want to get a sense of this see the video at the bottom of this review). Here are more notes on this program:

• Zoom mode: by default, Photomesa will scan the folders that you tell it to and generate groups of rectangles that represent your folder tree visually. What is nice about this representation is that (a) it serves to take maximum advantage of your available screen space, and (b) it allows you a bird’s-eye-view (or satellite-eye view more like) which allows you to easily browse your entire image collection in a very intuitive way.
• Scroll mode: is a normal interface of viewing folders or groups sequentially employed in most programs (such as Picasa). This is made available in case you prefer a conventional way of working with folders/groups. This is also a better interface when you need to see all images within folders, as zoom mode uses "representative" images for most folders until you zoom into it.
• Interacting with the program: the system of interaction under zoom mode is well thought out, and takes a very short time to get the hang of it. Left or right clicking over any rectangle zooms in and out of it, respectively. Each rectangle will only display a representative number of thumbnails, but once zoomed into will display all the images within using very small thumbnails (this depends on the program window size and the number of images within). Hovering on any thumbnail produces a larger floating preview of the image, which is very useful. You can perform operations on the images by selecting one or more images (using CTRL or Shift) and using a number of options in the context menu (rotating, captioning, making an image a "favorite", etc).
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Description: TreeDBNotes Free Edition is a hierarchical notes outliner program with a wide range of features, including organizing information in both tabs and tree structures, rich text editing, support for tables, images, and links, global search, and more.

I used this program as my primary hierarchical notes outliner more than a year ago but eventually abandoned it because it lacked some key features and languished without development for a long time. Needless to say I was intrigued to find that the developer recently released an update, and very pleasantly surprised with how mature this program has become. The new release is worth the wait; to get straight to the point: if you are looking for a full-featured, sleek, well designed freeware hierarchical not-taking program, TreeDBNotes Free Edition is one of the best options around. More info below:

• Organization: notes are organized two dimensionally in tabs and hierarchical folder trees. This is extremely important, as some notes programs only provide a single hierarchical folder option which can get very cumbersome to manage. Trees/folders can be easily managed from the right click menu (moved around the tree or into another tree, copied/pasted, sorted alphabetically, etc).
• Rich text editing: the editing capability provided rivals that of any major word processor.(e.g. text styles, justification, bullets, sub-bullets, numbering, text and background colors, paragraph formatting etc). One feature I really like is the shrink/grow font by one point function, familiar to MS Word users. Includes a nifty text manipulation tool that can change the case of selected text: uppercase/lowercase/first letter/first word.
• Links creation: this is one of the coolest features which is surprisingly absent in many freeware notes programs; the ability to link to a URL (online or locally), link to another note or bookmark within TreeDBNotes, or link to a local file. I am using this feature to link to web pages that I save locally using the free version of Local Website Archiver, and it works really well. It also enables you to use TreeDBNotes as a versatile bookmark manager of sorts.
• Tables support: for HTML and Word tables. Tables are easily created and manipulated through the right click menu in a very intuitive manner. You can copy tables from a web page and paste straight into TreeDBNotes.
• Image support: images can be inserted into any page, or pasted from the clipboard. For some reason, though, when copying/pasting paragraphs from the internet that include images those images are not transferred (unless copied/pasted individually).
• Favorites and bookmarks: both can be accessed from the left hand pane (these are 2 different things). You can create a favorite out of any note (folder or node in the tree structure) in order to jump to it from anywhere. Bookmarks, however, are anchors that can be used to jump to a specific location within the text, and are visible only within the tree/tab you are working with. (To bookmark: right click > insert > bookmark).
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Description: ALToolbar is a free Internet Explorer toolbar that offers a number of very useful functions straight from the browser, including an internet cleaner, advanced find, automatic site login with online password storage, online bookmark management , screenshot capture for websites, quick access to multiple search engines, a flash ad blocker, control by mouse gestures, and a few others.

Let me be clear first that I usually do not like toolbars and try to avoid them. I especially do not like toolbars when they offer functions and features that have little value-added, and then try to force you to use their own custom search page. The only toolbar that I have previously recommended on Freewaregenius is the Google Toolbar (see this post). ALToolbar, however, offers a number of functions with high value added and I have no qualms giving it my highest possible endorsement.

The reason I recommend ALToolbar is because it brings together a terrific collection of browser tools in one place. And although it does have it’s own customized search page, the last used search engine (e.g. Google or whatever other engine you like) will be used as default, or you can define your own default search provider.

