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Favourite software |
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Last updated:
Sun, Jun 22, 2008
Sometimes the things I value most are those handy little free utilities... There is some great freeware/open source software around these days and inexpensive shareware. Though I use a handful of expensive products too. Anyway, here's my list of favourites. A yellow star means it's something really 'top' that I use just about every day. A couple of sites have disappeared but I've left up the info for now. Google is a good way to find new software. Software archivesSnapFiles: a huge collection of shareware and freeware. A+ FreeWare Home: quite a few programs that I haven't seen listed elsewhere. Good, easy-to-use site. FreeWare Home: an archive of free software. FileHippo: another good archive. TinyApps.org: a guide to very small software for your PC. Virtually all of the programs listed are free of charge and for use with Windows. VideoHelp: a good place to find video-related software. OldVersion.com: an archive of old versions of popular programs, such as MSN Messenger, Acrobat Reader, Windows Media Player and many more. 'Because newer is not always better'. Very true... GraphicsXNView: (shown below) this is a freeware image management and processing program which I began using mainly to download images from my digital camera. Not quite in the same league as Thumbsplus, but definitely worth a look and very nice for free.
PhotoScape:
free graphics software. The filters section is particularly worth a look. It has
effects for creating an 'antique' look, darkening skies and some above-average
art effects. Pixia:
much as I love Photoshop, I find that it's sluggish when I'm drawing quickly with
my graphics tablet. Even though I have a fast PC, circles can end up with a straight
edge! So I was on the look out for some software that was a bit more nimble...
I tried out a couple of promising-looking free packages and found that Pixia worked
best for me. Lines are silky smooth when sketching and I can create something
that looks like a real pencil drawing. Pixia includes layers, transparency and
various tools, though not an airbrush. I've listed some other free painting programs
here. Url2BMP: free screen capture software for web pages. Just visit the web page using the built in browser. It then saves the entire page as a BMP, JPG or TIF image as soon as it has loaded completely. Some refinements are promised in the new version which is coming soon. The Gimp: impressive free graphics software that is available for Linux, Mac and Windows. This is the nearest you'll get to Photoshop without spending any money. Like any feature-packed software, The Gimp takes a bit of getting used to, but it's time well spent. Particularly smooth for painting and drawing and some great art effects. Plus the latest Windows version now supports my graphics tablet. Text remains a weak spot when compared to Photoshop.
JPG Optimizer: (I use v2.02) this allows compression to be varied within one JPG image. So, different areas can be compressed more or less. There's an 'extra colour' option, which is useful for boosting red areas (which often suffer in JPGs). I don't use this for all my images, just those that need special treatment.
FastStone Capture: this screen grabber can grab in many different ways, including an irregular shape and the full-length of a web page by scrolling it. I like to keep grabs of the web pages I design, so this is ideal. Free for non-commercial use. CaptureEzePro: pay software that can also scroll a web page as it grabs. PaintShopPro: good for text effects and I like the picture tube tool. But I'm not keen on the clunky interface. Adobe Illustrator: I use this occasionally for text effects. FastStone Image Viewer: nice free image browser, converter and editor. Vuescan: fairly specialist scanning software that I use with my Acer Scanwit film scanner. But it works with many flatbeds too, with lots of control. Internet
DemocracyPlayer: (shown below) watch thousands of online video 'channels', torrents and even YouTube videos with this free player. It does a great job of playing virtually all different video file formats including DivX and Quicktime (it's based around the VideoLan player) and presents everything in an attractive guide with search functions. In their own words: 'Democracy Player is free, open source, and built by a non-profit organization. Our goal isn't to make money off of you. Our goal is to give you the best possible video experience.' Mozilla Firefox: pretty good browser with many interesting extensions available.
