Make Tech Easier» Software

Huge List Of Software Updaters To Keep Your Computer Up To Date [Windows]

Sanix — Thu, 03 May 2012 23:58:23 +0000

While the computers are becoming more and more powerful nowadays, the software used to operate the computer are also becoming more and more complex. If you are following the press releases of software companies, we can safely assume that hundreds of new software are released everyday and thousands of already released software are updated to their next versions almost daily.

With these numbers in mind, it can become an issue for the users to update their software to the latest version, particularly if they have installed hundreds of software on their PCs. To counter this problem, the concept of automatic software updaters was introduced which would check for updates of all the software installed in the computer and notify the user of all the updates available for their PCs. These software are also called software updates monitors.

In this article, we will be discussing almost all the software updater available publicly today. If I miss one, you can share it in the comments below. Please note that all these software are not alike. Some software may be used for monitoring general software updates while some may be related to security apps and patches only.

1. FileHippo Update Checker

FileHippo Update Checker is one of my favorite as it is extremely small in size and very easy to use. After the installation, FileHippo Update Checker will scan for installed software and send the information to FileHippo servers to compare the versions of software installed on the PC and available on FileHippo.com.

It will then display a list of updates available and the download links to new updated software. One has to manually download the software and install it on the computer. FileHippo Update Checker is very good for those who want to keep an eye on everything that is being updated or installed.

One drawback of FileHippo Update Checker is that it does not support all the new software being released daily but it supports majority of the popular software. FileHippo Update Checker works on all versions of Windows but it requires .NET Framework 2.0 or later to be installed.

Download FileHippo Update Checker

2. CNet TechTracker

CNet TechTracker is from the owners of download.com which is considered to be a one stop destination for software downloads. Usually the updates to the software are available on CNet software catalog sooner than other sites. Another advantage of installing CNet TechTracker is that most of the software are tested for spyware and malware before being updated.

CNet TechTracker is the best tool for those who want to have a “set it and forget it” functionality. One thing to note that while installing this software updater, it will also install a search toolbar which can be annoying for many users. You have to be careful while installing TechTracker and select “I do not accept” when the toolbar offer is made.

Download CNet TechTracker

3. SUMo

SUMo (Software Updates Monitor) is another great software updater which is easy to use and can automate the software updates process. The biggest disadvantage of SUMo is with its installation procedure. You have to be very careful while installing SUMo because it will ask you to install some useless toolbars and software which you should always decline.

After the installation, SUMo will give you an option to either open SUMo settings or automatically detect installed software. After automatic detection, you have to click on the next button “Check for updates for your installed software”. The scanning and updating process is very fast and takes just a few moments to get the results. You can update the software by selecting it and clicking on the Get Updates button. You can also select multiple items by using Ctrl and Shift keys.

SUMo makes use of different software download sites in order to get the updates. The download sites include FileForum, Softonic, Download.com, Softpedia, Snapfiles, FileHippo etc.

Download SUMo

Note: The best way to keep away from bundled software which comes with SUMo is to download the zipped versions of SUMo instead of the installer.

4. UpdateStar

UpdateStar is another popular software updates client. UpdateStar is one of the first software updater that I started using. The interface of UpdateStar is not as user friendly as other software updater discussed above. There are two editions of UpdateStar – free and premium. The premium edition is paid and is fully automated. You don’t have to touch anything in order to update the software installed in the system. UpdateStar premium will automatically update the software and let you know in the system tray. This feature is not available in the freeware edition of UpdateStar.

UpdateStar delivers only major releases of the installed programs making sure that you always have the stable version of software installed.

Download UpdateStar

5. R-Updater

R-Updater is a light weight software updates monitor program which does not take a lot of resources when running. It is available as an installer as well in portable edition. R-Updater starts with Windows and keeps on checking for new versions of installed software every now and then. You can also change the checking schedule in the settings.

The best feature of R-Updater is that in addition to checking for new updates, it also offers to download Giveaway of the day software daily. Going to giveawayoftheday.com and checking for new giveaway daily is hard while R-Updater notifies about the latest giveaways on your desktop.

Download R-Updater

6. Secunia PSI (Personal Software Inspector)

Secunia PSI is another popular automatic software updating solution. When it comes to security updates and patches, Secunia PSI is the best in the competition. I’m currently using Secunia PSI 3 beta. With version 3, the software gets a really simple and user friendly interface. It takes a few moments to open. You will need to scan your PC for installed software in order for Secunia PSI to start working. It will also scan for Windows security updates and let you install the updates from within the program interface.

Overall Secunia PSI is a bit slower than other software updaters but it delivers solid security and software updates.

Download Secunia PSI

Other software updaters

The above mentioned software updaters were the most popular update monitoring software used by millions of users. There are a few others worth mentioning. I found all these updating software while researching for this article.

Carambis Software Updater – includes multilingual support and a very quick scanning engine with one click scanning option.
Glarysoft Software Update – informs whenever a new update of a software is available. You can share information and comment on the new software updates.
RadarSync – automatically download and installs new updates to installed software.
Appupdater – very similar to Linux apt-get and yum and provides the automated installation and maintenance of installed software.
Update Notifier – a portable software updater with a watch list feature where you can add programs to your watch list.
Ketarin – Ketarin keeps the setup packages up to date instead of the installed programs. So if you have a software repository in your computer, Ketarin will keep it up to date.
Software Informer – lets you find new software according to your needs while keeping the installed software up to date.
FileREX Update Checker – automatically detects installed apps and then gives download links to the latest versions available.
Patch My PC – checks for the latest versions of popular software. Patching those popular programs in time keeps the hackers away from the computer.
Seven Update - very much like Windows Update but it keeps third party software updated. It is free and open source.
Software-UpToDate - a very simple program which notifies about the recently updated software and gives download links to those software.

The good thing about these software updaters is that usually they do not conflict with each other. If you want to install multiple software updater monitoring programs, you can do it without any problems.

I have tried my best to collect all the software updaters in one place but in case I have missed one, please share it in the comments below.

Image credit: update button concept by Big Stock Photo.

Huge List Of Software Updaters To Keep Your Computer Up To Date [Windows] originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)
Follow us at Facebook | Twitter

4 Free Virtualization Software Solutions For Windows

Sanix — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 14:58:15 +0000

Virtualization is a hot topic nowadays. You will see most of the IT people (network and systems administrators) talking about Virtualization quite often. Before digging deep on what is virtualization, let’s talk a little about why we need or use virtualization as it will help us better understand the concept.

Uses of Virtualization

Virtualization technology is used to make the hardware resources expandable without having to shift the software and data from one place to another.

Virtualization is also used to lower the costs of computer hardware as multiple virtual servers can be hosted on a single server hardware.

Virtualization can be used to setup separate environments for each software application so that one application cannot interfere with the other. This is especially useful when testing a software product on different environments. Rather than dedicating a separate hardware machine, one can easily setup virtual servers on one hardware machine.

Virtualization can be used as a standardization tool. This means that we can setup one Operating System environment as a standard and then replicate the same virtual machine as many times as we want.

What is Virtualization?

According to Wikipedia:

Virtualization (Computing) is the creation of a virtual (rather than actual) version of something, such as a hardware platform, operating system, storage device, or network resources.

Let’s take a simpler example of Virtualization. If you are a frequent computer user, you should already be knowledgeable about the partitions of your hard drive. You can create more than one partition in your computer. In Windows, the partitions are named as C:\, D:\, E:\ etc. We call all the partitions as separate drives. We also know that our computer consists of only a single physical hard drive. These drives are logical partitions of the single physical hard drive. This can be termed as Virtualization as we are creating a multiple virtual versions of a single hardware.

Types of Virtualization

Virtualization is a term which can be used with wide variety of topics but the most popular subject in which Virtualization is used is Operating System Virtualization. Operating System Virtualization means that multiple Operating Systems are being run simultaneously on the same hardware. Other types of Virtualizations include Software Virtualization, Network Virtualization, Storage Virtualization and Server Virtualization.

We’ll discuss other types of Virtualization solutions some time later but in this post we will give the most popular Operating System Virtualization solutions available for Windows.

Operating System Virtualization terminology

Before we go to discuss the actual solution, let’s first get familiar with the terminology used in Operating system Virtualization.

Host: The Operating System on which the Virtualization software solution runs is called the host.
Guest: The Operating System which is run inside the Virtualization software is called the guest.

