Fontleech: The best free fonts on the web.

Fontleech claims the have the best free fonts on the web.

You be the judge.

Ele-Fonts has free fonts

Ele-Fonts is a free font source.  Some nice ones here!

VistaSwitcher – Speed Up Windows Alt-Tab

VistaSwitcher lets you Speed Up Windows Alt-Tab in Vista.

Main Features

• Outstanding UI, semi-transparent backgrounds and antialiased fonts
• Live window and desktop previews under Windows Vista and 7
• Task list with mouse-over selection
• Multiple task selection, tile windows vertically or horizontally
• Minimize, maximize, restore, close windows and groups of windows
• Compatible with UAC, works with elevated applications
• Small and fast, native 64-bit version available
• Multilingual user interface (Unicode based)
• It’s FREE for any use!  32 and 64-bit.

This is a beta version in development, so use at your own risk, and check back for updates often.

The simplest way to make databases in OpenOffice.org

The simplest way to make databases in OpenOffice.org is a post from Free Software Magazine.

PrtScr: stylish, “cool” screen capture program

FreewareGenius has a post about PrtScr, a stylish, “cool” screen capture program.

• Capture modes: capture full screen (click “PrintScrn” twice), rectangular region, or freehand region of any shape. [Update Sep 14, 09] also supports capture topmost through Alt+PrntScrn hotkey.
• Hotkey: program is activated by clicking “PrintScrn”; you can optionally change it to any other hotkey combination.
• “Annotation”: will let you perform drawings with the mouse on screen right before you capture, which sounds like a great thing but in practice is of little use.
• Delays before capture: right click the PrtScr icon in the system tray to request delays of 5 or 30 seconds (not changeable).
• Editing: there is no internal editor; however, click “edit” and your captured image is opened using your PC’s default image editor. To find a good editing/annotation app and change the default image editor on your PC see this post.
• Multiple monitors: supported.
• Rescaling: (i.e.resizing the image) is possible before saving.
• Title and comment: you can add a title and/or a comment on-the-fly as you capture a screenshot

Facebook Status Update Notifier

Ghacks has a post for Google’s Facebook Status Update Notifier.

This will display Facebook status updates right on the Windows desktop. It uses a semi-transparent window to display the unread messages, pokes, friend requests and invites.

The Facebook status notifier uses roughly 1.5 Megabytes with the transparent window open and the main application window minimized in the system tray. The software program requires the Microsoft .net Framework (not mentioned which version). It can be downloaded from the Google Code project website.

Update Your Facebook Profile from Outlook

SlackerGeek has a post on how to Update Your Facebook Profile from Outlook.

This requires an add-on to Outlook called FBLook.

RemainInPlay Offers 20 Years of Free Retro Games

Lifehacker has a post on RemainInPlay, which Offers 20 Years of Free Retro Games.

RemainInPlay has many past versions of great games for free.  (If you like the old versions, maybe you’ll buy the latest, is the manufacturers’ thinking.)

Top 10 Windows 7 Booster Apps

Lifehacker has an assortment of their Top 10 Windows 7 Booster Apps.

ABBYY FineReader Online for free OCR!

The Boreham Library uses ABBYY FineReader software for OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to convert text in pictures into text that computers can use as real text.

MakeUseOf has a post about ABBYY FineReader Online.

Features:

• Online image text extraction tool.
• Lets you process 50 pages a day for free.
• Supported input image formats: BMP, PCX, DCX, JPEG/JPEG, PNG and TIFF/TIF.
• Supported output file formats: Microsoft Word, Excel, RTF, and TXT and PDF.
• The file must not be larger than 10 MB.
• Multilingual recognition: Russian, English, German and French.
• Simple and clutter free design.

Free Fonts Download

ffonts for Free Fonts Download.

Recommended by MakeUseOf post.

GSmartControl – when’s it gonna crash?

You know that sooner or later, your hard drive will crash.  Maybe permanently.  Want to know when?

GSmartControl is detection freeware that “will give you a close-up look at your disks, and predict 64% of failures before the drive fulfills its paper-weight destiny.”

Signo for hotkeys

Signo is”an impressively complete hotkey manager that can handle pretty much anything you can think of doing with either hotkeys or textkeys and provides a large range of built-in functionalities you can easily leverage to boost your productivity.”

• Text actions: to copy texts automatically into your current application e.g. OutlookHtml actions: to do the same as above though in a HTML format; this also allows simply copying to the clipboard rather than to the active application.
• Open actions: automate the opening of files whether on your local drive or on the Internet. the Internet.
• Launch actions: automate the opening of tools and execution of DOS or Windows commands, including support for parameters.
• Ram actions: used to minimize the RAM usage of your applications, very handy if you sometimes run out of RAM with your setup.
• Win actions: multiple multi-screen actions such as fast switch and maximize, snap windows to the sides of your screen, tray applications, hide windows or task bar, etc.
• Capture actions: allows you to capture your whole screen, a window or an area you draw on your screen, to save it as an image in a file or your clipboard, or to send it to TFS or an image editor.

