There are some excellent time-tracking apps out there, but if you prefer the comfort of good old Microsoft Excel, here’s some good news. A Redditor made an Excel-based to-do list with built-in time tracking, and the template is free to download.
from https://is.gd/vM6Lzc
Selected by Galigio via Computer Borders
Your competitors are on Twitter and they are very active. Good to know but is their strategy really effective? Difficult to know because normally you have not enough time to constantly monitor more than a couple of them. A good market analysis strategy is to read their posts in a certain period of time but Twitter doesn’t keep this easy because you have to spend hours to expand their tweets before have a good view of what information your competitors wrote. Moreover, Twitter allows you to view only the last 3,200 tweets. For this reason I normally use Twitter XL. This online free service allows you to catch and save the last 3,200 tweets just inserting the Twitter name and click on Get Tweets. After a bunch of seconds (or, more often, some minutes) you will have a complete list including the last 3,200 tweets (retweets included) and you can export them in a CSV format. This file can be imported in a spreadsheet (e.g. OpenOffice) and clearly visualized. If you really know what you are looking for, you have a terrific picture about timing, source, contents and trends of the competitor you are monitoring. Not only you can discover when and about what your competitor is more active but you will also know if he/she is using some particular online service to tweet. This data mining tool is recommended for business or just for fun if you are a meddler. 
Just a quick reminder to add a text/word watermark in OpenOffice Word Processor or Microsoft Word:
In OpenOffice Word Processor
a- Create an image using GIMP
– insert a Text field
– choose your favourite font, size, colour (25-30% grey is suggested)
– use the “Rotate Tool” to rotate your text to 45.00 degrees
– save the file in a light graphic format (e.g .gif)
b- Create the watermark
– open OpenOffice Word
– go to Insert —> Picture —> From File and select your graphic file
– click on the image using the mouse’ right button and select Wrap —> In Background
– Done!
– Go to Format
– Select Background and choose Printed watermark
– Click on Text Watermark
– Type “Your Text Here”
– Select Diagonal and then click OK
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!!
In our Linux Page we have posted a brief review about NimbleX: a customizable Live CD based on Slackware. To build your own distro you have only to connect to NimbleX site and follow the simple instructions on the screen. The number of available programs is not huge but with a couple of tests you can built a very good personalized Live CD without knowing anything about programming (unfortunately, it is possible to create only one Live CD every day). You can also customize the background and the boot audio greeting using your favorite images and messages. NimbleX is so easy and fast to use that it’s a pleasure to use it. Recommended!
Today, in our Linux Page (in Spanish) we have post a review about PeaZip: a terrific program which is able to solve many common problems when extracting certain types of archives such as ACE, ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, ISO, Java archives (JAR, EAR, WAR), Linux installers (DEB, PET/PUP, RPM, SLP), LHA, LZH, Open Office file types, PAK/PK3/PK4, RAR, Windows installers (NSIS, some MSI), Z/TZ. This program was developed in two different versions: for Windows (XP and Vista) and for Linux. Moreover a powerful portable/standalone version (for both Windows and Linux) is available. Last but not least, using PeaZip you will be also able to create 7Z, 7Z-sfx, BZip2, GZip/TGZ, PAQ8F, PAQ8JD, PAQ8L, PEA, QUAD, split (.001), TAR, ZIP archives. In few words, PeaZip is tiny, extremely useful and easy to use program: strongly recommended!
Today it is possible to create free pdf documents without paying hundreds of dollars in licenses.
The solution is OpenOffice.
Moreover, it is also possible to have a portable pdf creator with you. This freeware is “OpenOffice.org Portable”, the portable version of the famous text editor developed by the open community and Sun Microsystem.
In the freeware section we posted a review about this particular feature of OpenOffice.
Thank you all for your comments.
A special “thank you” to Francesco who is now sharing this blog experience with me.
As you noticed, we decided to open a new linux page (in Spanish) posted by Frank (Francesco) and we moved his comments (about linux LIVE CDs and new linux mobile-PDA software) in the linux page.
I hope that you will appreciate this new page and the related posts.
Again thank you to you all!
Many (All, I could say) freewares I am talking about in this pages are ready to be used directly on a removable memory. Today the 70-80% of freewares can be used without the installation on the personal computer. In this way it’s possible to have a selection of freewares (or, if you want, paid softwares) with your own personal settings directly on a USB (or removable HD, micro vault key, etc..) and bring it with you everywhere.
Before using new freewares, I suggest to scan them using an antivirus (e.g. Avast Home Edition– freeware) and a good antispyware (e.g. a-squared, freeware, is very effective). For people who don’t want to take any risks, I also suggest to scan the freewares using an online antimalware detector (e.g. personally, I use the free scanner by Panda software).
Just to sum up the brief notes I wrote during the last month I would like to remind you to visit the freeware page where you will find some personal review about Essential PIM, Pricelesswarehome, Foxit Reader, OpenOffice, The Open CD, PDF Creator, Juice.
For comments, suggestions or to criticize what I say, please don’t hesitate to leave a message in the freeware section.
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