FreeDownloadManager: (shown below) a download accelerator and manager which lets you download a list of files or whole web sites. Completely free and a good piece of software. CuteFTP: one of the best-known FTP clients. Get an old version such as 2.8. Look@File:
secure file transfer software. Fast and free. If you have a router you will probably
need to open the relevant ports in the virtual server when using transfer software
such as this. HFS (Http File Server): you can use HFS to send and receive files. Easy to get running, small, works well and it's free. As with all software of this kind, if you have a broadband router, you may need to adjust the firewall settings to give HFS access to the internet. Abyss web server: a small but feature-rich free web server for Windows, MacOS X, Linux and FreeBSD. I ran this on a Virtual Private Server for a while, hosting a site, and it was faster and easier than Apache. RemotePad: edit html 'on the fly' by opening and saving directly to and from the server. Handy, though of course you should always keep a back-up copy of all your website files on your PC. Trillian:
integrate all of your
ChillCam: run your own webcam. Highly configurable and fun. However, hasn't been updated in several years now. Emule: a peer-to-peer file sharing client that improves on EDonkey. My tip is read up on how to configure it effectively with your router (certain ports need to be opened in your virtual server). That way you'll end up with a 'high' ID and your files will download more quickly. Azureus: an open source BitTorrent client. BitLord is also worth looking at. |
Video/multimedia
VideoLan: free open source video player. Plays everything including MPEG2, DVDs and MPEG4. It can also act as a server and client for streaming video. FreeVCR: free video capture software. Includes a timer, which you can set to record TV shows.
AVIEdit: video capture and basic editing software with effects. Can be used to grab stills from live video and for time-lapse sequences. Very small but powerful. Shareware. ASFTools: converts ASF/WMV files to different bitrates or to AVI. Stoik Video Convertor: convert AVI, WMV, DV files in all possible combinations. Very useful! Older (free) versions also handled Quicktime. But that is only available in a pay version now. Real Producer Basic: free software for converting videos to Real streaming media format. Lots of options are disabled in this free version and the files created are not backward-compatible with old versions of RealPlayer, which is rather annoying. But, hey, it's free. Windows Media Encoder: free, fully working software for converting video to WMV format and for broadcasting (streaming) audio or video.
ABC Videoroll: free video editing software. Adobe Premiere 6: video editing software. Very like editing in a traditional film or video edit suite, with good facilities for mixing/dubbing soundtracks. But crashes often and I haven't touched it since I got Vegas Video.
TMPGEnc: (shown below) a top quality MPEG encoder, chopper and combiner. Free for MPG1, shareware for MPG2. Also check out TMPGEnc DVD Author for making your own DVDs.
Lagarith Lossless Video Codec: an interesting alternative to HuffyUV which gives smaller files under certain circumstances.
Flash: can be used for making animations for web pages. But I've always been more interested in making cartoon movies and this is certainly a lot more easy than doing it on film!
Toon
Boom: various animation software and you can try before you buy. Audio software
ClubSceneUKDJ: this is funky freeware for mixing audio 'live' and is primarily aimed at music. Mix tracks manually or on auto, talk over, play sample ('jingles') import Winamp playlists and store loads of lists in the system, does Karaoke lyrics too and can flash up messages on screen to co-incide with record requests. Useful for club nights or Internet radio shows. Very cool! Sadly the website seems unavailable now.
PodProducer: (shown above) free software to record, mix and tag your podcast. It includes virtual playing decks and buttons for effects and jingles. CoolEdit 2000: audio editing software, as used by BBC Radio reporters. Convert, edit or clean up sound recordings and add effects. Sadly this has now been bought by Adobe, renamed 'Audition' and is expensive ($299). Instead I suggest you try Audacity (above).