1. Microsoft Virtual PC

Microsoft Virtual PC, as the name implies, is a free Virtualization product from Microsoft. The latest version of Virtual PC is Virtual PC 2007. It can run almost any Operating System as a guest, but only a few hosts are supported, listed below:

Windows Vista Business, Enterprise and Ultimate
Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition (32-bit and 64-bit supported)
Windows XP Professional (32-bit and 64-bit supported)
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition

Although Virtual PC does everything which a standard Virtualization software can do, it has certain limitations. It does not have USB device support and it cannot save multiple snapshots of the Virtual machine. Other than these limitations, Virtual PC is quite fast especially if you want to install any version of Windows as a guest Operating System.

Download Virtual PC 2007

Please note that Windows XP mode in Windows 7 is just an extension of Virtual PC. It will create a preset Windows XP environment in Windows 7 so that Windows 7 users may be able to run the programs which are only supported to run on Windows XP.

2. VirtualBox

VirtualBox is a Virtualization product from Oracle. The advantage of VirtualBox over Virtual PC is that VirtualBox can run on most platforms including Windows, Linux and Mac. VirtualBox is free and Open-Source. It supports resizing the guest Operating System screen according to the VirtualBox window. You need to have “scale mode” enabled for this purpose. If you click on the guest OS screen, your mouse and keyboard will be locked inside the guest OS so that you can use the keyboard and mouse in the guest OS without interrupting the host. To release the mouse and keyboard to be used in the host, just press Ctrl + left arrow key. This hotkey can be customized in VirtualBox options.

VirtualBox also comes with an extension pack which can be installed along with VirtualBox in order to get additional functionality like USB device support, remote desktop connection and PXE (network) booting capability for Intel NIC (LAN) cards.

Although VirtualBox runs in Mac OS but it has many problems and creates stability issues. So it should only be used in a home environment when Mac OS has to be used as a host Operating System. VirtualBox runs fine on Windows and Linux as hosts.

Download VirtualBox (All Operating Systems)

3. VMLite Workstation

VMLite Workstation is a Virtualization product based on VirtualBox (Open Source). It works very similar to Microsoft Virtual PC but gets rid of the limitations of Virtual PC. An interesting feature of VMLite Workstation is that it supports running of a 64-bit guest Operating System on a 32-bit host Operating System. So if you are running 32-bit Windows 7, you will be able to run 64-bit Windows XP with the help of VMLite Workstation.

As opposed to Virtual PC, VMLite supports saving of multiple live snapshots of the virtual machine. This is like versioning. If you don’t like the current version of the environment, you can always revert to a previous state using a previous snapshot saved by VMLite Workstation.

VMLite supports most of the Virtualization formats used in the industry like VMDK (VMWare), VHD (Microsoft), VDI (Sun) and HDD (Parallel).

VMLite comes with its own version of Windows XP Mode for Windows 7. It gives the same functionality as the original Windows XP mode and does not require any hardware Virtualization.

Download VMLite Workstation (Registration required to download the setup file)

4. VMWare Server

VMWare Server is a free Virtualization software from VMWare. Although its support has ended but it can still be downloaded and used for free. VMWare Server supports almost all the Operating Systems as guests or hosts but 64-bit guest OS cannot be installed on a 32-bit host. VMWare Server has support for USB devices and also supports bridged, NAT and host only network interfaces.

VMWare Server comes with administrative tools package which can be installed from the File menu. The administrative tools make it easier to communicate between the host and the guest Operating System without locking the mouse and enabling of cut, copy, paste and drag and drop operations across host and guest OS.

Download VMWare Server

5 Best Free Alternatives To Microsoft Visio

Sanix — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:58:53 +0000

Microsoft Visio is a professional diagramming software from Microsoft which makes it very easy to explore and visualize complex information and processes quickly. As an IT professional, I find it very easy and satisfying to visualize process flows, network architecture and program workflows. Microsoft Visio is not only limited to the IT field but can also be used with other fields like business, engineering and construction (maps and roads). One downside of Microsoft Visio that is common in almost all Microsoft products is that it is not affordable by a home user. The home user does not need to have very complex diagramming needs so we research and bring the most feature rich and free alternatives to Microsoft Visio.

1. OpenOffice/LibreOffice Draw

OpenOffice Draw and LibreOffice Draw are two separate software but since their usage and functionality is very similar, I would mention them together. These are the closest and the biggest open source competitors of Microsoft Visio. Draw is an all purpose drawing, diagramming and charting tool. The feature that I love in Draw is the grouping feature. You can easily group different objects together and then do different actions on the group like moving the group, connecting with other groups etc. In addition to other formats (XML format is the default), you can also export your diagrams as SWF Flash files.

Download OpenOffice Draw

Download LibreOffice Draw

2. Dia

Dia is an open source software very similar to Microsoft Visio. When you start it for the first time, you will see that the user interface resembles with Visio a lot. The feature set of dia is also very similar to Visio. You can create UML diagrams, flowcharts, network processes and architectures, entity relationship diagrams etc. easily with Dia. The default file format for any file created with Dia is .dia but there are a lot of file formats that you can export your diagram including Microsoft Visio vdx format.

Download Dia

3. LucidChart

If you are looking for a web based alternative to Microsoft Visio, LucidChart is the perf5 Best Free Alternatives To Microsoft Visioect choice. It provides a drag and drop web interface to draw any kind of diagram. LucidChart gives you an option to build your diagrams in collaboration with your team. Multiple people will be able to work with the same diagram making it the perfect choice for small teams. One of the great features of LucidChart is that it can export or import Microsoft Visio vdx files very easily in your LucidChart account. One thing that is missing in LucidChart is the built in categorization of different shapes for different areas like networking, engineering etc. You don’t need to signup for an account on LucidChart. You just have to open the site and start drawing.5 Best Free Alternatives To Microsoft Visio

Visit LucidChart

4. Diagramly

Diagramly is another web based diagramming and mind mapping software. It has a very responsive and easy to use interface with the tools on the left hand column and the drawing on the right hand column. You don’t need to signup for an account to use Diagramly. You can just visit Diagramly and start working on your diagram or mind map. When finished, save the diagram in an XML file locally on your computer. If you need to edit the diagram again, just visit Diagramly again and open your locally saved file for further editing.

Visit Diagramly

5. Pencil Project

Pencil Project is an Open Source alternative to Mcirosoft Visio which is actively maintained by the development community. Their goal for Pencil Project is to make it a tool to make diagramming as easy as possible and usable for everyone from a newbie to an expert. It is very similar to other desktop based tool with a distinction that it can be installed as a Firefox extension so that you can easily create your diagrams while browsing the Internet.

Download Pencil Project

I hope you will find these free alternatives to Microsoft Visio very useful and I would like to have your thought on how much these free software have been able to replace Visio in your work?

Image credit: Big Stock Photo

5 Best Free Alternatives To Microsoft Visio originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)
Follow us at Facebook | Twitter

5 Best Free Alternatives To Microsoft Project

Sanix — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:58:51 +0000

Microsoft Project is a project management software which makes it a breeze to organize the whole project timeline including the work schedules, budgets and human work hours. Microsoft Project has become the best project management software which every IT professional and manager loves to work with. Microsoft Project is suitable for everyone from a person with very basic project management needs to a very large team with very complex collaboration and management needs. This is where simpler tools with only essential features come in. We share some of the most competent, simpler and free alternatives to Microsoft Project. There are two types of alternatives that I have used, web based and desktop based. Let’s get started with the list.

1. Openproj

Openproj is so far the best free and open source alternative to Microsoft Project. Openproj is the best alternative because there is very little time and effort required to shift from Microsoft Project to Openproj. It can even open MPP and MPT files created from Microsoft Project but one drawback of Openproj is that it will not be able to save the file back to MS Project file format but rather save it in an XML file which can be opened universally by any XML reader.

Download Openproj

Openproj is compatible with Mac OS, Windows and Linux.

2. Gantter

Gantter is a free web based project management application that is especially targeted for small businesses and home users. The biggest feature of Gantter that I like the most is that it can be easily integrated with Google docs. You can also import your MPP files created in Microsoft Project but Gantter will save files in XML format. You can either save your projects locally or on Gantter cloud servers.

Visit Gantter

3. Teambox

Teambox is another free web based project management tool. Teambox is much like a social network of all the people who are working on a project. You can easily assign tasks, leave comments and fix due dates and this functionality is given just like we post anything on Facebook or any other social network. This makes it stand off from other project management tools. If your requirement is heavy collaboration among the team, Teambox is the perfect solution for you. The free edition of Teambox supports up to 3 projects and 50MB of online space.

