This week a friend of mine told me he had a room to plan out and wanted to know some of the software he could use. I happened to run across two places you can get help with that.
The first is a web service called MyDeco Plan My Room.
When a natural skeptic likes a program that I would normally cast aside as not worth trying, I pay attention. I've never seen a program that does nearly as good a job at speeding up a system as it claims to do.
Bill Webb seems to like this one. Pay attention.
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The piece of… ah… cheese much-repaired eMachine at work (not my problem or responsibility) runs much faster. My 3.2 Pentium D at home is quicker with processor-intensive programs like OpenOffice and PhotoShop, and Firefox is snappier.
I've been keeping my eye on John Hood's site. It looks like his switch to a different content manager has allowed him to devote more time to trying new freebies out.
Here is one of John's recent updates to an old program.
Cetus Wordpad
John H., 20 January 2008 (created 24 August 2007)
Review Date: Apr-2003 First Listed: Jun-2004 -License: Abandonware
Average Rating = 6.5 (Of The 4 Programs I Reviewed)
Pluses - Blazingly fast. Dead-easy for a new person to pick up. Reads and writes RTF and Microsoft Word Version 6.0 and below.
Minuses - Interface won't win any beauty contests. Also, no longer available. I am hosting it.
but one of the things that can be very distracting to your viewing experience is the content which surrounds the streaming window ... sometimes, you just can't get rid of the extra advertisements and other stuff surrounding the streaming content. Fortunately, there is a handy little utility called 'Zorro' that you can use to "black out" the extra crap, leaving a nice window with nothing but video content!
This is just one more of those programs that I really have a hard time believing is free. Wink allows me to do something that I've seen done with tutorials but never imagined I could do myself without a lot of hard work. In a few easy steps Wink allows you to make a tutorial with mouse cursors zipping around and opening menus. It lets you pop up comments and advice. It also lets you create branch points based on user decisions of what they want to see next. Finally Wink creates the html code that lets you publish your flash tutorial for the whole world to see and appreciate.
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Wink is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). Using Wink you can capture screenshots of your software, use images that you already have, type-in explanations for each step, create a navigation sequence complete with buttons, delays, titles etc and create a highly effective tutorial for your users.
I like to look back and see what I was thinking about. Here's another letter from the wayback machine.
TIPS AND FEEDBACK
Frapper - you people live all over the world!
Wow! Over 900 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.
Has anyone ever forwarded an eFax to you before? What you'd see is that they've sent you a .efx file that you have no clue how to open. I've only seen this happen a few times, but here's what the deal is.
eFax is a sometimes free service at efax.com which allows you to receive a fax from people even if you don't have your own fax machine. They supply you with a phone number and all you have to do is give them your email address. If someone sends a fax to your eFax phone number, you'll get an email from eFax with an attached .EFX file.
The EFX file is sort of like a specially encoded TIFF file. Most people can't view this file without an eFax viewer. If you search for an eFax viewer online, you'll generally end up at the eFax website and downloading a bloated tool called the eFax Messenger.
I used eFax years ago when it was a new service. I still have a copy of one of their first eFax viewers here and it works just fine on most PCs.
Here's a tip for existing eFax users. Don't forward your eFax files to folks and expect them to know how to open them for viewing. All the eFax viewers I've ever used allow you to save your eFax as another more common file type. Just look through the menus while you have an eFax open and you'll soon see how to save it as a TIFF or maybe even a PDF file.
By the way folks, I still recommend their free service despite their choice of a proprietary format for sending you a fax. If you seriously need to receive a fax at home and you can't afford a real fax machine, this will do the trick nicely. Please be aware that you can't send a fax from your PC unless you pay them a little money for a premium account. Even if that's so, I'm sure it's well worth a few bucks if you're a business person on the go and you can't drag a big fax machine with you everywhere.
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eFax is an online fax service that eliminates the need for a fax machine, an extra fax line and all the associated expenses (paper, ink cartridges etc.). Get a real fax number that's tied to your email. Send and receive faxes as email attachments. It's all the reliability and security of faxing with the ease and convenience of email.
One day this week, someone left me a voicemail message at work. "Hey Clif, I've gotten this winmail.dat file from someone. How do I open it?".
I'm not in the I.T. department at work, but the guys in my group know where to go to get answers to weird questions like this one. Yes, I did know the answer because I've seen this happen before.
Here's the answer I gave:
Some people fail to realize that the whole world does not use MS Outlook Email.
Outlook sometimes sends proprietary info in each email that appears as winmail.dat to anyone who isn't using Outlook. The info included is rich text formatting and also file attachments.
We can't see file attachments inside the winmail.dat file, but they might be there.
Since that's the case, you'd think MS would make the winmail.dat file easy to open and view in almost any program. Yeah right, and I've got some farmland in Florida I can sell you too.
MS doesn't supply a free viewer for that winmail.dat file, but some really nice folks on the net do.
You need Winmail Opener to view this file.
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Winmail Opener is a small and simple utility that allows you to view and extract contents of TNEF-encoded messages (infamous winmail.dat). That means if you receive winmail.dat on your e-mail, with Winmail Opener you can view the rich text message contents and attachments embedded into this file.
You may receive winmail.dat files from the senders who are using Microsoft Outlook (97, 2000). Winmail.dat contains all attachments and rich text message, and not all e-mail clients can recognize its format. Winmail Opener is the solution.
I like this article at MakeUseOf.com. They show you several good free video capture programs that help create tutorials. I did notice that they left out one of my favorites. Where is Wink at? Maybe they don't consider it a true video capture? That's true, but it's still a great option when making tutorials.
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With all the screencasting going on in the blogosphere lately, what with tutorials running rampant across all different video sharing websites…I thought I’d share a few screencasting tools for those of you looking for a free alternative to some of those higher priced utilities. This review covers both PC and Mac utilities, and not wanting to leave anyone out … one for those running Java.
Here's a great article if you like to listen to your MP3s often.
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Ok, you’ve got loads of music on your computer - but is that all cluttered, unorganized, unmanaged and simply not easy to access? May be you need to do something. Literally hundreds of free software let you play, organize, burn and do lots more with your digital MP3 music collection. Have a well tagged, sortable music collection that you can be proud of! Here comes a carefully chosen list of free programs that might help you squeeze the best out of your MP3 collection.
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!".
The last graboid I saw was in a movie about underground monsters that lived in the desert. The graboid website and the application you install, offers you access to full length videos.
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Access to over 70,000 videos
Full-length, full-resolution files
High-Definition video support
Faster than peer-to-peer
Integrated playback
We’re not afraid to compare ourselves to the competition. From the beginning, Graboid Video was conceived to be better, faster, easier and prettier than the other guys ... go ahead and download the latest version of Graboid to get access to over 70,000 full-length videos. It’s completely free, and Graboid Video does not include any harmful and intrusive spyware or adware.
I haven't tried this so I can't recommend it yet. There are lots of VOIP services out there. How can this one be free? I'm guessing it won't be free forever.
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Getting FREE local Talkster numbers for you and your friends around the world is simple!
1. The first time only, tell us the name and phone number of the friend you want to call
2. You are given a new Talkster phone number for each friend that is yours to use forever. Save it in the address book on your phone!
3. Whenever you want to talk to your friend, dial the new local Talkster number for that friend instead of the old long distance or international number.
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 6 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.
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.
What do you have to say?
Just tell me what article you are talking about and leave me your comment.
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