Category Archives: freeware tip

QuotePad a useful portable freeware to take notes “on the go” when in internet.

This week, in our Freeware Page , we have added a short review about QuotePad which is a very interesting notepad that can be used to better organizing your online day by day work especially when in internet. In particular this light freeware allows you also to copy and paste large amounts of texts from web-pages and automatically recording the web-address. After coping the text you have only to go into your QuotePad and paste it using Ctr-Shift-Q. QuotePad directly memorizes the time of your “cut and paste” and allows you to write the most appropriate title for each of your notes. Moreover, clicking on “stay on top” (on the right in the upper bar) you can also stitch your notes above the browser you are using. Recommended.

How to share notes and images using thepiratebay.org satellite websites: PasteBay and bayimg

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Today, in our Freeware Page, we added a brief review about two, multiplatform free services offered by th piratebay.org. The first one is PasteBay which allows you to quickly create, save and protect (in a basic way) your own notes when browsing on internet. PasteBay is very intuitive, quick to use and effective. The only “trouble” could be the simple http connection (instead of https) and the password you choose that could be weak if you do not choose it in a proper way. The second online service offered by thepiratebay.org is bayimg which allows you to store images for your websites in 140 different formats. Each image could be uploaded till 100MB so it is possible to save online also high resolution images. We have spent five days testing the features offered by these two websites and we have really not found any problem or bug. Recommended!

Ext2fsd: an useful freeware to manage Linux partitions when running Windows

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Nowadays it is common to find PCs with more than one OS installed. Normally, when on a Linux OS, it is very simple to access Windows partitions and copy, create, delete or transfer files. Rarely, it could be also necessary to access Linux partitions (ext2 or ext3) from Windows OS but this operation it is not simple to manage. After some web-searches we have found a light and simple program which instantly allows to use Linux partitions as local disks: Ext2Fsd. In our Freeware Page we have posted a brief review about this freeware which is very simple to install (as usual we suggest to reboot your computer after the installation) and in just few clicks you will be ready to manage your Linux hard disks. We tested Ext2Fsd for a couple of weeks and we actually were satisfied from the results; in fact we have never registered any bug and all the writing – copying – deleting tasks were executed in a 100% proper way. Obviously, if you need to access a Linux partition, you are a purist and you do not want to use a Windows OS you can use a Linux Live CD. Potentially useful.

How to synchronize Gmail, Google Docs and Google Calendar with your PCs: the cross-platform Google Gears

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This week, on our Freeware Page , we have posted a brief review about Google Gears which allows you to keep, for example, your Gmail and Google Docs perfectly safe and synchronized with your computer. Google Gears does not add any new features if you think about what Thunderbird or Sunbird (now also known as Lightning) offer. On the other hand, Google Gears is very useful if we think it is very easy to setup and allows you to directly manage offline your email, documents and calendar without using other email applications. In the post we fastly show how to install Gears on your browser and how to start to use it. When you activate Google Gears a pop-up windows will remind you that this particular feature is totally experimental and you use it on your own risk but for our personal experience Google Gears works very well, in particular we really appreciated its Flaky option which allows you to synchronize your datas without “burning” too much band. When you are on a public PC you can also click on – load with offline disabled – button (on the below right corner) soon after the login window. Interesting!!

Easily backup your datas and save some energy: two interesting freeware for XP and Vista!

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This week, in our Freeware Page, we posted a review about two interesting freeware for Windows: FBackup and edison. FBackup is a powerful software which allows you to easily manage and plan your backups. All the menus are very intuitive and it is possible to back up files also when they are in use. Fbackup is very well structured and allows you to decide when, what, how (zip files or exact copies) and when backup your datas. On the other hand, edison is a simple freeware, developed to helpXP and Vista users to save more energy. Edison contains some simple setups which allow you to determine the best energy “saving” configuration depending your needs. This program can not be considered “revolutionary” but certainly helps to organize our PC, in a more efficient way. To conclude, we really think that using this freeware, we could benefit of some budget savings (in theory it is even possible to calculate your saving when using the dedicated menu). Recommended!