Visit Teambox

4. Rally Community Edition

Rally Community Edition is another web based free and easy to use project management tool. This tool is an ideal solution for small business free for up to 10 users. You can easily plan and track tasks with Rally community edition. The distinction of Rally Community Edition is that it provides personal dashboards for all the users and combines social media tools for better collaboration and getting the right things done at the right time.

Visit Rally Community Edition

5. FreedCamp

FreedCamp is another feature rich web based alternative to Microsoft Project. The thing that attracts me towards FreedCamp is their claim on their homepage:

Over 48 universities, and 31 thousand professionals from 188 countries use Freedcamp every day!

FreedCamp offers an extremely easy to use dashboard which even newbies can get familiar with easily. FreedCamp works in modules and you can install any application that suits your project. This approach is especially successful as people have the flexibility to work on only the tasks and tools that they would like to use. All extras will never be installed. You can install the basic apps during the signup process. The basic apps includes a to-do list, discussions, milestones, time and files.

Which is your application of choice for managing your projects whether at the office or at home? What do you think is the best way to manage projects easily? Is it through using the software or doing things manually?

Image credit: Big Stock Photo

5 Best Free Alternatives To Microsoft Project originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)
Follow us at Facebook | Twitter

TimeSlotTracker: A Useful Cross Platforms Compatible Time Tracker

Damien — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:58:20 +0000

If you are a freelancer who charges by the hour, you will know important it is to track the amount of time you have spent on each project. While there are several good time tracker software for Windows and Mac, there are only a few for Linux, and most of them are too basic and simple. While researching for a good time tracker software for Linux, I come across TimeSlotTracker, which is cross-platform compatible and comes with the plenty of features that are lacking in other software.

TimeSlotTracker comes with many features. It allows you to create tasks in hierarchical format and view data in various format. It even supports exporting of data to iCal, which can be very handy for some of you.

TimeSlotTracker is created in Java, and that explains why it is cross-platform compatible. To make it easy to install and use, there is the native installer for both Windows and Linux. If there is anything unpleasant about a java-based app, it must be the ugly interface and the inability to integrate with the OS theme. This is what it looks like in Ubuntu.

Luckily, you can change the theme layout in TimeSlotTracker.

Once installed, the app comes with a list of task and sub-tasks. You can only have one main task, but you can add unlimited sub-tasks (and sub sub-tasks) to it. Each sub-task is equivalent to a project. Using the Play, Pause and Stop button at the toolbar, you can quickly and easily get it to track the time spent on each project.

At any point of time, you can pause or restart the timeslot. I love the part where you can edit the selected timeslot. This is particularly useful when you have forgotten to start the time tracking while working on a project and only remember it an hour later. You can start the time tracking and edit the start time to an hour ago.

Taking screenshots while tracking time

Another feature of TimeSlotTracker is to take a screenshot of your desktop on a regular interval. This allows you to track the task you are doing while the time tracker is active. It is a good way to convince your client that you are indeed working during the tracked time.

The screenshot feature can be enabled under the “Configuration -> Monitoring” section.

Reporting feature

TimeSlotTracker also allows you to export your data to several formats, including HTML, XML and CSV. You can also choose to export a Summary report, Detail report or Journal report. It will be great if it supports PDF format too.

Conclusion

I am not sure about Windows or Mac, but in Linux, the TimeSlotTracker is almost the perfect app for me. Being cross platform compatible also means that you can easily port your data from platform to platform without any issue, which is important since my work requires me to work in different OS. In Ubuntu, I do have a minor issue with the “Minimize to tray” feature. Once minimized, I am not able to restore back to maximize mode. The “Tip of the day” popup is rather annoying too, but it can be turned off at the Configuration section, so it is not too bad. All in all, if you are looking for a good, useful, and free time tracker software, TimeSlotTracker could be the one for you.

TimeSlotTracker

TimeSlotTracker: A Useful Cross Platforms Compatible Time Tracker originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)
Follow us at Facebook | Twitter

5 Free Alternatives To Microsoft OneNote

Sanix — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 00:58:19 +0000

Microsoft OneNote, as its name implies, is a note taking application from Microsoft. It is very different from other apps like Notepad or Wordpad, which take a linear approach to making a document. While Microsoft OneNote is completely different. It can gather all types of digital information including text, pictures, videos, web clips etc. And it is not necessary to arrange this information in a linear form. You can drag and drop anything anywhere on the canvas.

Previously I have written about Microsoft Outlook alternatives and Microsoft PowerPoint alternatives and today I want to share my collection of Microsoft OneNote alternatives that I have been testing and using from time to time. But one thing is for sure, my primary note taking application on my primary computer still remains to be Microsoft OneNote.

1. Evernote

Evernote is the most popular and the closest alternative to OneNote. Evernote can help users organize different types of information without having to follow a defined set of architecture. The biggest advantage of Evernote, which even OneNote doesn’t have, is the synchronization feature. All your notes created in Evernote will automatically be synchronized on the Evernote servers. These notes can be access from anywhere else as it’s saved on the cloud. There are two editions of Evernote; paid and free. The difference is the cloud storage capacity.

2. Tiddlywiki

Tiddlywiki has been my favorite for quite some time now. I had organized all my documents in separate Tiddlywikis before I started using Microsoft OneNote. For those who don’t know, Tiddlywiki is a non-linear web notebook. All the data is stored in a single document. The best feature of Tiddlywiki is that it does not require any software download and installation. You just have to download the Tiddlywiki html file and start using it in any standard web browser. The down side of Tiddlywiki is that it is not very user friendly and you have to learn a lot of shortcuts in order to create different tiddlers.

3. CintaNotes

CintaNotes is a relatively simple notes taking application and not a standard alternative to Microsoft OneNote. If you want to organize only text snippets to your liking, then CintaNotes is for you. It is portable and light weight. The strongest features of CintaNotes include the tagging system. By tagging different snippets of text, you can easily organize your notes the way you want without having to drag and drop things around.

4. Tomboy

Tomboy works very similar to a web content management system and makes it easier for you to organize and connect to the information. The feature of Tomboy that I like the most is that it makes those words in any note a hyperlink which match the title of any text snippet. You can organize your data using different fonts and styles, highlighting and making use of bullet points. You can extend the functionality of Tomboy by installing different add-ins.

5. Nevernote

Nevernote was created in response to Evernote. In the beginning, it was only meant for Linux but now it can also work on Windows. Although it is very similar to Evernote, I don’t like the user interface of Nevernote. It’s not because it is not functional or easy to use, it seems to be designed in Java and is not very fast and sleek. But the overall interface is easy to use and self explanatory.

If you don’t have Microsoft Office suite and don’t want a paid note taking application like OneNote, you may want to select one of the above mentioned apps for this purpose. What are you using for your note taking needs and organizing information?

For further reading you may want to learn about Growly, an alternative to OneNote for Mac and Webnotes which is an online alternative to OneNote.

5 Free Alternatives To Microsoft OneNote originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)
Follow us at Facebook | Twitter

How to Understand Terms and Conditions Without Reading Them

Laura Tucker — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 15:58:23 +0000

No one wants to spend the time to read lengthy Terms and Conditions. From a poll last week. 58% of you said that you will skip Terms and Conditions page when you are signing up for a service or install a new software and only 15% will read the T&C all the time or frequently. I can tell you from the time I spent in a previous career as a typesetter for a business forms printer that not many people do. The multiple typos I would find on existing printed Terms and Conditions told me that it was a necessary evil. It was important to include it, but not many people were going to take the time to read it.

These things can be very lengthy. When I would type them up, they could easily take me a few hours, and I’m known as a really quick typist. To proofread them took another couple of hours. This guarantees that not many people are reading them, other than people who are experts at legalese. There are even Facebook pages dedicated to people admitting that they click the box, but never read it. One of those has almost 75,000 fans.

However, by clicking that box saying that you understand the Terms and Conditions, you are still just as bound to abiding by them if you read them or didn’t. This means the Terms and Conditions aren’t there to read as much as they are there to hold you to something you would be willing to do.

In this world of business that is conducted online, the people placing the Terms and Conditions on their website or software probably aren’t reading it either. Google shows over 20,000 Terms and Conditions generators out there to generate the wording and code to make it easier for business and websites to place it on their site or add it to their software package.

