Protect your privacy in Windows 10 – Free
I just received this from O&O Software and it’s just one of the many reasons I feel it necessary to steer clear of Windows and Microsoft.
The all-new Windows 10 Fall Creators Update brings a lot of new features, and aims to make your daily work as easy and hassle-free as possible. This enhanced comfort is to be taken with a grain of salt though: Windows 10 quite freely shares your personal data with Microsoft and certain apps.
An operating system that spies on you and needs 3rd party tools to stop it sending information back home isn’t worth having.
Other articles of interest:
- O&O DiskImage 4 Professional Edition Free Download With License Code
- A Year of Windows 7
- The Six “Wow” Features of Windows 7
- Windows Doesn’t Like to Share
- Is the iPad a PC?
- Microsoft denies Windows 7 is based on Mac OS
- Can you trust the Cloud?
- Underwhelmed by Windows 7
- It’s time for some Fall cleanup
- Ballmer is asleep at the switch
A professional writer using Word?
I just saw this tagline and it made me cringe. “I’m a professional writer and I use Word 2016.” Ironically, the article was about making Word faster by turning off a slew of features and UI elements. I won’t question someone being a professional writer, but I will call using Word an amateur decision. The fact you spent big money on a high end piece of software and then need to turn things off proves to me you have chosen poorly.
Word is a terrible tool for writers. It’s bloated with features people don’t use. The design is clunky and cumbersome with an emphasis on formatting rather than generating useful content. The interface is a game of hide-and-seek and the underlying text is riddled with hidden formatting code that makes other programs angry.
There are far better, far cleaner, far more efficient, and far cheaper alternatives out there. I haven’t used Word in nearly 5 years and I’m the better for it. Anyone who is serious about writing first needs to kick Word to the curb and get the right tool for the job.
Other articles of interest:
- Windows Live Writer 2011
- Where did all the good desktop blogging software go?
- RightNote on Sale for 50% Discount
- Microsoft ditches blogging, embraces WordPress
- Hello LibreOffice. I think we might just get along.
- RightNote – A $15 replacement for Word and Excel?
- How to Password Protect Part of a WordPress Post
- HD Video Converter Factory Pro for Free
- ZenWriter – A bit of writing bliss
- Artisteer as a Web Development Tool
MiniNote Pro for quick note taking
I already have a couple of note taking apps, Notebooks, Outline, but MiniNote Pro is a great scratchpad for those quick and dirty notes I don’t need to keep for very long, like the link to a site or a shell command I need to edit.
It sits in the menubar and pops up with a click or with a keyboard command. From there I can add as many notes as I like or search through what I’ve written. If I want my notes available on another machine, there is a sync function.
The options are simple, but that’s the beauty of it. MiniNote gives me a convenient place to store items until I decide what needs to be done with them. In most cases, they stick around for a few minutes and then I don’t need the anymore. But it’s extremely handy.
Other articles of interest:
- An interesting dashboard app called Freeter
- An handy little windows organizer called Magnet
- Roboform on Ubuntu – And on sale
- Switching from Windows to Mac OS – The Software
- Not everything is different between Windows and Mac
- Windows 7: Network problem after sleep mode
- Windows Doesn’t Like to Share
- Paprika for iPad, Windows and Mac – Easy to catalog recipes, shopping list and now a big discount
- 30-50% off SyncBackSE and SyncBackSEPro
- Building a Writing Environment with Notebooks, RightNote and Scrivener
An handy little windows organizer called Magnet
As I get my feet wet with the Mac, or rather, start to building a library of hand utilities, I came across a good one for organizing the app windows. When using DisplayFusion, there are hotkeys for snapping the window to a certain position. This is handy to putting two applications side by side or stacked on top of each other.
The task will now be handled by a little app called Magnet that I found on sale for $0.99 in the App Store. It’s normally $9.99, which would still make it pretty handy for the price, but less than a dollar is amazing.
I grabbed a copy, have it running and can already see the benefit. It comes preconfigured with hot keys to move a window to the left, right or center, as well as maximize, or set it 2/3 of the window.
Pretty handy.
Other articles of interest:
- Just bought Torchlight and Tropico 3
- Roboform on Ubuntu – And on sale
- TeraCopy 50% off
- MiniNote Pro for quick note taking
- Cogs on Sale at Steam
- Slysoft AnyDVD, CloneDVD 20% off
- Not everything is different between Windows and Mac
- Paprika for iPad, Windows and Mac – Easy to catalog recipes, shopping list and now a big discount
- BestBuy needs to work on their return policy
- 30-50% off SyncBackSE and SyncBackSEPro
An interesting dashboard app called Freeter
I found this app last night on the BitsDuJour site and was immediately intrigued. It’s an application to create a dashboard of “widgets” that link to web pages, files, folders and offers widgets for text notes and to-do lists. After a few minutes of poking around, it works quite well to organize disparate file types.
For example, for the projects I work on, there is a test web site, the Jira page with requirements, another Jira page for open tickets, a file for my test plan, the login credentials and several other pieces of information. Some are files on my machine, others are bookmarks.
With Freeter, I created a panel of widgets to link to all this information in one central location. I made links to the files, embedded a web browser to show the list of tickets, another for the test sites, created text boxes to take notes and set up a space for a to-do list.
Freeter supports multiple projects and each project can have multiple dashboards. This lets me create a project for the client, then each dashboard is for a specific release. And the thing is, it doesn’t matter where the notes are or what apps you took them in, Freeter can open them.
I have links to TXT files, Outline files and XLS files. All of these open in their native app. Freeter is literally the corkboard where you pin the items. It can also create a folder listing for source files or other docs.
I’ve already built several dashboards and each one has only taken a few minutes. So far, Freeter has turned out to be very handy. Plus, I can sync what I make on my work machine to my home machine so my view is exactly the same.
It showed up on sale from Bitsdujour for $10, marked down from $30, and it works on both Mac and Windows and is well worth taking a look.
Other articles of interest:
- Dropbox + OneNote = Awesome
- Getting a handle on all those files
- Rapid PHP 2010
- Serif PagePlus X5 – Could this be my answer?
- Wait a moment, I think a found program that will work
- How to play Blu-Ray discs with VLC Media Player
- Index Your Files is Refreshingly Good
- Roboform on Ubuntu – And on sale
- Artisteer as a Web Development Tool
- What software am I supposed to use?
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