Posted by Samer on December 6, 2010 in Launchers, System | Tagged Desktop Enhancements |
If you have a cluttered desktop, consider this: one reason why many of us keep so many objects on the desktop, aside from the fact that we have too many projects going on, is to avoid the “out of sight, out of mind” phenomenon. If you want to keep many icons within sight but are also looking for a way to keep them organized then you are likely to be quite pleased with this program.
Toolbox is a free launcher that provides floating, semi-transparent “containers” called toolboxes that can be placed anywhere on your desktop. These toolboxes can house shortcuts to files, folders, URLs, and other objects. You can move and resize your toolboxes using the mouse and icons can be added or moved to then via dragging and dropping. Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on December 2, 2010 in Games | Tagged Desktop Enhancements |
’Tis the season to be jolly again, apparently, and what better way to celebrate than by giving to your favorite freeware site? (for example). Or you could place one or more animated Christmas trees on your desktop to infuse your every moment with that festive holiday cheer!
These trees hover on your desktop, lights flickering, in all their animated glory. You could download them singly or in an all-in-one pack that contained no less than 18 different trees at the time I tested it. Kudos go to the developer for the sheer range and variety of the different tree designs (nothing short of astounding!). Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on November 29, 2010 in Productivity & Applications, Utilities, Web Development |
Have you ever needed to compare multiple versions of a text or code, and wished that the differences would be highlighted visually? This is exactly what this program does: Diffuse Merge Tool is a free, visual text file comparison and merge tool. It will display text files on-screen simultaneously each in their own pane, highlight the difference, and offer easy merging options.
This program is unusual in that, aside from the typical 2-pane two way comparison, it provides a 3-pane three-way comparison as well.It also provides syntax highlighting for a wide array of coding languages, a set of tools to identify differences and merge some or all of them, and tools to manipulate text. It can be launched from the Windows context menu (on both 32bit and 64bit Windows) for quick, on-the-fly access.
Diffuse Merge Tool is open source and multiplatform (Windows, Mac, Linux, and BSD). Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on November 26, 2010 in Graphics, Productivity & Applications, System, Utilities | Tagged Desktop Enhancements |
FilerFrog is a free program that can install a wide array of useful tools into the Windows context menu, in the vein of such useful context-menu based apps as Lammer Context Menu and Freewaregenius favorite FileMenu Tools. It works with both 32bit and 64bit versions of Windows
This program offers a wide range of commands, including many of the usual file management operations, but it also offers an interesting list of image manipulation functions (resizing, publishing lists of images to PDF), and a unique “desktop sorting” tool designed to organize the desktop.
FilerFrog enables you to pick and choose exactly which functions you want and to remove others. This is especially useful if you find a handful of functions useful and want them easily accessible but do not want to clutter your context menu with a host of other commands which you do not care for or see yourself using. Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on November 23, 2010 in Audio, News |
I’ve received a couple of emails about my last post, which has since been removed but many people can still read on their RSS readers.
Since reviewing the program (an MP3 downloading engine) I received multiple reports on email and in the comments, which I will quote here: "it installs a search toolbar and changes your homepage on your browser [although] the toolbar can be uninstalled via control panel. It also changes your Keyword.URL string in Firefox browser to a search engine sponsored by the program". (Thanks Derek). Since these changes were not declared up front in the installation process, I had to remove the program.
Which is too bad since it was kind of a nice app and seemed so well put together. In any case, for other, similar, MP3 downloading engines check out Songr (which downloads MP3s and lyrics), and Quisple (which finds songs on YouTube and downloads the audio). You can also check out a handful of tools that can download from music sharing sites; see here, here, here, and here). Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on November 19, 2010 in System, Utilities |
Have you ever launched a program and started working with it only to discover that there’s another instance of it running in the background? This can be a mild annoyance from time to time, especially when you realize after a few minutes that the two instances have the same file or data open and that your unsaved modifications are slightly different in each one and you are unsure which of the two (if any) was last saved to the hard drive.
I set out to find a program that might prevent this sort of thing, and I present to you: SingleInstance an Autohotkey script that runs in the background, consumes very low resources, and can prevent the duplication of running instances for specific user-defined programs. Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on November 17, 2010 in Icons, Productivity & Applications, Utilities | Tagged Desktop Enhancements |
Ever wanted to embed a clock or calendar into your wallpaper, or overlay shapes on your wallpaper to delineate areas or sections of the screen (for the purposes of icon organization, naturally).
SE-DesktopConstructor is a free program that does all of that. It lets you draw shapes of various colors and transparency into your wallpaper. These are lo-tech, non-interactive shapes unlike say a desktop icon management program Fences, but, I have found, can still be very useful. SE-DesktopConstructor can also embed a clock and/or a monthly calendar into the desktop wallpaper itself, both of which are fairly customizable in terms of their placement and size on screen, as well as their font and formatting and other tweaks (and the clock in fact comes a wide range of styles both digital and analog, etc).
Last but not least: SE-DesktopConstructor also functions as a wallpaper changer that can search a folder for images and change them based on a user-specified schedule. Continue reading ..