In lieu of being a speed-reader, the best way to know what you’re agreeing to before you click that box is to skim the text. There is so much information contained within this text it’s often laid out in outline form. It starts with roman numerals, and includes indents with capital letters, regular numbers, lowercase letters, etc.

Much of this is information you don’t need to read. Looking at the above sample, you know who the buyer is. It’s you. Why read the text explaining what it is? If you know what the word conspicuous means, there’s no reason to read most of the next five paragraphs. Simply skim it to make sure they aren’t applying a different meaning to it.

There are a few words you want to pay particular attention to while skimming, and perhaps read those areas a little more in depth. One of those words is liabilty. This pertains to how you will be held responsible for buying or using the software, app, or website. You want to be sure you know what you are agreeing to with this.

The other words you want to pay close attention to are “fees”, “compensation”, or anything else that translates into money going out. That’s always my fear when downloading software. I’m always afraid that while it says it’s free, I’ll be expected to pay after a certain time or when I use it a certain way. Be absolutely clear with this wording to be sure you don’t get stuck paying for something you don’t want to.

EULAlyzer

If you need even more understanding being following a few key terms, there is software out there that will help you understand the Terms and Conditions of software. EULAlyzer is a Windows-based software that will tell you how safe the software you are about to install is, and also helps analyze that Terms and Conditions agreement highlighting the key phrases that you should pay particular interest to.

By skimming and ignoring portions of text that either don’t pertain to you or are explanations of terms you already understand, and by knowing where to go for more help when you need it, you will be able to click that checkbox at the end with much more confidence. You can change hours of boring reading into minutes of skimming, skipping, and double-checking.

How to Understand Terms and Conditions Without Reading Them originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)
Follow us at Facebook | Twitter

Best Alternatives To Microsoft PowerPoint (Online And Offline)

Sanix — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 15:58:59 +0000

Microsoft PowerPoint is certainly the best and the most used presentation software used on earth today. Presentation can be a great resource to share ideas, collaborate or showcase your work to the respective audience or gathering. I have been making presentations throughout my life, starting from school time where we had to present our work and prepare a presentation for it. At that time, Microsoft PowerPoint was the only solution we had and we never looked into any alternatives. However, the world has changed and we always look for software which can do our work cost and time effectively. I have a collected some of the presentation software that can be very useful for various purposes. The software are categorized into online and offline. The online software need no installation. They will open in a browser and you can easily make presentations using them. The offline software will be installed on your computer and will work even without Internet.

Best Online Alternatives to PowerPoint

Prezi

Prezi is my favorite online presentation building tool. Prezi takes a different approach than the traditional presentation software, including Microsoft PowerPoint. In Prezi, instead of the slide by slide sequential presentation, we can build a complete presentation structure on a single canvas and then zoom in and out of the parts on which we are emphasizing. This helps the audience to see the bigger picture and the core concept of the presentation remains in mind. Here is a very interesting introduction to Prezi:

There is also a Prezi Desktop version for Pro members which can create presentations offline.

SlideRocket

SlideRocket is just more than a presentation tool. In addition to presentation, SlideRocket can provide user engagement analytics. The unique feature of SlideRocket is that it can integrate content from sites like Flickr and Youtube. The plugins can also be installed expanding the features of SlideRocket. Here’s a video on introduction to SlideRocket:

Google Docs Presentation

Google has silently sneaked through what used to be Microsoft’s area of expertise – Office Suite. Now Google offers Google Docs which very much competes with Microsoft Office. Google Docs Presentation was added to Google Docs 4 years back and is an online alternative to Microsoft PowerPoint. The user interface of Google Docs is very much similar to PowerPoint but has less functions and is easier to use. If you need a traditional presentation builder which can build presentations online, Google Docs Presentation is the perfect choice for you.

Best Offline Alternatives to PowerPoint

While it is best for me to save everything on the cloud when I’m always online, there are certain times when you don’t get the Internet connection. In this situation, if you need to build a presentation on the go and you are looking for Microsoft PowerPoint alternatives, here are several free alternatives that you can consider.

OpenOffice – Impress

OpenOffice is an open source and free office suite which includes a presentation software called Impress. It provides almost all the tools that presenters generally need, including drawing, outline, slides, handouts etc. Although it has got a lot of features, it has an old user interface. If you are used to the older Microsoft Office interfaces then you will love to work with OpenOffice Impress.

LibreOffice – Impress

LibreOffice is an enhanced version of OpenOffice suite. LibreOffice also includes a presentation software called Impress. I prefer LibreOffice over OpenOffice because it gives me more features as well as I can create, edit and save my documents in more formats then in OpenOffice.

I hope this list of Microsoft PowerPoint alternatives have been useful for all the readers. Which presentation software do you use? If you are using multiple presentation software, which software do you use for what purpose?

Best Alternatives To Microsoft PowerPoint (Online And Offline) originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)
Follow us at Facebook | Twitter

Free Slideshow Maker Software To Organize Photos In Slideshows

Sanix — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 00:58:23 +0000

Nowadays the digital photos have become very easy to capture and save. With the advent of larger hard drives with cheaper prices, the space constraint is almost gone forever. Now comes the challenge of organizing these photos because with the passage of time, the collection of digital photos becomes so huge that it becomes very difficult to find a particular photo. I have recently written about 5 free feature rich photo editing software that can make the task of editing photos to your desired effect very easily and conveniently. A wonderful regular reader, Colin Boswell, has asked for suggesting some free software for making slideshows of photos particularly for the DVDs. While most of the slideshow making software are not free, I have a collection of few free software for making slideshows of digital photos.

So what features I am looking for when searching for a photo slideshow maker software? Here are some of the features that I evaluate when looking for one:

Drag and drop: Ease of use is the first and foremost feature that we should be looking for in any software. Drag and drop functionality makes a software easier to use so I prefer to have this kind of functionality in the slideshow maker.

Transition effects: The software should be able to provide different types of popular transition effects for the photo slideshows.

Timing: We should be able to specify our own time intervals between each transition.

Captions: We should be able to add captions to our photos so that we can write something about the photo right beside it. Text animation is an added plus.

Sound effect: We should be able to add sound effects to the slideshow whether it be music or our own voice.

Photo editor: The software should provide at least a basic photo editor so that we may be able to edit photos on the go without having to go to another program even for the minor edits.

Publishing methods: The software should be able to provide us with easy publishing methods according to our requirements. For example if I want to publish my slideshow on a DVD, there should be an option to do so.

Formats: This is important especially for those who want to distribute their slideshows. The slideshows should be in the formats that people will be able to see without installing any additional codecs or software.

Now lets talk about the free software which we can use to create great and beautiful slideshows and which have all the features that I have given above.

1. PhotoStage Slideshow Producer Free

PhotoStage Slideshow Producer is my most favorite slideshow maker. The biggest reason behind this is its ease of use. The interface is very similar to Windows Movie Maker which I have been using for years before. Everything is organized in steps. If you don’t know where to go, just follow the steps and you’ll be able to make stunning slideshows in no time.

I absolutely love the timeline feature that gives me a summary of what I have added. I can also use the drag and drop functionality in the timeline instead of using a step by step interface. There are more than 35 transition effects to choose from. You can also add effect to individual photos. In the next step you can either record your own narration or add some music to the slideshow. Saving options of PhotoStage Slideshow Producer is a feature that I absolutely love. I have almost all the options that I like to have, like saving the slideshow on a CD or DVD, saving it locally on the computer, or on a portable device like iPod or iPhone, upload it directly to Youtube or Facebook or saving the whole slideshow as Flash movie.

There is a a commercial version of PhotoStage Slideshow Producer but I prefer to have a free one because it has everything that I need.

2. DVD Slideshow GUI

DVD Slideshow GUI is another free software for creating slideshows. While it is a very good software with lots of options, I don’t prefer it because it is not easy to use. Its interface is not at all user friendly. Other than that, it has almost all the options that are found in commercial slideshow makers. If you are used to the older menu and toolbar button style interface, you’ll love to use this software. It has about 237 transition effects included, 17 formats to publish the slideshow in which make it stand with other commercial options.

Slideshow Makers For Other OSes

These are the two best free slideshow makers for Windows. If you are using other Operating System, I’m just listing down some of the software available for those platforms:

3. Slideshow Makers for Linux

Slideshow Makers for Mac OSX

PhotoMagico (Commercial)
Photo To Movie (Commercial)

Online Slideshow Makers

I hope this has been helpful for every viewer and I’d like to thank everyone for taking time for reading. If you would like to add anything to this article, please leave a comment below. If you want us to write about a specific topic, you can request it from our contact form.