In addition, the tool allows defining multiple textkeys which are short words, 10 characters or less, that start with a #. Upon the word being typed the tool will automatically delete it and trigger the appropriate action.

Freeware from Kerkia.

TwInbox – Use Twitter directly from Outlook.

TwInbox lets you use Twitter directly from Outlook.

“Now you can have a fully-featured, powerful Twitter client at your fingertips without having to open any other applications. TwInbox seamlessly integrates Twitter into Outlook. It is a perfect Twitter client for any Outlook user, from a Twitter newbie to a business professional.”  Freeware.  Use at your own risk.

Features

• Update your Twitter status directly from Outlook.
• Receive your friend updates in Outlook.
• Archive, manage, group and search your tweets the
  same way you manage your email (details).
• Search, track keywords. TwInbox will automatically download ALL tweets matching the keywords you specify, even if you are not following the tweet sender. This feature is perfect for keeping up to date with the Twitter buzz on your name, brand, interests, etc.
• Group tweets by sender, topic, etc using the Search feature.
• Upload and post picture files and Outlook email attachments.
• See new tweets at a glance (details).
• Assign custom folder and categories to new messages.
• Use Outlook’s “Reply” and “ReplyAll” commands to send twitter direct messages and @replies.
• Automatically sort new tweets into per-sender folders.
• Shorten URLs with tinyurl.
• See graphs of your Twitter usage statistics.
• Tweets sent to you (@replies and direct) are marked with high importance, so you can see them at a glance.

Making big posters

Sometimes you just have to say it big… on a big poster.  But who has a giant printer to make them?

Who needs a giant printer?  All you need is a way to blow up whatever you want on the poster, and print it in blocks that fit the paper for the printer you already have.

Examples:

Posteriza is a FREE online service that features:

• No installation required. No weird files on your system
• Use any Windows printer
• Use any paper supported by your printer. Any size. (A4, A3, Folio, Letter, etc)
• Posters can be any size you want. Using this program you can ever cover an entire whole wall of of your house!
• Use any font installed in your system for text
• Use any photograph as background. Supported formats are BMP, JPEG, PNG, EMF and GIF. Uou can even use just part of a photo!
• Choose predefined type and color for the frame

==========

An old friend of this blogger is shareware (try before you pay) “for making BIG posters, signs, banners, certificates, and murals, printing them up to 100×100 feet. POSTER combines the best features of graphics, word processing and desktop publishing packages together with special features for printing large posters or banners. All text and graphics are enlarged and printed over multiple pages.”

POSTER is distributed as shareware: you can download it and try it for free, but you are limited to printing 10 posters or banners. POSTER registration costs only $18 , and removes the 10 poster/banner limit, provides support and upgrades for a year, and gets you a disk with the latest version of Poster and a set of 100 fancy borders.

Thumbview adds thumbnail support

FreewareGenius has a post on Thumbview which adds thumbnail support for a wide variety of image formats not natively supported in Windows.

Ever have a file not show you a thumbnail view of certain kinds of graphic files, like png or pcx?  This fixes that.

Open++ enhances your “Right-Click” menu

FreeDownloadADay has a post on Open++ which enhances your “Right-Click” menu.

Increase the options you have for files: send to new places, open new programs…  Freeware.

SharePod for iPod owners

SharePod lets you backup your iPod files to your computer, without any limits which iTunes might impose.  Also iPhone and iPod Touch support.  Freeware.

CrashPlan – Automatic Online Backup

CrashPlan – Automatic Online Backup comes in free and pay flavors.

This allows you to backup your computer automatically — to elsewhere on your own computer, to an external drive, to another computer.  The software for this is free for personal use.

If you want to backup to CrashPlan’s service online, there is a regular fee to compress and save using “industrial grade private key encryption to secure your files before they’re backed up. The only person who can decrypt your files is you.”

Note that as of October 2009, the lowest annual fee is $54/year for unlimited storage.  On one hand, it’s not as fast as locally backing up, and costs more in the long run, but on the other hand, it’s not vulnerable to anything stolen/damaged/broken at your end.

Use at your own risk, like any such service.

MyStickies, Sticky Notes for the Web

MyStickies, Sticky Notes for the Web “allows you to place little yellow squares of digital paper anywhere and everywhere you feel like in the whole wide web. Along with the ability to put sticky notes on webpages mystickies offers a powerful interface to browse, search, sort, edit and generally have a wonderfull time with your sticky notes from any computer that has internet access.”

“A part of the MyStickies service is an account area where you can go to quickly view all the notes you have placed. You can modify the text of the notes from there or delete old notes no longer needed. The account allows you to review your notes, go back to the sites you have “stickied,” and otherwise manage your notes.”

“MyStickies also gives each account an unlimited number of Sticky Pages. These are blank pages except for a title which you choose, which you may place your notes on. They are a scratch pad for you to organize thoughts, keep to-do lists, or write reminders to yourself.”