You spend a whole lot of time each day moving, copying, trashing, browsing, and otherwise fiddling with all the files stored on your PC, and you should have the most efficient power tools to get those jobs done. Windows Explorer and its weak army of file manipulation functions just doesn't cut the mustard for people with lots of data and only a little time, but several free utilities can help out. So today we present our top 10 free Windows file manipulation utilities for managing your important data.
Top 10 Free Windows File Wranglers
Firefox is too fat
Hunting around a bit I found an excellent little post that explains how to stop this memory vacuum from getting away from you.
Light a flame under Firefox’s memory usage ~ Dao By Design
- Simply type about:config in your browser’s address bar.
- On the resulting screen, right-click and select New -> Boolean.
- In the input box that appears, type config.trim_on_minimize. Press enter.
- Select True, and hit enter.
What this does is causes Firefox to dump to your hard drive when you minimize it. Upon re-maximization, it loads back into RAM, but at a fraction of the bloated size it was. As an example, I just checked Firefox’s memory usage. With three tabs open, I was sitting around 80 MB of RAM being used. On minimization, this immediately dropped to under 10 MB. The upon maximization, it went up to 40 MB or so.
As I often have a lot of application open at once, the ability to control their memory usage like this is fantastic. If you use Thunderbird as your mail program, you can make the exact same modification. To get into the About Config, simply navigate to Tools / Options / Advanced / Config Editor.
Light a flame under Firefox’s memory usage ~ Dao By Design
Call phones from Gmail
Call phones from Gmail
Wednesday, August 25, 2010 | 9:40 AM
Gmail voice and video chat makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family using your computer’s microphone and speakers. But until now, this required both people to be at their computers, signed into Gmail at the same time. Given that most of us don’t spend all day in front of our computers, we thought, “wouldn’t it be nice if you could call people directly on their phones?”
Starting today, you can call any phone right from Gmail.
Calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free for at least the rest of the year and calls to other countries will be billed at our very low rates. We worked hard to make these rates really cheap (see comparison table) with calls to the U.K., France, Germany, China, Japan—and many more countries—for as little as $0.02 per minute.
Dialing a phone number works just like a normal phone. Just click “Call phone” at the top of your chat list and dial a number or enter a contact’s name.
We’ve been testing this feature internally and have found it to be useful in a lot of situations, ranging from making a quick call to a restaurant to placing a call when you’re in an area with bad reception.
If you have a Google Voice phone number, calls made from Gmail will display this number as the outbound caller ID. And if you decide to, you can receive calls made to this number right inside Gmail (see instructions).
We’re rolling out this feature to U.S. based Gmail users over the next few days, so you’ll be ready to get started once “Call Phones” shows up in your chat list (you will need to install the voice and video plug-in if you haven’t already). If you’re using Google Apps for your school or business, then you won’t see it quite yet. We’re working on making this available more broadly - so stay tuned!
Call phones from Gmail - Official Gmail Blog
Open Source Windows - Free, Open-Source software for Windows XP and Vista
Free and open-source software is good for you and for the world. This is the best Windows software that we know of.
No adware, no spyware, just good software.
Open Source Windows - Free, Open-Source software for Windows XP and Vista
No adware, no spyware, just good software.
Open Source Windows - Free, Open-Source software for Windows XP and Vista
Allmyapps - Application Store for Windows XP, Vista and Seven to find and install the best applications
Allmyapps makes software installation a breeze. No matter how many applications you need, 1 click is all you need to have all your favorite applications installed on your PC.
Allmyapps also keeps your applications safe! Would you need to reinstall your system, Allmyapps takes care of reinstalling all your favorite applications in the blink of an eye.
With Allmyapps, installing software applications has become so easy that you'll soon find yourself installing a lot of great new applications! Be prepared to enjoy your computer like never before!
Allmyapps - Application Store for Windows XP, Vista and Seven to find and install the best applications
Allmyapps also keeps your applications safe! Would you need to reinstall your system, Allmyapps takes care of reinstalling all your favorite applications in the blink of an eye.
With Allmyapps, installing software applications has become so easy that you'll soon find yourself installing a lot of great new applications! Be prepared to enjoy your computer like never before!
