Posted in Applications, Articles, File & Dir Utils, PDF, PDF & Ebook readers, Productivity/Organization, Utilities on Mar 6th, 2010
Update: Mar 6th 2010. I finally updated this comparative analysis of free PDF to Word conversion software, re-writing it from the ground up, and in the process doubling the size of the article since the last iteration
Read more on How to convert PDF to Word DOC for free: a comparative test…
Posted in Applications, Freewaregenius Picks, PDF, PDF & Ebook readers, Productivity/Organization on Mar 1st, 2010
Nuance PDF Reader is a free PDF document reader and alternative to Adobe Acrobat Reader. It offers a number of nice features, such as the ability to fill PDF forms and save them to your hard drive, the ability to open and save PDFs straight into Sharepoint, and the option to upload your PDFs to an online conversion engine and convert them to other formats (including MS Word .DOC formats), straight from the Nuance PDF Reader interface.
Posted in Applications, Charting, Data Visualization, Excel, Productivity/Organization, Web Development, Web2.0 on Feb 21st, 2010
One way to describe this software is: take the Excel charting engine, make it a standalone app that can chart data from any source, and give it a web/community sharing component for publishing charts and dashboards on the web. Except this charting engine is light years ahead of Excel in terms of both its capabilities as well as ease of use.
Read more on Tableau Public: create charts and interactive dashboards and publish them to the web…
Posted in Applications, Linux, Productivity/Organization, System, Utilities on Feb 11th, 2010
UNetbootin (Universal Netboot Installer) is a small, free, cross platform app that can download and install Linux (or other operating system) on a bootable USB drive or a hard drive partition. It supports a wide range of Linux builds (25+ and growing) out of the box that it will automatically download from the net, or it can work with any locally downloaded ISO images that you might want to use.
Read more on UNetbootin: create a bootable Linux USB with a single click…
Posted in Applications, Productivity/Organization, Web Development, Web2.0 on Feb 8th, 2010
At heart, this software is a web-clipping tool with online storage, similar to Evernote. Yet Notable App is designed for sharing clipped web pages with collaborators, making notes on them and receiving feedback in a kind of virtual conversation.
Posted in Applications, Productivity/Organization, Web2.0, twitter on Feb 5th, 2010
Seesmic Look is the first Twitter client I’ve used and I have to say it simplifies a whole lot over Twitter.com. Seesmic Look’s best feature isn’t just something that would come with any client though, it looks very polished and presents information in a visually appealing way. Designed to match the graphics of Windows 7, Seesmic Look still works on Windows XP, Server 2008, and Vista as well as Windows 7.
Read more on Seesmic Look – A Polished, Functional Twitter Client…
Posted in Applications, Freewaregenius Picks, Productivity/Organization on Jan 11th, 2010
VUE (Visual Understanding Environment) is a free, open source mind mapping and data visualization software developed by the Academic Technology group at Tufts University in Boston. VUE is unique in that it offers a range of innovative functions such as tagging of nodes and of relationships, support for images, videos, and other objects within the mind map structure, and the ability to import and analyze datasets (from CSV files, XML files, and even RSS feeds) using semantic mapping. It also functions as an innovative Powerpoint-style presentation tool, allowing users to define “presentation pathways” on top of the mind map structure, and to create presentation-style content that is associated with the mapped concepts.
Posted in Applications, Productivity/Organization, Software Updates, Uninstall, Web2.0 on Jan 8th, 2010
OK so you’ve just reinstalled Windows for whatever reason (update, clean slate etc). Now you have to sit there for about an hour just downloading all your favourite programs again and installing them. Well not any more.
Posted in Applications, Productivity/Organization on Dec 16th, 2009
Osmo is a small, free, and multi-platform Personal Information Management (PIM) program. It provides the major functions you would expect in a PIM app, such as a task/to-do list with reminders and alarms, contacts management, notes, as well as calendar integration. Neatly packages in a tabbed, self-contained interface, Osmo is highly configurable and is module-based, allowing you to turn tabs/functions off and on depending on your preference. It is built such that all functions can be easily performed using keyboard shortcuts.
Posted in Applications, PDF, PDF & Ebook readers, Productivity/Organization on Dec 3rd, 2009
gDoc Creator is a free program that can perform a number of document format conversions, including converting PDF to Word (.DOC) format. It can convert PDF, XPS, or any MS Office format (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) into any of three formats: DOC, PDF, or XPS. It also can optionally install add-ins for MS Office that enable saving directly to PDF or XPS and will install ’virtual printers’ that enable converting any printable document into either PDF or XPS.