Free Slideshow Maker Software To Organize Photos In Slideshows originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)
Follow us at Facebook | Twitter

Is Noow better than VLC?

Trevor Dobrygoski — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 14:58:33 +0000

There are a lot of applications you can use to play your video. Many people use Windows Media Player because that is what your Windows machine came with. There are other options like QuickTime/iTunes and the wildly popular VLC.

Noow is a pretty new competitor to the media playback game. Its claim is that it can play back HD video with amazing quality. Lets see how it stacks up against VLC.

The desktop applications

Both are applications you will need to download and install onto your machine. The look of Noow is clean and modern.

There are options in the left sidebar to video sources like Hulu and YouTube. Also near the bottom of that same sidebar, there are some links to podcasts.

VLC has a more plain interface. It is not as stylish as Noow’s player, but has everything you typically access right there in the open.

Noow media types played

Noow can play MPEG, AVI, DivX, H.264, Flash Video, QuickTime, Windows Media. There is not a full list of file types anywhere I could see.

While installing Noow, you may want choose custom install so you can turn on support for QuickTime, MP3, AVI, MPEG, Windows media files. These are not checked by default.

VLC media types played

VLC has a full list of media types it can play. If you take a look at the file types, I doubt there are many out there that VLC won’t play.

Having the ability to play a specific media type can take a lot of the guess work out of deciding on the player you want to use.

Noow special features

Playback location – If you need to stop a movie or video before you finish it, Noow will remember the location where you stopped and automatically start you there when you open the file again.

RSS feeds – Get the latest video from your favorite site using the RSS feed option.

Torrent files – You can use files from Bit Torrent

Space – You can set aside a certain space on your hard drive for your downloads and be notified when it is full.

VLC special features

Stream – You can stream your audio and video files to other devices. This can be super cool if you set up an old computer as a media server.

Remote – Your Android device can be used as a remote to control your media playback.

Appearance – You can download different skins to change the look of the player window.

Conclusion

I am still leaning toward VLC. My reasoning is, I am using Windows 8 for most things recently and Noow was a bit choppy playing video. I don’t expect all of the applications to work perfectly on a new OS. Noow worked great for me in XP. VLC has been a great all around media player for as long as it has been around. They usually adapt to new formats very quickly.

What kinds of features help you choose which media player to use?

Is Noow better than VLC? originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)
Follow us at Facebook | Twitter

How to Stream Media to Your Xbox 360 or PS3

Tavis J. Hampton — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 23:58:34 +0000

Video game consoles, particularly the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, are increasingly becoming more than just gaming devices. They have become complete entertainment systems. You can now watch Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and other streaming video content. You can purchase and listen to music, and with the new Xbox 360 dashboard update coming this fall, you can even watch exclusive live content from cable providers.

One media streaming dilemma that still faces some Xbox 360 and PS3 users is the ability to stream content from another device, such as a desktop or laptop computer. If you have home movies, pictures or photos, a collection of MP3s, or other content that you have downloaded to your computer, it is a pain to have to copy that content to your game console. For Windows users, they can connect their Xbox 360 to their Windows computers without much difficulty. For the rest of us, there are third-party tools. One in particular that I have been using lately is PS3 Media Server.

PS3 Media Server

Despite the name, PS3 Media Server can actually stream to a number of UPnP-capable devices, including the Xbox 360, Android phones and tablets, XBMC, iPad, and Sony Bravia Internet TVs. It is also cross-platform and free and open source, with builds available for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. It is written in Java and can stream supported content formats directly or even transcode incompatible content before streaming.

Installation and Setup

The Windows and Mac versions comes with .exe and .dmg files respectively. The installation process should be familiar to you. For Linux, there are no distribution-specific packages, so you will need to download the .tgz file and extract the contents. You can copy the extracted files wherever you want and then just execute the PMS.sh file. As it is platform-independent, you might be able to get it to work with other Unix-like OSes, such as FreeBSD, as long as Java is installed and working.

After startup, the first screen will show you a detection process where PMS will look for a PlayStation 3 on your network. If it finds one, it will show a picture of one at the top and immediately make itself available to it. Regardless, it will continue searching for additional devices. If it finds an Xbox 360, it will display a picture of one on the bottom half of the window.

Your content will now be ready to stream, but you still need to tell PMS where the content is. To do this, click the “Navigation/Share Settings” tab. At the bottom is a section called “Shared folders”. Click the folder icon with the big plus emblem and select the folders you want to add to your streaming library. Once you have selected the folders you want, you will notice that the top middle button labeled “Restart HTTP Server” has become available. Click it to refresh your new shares.

There are many other features you can configure, such as image thumbnails, network features, and transcoding settings. To support transcoding, you will need to make sure you have Mplayer/MEncoder and/or FFMPEG installed. If you intend to stream HD movies while transcoding them, you will need a powerful computer. My laptop was unable to do it without stuttering through it. Without transcoding, everything streams fine.

At your game console, you should go through the normal process of attaching media streamers and playing content. On the Xbox 360 for example, it will detect your PS3 Media Server and play content from it as if it were a Windows machine. If you have trouble connecting, always go back and check the “Status” tab on PMS, and if necessary, restart it. You should now be able to enjoy your computer’s content from your living room anytime you want it.

PS3 Media Server

How to Stream Media to Your Xbox 360 or PS3 originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)
Follow us at Facebook | Twitter

How to Design Your Own House With Sweet Home 3D

Damien — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:58:12 +0000

I am sure you don’t move house everyday, but when you do, one of the headache is to decide the layout of your new house. I have recently renovated my house and while everything is in a mess, I have to come up with the layout design of the house. I don’t have the luxury of moving my furniture around and do a trial and error. What I did is to make use of a software call Sweet Home 3D to design my house digitally.

Installation

Sweet Home 3D is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. There is also an online version that you can use directly from your browser. To install the desktop software, go to Sweet Home 3D site and download the version for your operating system.

In Ubuntu, you can easily install via the Synaptic Package Manager, Ubuntu Software Center or with the command:

sudo apt-get install sweethome3d

User Interface

When you open the application, all you will see is a blank window with four sections.

The top left section is a list of 3D model (furniture) that you can drag and drop to the design pane. The top right section is the design pane where you can drag, move, rotate and resize your furniture and arrange them in the preferences you want.

The bottom left section show the description and attributes of individual item and the bottom right section is the 3D preview of your house design. You can change the view by dragging and rotate it around.

Getting Started

The first thing you have to do is to create the layout of your house. If you already have a digital copy of the layout plan, you can import it at “Plan -> Import background image“. Alternatively, you can start from scratch by going to “Plan -> Create Walls“.

Once you have created your layout, you can start to drag and drop the furnitures from the top left section and move them around in the layout. When dealing with the furniture, you can use the corner actions to change its appearance:

Top left corner – rotate
Top right – change elevation
Bottom left – change height
Bottom right – resize

At any point of time, you can drag your cursor to change the viewing angle at the Preview pane. You can also use the scroll wheel to zoom in/out of your layout.

3D Models

The furniture library is rather limited in the desktop version. What you can do is to import (Furniture -> Import Furniture Library) the extra library of 3D models from here.

Once you have finished your design, you can either save it for future editing (with .sh3d extension), print it or save as PDF. The layout that you created can also be exported to SVG format.

Conclusion

If you need a simple home design software that doesn’t require any technical background to use, Sweet Home 3D is a good choice.

Note: Sweet Home 3D is built with java and require java to be installed in your machine before you can use it.

Image credit: BigStockPhoto

How to Design Your Own House With Sweet Home 3D originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)
Follow us at Facebook | Twitter

Provide Remote Desktop Support With GoToAssist

JJ — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 14:58:45 +0000

Everyone knows about Teamviewer – it’s one of the most popular remote support applications out there. However, it also has a rather high startup cost if you want to use it for professional purposes. With licensing prices ranging from $749 to around $3,000, this can be prohibitive if you’re just starting out. Thankfully, there is a rather great piece of software which is almost as good. GoToAssist by Citrix is a full-featured professional remote desktop support platform with far more flexible pricing: $9.95 for a 24-hour use pass, $69 per month, or $660 per year. This gives you the flexibility to potentially move over to Teamviewer when you have enough customers to justify it.