Note that of the many functions that ALToolbar offers, two of these (the automatic password login ALPass and the Bookmark manager) actually store your information online. The idea behind this is to enable you to manage your bookmarks or site logins on one computer (say, at home), and then access these from your work computer for example such that you will always have access to the will always be in sync. These are discussed in mroe detail below. Here’s a list of all the functions ALToolbar has to offer:

• The user interface: the toolbar generally looks good but what is cool is that it allows you to maximize it (so that a text label is displayed next to each button) or minimize it so that only the icons appear. The latter option is very useful if you are interested in minimizing your browser toolbar clutter.
• Customizability: ALToolbar allows you to pick and choose in terms of the buttons you would like to display within the toolbar and/or the functions that you would like enabled. If you do not care about any offered function(s) you can disable it and use the remaining ones.
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Description: WordFlashReader is an open source program that promises to increase your reading speed (of electronic texts) by multiple factors, as well as increase your comprehension of them. It will flash the words within a text in sequence (individually or in chunks) on the screen in large font, with pauses for punctuation. WordFlashReader can open and display multiple text and ebook formats.

I am 36 years old, and one of the facts of life which I have come to terms with is the following: I will never read all the books that I would like to read. In fact, I will most likely never read all the books that I have already purchased, hoping that I might someday get to them. Unlike some people (my wife, for example, who can zip through books) it simply takes me too much time to read a book; there is simply too much thinking, reflection, and daydreaming involved for me to get through texts as efficiently as I would like.

Which is why this program piqued my interest as soon as I lay eyes on it. What WordFlashReader does is open and display electronic texts such that only one word or a chunk of text is displayed in large font on a dark background at any one time. The flashing word(s) move through the text in quick succession, with some considerable degree of control allowed the user in terms of display speed, size of the displayed chunk, and the behavior of the text with regard to punctuation. This system of reading is supposed to have the following effects:

• Comfort: it is supposed to be more comfortable on the eyes than the normal method of reading. Although it takes a bit of getting used to at first, I can see that how this might be the case.
• Efficiency: because the stream of words served is constant and uninterrupted, the user is forced to keep with the pace, although he/she can control the display speed. If you are going to use the program you will be forced read in a constant and efficient manner.
• Comprehension: the program pauses for punctuation, which is supposed to increase comprehension.
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Description: HTML Formatter can instantly format unstructured, messy code into an indented, cleaned-up logical structure. It can process a wide range of code types including HTML, ASP, PHP, Smarty templates, XML, and Coldfusion.

If you write code you already know how important it is to have a clean, organized layout. This can not only make your code more intuitively readable (by you or someone else), but can also have an esthetic, pleasing angle as well. The problem, of course, is that formatting and cleaning up code can consume a lot of time; wouldn’t be simply perfect if there was a tool that could simply read your code, figure out its logical structure, and format and clean it up for you? HTML Formatter is precisely such a tool.

I’d previously written about GUI Tidy, a frontend for the very well known HTML Tidy. A quick comparison between the results obtained after running a snippet of messy code through that tool and through HTML Formatter showed the latter clearly superior. While GUI Tidy’s output had broken links and the occasional unformatted clutter strewn about, “HTML Formatter” re-structured the code almost perfectly. And although I only occasionally write code you do not have to be a programmer to see, at a glance, the improvement that this program can lend to messy code.

Here are more notes on this program:

• How it works: you can drag and drop a single file, multiple files, or entire folders on the program icon for processing. HTML formatter will then save re-structured versions of your files with “_Indented” added to the file name. This program has no GUI (or user interface of any kind, for that matter).
• Customizable: you can edit a config file in the HTML Formatter folder in order to manipulate some of the program settings (e.g. what part of the code and which tags gets processed).
• Structure: indents code, supports nested divs/nested tables, adds missing tags, formats your code and gives it a logical structure.
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Description: Desktop Sidebar is a Vista-style sidebar widgets engine with minimal system resource consumption. It supports a wide range of applets/widgets that can give you access to a wide variety of information from your PC or from the internet straight on your desktop. Works on Windows 2000, 2003, XP and Vista.