Allmyapps - Application Store for Windows XP, Vista and Seven to find and install the best applications
20+ Small Yet Powerful Windows Applications
Are you bored of using huge software which takes lots of disk space? Do you want to perform all your desired action but with less hard disk consumption ? If these are the questions going on in your mind then this would be the best post for you. Here is a list of smallest applications which are less than 1 MB , but they are more powerful and can perform all actions that Huge software would do. This tiniest software list is for all those old windows users who have very small hard disk. This software will be useful if you want to store more disk space as well.
This is a list of smallest applications which are powerful enough to perform all the necessary actions that an huge software can do. Without making anymore fuzz i would like to disclose the list of software.
20+ Small Yet Powerful Windows Application @ Techie BloggerWhere's my hard disk space gone?
Ever find yourself asking, "Where's all my hard disk drive space gone?", and even more so, "Which application has stolen it?!". Well, guess no more... I came across this really handy free application called WinDirStat (you can download it from here), that let's you see you whole hard drive visually. Here's a snapshot of my hard drives at home:-
Cool, huh. Previously, I've been using an internal tool at Microsoft (which one of our employees wrote) called FatSlice. Once again, here's a shot of my hard drives at home:-
Alas FatSlice is only available to Microsoft employees, but WinDirStat is available for everyone! :-) Go check it out.
Seven Firefox Plug-ins That Improve Online Privacy - CSO Online - Security and Risk
As strange as it might sound, there are times when I wish for the old days of the Internet circa the early 1990's. The days of Mosaic and Lynx, where there was no Flash, no Javascript and no Java. A simpler time where protecting your privacy and security wasn't as essential as it is today.
Time travel isn't an option for securing my browser. But Firefox gives me it all and then some. The number-two browser (with 32 percent market share), Firefox is a cross platform, standards based, open source browser. It is feature rich and has supernumerary add-ons to extend its functionality. In the spirit of Open Source, its community maintains a focus on security and has a strong record of swiftly patching known vulnerabilities, faster in some cases than most others in the market.
Firefox isn't just a killer app; it's also a pillar of the Internet community. When it comes to security and privacy, the Firefox picture is compelling, with over 600 plug-ins related to privacy and security. Acknowledging the current state of privacy and security, these plug-ins are a welcome addition to any browsing experience.
My goal in this article is to highlight a few of my favorites with the hopes that you too will take advantage of them.
Seven Firefox Plug-ins That Improve Online Privacy - CSO Online - Security and Risk
Time travel isn't an option for securing my browser. But Firefox gives me it all and then some. The number-two browser (with 32 percent market share), Firefox is a cross platform, standards based, open source browser. It is feature rich and has supernumerary add-ons to extend its functionality. In the spirit of Open Source, its community maintains a focus on security and has a strong record of swiftly patching known vulnerabilities, faster in some cases than most others in the market.
Firefox isn't just a killer app; it's also a pillar of the Internet community. When it comes to security and privacy, the Firefox picture is compelling, with over 600 plug-ins related to privacy and security. Acknowledging the current state of privacy and security, these plug-ins are a welcome addition to any browsing experience.
My goal in this article is to highlight a few of my favorites with the hopes that you too will take advantage of them.
Seven Firefox Plug-ins That Improve Online Privacy - CSO Online - Security and Risk
99 of the best Windows freeware programs you may not know of
Because of the popularity of my previous article on Help Desk Geek entitled 99 ways to make your computer blazingly fast, I’ve decided to write another list post with 99 items, but this time on Windows freeware programs that you may have not heard of.
If you search for “best freeware programs” or “top freeware apps”, you’ll get lots of lists, but mostly with programs everyone has already heard of: AVG anti-virus, 7-zip, Firefox, OpenOffice, etc, etc.
That’s all nice and fine, but what about all those little gems programs that work great, but don’t get all the headlines? In this article, I will try my best to mention as many small name freeware programs as I can that can help make you more productive!
As usual, I write for both Help Desk Geek and for Online Tech Tips, so I will be linking to old posts throughout if I’ve written about it or else I will link out to the main website for the program.