Overview

GoToAssist is a very user friendly piece of software, with full support for both Windows and Apple OSX. When you run it, it provides you with a a support key to give your customer, and the option to copy the support URL to the clipboard or to email it. The customer can follow the link you send them, or just go to www.fastsupport.com and type in the support key and their name. Once they click launch, the download of the client side portion of the software begins and the support session is initialised shortly after that.

I have used GoToAssist from behind various different kinds of proxies and firewalls and never had any trouble establishing a connection both to and from such clients. Its routing abilities appear to be quite advanced.

GoToAssist offers a variety of great features that make your life as a remote support technician much easier. It’s possible to setup full unattended support with your clients (they must give permission, obviously), so that you can manage client machines out of hours or when they are not around. It also offers live chat during the session, file transfer, annotation tools and even a reboot and reconnect feature. The latter feature is invaluable as often a client will go off and do something else while you work on their system, and it can be time-consuming to have to call them back and ask them to reinitialise a support session once the machine has rebooted.

Options

There are a number of options in GoToAssist, primarily surrounding the quality of the visual experience at your end. The idea is to conserve bandwidth in order to improve the speed of your experience. If both you and the client have a fast broadband connection and are located in the same country then 24-bit colour and display effects should all work fine. If there are any bottlenecks, however, it’s probably best to revert to 256-colour and to disable any display effects as they will probably slow down your support session.

Speed

This is the one place where I find GoToAssist lacking in comparison to Teamviewer. Citrix does not specify whether GoToAssist uses multichannel routing, but my belief is that it does not. Speeds in Teamviewer are mostly superior to those of GoToAssist. That said, the speeds in GoToAssist certainly aren’t a deal-breaker

Wrap-up

If you’re looking for a strong alternative to Teamviewer then you could do much worse than to give GoToAssist a try. They offer a 30-day free trial, so you can evaluate if it works well for your needs. Please let me know how you find it.

Provide Remote Desktop Support With GoToAssist originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)
Follow us at Facebook | Twitter

4 More Things You Didn’t Know VLC Could Do

Joshua Price — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 14:58:39 +0000

VLC is great – it’s as simple as that. It’s so full of useful features that we’re already on our second article about some of the lesser known (but still really great) things it can do. Last time, we covered some gems such as the ability to normalize the audio tracks or transcode videos. This time we’ve got a few more great features from this fantastic media player that your average user may not know.

1. Fix Audio/Video/Subtitle Sync Problems

One of the most annoying things that can happen on video playback is when the audio and video tracks do not sync up properly. Sometimes it’s a result of bad encoding software, sometimes it’s a result of a mistake by the person doing the encoding, but it’s always annoying. VLC feels your pain and includes a tool to adjust the delay for the audio and/or subtitle tracks to let you adjust things as needed. Just open Tools -> Track Synchronization to make your adjustments.

2. Watermarks/Overlays

Sometimes you may need to place some text or watermark into your video display (particularly when transcoding), and you don’t need a video editor suite to accomplish this. VLC’s got that too. Like some of our other tips, this can be found in Tools -> Effects and Filters, but this time under the Video Effects tab under Vout/Overlay.

If you want a graphic instead of plain text, you can do that with the Logo tab in the same section.

3. Control Playback Through the Web

If you’ve got your videos hooked up to play through a home theater PC, or just like to do remote control, you can command VLC from anywhere through its network interfaces for Telnet or Web. Just open View -> Add Interface -> Web Interface. It starts a small web server (you may need to adjust your system firewall settings to allow it) which can be accessed on port 8080. The web interface will let you start, stop, and set current playback and even adjust volume just as if you were clicking the buttons on the player window itself.

4. Mouse Gestures

Many people find mouse gestures to be a more natural way to interact with a computer than using buttons, and VLC has got those people taken care of as well. If you’re not familiar with them, mouse gestures let you use various click-and-drag motions to tell the application what to do. In web browsers, for example, you might drag the mouse anywhere on the screen from right to left to go back, instead of moving up to the corner for the button. It may not sound like much but many mouse gesture users will say it adds up.

To enable this feature, go to View -> Add Interface -> Mouse Gestures. You may need to restart VLC for the changes to take effect. The list of supported gestures can be found here.

Conclusion

As always, VLC delivers more than expected from a media player. There have been times when this author has run into some type of problem with a video and thought “I bet VLC is clever enough to have something for this…” and most of the time, I’ve been right. In case you can’t tell, I’m a fan.

4 More Things You Didn’t Know VLC Could Do originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)
Follow us at Facebook | Twitter

Crave Invoice Review + Free Giveaway [Update: Contest Closed]

Joshua Price — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 22:00:52 +0000

As I recently learned while trying to start up my own business, finances are hard. REALLY hard. I mean, I’ve written software and compiled custom kernels and built unique Linux systems for years, but trying to track assets and liabilities and equity and invoices and balance sheets… it’s just beyond me, and I need software to help. Judging by the sheer number of financial applications online, I’m certainly not the only one. I went in search of software to make things easier and one I came across was Crave Invoice. While not specifically intended for my type of business, I wanted to give it a shot. Here’s that experience, both the good and the bad.

A bit about Crave Invoice

This is a Windows application and comes in three versions – Pro, Enterprise, and Ultimate. Each builds on the last, so where Pro includes invoicing along with customer and product management, Enterprise adds inventory management and Ultimate includes all of Enterprise plus a plugin for managing production.

All versions have a 30-day free trial where you can decide if you like the program before purchasing a license.

Setup

As a Windows program, it installs like any other, and you’re greeted on the first run with a brief 3-step wizard to enter company information and, optionally, tax and currency info.

As far as wizards go, this one’s quick and simple, and I appreciate that you can choose to skip the tax and currency screens once you’ve completed the initial company info screen.

Basic Usage

Of the three editions mentioned above, we’re reviewing the Pro edition. It is the most limited of the three, but it provides the core modules used by all editions and demonstrated the functionality of the program. Once you’re done with the First Run Setup Wizard, you’ll get the main application screen

which is pretty straighforward. The first thing I did was to try making a new customer, and this is where I ran into the first of a few “quirks” in the application. When creating my fictional customer I decided to enter a London, UK address to see how the application would handle a non-US address, and got the following response

In short, it’s telling me that I did not enter a ZIP code (not applicable in UK). It doesn’t like that I did not enter any information for delivery address (in the next tab over). Crave did accept a London-style postcode in the ZIP box, and I was able to set the delivery information to Same As Billing Address so this was not a deal-breaker, but I can’t predict how the system might respond to countries without a ZIP equivalent. As deliveries have nothing to do with my business, and many others, I was a bit surprised that the Delivery tab would be a required field.

Managing Products

To simplify your bookkeeping, you can specify individual products and their prices with Crave and easily add them to your invoices later. Just choose the Create New Product button from the Quick Access Panel.

While it’s one relatively small portion of the overall application, I actually had two complaints about this section. The first is the lack of a description field, or any other way to include additional info/comments/notes about a product. Second, the Units of Measure field provides four options – NOS, KGS, LTR, and MTR without any tooltip or other information about exactly what those mean. From the looks of it, I’d think those might mean number of units, kilograms, liters and meters but there’s no clarification in the GUI or even the online docs to confirm that. A Google search for those terms brought me to a Foreign Trade Department website which confirmed my suspicions, but the software shouldn’t necessarily assume I’m up on the latest FTD abbreviation standards.

Invoicing

Surely, if there’s one place this software should shine, it should be invoicing. Why else put that in the name? For the most part, I’d say it’s justified. Crave makes it easy to pull up customer and products and combine them into a simple-to-use invoice generator.

This screen contains all the invoice generation options I need (plus a few more) and is fairly straightforward and intuitive.

Once I finished entering my invoice details, I hit a snag which very nearly caused me to completely dismiss Crave as useless – until I realized it was another GUI “quirk”. If you look at the above screenshot, you might notice two important things missing. You can print, but there’s nothing to email your invoice, or export it to a file! All is not lost, however, as both those functions are present, but for some reason they’re both hidden behind the Print button. Click that, and you’ll see a preview window which DOES have the controls to email and export.

Conclusion

It’s hard to nail down a single, solid opinion about Crave Invoice. Its primary focus – creating simple and nice-looking invoices, it does well. The graphics are good, but there are some downright silly usability choices (such as loading all screens into one overlapping space with no tabs/tiling/other sane organization). There’s very good reporting capabilities, but the usability troubles make it difficult to want to take advantage of that. I suppose if I had to sum it all up, I’d say that Crave Invoice has some pretty impressive functionality, but lacks quite a bit in form. It appears to be designed for a somewhat limited type of business, but for that type (small manufacturing) it could be extremely useful, provided you can get past those quirks.