How to easily check HD health using a cross platform software: GSmartControl 0.8.3

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GSmartControl is a multiplatform (Windows, OS X, Linux) freeware drive health inspection tool which is very useful in all that case when you think something is not working perfectly on your HD. Today, in our Linux Page (in Spanish) we have posted a brief comment about this software which basically is the graphical user interface for smartct. The program is very intuitive and easy to use; it automatically detects all your internal HDs (with some external USB disks we had some problems because they were detected as unknown) and let you decide if you want to activate the SMART feature. This particular feature let you “predict certain kinds of failures with certain chance of success” so you have a better chance to avoid HD crashes and all the consequent data loss. If you prefer, clicking on the “Enable Auto Offline Data Collection” the HDs will be tested every four hours without impacting your CPU performance. I would like to focus your attention that GSmartControl is very well developed and it is possible to download many “personalized” versions for all the main Linux distributions, OS X and Windows. Last but not least, do not forget that SMART could predict some HD crashes but it is not 100% safe; for this reason we strongly recommend you to backup your PCs, at least every week!

How to install XBMC on Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex

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This week, in our Linux Page (in Spanish), we posted a brief tutorial about installing XBMC on Ubuntu 8.10. As you certainly know, XBCM is a complete Media Center based on Ubuntu. This program is multiplatform (Linux, Windows, OS X and also XBOX – not officially supported-) and, in our opinion, is the most efficient and complete open source media center you can find today on the Internet. Moreover, XBMC has developed a special version that could be installed on a USB Key on a Live CD to freely test the application before installing on your PC. The post is brief but contains all the complete instructions to quickly install XBMC without problems. Please, be sure to digit sudo apt-get update in Terminal after you install the new repositories. Recommended!!

Do not spend money for professional hardware when you can create your hi-tech router with less than 50 bucks!!

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This week, in our Freeware Page, we have posted a brief review about Tomato and DD-WRT two unofficial firmwares to upgrade your router into a professional machine which allows you to properly manage and strengthen your wi-fi signal. Surfing in Internet we found more manuals for DD-WRT than for Tomato. On one side it is possible to affirm that DD-WRT is more flexible for traditional home users than Tomato which has been developed for more professional users. On the other side when you read the “Supported hardware” of both the websites it is clear that DD-WRT is able to support many more devices than Tomato but we really were satisfied for all the test we made with both the firmwares on a old Linksys WRT 54G v.2. If your device supports both the firmwares we really suggest to spend a couple of days for testing them and decide what is the best for your needs. Recommended for all that people who do not like to waste money!

NoteCase: a simple multiplatform (Linux, Windows, OS X) freeware to preserve the privacy of your notes!

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Today in our Freeware Page we added a brief post about NoteCase a powerful note editor for Linux. In our tests we installed NoteCase on a Ubuntu 8.04 with positive results. This free software allows you to write complex notes dividing them between “nodes” and, if you need, it is also possible to easily create child notes at each level. Moreover, using NoteCase you can insert images and links to your text. Using NoteCase, for complex projects, you can decide to insert tag in each node and find them in just few clicks with the “Find” feature. Last, but not least, when you save your notes, you can decide to save them into an encrypted file. In few wordsNoteCase is one of the best freeware to manage notes using different OS without risks. Recommended!

Three interesting extensions to enjoy a real Web 2.0 experience with OpenOffice 3.0

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After more or less a month from its release, the new OpenOffice 3.0 is receiving tons of positive comments. Anyway, this week, in our Freeware page, we have posted some brief notes abut three different extensions which are able to improve your effectivenss in office routines. First of all we have ooo2gd a simple menu bar which allows you to directly upload or download all kind of documents from Google Documents and Zoho. The second one is the Sun PDF Import Extension which has been created to allow minimal but useful changes to PDF documents. After few minutes we were able to make some interesting changes to a complex PDF documents with just a couple of clicks and export the result “into a hybrid PDF file, which is a PDF with the embedded source file asODF “. Last but not least we tested Sun Presentation Minimizer: an effective extensions which cuts the size of presentations reducing, for example, the image sizes. Using Sun Presentation Minimizer you will be able to simply and freely decide what kind of changes you want to make to your multimedia files contained in the presentations. To conclude it is necessary to focus your attention on the feature that also allows Sun Presentation Minimizer to work on Microsoft PowerPoint presentations. In few words we think that these extensions are guaranteed to be 100% satisfactory!!