There are a lot of online productivity suites out there these days. Google has probably made the biggest news as they have put together a collection of them (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software, etc) after buying several companies. But Google certainly isn’t the only one. I have previous mentioned a basic collection of similar programs by AJAX13. A more full-featured collection is from ThinkFree:
The award-winning ThinkFree Office is a Microsoft® Office compatible application suite comprised of word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation graphics software-all usable online and off.
I haven’t done much other than signing up for a free account and then playing around a bit, but it looks promising. Check it out for yourself.
A month or so ago Download Squad linked to DVDFab, a program that lets you rip DVDs to your hard drive.
To burn or not to burn? That is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the absence of your DVD collection on your hard drive, or to take arms against those who poison your collection with various “protections,” and by opposing end them.
If you side with the latter camp, then you’ll be interested in DVDFab HD Decrypter, a free program for Windows that copies an entire DVD movie to your hard drive, and removes all the protections (CSS, RC, RCE, APS, UOPs and Sony ARccOS) while copying. The program also provides full HD-DVD and Blu-Ray support (hence the “HD” in the name).
As is usually the case, the comments section of that posting provides some good alternatives.
On Monday night I had the pleasure of viewing several wonderful slideshows from members of my local camera club. One of those was a great presentation by Karen Fulham. Karen’s photos are full of colour which also happened to be the subject of her presentation.
Using colour as your subject is a good method is a great way to both practice your compositional skills and to add some new excitement to your photos. In order to capitalize on the use of colour as your main subject within your photograph, you must have strong compositional form with your photos.
Colour in strong compositional forms abounds everywhere. Capturing those colours and forms can lead to wonderful photographs.
Until next time, happy shooting.
These days, most people have access to several computers that they use regularly. There is usually a computer at work and at home, but there may be multiple computers at either location. Although it can be great to have so many different computers to use, it can be frustrating if you don’t have all of your data in one place. Personally, I “live” in Microsoft Outlook, so I’ve got to have my emails, contacts, notes, calendar items, and tasks always available. There are a couple of different solutions out there. I’ve tried two free ones, and both do a decent job. Note: when I refer to Outlook data below, I mean those contacts, notes, calendar items, etc. Both of the software titles support Outlook, Outlook Express, and some web-based email services. Visit the sites to learn more.
Plaxo - Plaxo has really grown over the last few years. They used to be strictly a contact management site, and were often known for sending out unwanted emails to people telling them that you were using their service. They have gradually added more features, and can now sync all regular Outlook data. I’ve tested this on 3 different computers, and they sync up beautifully. I sync my contacts and notes among all 3 computers, and my calendar items between two of the computers. It’s great. By default, Plaxo adds all sorts of extra features to Outlook that I have no use for, but you can disable those, and use just the syncing feature. You can also access everything online if you need to.
SyncWizard - This is a new service from Michael Robertson and his Ajax13 company. They use several different open source tools to do the same sort of thing. I have only tried this briefly, but it seems to be able to sync up all of the same Outlook data. SyncWizard also has a web-based interface where you can see your data. As well, you can also backup some other things other than your Outlook data.
I prefer Plaxo, but if this is all new to you, give both a try and see which one you like.
When you right-click on a file, one of the options is “Open With”, and in many situations, there will be a sub-menu with a few options. For instances, and BMP, GIF, or JPG file can be opened in a variety of programs, and these may all be listed. Yesterday Download Squad posted about a program called OpenWithView which “allows you to easily disable/enable the applications in the Windows “open with” dialog box.” In the comments of that post, another person mentioned OpenExpert, another utility that lets you “specify any number of suitable applications for each file type. In this way, when you open a file, instead of being restricted to using a single pre-determined application, you can easily choose among a list of suitable applications.”
If you like to open certain file types in a variety of different applications (depending on what you want to do with the file when you open it), then you should give these a try:
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