More and more software companies are providing their applications online, often for free. This is the case for Adobe who recently launched Photoshop Express, a new online photo storage facility, photo organiser and editor.
Offering 2GB of storage and interoperable with other photo-sharing websites like Facebook, Picasa and Flickr, Photoshop Express offers basic editing and cataloguing of photos. It has the basic functions that enable you to crop, rotate, fix red-eye and touch up, as well as offering more sophisticated tools for tuning your image, such as white balance, fill light, sharpen and soft focus.
You want to email those photos to friends but the image files are too large. A freebie called Photo Gadget Resize integrates with Windows Explorer and allows you to resize a photo by right clicking on the photo and simply selecting the size/quality you want.
Alternatively, Shrink Pic runs in the background and when it detects that you’re sending a large photo it creates a temporary copy, automatically resizes based on your pre-selected settings and sends. Great for sending photos in email or as attachments, uploading to blogs and web galleries and sharing with Skype and MSN Messenger, Shrink Pic works with regular email, like Outlook, as well as webmail, such as Gmail, Hotmail and others.
Recuva free data recovery software is a Windows utility that enables you to restore and recover deleted files and data from your hard disk or removable drive.
With Recuva’s simple interface, there are only a few easy steps to recover files that have been emptied from from the recycle bin, deleted from your hard drive, digital camera memory or mp3 player. It’s even possible to restore files deleted by bugs, viruses and crashes. Ideally, install Recuva before you need it, as just browsing the internet and downloading the installer can possibly overwrite the file you are trying to recover. When needed, run the software, choose the type of file for recovery. Recuva will assist you to identify the file by name, size, path or last modification and advise as to recoverability. Then it’s just a matter of selecting the file to recover.
If you’ve copied text from a webpage or a PDF file to an email, you’ve encountered the problem associated with formatting being copied along with the text. The result can look very strange indeed, with broken lines and odd fonts. Email replies are even worse, with all those problems, and the crazy >>> characters to boot.
The good news is that there are several free programs available that allow you to copy the text you want without the unwanted formatting.
One of my favorites is StripMail. It’s a stand-alone program that takes the clipboard contents and converts it into plain text without formatting.
It removes HTML and Word formatting, removes email reply “>” and “|” characters and will optionally remove line feeds so that broken lines are restored into proper paragraphs. At the touch of a button the stripped text is restored to the clipboard, ready for pasting into your document.
It works like a charm. I use it daily and it’s one of the most useful utilities on my PC.
The only downside of StripMail is that you have to run the program each time you want to clean some text. I overcome this by assigning a hotkey to run StripMail to automatically strip the clipboard contents ready for pasting. Removing formatting is then as simple as copying the text, hitting the hotkey and pasting.
You can create the hotkey by using the freeware program AutoHotkey.
The magic line you need for your AutoHotkey script is
#v::Run %A_ProgramFiles%Stripmailstripmail.exe -d -x
(assuming that you put StripMail in C:Program FilesStripmail or similar) which assigns the WindowsKey-V hotkey combination.
Now the next time you want to copy text from an email or website, just copy the text as normal, hit WindowsKey-V, and paste. Voila, the unwanted formatting has been removed.
Source : techsupportalert
SafeManuals, with over 800,000 user guides, will save you wasted time looking for that missing instruction manual. You can browse by manufacturer or category or simply enter the brand or product reference and hit ’search’ to find everything from network card setup guides to printer cartridge replacement how-to’s.
What’s the difference between a modern anti-spyware program like WebRoot SpySweeper with its newly-acquired anti-virus capabilities and a modern anti-virus program such as Norton 360 which has anti-spyware capabilities? The answer is “not a lot.” In essence, they are both now anti-malware scanners.
Every computer security developer wants their product to address all security threats, not just individual categories of threat. So do you still need an AV program plus an anti-spyware program and an anti-trojan scanner?
For the majority of average users the answer is no. A single competent broad spectrum anti-malware product is enough. Leading the pack here would be AntiVir, NOD32, Kaspersky, BitDefender, Norton and a few others.
In the free domain, AVG anti virus 8.0 free edition has now been released for download, providing protection not only from viruses, but also giving spyware detection and safe search utilities. AVG anti virus 8.0 is packed with features like real-time protection, daily updates, and integrates to fight spyware through their combination anti virus and spyware engine together. The free version is missing the Anti Rookit features found in the license version.
Sources : techmixer and techsupportalert
SKYPE has introduced its first plan for so-called unlimited calls to overseas destinations.
There are no long-term contracts - just a monthly fixed rate to dial landline numbers, including monthly packages to North America for $3.95, Europe for $4.95, and Asia for $5.95.
Consumers can choose from three types of subscriptions - 34 countries, several countries in a region or a single destination. The offering is extended to mobile calls in some countries.
All calls have a limit of 10,000 minutes per month or more than five hours of talk time per day.
Source : Australian IT
Remember tackling the apparently simple task of printing a folded booklet? Now is it page 1 on the left with page 7 on the right? And should the right side be printed upside down? Grrrr!
Booklet Creator is a free web service that allows you to upload a PDF file and have it converted to another PDF file that, when downloaded, can be printed as a book. That is, double sided with alternating pages.
There are some minor restrictions: the file can be only 10MB maximum and the document must be in portrait mode.
Source : techsupportalert
Is your email your work or business lifeline? What steps have you taken to protect this vital data?
Amic Email Backup, is a free email backup solution to designed to create backup or archive files of your email data and handles Microsoft Outlook Express, Microsoft Outlook, Eudora, IncrediMail, Pegasus, The Bat, Poco Mail, Netscape Messenger, and Opera Mail.
As well as archiving email messages, Amic Email Backup will backup your address book, settings, mail and news accounts, message rules, blocked senders lists and the signatures, bundled together into the backup file. Email restoration via Amic is performed with just a few clicks.
Wizard mode will walk you through creating, restoring, and/or scheduling your backup. Standard mode is for tweaking and customizing. The email backup can also be moved from one computer to another, handy if you’re moving all of your information to a new computer. You can even use the Schedule feature to schedule email backups daily, weekly or at any time period of your choice.
This free email backup application is suitable for the home and small business computer user to save the email folders and settings easily, either manually or automated at periodic times.
Source : techmixer
If you only use a few programs you don’t need a program launcher as you can get by perfectly well with the Windows Start Menu or by using Desktop Shortcuts. Now let’s get real! We are busy, with multiple tasks on the go, and for the trusty PC to really shine as a productivity booster, we need what we want next … fast!
There are many approaches for program launchers. An effective one is to use a keyword based approach where you launch a program by typing in the name (or part of the name) of a program. Launchy is the best known freeware example of this approach, and Keybreeze is free for non-commercial use.
Keybreeze is very fast and provides many configurable options to change how it functions and appears. The list of supported features is impressive, including automatically opening typed websites in a preferred browser as well as quick searches, user defined macros, looking up movie times, notes, reminders, and inserting commonly typed text into programs. It has a smaller memory footprint than Launchy, which is more attractive to the eye and has better indexing of files and folders.