There are a number of free sidebar/widgets programs out there, of which I will mention my favorite, Klipfolio, and the well-known Yahoo widgets. Desktop Sidebar is another free option that has a number of really good reasons why you should use it; here are the top 5 reasons I could think of (in ascending order):

• Reason#1: Desktop Sidebar’s Outlook widget. If you use Outlook, you will find this widget really useful as it will display your Outlook info (received emails, calendar, tasks, notes, etc.) on the desktop without having Outlook open in the background and hogging system resources. I have tried a number of Outlook-on-desktop programs and the couple or so I tried require Outlook in the background, so this is good news indeed. (Klipfolio, in contrast, does not have a good Outlook widget).
• Reason#2: the range of available applets. Is really excellent. Aside from the usual staples (such as image display, clock, weather, stock tickers, google, desktop search etc.) it has some sophisticated applets such as a clipboard viewer, an FTP uploader, Miranda IM, a website-monitoring thumbnail applet, media player contol (including Itunes), desktop search, a POP3 email checker, a gmail plugin, and a good number of others.
• Reason#3: the "Capture Panel" plugin. This applet allows you to take any program that may be running on your desktop and "widgetize" it. For example, I was able to imbed Pidgin (my freeware IM client of choice) into Desktop Sidebar, although admittedly it did look crowded and out of place, but you see my point.
• Reason#4: memory consumption is generally low (approx 19 megs upon installation with the default plugins running). However, note that with every plugin installed the memory use will go higher, so remove all plugins that you do not care for or particularly need.
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Description: Enso Words is a free program that offers a number of text-related functions that can be performed universally within any application. These include a spellcheck, word definitions, thesaurus, word and character counts, uppercase/lowercase conversions, instantly Googling selected text, and others.

"Enso Words is part of the Enso group of applications, a collection of task-oriented software that employ the same basic interface and method of interaction with the user. They are designed to perform simple tasks - tasks that might otherwise interrupt your workflow or require shifting your focus from your work- quickly and easily. Here are more notes on Enso Words:

• The User Interface: first select a text or word, then press a hotkey (the caps lock button) that brings out a kind of command prompt overlayed on top of all open windows in the top left corner of the screen. Here, you can type in a handful of commands that perform the available functions. The program will immediately offer several "autocompleted" commands that are filtered as you type, making it very easy to hone in on the task that you seek (see first screenshot above).
• Available tasks: include spell check, word definitions, thesaurus, word count, character count, uppercase selected text, lowercase selected text, Google selected text, calculate (for on-the-fly calculations) and even cut/copy/paste text for apps that do not support these natively.
• Online tasks: note that the word definition and thesaurus require an internet connection and will in fact open the answers.com webpage as reference. The spellchecker, thankfully, is local.
• The spell check: is performed within a window that overlays itself on top of your application, and is limited to English, at least at the moment. Unrecognized words are highlighted in yellow and left-clicking these will display a dropdown containing suggested spellings that you can choose. You can also add unrecognized words to the database. The spell check is powerful and works really well; one glitch, however, is that it can, at times, mess up your text’s formatting (this happened both in MS Word and Post2blog, the program I use to write my blog postings).
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Description: ComicRack is a free comic ebook reader for CBZ, ZIP, CBR, RAR, TAR and PDF formats. It is designed as a full-feature reader with bells and whistles as well as being a manager for your library of comic ebooks and metadata. It can also convert ebooks to other ebook formats.

If you don’t know what they are, comic-book format ebooks are typically images files that are compressed into archives and displayed in a reader according to the naming sequence of the individual images (more info on comic book formats here). Comic readers are usually geared towards displaying pages/images full screen, rotating and scrolling them for the best reading experience.

ComicRack is a worthy replacement for CDisplay, the standard bearer for comic book readers (which is also free). It goes a couple of steps further in that it is not just a display engine but includes the functionality to manage your ebook collection. Here are most notes on this program:

• Bells and whistles: there are many of these, including multiple display modes (rotate, 2-page views, etc), scroll mode, information overlays, color adjustment, automatic background matching, a magnifier tool, etc.
• The user interface: is generally nice and highly customizable, but may have just too many options and tweaks to be user friendly. Supports a tabbed, explorer-style file browser that can be placed on the left, right, or bottom of the screen (or in its own window). The type of view within the browser can be customized as well in a way reminiscent of Windows’ folder views. You can even save your workspace once you arrive at a customized layout/view combo that you like or create and save multiple workspaces. See the tips and tricks page for more info.
• PDF support: supports PDF eComics (which is to say PDFs that contain images only). However ComicRack also has the ability to read any PDF provided that you install the latest version of Ghostscript as well.
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