I asked for this app review because I have a really hard time staying organized. This isn’t a great trait for someone who wants to write professionally – or for anyone else with deadlines, multi-step tasks, projects, ingredient lists, or any other number of things integral to GTD – Getting Things Done. My friends have often said it’s...

No matter how organized you are with your calendar and todo lists, you cannot be simplicity and convenience of sticky notes. So instead of cluttering your physical desk with these notes, give virtual sticky notes a try using Stickies. Stickies is a PC utility [...] to try to cut down on the number of yellow notes [...] stuck to [your] monitor. It is a...

A little known tool from Microsoft titled RichCopy is deemed by the author of the tool’s download page as “the answer to all your file copying needs”. Being a big user and fan of the built in utilities, XCopy and RoboCopy this is a pretty bold statement, however RichCopy takes the functionality of RoboCopy to a new level: What you’ll find...

Digging into the incredibly useful NirSoft freeware utilities, today we take a look at SmartSniff Packet Sniffer. SmartSniff is a network monitoring utility that allows you to capture TCP/IP packets that pass through your network adapter, and view the captured data as sequence of conversations between clients and servers. You can view the TCP/IP conversations in...

My first experience with writing data to optical disc was with Nero Burning ROM many moons ago in the late 1990s with Windows 98. When I upgraded to Windows XP, one of the first features I used was the ability to burn discs using the OS and nothing else. It worked well for the most part. What I mean by "the most part" is that there are times when...

The title of this post is taken from the tag line of Microsoft’s free WebMatrix offering: It includes IIS Developer Express (a development Web server), ASP.NET (a Web framework), and SQL Server Compact (an embedded database). It streamlines Web site development and makes it easy to start Web sites from popular open-source apps. The skills and code you...

If you ever have the need to convert a video file from one format (for example an MOV) to another format (for example an AVI), then a tool for the job is the free utility: iWisoft Free Video Converter. iWisoft Free Video Converter can fast convert videos between all popular formats like AVI, MPEG, WMV, DivX, XviD, MP4, H.264/AVC, AVCHD, FLV, MKV, RM, MOV, 3GP,...

Mac users looking to get some insight into their battery power outside of the typical X% charge left should take a look at the freeware utility coconutBattery. coconutBattery isn’t just a tool which shows you only the current charge of your battery – it also shows you the current maximum capacity of it in relation to the original capacity your...

Some of my favorite console games are the Super Mario series (I didn’t care much for 2 though) which graced the NES and Super NES. So fans of the landmark game might want to take a look at the open source Secret Maryo Chronicles which shares a very (very very) similar style of play. Just by taking a look at the screenshots and power ups you can tell where...

Linux, for a long time, has natively supported virtual desktops in their window managers but this feature is not standard within the Windows GUI. No problem though as there are plenty of freely available tools to add this functionality. One such tool is the open source VirtuaWin. In addition to the typical features you would expect from a virtual desktop tool,...

A disturbing trend among popular freeware applications seems to be the inclusion of browser toolbar and/or other garbage options as part of the installation wizard. One rather lengthy message post has an updated list of offending programs which they have titled the “Installers Hall of Shame“. As a developer I can certainly appreciate the hard work it...

When it comes to graphics editors, there are loads of options but typically many of the free ones are either online only or designed for Windows. Mac users wanting a free (and open source) image editor should check out Seashore: Seashore is an open source image editor for Mac OS X’s Cocoa framework. It features gradients, textures and anti-aliasing for...

Good through Friday (6/18/2010), The Windows Club is offering a free copy of Paragon’s System Backup 9.5/2010. While I have never used this product personally, I pass this link along because everyone should have a reliable backup process and if you have nothing in place this program may fit the bill. You can read the full description on Paragon’s...

In Windows XP, the system restore feature was added to the OS which allows you to take incremental snapshots of your system state as a tool to assist in recovery from OS problems. While certainly not bulletproof, it is a useful feature nonetheless. By default Windows creates a new restore point when updates and/or applications are installed, however if you want...

One of the criticisms of Microsoft has been that over the years their Windows OS  has attempted to be everything for everybody which contributed to a serious amount of bloat in the OS. Attempting to combat this problem, Microsoft has released their Live Essentials package as a separate package which is freely downloaded from either Microsoft.com or Windows...

Recently, I have been reading a lot about a relatively new PDF reader product, Nitro PDF, so I decided to give it a try. After about a week of usage, I am pretty impressed. In fact, I have uninstalled SumatraPDF and CutePDF writer from my system and solely use Nitro PDF. This free product boasts an impressive list of features which most free readers do not...

One of the very few programs I have gone on record as officially recommending is the excellent WinPatrol monitoring utility. So to keep you updated, earlier this week a new version was released which adds registry monitoring: I frequently get recommendations from pros on new registry locations which should be monitored.  In some cases, these locations are...

If you want the best to two worlds: the power and features of Microsoft Office and the collaboration tools of Google Docs, then bind them together with OffiSync. OffiSync Supercharges Microsoft Office, enabling users to significantly improve the way they create, collaborate and share their documents by integrating Microsoft Office with Google Docs, and Google...

Yesterday I wrote about an new Sysinternal’s tool, so it is only fitting that today I write about a new tool released by Nirsoft, RouterPassView: Most modern routers allow you to backup the configuration of the router into a file, and then restore the configuration from the file when it’s needed. The backup file of the router usually contains...

It is no secret that I absolute love the Windows Sysinternals tools which give you great insight into the operating system. This week another tool was added to the suite which breaks down physical RAM usage, RAMMap: Have you ever wondered exactly how Windows is assigning physical memory, how much file data is cached in RAM, or how much RAM is used by the kernel...