I often lurk in the DonationCoder forums for good ideas, information and help. Here's a forum post worth watching if you need to add foreign language accents or other odd characters when you write articles.
Another free accent tool I've mentioned is Accenter. There is also a website that tells you how to add accent characters to the keyboard using only the features already available in Windows.
Review from Lanux128:
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My favourite keyboard extender is now Open Source & into beta version 4 ...
I haven't tried this program. I have no use for it. However, if I did, this would be a big help. If you go to multiple locations with a laptop and you have multiple networks that you have to hook up with, this is the swiss army knife of network setup tools for a PC.
All the network settings you need are in one place and once you set them, you just save the settings as a profile. The free version allows up to 6 profiles. A pro (paid) version with unlimited profiles is available.
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Are you tired of changing your network configuration on your laptop or computer every day? Always the same procedure?
On the go: changing...
At home: changing...
In the office: changing...
Then NetSetMan is your solution. It will do the work for you.
MooPlayer is a quick and simple media player that's easy to use. There's no need to install this program, it will run in any folder. The interface is simple and it loads up movie and music files with no lag. I found the full screen mode worked well and it will also run music playlists.
If you need a small media player to take with you on the road, this one will work just fine.
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MooPlayer was designed to replace Windows Media Player 6 (mplayer2). It uses a similar style where the player is only the actual video, menu and window frame. It is DirectShow based which means it supports all formats that Windows Media Player does (MPEG, DivX, XviD, etc.). The interface is meant to be as minimal as possible. All controls are overlayed on the video so you can easily access them even in full screen mode. This also means they don't clutter up the view as much. It is released under the GPL and source is available for all releases.
GloryLogic Software has just issued version 1.0 of a disk burning program that likely won't need much upgrading or fixing. They did it right the first time. BurnAware burns CDs and DVDs [including Blu-Ray (BD-R/BD-RE)], disk images, allows for multiple burn sessions so you can add successive backups to a disk or new software to a backup of your collection and it supports all current hardware. It does more I won't list here.
BurnAware works on Windows 98/NT/2000/XP and Vista (32 and 64 bit), it has no adware or banners and it has that ever-so-attractive zero price tag.
Though it's called BurnAware Free Edition, the web site has nothing I found to buy. I had a question about how to activate the verification feature for data CDs, something that I consider critical for backups but you don't find on many burn programs. The reply to my email was in my inbox five hours later (it arrived about midnight, so you know someone is paying attention there).
I have set aside my Nero in favor of BurnAware's simpler interface, more modest demands on resources and clear, understandable Help files. It's simple, it's clean, it's free and it works very well.
BurnAware Free Edition v1.0 just hit the streets on December 17/07, so you may be the first on your block to get it.
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a book about real and inexpensive solutions to personal and community problems most people think are inevitable evils of modern society. They aren't. We just have to look in the right place.
Last week, I ran into this program and consulted a free music guru for his opinion of it. Jimi Pocius is never short on opinions and he didn't let me down this time.
Quote from Jimi:
Wavosaur is a cool cool cool little program. I have deep respect for the developers of Wavosaur and I believe it will remain free once they get out of Beta.
Wavosaur is GREAT for recording stereo Audio and tweezing it. It's better for recording stand-alone/SaviHost'ed VSTI's than Audacity, which often chokes on VSTi's, because Audacity generally uses windows sound drivers rather than the ASIO drivers VST is built on. If you need to run a VSTi (soft synth) that is very CPU intensive, Wavosaur, being a lighter app seems to record these better than Audacity. Audacity doesn't yet support ASIO (Stienberg lo-latency) drivers. If Steinberg opens that part of the VST standard to Open Source, I'm sure that will change.
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Wavosaur is a free sound editor, audio editor, wav editor software for editing, processing and recording sounds, wav and mp3 files. Wavosaur has all the features to edit audio (cut, copy, paste, etc.) produce music loops, analyze, record, batch convert.
Wavosaur supports VST plugins, ASIO driver, multichannel wav files, real time effect processing.
The program has no installer and doesn't write in the registry. Use it as a free mp3 editor, for mastering, sound design. The Wavosaur freeware audio editor works on Windows 98, Windows XP and Windows Vista.
A fellow named Leo Kuznetsov wrote me a short letter asking to include a review of his software here. Naturally, I had to try it first. After downloading it, installing it, and checking the file type associations. I found I had no problems with Zipeg at all.