Skype: free software for making internet telephone calls. Calls to standard telephone numbers cost a few pennies/cents per minute. Works best with a headset or a USB handset. There are some issues with it using your PC's processor and bandwidth when you aren't actually making a call. So I start up Skype only when I need it. Google Talk: similar to Skype and worth trying out as an alternative. |
Web design
Arles Image Web Page Creator: ideal for building image galleries. Arles can do just about everything -- it makes thumbnails, resizes images and watermarks them if required and even adds banners to pages. NVU: a 'Web Authoring System' that aims to rival Dreamweaver. It isn't quite there just yet, particularly if you need to manage a website with many pages, but it provides more than enough features for basic use. Free and available for Linux, Windows and Mac.
Color Scheme Designer: (above) if you've ever struggled to put together a good colour scheme for a website, this free tool is for you. Spamproofer: this small freeware tool encodes any e-mail address you want to put on a web page, so spiders can't pick it up and add it to mailing lists.
RSS Builder: create RSS feeds for your web site with this cool free program. EspressoWeb: it took me a whole day of searching to find this. It works like mail merge software, generating HTML pages from a template document and a database.
UtilitiesUltraVNC: this offers some improvements over WinVNC which I was using previously. It's client/server software that lets you remotely control a computer over any TCP/IP connection. Type in the IP address and the password, and the desktop of the other PC appears in a window on your screen. You can then work as if you were sitting in front of it. This is handy if you need to help a relative who has a PC problem. You can also use VNC on a home network to save you running between different PCs. Believe it or not, it's even usable over a 56k modem connection (I tried it) and it's completely free. One word of caution, be sure to choose a very secure password.
FreeCommander: a free file manager similar to Total Commander above. Roadkil's Unstoppable Copier: recovers files from disks with physical damage. Free and certainly works well for me. SyncBack: synchronise files on two PCs or make back-ups. The free version will probably be fine for most people, though a pay-version with some extra features is also available. JRes:
(Windows 98 only) if you're working with video or designing web pages, often you
need to change your screen resolution or colour depth. This little utility does
it with one click. No need to open the Display Properties any more. File-Ex: this improves the Windows file open/save dialogue. It gives a larger file window, remembers the current folder and also recent and favorite folders and files. A huge time-saver and you'll wonder how you ever lived without it. PDFFactory: from the same people as Fineprint (above). 'Print' to this software and it turns whatever you send into a PDF document.
CCleaner: use this to free up hundreds of megabytes of space. It deletes temporary files and all the other junk that builds up on your PC. It can also detect and fix various issues. When you install CCleaner you may wish to untick the option to install Yahoo! toolbar. TreeCopy: an invaluable free utility that copies a directory (folder) structure without copying the files. SuperAntiSpyware: very impressed with the free version of this anti spyware software. CuneiForm: OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software. Scan printed documents and turn them into text that you can edit. RegCleaner: gets rid of old and obsolete registry entries. RegSeeker: another registry cleaner to try out. JkDefrag: an alternative defrag tool for Windows. RamPage:
a handy utility for Windows 98. It frees up memory when it drops below a certain
level and when exiting programs, which can improve the stability of your system.
There are several similar utilities around and some are way too large. But this
one is small and free. OtherFreeMind: did you ever make one of those bubble charts where you start off with a main idea in the centre of the page? I used to use them all the time in the days when I wrote articles for magazines. FreeMind is free software that does the same and, of course, it's far more flexible that writing down your thoughts on a piece of paper. Chaos Manager: a great personal organiser with many features. Free, well thought out and it works beautifully. OpenOffice: a multiplatform and multilingual office suite. Opensource, which means it's free. Operating systemsUbuntu (Linux): a complete Linux-based operating system, freely available with both community and professional support. This is really impressive and if I didn't need rather specialised Windows-based software such as Dreamweaver and Vegas Video, I would probably be using Ubuntu as my operating system. My friend D. has switched and I hope I can before Windows XP is phased out. Blag
(Linux): put together by the Brixton Linux Action Group, this is another good
Linux distribution. For the first time I can see myself giving up Windows sometime
soon! Blag has a suite of graphics, internet, audio, video, office, and peer to
peer file sharing applications and just seems to work beautifully. |
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