Free Giveaway

The developer of Crave Invoice has gladly sponsored 10 license keys to giveaway to all of you. Here is how you can participate:

Update: Contest Closed

[giveaway]Step 1:

Share this giveaway post in Facebook or Twitter.

Step 2
Leave a comment below with the link to the facebook/twitter post status. [/giveaway]

This giveaway begins now and ends Sunday, 4th September 2011 at 2359hrs Pacific Time. The winners will be selected at random and announced via email.

Share and enjoy!

Check out Crave Invoice.

MakeTechEasier would like to thank craveinvoice.com for their generosity in sponsoring this giveaway. Interested in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us.

Crave Invoice Review + Free Giveaway [Update: Contest Closed] originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)
Follow us at Facebook | Twitter

Why You Should Bite The Bullet And Signup For Spotify

JJ — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 23:58:00 +0000

I find it surprising that no-one has yet stepped up to the plate to post a review of the magic that is Spotify here on MakeTechEasier. This application has truly revolutionized the way that I consume music, and I only see things getting better. For anyone who has been living under a rock, Spotify is a music application that lets you stream any music on-demand from their impressive catalogue of more than 15 million tracks. It runs happily on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.

The Premise

Raise your hand (or mash your keyboard) if you pirate music. I thought so. How do you feel about it? Indifferent? A little guilty? Uncomfortable? Well, with Spotify, you get the choice of a free account or a paid one, so if for some reasons, you object to paying $5/month for the best music application since Napster, then there’s still something in it for you.

The Offering

There are 3 plans available on Spotify – Free, Unlimited and Premium. The main differences between these three accounts is that the free account subjects you to the occasional ad, the Unlimited account has no advertising, and the Premium account lets you download up to 3,333 tracks to your computer and/or mobile device so you can carry them around with you. The sound quality on the Premium account is also higher (320kbps ogg versus 160kbps ogg). I’m personally on an Unlimited account, and it sounds great so I’m not sure how much benefit there is sound-wise unless you’re running it through an amazing home theatre setup. Keep in mind that Spotify is currently limited to people in Finland, France, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom or the United States. For the paid accounts, there is no need to use a VPN to access Spotify outside these countries – you just need to make sure you can pay with a credit card or Paypal account registered in these countries. There are also many people selling US gift cards for Spotify on Ebay.

The Interface

Spotify’s main interface is very much an iTunes clone, but prettier. You run searches from the top left search box, and browse your results in the main window on the right. Double clicking a track starts it playing almost instantly, and you can jump through the track as if you were listening to a downloaded file. Clicking on an Artist’s name will bring up a list of everything Spotify has on that artist, as well as some artist information. Up the top there are tabs for Biography, Related Artists and Artist Radio. The biographies tend to be quite good, and the related artists section is very useful for discovering music similar to things you already like. Artist radio just plays a selection of related artists at random.

You can create queues in Spotify, much as you would in iTunes. If you have an artist’s page open, just right-click on the name of an album and click “Add to…” then “New Playlist”, and a new playlist will be created on the left. What I tend to do is create an initial playlist, then browse related artists, queuing additional albums until I build up a decent list of interesting and varied music.

Problems

There are a couple of issues with Spotify. Firstly, not all music is correctly categorised under the right artist – especially if the track was produced by a couple of different artists. As far as music that’s not available on there, the only thing I was not able to find was the genuine soundtrack to the Blues Brothers. There were many “tributes”, but not the real deal unfortunately. However, like I said – that was the only album I couldn’t find.

Wrap-up

All in all, the service is really quite good. If you’re tired of playing around with torrents, feel guilty for downloading pirated music, or just want easy access to music, Spotify’s well worth a try!

Why You Should Bite The Bullet And Signup For Spotify originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)
Follow us at Facebook | Twitter

Wuala: An Alternative To Dropbox With Security In Mind

Damien — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 14:58:18 +0000

Dropbox is great, but it is not the best. While we love Dropbox for its versatility and cross-platform compatibility, we also hate it for its inability to secure files in the cloud. We have to either live with it, and leave our files vulnerable in the cloud, or make the extra effort to encrypt the files before syncing them online. Alternatively, we can switch to another cloud storage app that places security as the top most priority. Wuala is one such app.

Wuala is a cross-platform compatible cloud storage app that allows you to sync your local files to the cloud and access them from another computer. Wuala encrypts all your files before they are uploaded to the server. In the server, each file is split up into many different pieces and stored in multiple places, so you can be assured that they are secured. In addition, your password is never transmitted, which means that no one – not even the employees at Wuala – can see your private files.

Download and install Wuala on your computer. On the first run, it will prompt you to create an account (or sign in to your existing account if you have one).

Once you are logged in, you will see your dashboard with several folders (Document, Music, Photos, Videos). Unlike Dropbox, Wuala does not integrate with your filesystem. Instead, it mounts itself as a drive in your system.

You can get it to sync with any folder in your computer. To do so, click on the “New -> Sync” option and select the local folder that you want to sync.

It also works the other way – syncing your Wuala document to your local computer. You just have to select the folder and go to “File -> Synchronize with this computer“.

There are several sharing options in Wuala. By default, all your files and folders are marked as Private. No one, other than you, can view your files. You can, however, change the file permission to Share or Public. For Share option, you can share your files with your contacts, either via email or web link. For Public option, the file/folder is publicly available for everyone.

Wuala Preferences

The Preferences section of Wuala is pretty comprehensive, covering everything from your account detail, connection speed, cache size, filesystem integration, notification and many more options.

Trading of local storage in exchange for online storage

When you sign up for a free account, you will receive 1Gb of storage space. To many of us, this is too little. If you need a lot of online storage space, and at the same time, you have plenty of free space in your local hard drive, you can trade your local space in exchange for online space.

It works like this: you need to first specify the amount of hard disk space you are willing to trade (say 100GB). Depending on the amount of time you are online (for example, you are connected to Wuala 70% of the time), you will be given a free online storage space equivalent to the product of the hard drive space you are trading and the time you spent online. In this case, you will have access to 70Gb (70% * 100Gb) of online storage space.

Alternatively, you can refer your friends to use Wuala and earn up to 3Gb of storage space. Lastly, there is always the premium plans that allow you to buy storage space for a annual fee.

Conclusion

Wuala comes with plenty of features and it is really an enjoyment to use it. Personally, I like its security feature and the ability to choose the folders that you want to sync. The only gripe is the 1Gb storage space. Most online storage services offer 2Gb (some offer up to 5Gb) for their free account. Upon comparison, Wuala’s 1Gb storage space is really pathetic and unattractive. With competitors like SpiderOak and Ubuntu One, this could really make a lot of differences.

Wuala is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone and Android.

Wuala: An Alternative To Dropbox With Security In Mind originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)
Follow us at Facebook | Twitter

Spring Publisher: Create, Design & Print Business Card Easily + Free Giveaway [Update: Contest Closed]

Damien — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 14:58:44 +0000

Be it a freelancing business or a corporate entity, one of the first few things that you need to do when starting up a new business is to design and print your business card, letterhead and flyer. The problem is, most of us are not creative in nature and designing a nice and beautiful business card can be a difficult task. One alternative is to hire a professional designer to do it for you, but that requires you to set aside a big budget. A cheaper alternative is to make use of design software to get things done.

Spring Publisher is a software that allows you to to design and print Business Card, Flyer, Postcard, Letterhead within a few minutes. It comes with several beautifully designed templates that you can use offhand. All you need to do is to drag and drop the design elements to where you want them to be, type in your name and address and it is ready to send for printing.

When you first launched the application, it will ask you if you want to create a blank project or select a template from a template library. Personally, I am not creative in nature, so I choose to use existing template.

The template library comes with a few templates that you can choose. You can also download more templates from the web template store (available for premium account only).

Once you have selected the template, you can start to do the editing. All the design elements are layered (like Photoshop), so you can easily move them around without affecting others. Things that you can insert to the design include images, text and shapes.

The element properties are shown on the right side bar and you can quickly edit the position, canvas size, width, height, color and many other attributes easily.

This is what I come up with after 5 minutes of playing with it.

Conclusion

Spring Publisher is like a stripped down version of Photoshop – comprehensive, yet easy to use. It is built specifically for designing namecard, letterhead and flyer. The drag and drop feature really make it easy to use.

