Adobe has struggled with the performance of Acrobat Reader for quite some time, and that's the main reason I've always found myself using the free Foxit Reader. Plus the fact that they've always offered the PDF reader as a standalone executable has meant that I can carry around the application on my USB drive.
In the past we've talked about some mouse gesture applications for Windows including ones that targeted specific applications like Firefox. For some people these gestures can save significant amounts of time day in and day out. If you're one of those people you should probably know that there's a new mouse gesture program in town, and it's called gMote.
As you may recall sLife is a application that you can use to monitor which applications you use on a regular basis, and then graph the usage on a pretty chart. Previously sLife 2.0 application was only available for Mac users, but after four months the Windows version has also been released.
Adobe has presented hackers with yet another challenge thanks to their new breed of Creative Suite 4 (CS4) applications that were released less than two weeks ago. They try do everything they can to stop software pirates from stealing their programs, but it's inevitable that someone somewhere will find a workaround.
Everyday when I'm at work I'm dealing with dozens of different servers that I have to connect to using the Windows Remote Desktop.
I know that some of you have been patiently awaiting for a Windows version of the Slife computer usage analyzer. Back in June we wrote up a quick review of the Mac version, and at the time a Windows version was in the works.
Keeping up with everything that you need to do can be a rather exhausting task. An open source project called Chandler is looking to ease the burden by giving you an intuitive way to leave notes, manage tasks, and organize your calendar all from one central location.
There have been a few different radio applications that have come around, but one frequent complaint is that none of them offer a way to stream music in the background. This is a limitation that Apple has placed on third-party programs, but the native iPod app has this ability.
It's always surprised me that Google has a few desktop applications (Picasa, Google Desktop Search, Google Talk, etc...), but for one reason or another they don't have any programs that leverage some of their other big services. Having a program for Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and several others would all make a lot of sense in my book.
When you're working with a small screen space it's nice to try and squeeze everything you can out of it. That's especially true when you've got a device like the Eee PC who's 7" screen has an 800x480 maximum resolution. As you can imagine you're Taskbar would fill up after opening just a few applications at a resolution like that.
In March we covered two free CD/DVD/Blu-ray burning applications that pretty much amounted to everything you'd need. One of the programs, called BurnAware, was sold off a few months later to a company who scrapped the idea of offering a free version of the program. I had uploaded a mirror for the last free version, and over the last two months it's been downloaded almost 1,500 times.
One of the things that's always nice to know is what you can remove from your hard drive to quickly regain hard drive space. Maybe there are some enormous games on your computer that you don't play anymore, or files you've downloaded that have never gotten deleted? By using hard drive visualization tools you'll be able to pinpoint exactly what is eating up your hard drive storage.
A few months ago we wrote about a free application that was able to track stolen computers, and today we've got an open source alternative for you. It's called Adeona, and it's interesting how it works. After setting it up you'll be given a file that is used to identify your computer in the event it gets stolen or lost.
Have you ever tried to copy a file from a CD or DVD that has been scratched? If so you might have received an error message stating that the file could not be copied because it is corrupt, but there might still be hope if you really need to access the contents.
The open-source file sharing application Shareaza has been going through some tough times lately. They had their domain hijacked by a company called Discordia Ltd. back in December 2007, which is the same company who turned Bearshare and iMesh into paid services. On the Shareaza.com site they then started offering an app called "Shareaza 4" that promotes legal downloads.
Searching for files on your computer was something that was once a tedious process, but in the last few years it has been one of the most talked about features in new operating systems.
One of the things that I really like being able to do on my MacBook Pro is monitor the temperature of various parts of my laptop, and also control the speed of the fans. Using the iStat Pro widget (review) I'm able to read the temperature of my hard drive, CPU, GPU, heatsinks, wireless card, and more. If you want you can take it a step further and even control the speed of your fans.
We always like coming across an interesting free application... especially when it sets out to accomplish a lot of what a paid application does. That's exactly the first impression I got when using Artweaver. They don't come out and say they are trying to emulate Photoshop, but they don't need to.
When it comes to computers I'd say that keyboard shortcuts (a.k.a. hotkeys) are something I couldn't imagine not having at my beckon call.
I've been a big fan of the open source 7-Zip application, and it has served me well over the last few years. Today, however, I came across a new program called PeaZip that looks like it is just as nice, and the great news is that it works on both Windows and Linux.