These are written in no particular order! Again, I’m sure there are hundreds of programs that I won’t mention, so if you feel I’ve really missed a great program, mention the name of the app and what it does in the comments!
If you like this post and think it would be useful to others, feel free to share it!
99 of the best Windows freeware programs you may not know of
If you search for “best freeware programs” or “top freeware apps”, you’ll get lots of lists, but mostly with programs everyone has already heard of: AVG anti-virus, 7-zip, Firefox, OpenOffice, etc, etc.
That’s all nice and fine, but what about all those little gems programs that work great, but don’t get all the headlines? In this article, I will try my best to mention as many small name freeware programs as I can that can help make you more productive!
As usual, I write for both Help Desk Geek and for Online Tech Tips, so I will be linking to old posts throughout if I’ve written about it or else I will link out to the main website for the program.
These are written in no particular order! Again, I’m sure there are hundreds of programs that I won’t mention, so if you feel I’ve really missed a great program, mention the name of the app and what it does in the comments!
If you like this post and think it would be useful to others, feel free to share it!
99 of the best Windows freeware programs you may not know of
10 must-have Thunderbird Addons (+ 25 more)
Mozilla Thunderbird is an Outlook-like email client, but way better. It’s free, it’s multi-platform, it’s multi-lingual and most importantly, it’s highly customizable featuring lots of useful addons and themes. In case you’re new to it than you can read about it here, otherwise jump directly to must-have section below.10 must-have Thunderbird Addons (+ 25 more)
Top GIMP tutorial sites — kristarella.com
After some discussion at Creative Curio I was starting to think that building a site similar to PSDTuts for GIMP tutorials would be cool.
I haven’t seen much in the way of GIMP tutorial sites that I really like; except for Meet the GIMP, but video tutorials are different in my mind.
Before I go and jump into a huge project like that I wanted to have a look at what was out there. When I say “Top GIMP tutorial sites” I don’t mean that these are sites that I endorse or recommend (although I might when I get to know them better), it actually means these are the top search results (with my first impressions of them).
Full list here:
Top GIMP tutorial sites — kristarella.com
I haven’t seen much in the way of GIMP tutorial sites that I really like; except for Meet the GIMP, but video tutorials are different in my mind.
Before I go and jump into a huge project like that I wanted to have a look at what was out there. When I say “Top GIMP tutorial sites” I don’t mean that these are sites that I endorse or recommend (although I might when I get to know them better), it actually means these are the top search results (with my first impressions of them).
Full list here:
Top GIMP tutorial sites — kristarella.com
Adeona: A Free, Open Source System for Helping Track and Recover Lost and Stolen Laptops
Adeona is the first Open Source system for tracking the location of your lost or stolen laptop that does not rely on a proprietary, central service. This means that you can install Adeona on your laptop and go — there's no need to rely on a single third party. What's more, Adeona addresses a critical privacy goal different from existing commercial offerings. It is privacy-preserving. This means that no one besides the owner (or an agent of the owner's choosing) can use Adeona to track a laptop. Unlike other systems, users of Adeona can rest assured that no one can abuse the system in order to track where they use their laptop.
Adeona is designed to use the Open Source OpenDHT distributed storage service to store location updates sent by a small software client installed on an owner's laptop. The client continually monitors the current location of the laptop, gathering information (such as IP addresses and local network topology) that can be used to identify its current location. The client then uses strong cryptographic mechanisms to not only encrypt the location data, but also ensure that the ciphertexts stored within OpenDHT are anonymous and unlinkable. At the same time, it is easy for an owner to retrieve location information.
Adeona: A Free, Open Source System for Helping Track and Recover Lost and Stolen Laptops
Adeona is designed to use the Open Source OpenDHT distributed storage service to store location updates sent by a small software client installed on an owner's laptop. The client continually monitors the current location of the laptop, gathering information (such as IP addresses and local network topology) that can be used to identify its current location. The client then uses strong cryptographic mechanisms to not only encrypt the location data, but also ensure that the ciphertexts stored within OpenDHT are anonymous and unlinkable. At the same time, it is easy for an owner to retrieve location information.
Adeona: A Free, Open Source System for Helping Track and Recover Lost and Stolen Laptops
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