The free version is fully functional, but if you upgrade to the premium version, you can access the online template library and download many beautiful templates for free. In addition, you can also print high quality output at 350dpi.

For you only, we have 8 license keys for the SpringPublisher PRO version to give away. Here’s what you need to do to participate:

[giveaway]Step 1:

Update: This contest is now closed.

Share this giveaway post in Facebook or Twitter.

Step 2
Leave a comment below with the link to the facebook/twitter post status. [/giveaway]

This giveaway begins now and ends Saturday, 13th August 2011 at 2359hrs Pacific Time. The winners will be selected at random and announced via email.

Share and enjoy!

Check out Spring Publisher.

MakeTechEasier would like to thank springpublisher.com for their generosity in sponsoring this giveaway. Interested in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us.

Spring Publisher: Create, Design & Print Business Card Easily + Free Giveaway [Update: Contest Closed] originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)
Follow us at Facebook | Twitter

10 Useful Ways Business Owners Can Make Use Of Evernote

Trevor Dobrygoski — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 14:58:32 +0000

If you haven’t used it before, Evernote is a super popular note taking application. There is no set way to use Evernote, so to some people, this can deter them from using it. By using tips like we have listed below, you may see them as a template to use Evernote or they may spark some ideas of your own on different uses.

The hardest part about using a service where there is no defined way to use it, is making a system of your own. While there are features built into Evernote that will make it easier to keep your information sorted, you will still want to keep it pretty organized.

Here are some ways that business owners can make use of Evernote.

1. Vendors

You can use Evernote to keep the contact info and terms for each vendor you deal with for easy access anywhere you may need it. Any bit of information you can keep about a vendor is good to have access to from anywhere. You never know when you may need to contact one.

2. Outsourced employees

If you run a business where you may have several outsourced employees or services, you can keep the terms of your agreements in a separate notebook for easy access if you need to recall the terms of your agreement.

3. Event planning

Create a checklist of tasks to do and keep it in a notebook along with people involved in each part of the event. Having tags assigned to each task may help you easily sort who is accountable for each part of a task.

4. Marketing ideas

While you are on the go, you will likely see an ad that you could mimic to promote your product or service. Either using a picture or a voice note, you can log the details of this great marketing idea.

5. Meeting notes

If you have an important meeting with a client coming up, you can review the details of your last meeting, or even the personal details about your contact (like their kid’s names or any special events that may have recently happened).

6. Products

If you are in a business where you have the freedom to add new products at your leisure, you can keep notes on potential products to carry. You could also look at how your potential competitors are marketing the same or similar products. This may help you decide what to sell and what to leave be.

7. Business Cards

An important part of any business is networking. When you network, you meet new people and need to keep their contact information handy. Evernote is a great place to store a copy of all those business cards. Take a picture of them and store them under a tag like business card and the event you met them at. When the time comes, you can search for that person by the text on the card or any tags you may have added.

8. Travel itinerary

Some businesses require travel. One big headache of traveling is remembering flight and other confirmation numbers. By saving a screen capture, PDF or by simply copying and pasting the information into an Evernote, you can set your mind at ease on your next trip.

9. Take photos of receipts

Anyone in business knows you need to keep a copy of a receipt for pretty much everything. Taking a picture of each receipt may be good enough for proof of your purchase.

10. Billable hours

If you are a freelancer, you can use a note to keep track of your billable time spent on each project for a client. I use this technique a lot because I usually have my Android phone with me when I am not in my office. Other times I have the web or desktop version where I can jot down billed time spent.

How do you use Evernote for your small business?

image: Evernote blog

10 Useful Ways Business Owners Can Make Use Of Evernote originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)
Follow us at Facebook | Twitter

How to Get Your Work Done Using Pomodoro Technique

Sanix — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 23:58:26 +0000

The Pomodoro is a technique of time management developed by Francesco. By using Pomodoro, you can manage your time easily on the computer. The basic form of pomodoro technique works like this:

You choose a task that is to be accomplished in a certain time
Set the Pomodoro timer to 25 minutes.
Work on the task until the timer rings.
Record the status of the task.
Take a short break (usually 5 minutes)
Set the Pomodoro timer again.
Work on the task until the timer rings.
Take a short break.
Take a longer break after 4 Pomodoro timer rings.

This process continues until the task is completed. This is a successful time management technique used by many professionals around the world. If you are a computer geek and most of your work is related to computers, you can apply this technique using software.

Pomodo7o is a tiny, portable and open source software which can emulate the Pomodoro technique on a Windows 7 computer in an innovative way. When opened, it will start the timer of 25 minutes (which is the default in Pomodoro technique) and will start displaying a progress bar on its own icon on the taskbar. The screenshot is given below:

When we look at the application, the application itself has only three buttons. Reset, Pause and Take a break. All the three buttons are self explanatory. Reset will reset the timer to zero minutes. If you want to stop working on your task for a while, you can press the Pause button. And if you want to take a break before 25 minutes, you can just press Take a break button.

The green taskbar will turn orange after fifteen minutes and then red when the timer is about to ring.

Then the pause icon will appear and it will display the same green to red taskbar for five minutes. The same Poromodo cycle will continue as discussed above. This will make sure that you’re working on your tasks efficiently and taking a break during your work timings making you more productive and fresh at the same time.

Download Pomodo7o and manage your time efficiently.

Please note that Pomodo7o is only compatible with Windows 7. If you want to use Pomodoro technique on other Operating Systems, you can try out the following apps but these apps may not be as simple as Pomodo7o.

Tomighty is a little advanced desktop timer which can emulate the Pomodoro technique with advanced functions and customizations, like setting a custom timer, a custom break etc.

Pomodairo is an Adobe Air application which can be run on any platform supporting Adobe Air.

Focus Booster is another application which comes in three flavors including Desktop app, Adobe Air and and an online version. Best for those who like to install the application on their computers.

I hope all these productivity and time management will help the user manage time more efficiently and be more productive. I use these time management techniques myself when I’m writing articles. This helps me focus on the article and the article gets completed in the allotted time.

Image credit: Il pomodoro.jpg

How to Get Your Work Done Using Pomodoro Technique originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)
Follow us at Facebook | Twitter

Make Tech Easier» Software

Huge List Of Software Updaters To Keep Your Computer Up To Date [Windows]

1. FileHippo Update Checker

2. CNet TechTracker

3. SUMo

4. UpdateStar

5. R-Updater

6. Secunia PSI (Personal Software Inspector)

Other software updaters

Related Posts:

4 Free Virtualization Software Solutions For Windows

Uses of Virtualization

What is Virtualization?

Types of Virtualization

Operating System Virtualization terminology

1. Microsoft Virtual PC

2. VirtualBox

3. VMLite Workstation

4. VMWare Server

Other Virtualization Solutions

Related Posts:

5 Best Free Alternatives To Microsoft Visio

1. OpenOffice/LibreOffice Draw

2. Dia

3. LucidChart

4. Diagramly

5. Pencil Project

Related Posts:

5 Best Free Alternatives To Microsoft Project

1. Openproj

2. Gantter

3. Teambox

4. Rally Community Edition

5. FreedCamp

Related Posts:

TimeSlotTracker: A Useful Cross Platforms Compatible Time Tracker

Taking screenshots while tracking time

Reporting feature

Conclusion

Related Posts:

5 Free Alternatives To Microsoft OneNote

1. Evernote

2. Tiddlywiki

3. CintaNotes

4. Tomboy

5. Nevernote

Related Posts:

How to Understand Terms and Conditions Without Reading Them

EULAlyzer

Related Posts:

Best Alternatives To Microsoft PowerPoint (Online And Offline)

Best Online Alternatives to PowerPoint

Prezi

SlideRocket

Google Docs Presentation

Best Offline Alternatives to PowerPoint

OpenOffice – Impress

LibreOffice – Impress

Related Posts:

Free Slideshow Maker Software To Organize Photos In Slideshows

1. PhotoStage Slideshow Producer Free

2. DVD Slideshow GUI

Slideshow Makers For Other OSes

Related Posts:

Is Noow better than VLC?

The desktop applications

Noow media types played

VLC media types played

Noow special features

VLC special features

Conclusion

Related Posts:

How to Stream Media to Your Xbox 360 or PS3

PS3 Media Server

Installation and Setup

Related Posts:

How to Design Your Own House With Sweet Home 3D

Installation

User Interface

Getting Started