We've covered numerous file renaming utilities here on the site, and many of them have their own strengths and weaknesses. What I've found with a lot of them is that most tend to be difficult to use, but I found one called Rename Master that is both easy and powerful.

Starting in Windows 7 Microsoft introduced a new feature they called libraries. The libraries are designed to give multiple folders a single unified view that can be used to manage your media and documents. This is especially useful for anyone with files spread out across multiple hard drives and network locations because it will all appear as a single folder on your machine.

A few years ago we wrote an article that offered up a solution for quickly accessing an FTP site from Windows Explorer, but things got a lot more complicated if you were trying to work with an SSH/SFTP site. A couple of weeks ago a commenter, Shawn, mentioned a new application that recently came to fruition which lets you assign a SFTP connection to a drive letter in Windows Explorer.

If you use Twitter a lot you probably already have a repertoire of apps at your disposal for accessing and managing your tweets. Chrome users have another one that they can add to the list called Silver Bird, which simply installs as an extension in the browser.

Over the years I've come to rely on Google Maps quite a bit, and I'm always looking for ways I can quickly access everything it has to offer. That's why I was pretty excited when I came across the slick Mini Maps extension for Google Chrome. The extension is designed to put a lot of the data offered by Google Maps just a click away in your browser.

When you're using the desktop view in Windows 8 things won't feel all that much different than they do in Windows 7. Something I thought Microsoft might change in Windows 8 was the size of the thumbnails displayed when you hover over running apps in the Taskbar, but unfortunately they are just as small as they always were.

I've been using Windows 8 regularly ever since the pre-release versions were offered up to the public early this year. Initially I wasn't a huge fan of the new tile interface, Charms Bar, and other areas in Windows 8 that altered my experience so much that it hurt my productivity for a little while. [...]

I think at this point most of our readers have heard of the excellent CCleaner app that will remove a lot of the temporary files and other junk sprawled out across your PC. It's always worth keeping an eye on what some similar apps are capable of doing since you may find one that fits your needs even better. For that reason I want to point out System Ninja.

A few months ago I wrote about a grep utility for Windows called AstroGrep that provided an interface for using the popular grep search command on a Windows machine. Fred left a comment on that post letting us know of an excellent alternative called grepWin that I've been enjoying even more than AstroGrep.

As much as I hate having to use Java there are still some things I need it for, which means most of my machines still have Java installed on them.

If you want to create your own website one of the first things you'll need to learn is how to write CSS code. You'll also need to know the HTML side of the coding, but once you've got that figured out Simple CSS is a great app to help you pick up on writing the CSS. It provides an intuitive interface for accessing most of the different CSS properties that are available for you to configure.

I've had a lot of friends point out their interest in downloading music from the seemingly endless supply available on YouTube, but the problem is that they are looking to snag the songs in an MP3 format rather than a video.

Have you ever wished you had a volume limiter for your computer? I can think of a variety of reasons where you might want to limit the volume on your computer including keeping kids from accidentally cranking up their favorite tunes on your computer, or even limiting the volume to match the quality of your speakers.

There might be a time that comes where you want to edit some file or folder attributes that Windows doesn't natively let you change. Things like the date a file was created, modified, and accessed are normally out of your control, but with the free Attribute Changer you can change many of those properties in just a few clicks.

A couple of months ago we wrote about a free Windows 8 Start Menu that provided the basic features you'd need from a Start Menu app. While it was extremely customizable I wouldn't say it was my preferred style given how accustomed I have grown to the Windows Vista/7 Start Menu over the years.

The next time you are typing away on your keyboard you should think about whether you're using the right app for the job. Some of us use Microsoft Word for almost everything while others remain faithful to apps like Notepad and Notepad++ because of their simplicity. If you like the Metro-style design that Windows 8 basks in then the new MetroTextual app may be right up your alley.

We've covered a bunch of different ways in the past to find large files and folders on your system, and generally each have their limitations. I have yet to find a program that is both fast and provides a wealth of information, but the free GetFoldersize is inching closer to what I want.

A couple of months ago I decided to stop using 1Password to manage my passwords and instead migrated over to LastPass. I would say that 1Password is a very polished password manager, but it's just too expensive overall if you're like me and use both Windows and Mac regularly.

I've seen all kinds of OCR recognition tools in the past, and most of them are only good at handling certain kinds of files. Some of them are able to handle images, some can do PDFs, and some others specialize in other obscure types of files. And then there is the free and open source Capture2Text that can handle just about anything you can display on your computer screen… for real.

Several weeks ago we wrote about a free app called 3RVX that would provide an on-screen volume level indicator so that when you change the volume on your machine you'll be able to see in more detail the level it is set to.