It's true that most of the time, you can't tell quickly what images you have zipped up in an archive. Zipeg allows you to do this by simply hovering your mouse over the image file in the archive list.
The amazing thing to me is that he'd originally made this utility for the Macintosh. Here's what Leo told me about it.
I wrote Zipeg because I like WinZip and 7-zip and I miss both when I've switched to Mac OS X. Because I wrote front end in java, (back end is C), it became apparent that I can back port it to Windows too.
Good work Leo!
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Description from the author:
Zipeg opens and explores content of zip, rar, arj and other archives, preview files and images before you extract/unzip them. Extract only the files you want. Using Zipeg you can double click on the item and automatically open the document in Preview or your preferred application before you extract it. You can choose what to extract and where to put extracted files.
• see what`s inside BEFORE you extract;
• decode filenames in your national alphabet;
• open files in Preview directly from the archive;
• see image thumbnails (EXIF) in tooltips;
• extract items simply by dragging them;
• easy-to-use user interface;
• Macintosh version is also available (visit www.zipeg.com);
• archives are processed in background;
• supports variety of archive formats ZIP, RAR, ARJ, 7-zip, TAR, GZ, GZ, BZIP2, CPIO, LZH and more ...
• opens password protected encrypted archives
• decodes national file name encodings inside archives (code pages)
• explore CD and DVD ".iso" image files;
• reports cumulative contents size of subfolders;
• customizable destination and source of extraction;
Here's a tip from Tony at TopFreeware.net. He likes to play games occasionally, and this is a good one. I saw a review of the PC version of this game and I was impressed with the unique ideas involved.
Quote from the website
Over 40 challenging, portals thinking levels, which features almost every feature the real game does, in 2d - energy balls, cubes, turrets and even the famous crusher from the trailer. The game also includes a console to mess around with after finishing the game.
Even cooler, there is the freeware predecessor of Portal called Nabacular Drop. Check it out and let us know what you think of it. Below is a video showing some of the mind-bending features.
Old Newsletter
I like to look back and see what I was thinking about. Here's another letter from the wayback machine.
Recently, I've been playing a bit with the WindowsLiveWriter blogging tool. I was thinking of asking Sarah if she'd used it, but I was surprised to find I had no need to ask. This is one of her recent posts at a blog site.
Quote from Sarah in Tampa:
Windows Live Writer is a desktop application that makes it easy to publish content to your blog. I've been using Windows Live Writer for a long time to write my blog entries for the various websites I author. The software is intuitive and powerful, but, every now and then, I found something that it couldn't do or that I wished it could do in a better way. However, over time, I've found the solutions to all of my Live Writer wish list items ...
How long does it take Microsoft to catch on? Sometimes it takes far too long. "Save as PDF" is available in many of the free office suites such as OpenOffice and Star Office. That feature is finally being offered to the millions of Office 2007 users. At my day job, I've been using PdfCreator as a work-around for almost two years now. So now Microsoft offers this plugin? I'm not impressed, but I'll make sure all of my co-workers are aware of it.
Quote from the website
This download allows you to export and save to the PDF and XPS formats in eight 2007 Microsoft Office programs. It also allows you to send as e-mail attachment in the PDF and XPS formats in a subset of these programs.
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!".
3. I want to take a screenshot of my screen and save it in a graphics file, so I can email it to a friend. Do I need to purchase or download special software to do this?
I saw this review from Brandon Watts at LockerGnome. I think this web tool sounds great and I'll probably try it out when I get the time.
Quote from Brandon:
The Internet contains an enormous amount of information, and you’re going to routinely find content that you’d like to quote and use on your blog or one of the many other Web sites or social networking profiles that you may have. The way that you do this is up to you, but for many of us, this process involves copying text or linking to an image and then giving proper attribution in the form of a simple note or a link. This isn’t exactly the most streamlined process in the world, but kwout has taken it and improved it in ways that you’ll appreciate ...
New. Click-N-Type is an on-screen virtual keyboard designed for anyone with a disability that prevents him or her from typing on a physical computer keyboard: http://www.lakefolks.org/cnt/
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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.
Write your own review
I get many of the reviews in the newsletter from the readers. You don't have to be a genius or computer guru. Just answer a few questions and send me a review. I'll probably put you in the newsletter.
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Cheers
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Quote from Sarah in Tampa:
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