Windows only Folder Monitor is a free Windows app that can track changes to folders you select. The types of changes include a file being created, changed, renamed, or deleted. When one of those events occur you can have a visual notification appear, a sound played, and a command line action taken.
Windows only We've seen all kinds of apps that assist with finding large files and folders on your machine, but you often don't have much control over the kinds of files and folders that are returned.
I've run into the situation before where I've needed to empty the Recycle Bin for all users on a multi-user computer.
When things start to go wrong on your computer what is one of the first things you do (after punching your monitor, of course)? Often times I resort to Safe Mode, which prevents a lot of third-party and non-critical processes from starting up. If you try to enter Safe Mode in Windows 8 using the typical F8 key you'll be a little shocked when you're not actually prompted to enter Safe Mode.
Sometimes keeping track of website pages can be a pain. Maybe you want to monitor a certain section of a webpage, such as the price of an item on Amazon. Page Monitor for Google Chrome lets you do exactly that, and does so intelligently.
Some of the smartphones these days have really nice features to help you find your phone if it gets lost. With the iPhone, for example, you can use Apple's Find My iPhone to not only get a GPS location of the device, but you can also have it chime to help you realize that it is just sandwiched between your couch cushions.
Notepad (in Windows) has a unique feature that a lot of people don't know about. If you open a file in Notepad where the first line contains ".LOG" you will automatically see the current time and date appended to the end of the file. Here is how it works:
Windows; Mac; Linux The other day I needed to scan a range of IP addresses to find out which ones were actually in use, and I began looking for a tool that might make that task a little easier. I found some things that could be run through the command line/terminal, but I figured there had to be something that had a GUI. That's when I stumbled across Angry IP Scanner.
Windows only Before posting or sharing photos you might like the piece of mind knowing that there isn't any identifiable information stored in the metadata of your images. For example, if you've taken a photo using your cellphone there is a good chance that the image was also tagged with the GPS location where it was shot.
Windows only Windows includes several different command line tools that are useful for viewing network-related details on your computer such as ipconfig, route, and netstat. The ipconfig command provides TCP/IP configuration information, route lets you modify your system's IP routing table, and netstat displays active connections and ports.
Windows only I have seen all kinds of utilities that tap into the context menu that appears when you right-click on an application's titlebar. Often times they can adjust the transparency, pin the window so that it stays on top, and adjust the process priority of the app.
The Reader addition in Safari made it easier to read articles on websites, but that feature isn't unique to Safari. Most other browsers offer a similar option through the use of extensions, and one of my favorites is iReader for Chrome and for Firefox.
Windows only A couple months ago I wrote about an app that could be used to download songs from Grooveshark, but it was limited to songs you searched for one-by-one or songs that are on Grooveshark's "Most Popular" list. The free SciLor's Grooveshark Downloader can do all of that as well, but it also has a some other awesome features.
Windows; Linux Areca Backup is one of the few backup utilities that I've seen that runs on both Windows and Linux operating systems. Like most backup utilities you can choose what files you want to backup and where you want to send them to, which includes backing up the files to an FTP/SFTP server. You can also have the the backup zipped to help save some space.
Windows only There are some times where it would be nice to reset important registry values and services back to their default state. With RefreshPC you can do exactly that. They don't list out exactly what changes are made, but there are over 300 registry settings and services that will revert back to their original state.
Mac onlyI love the way Microsoft integrated the quick window resizing in Windows 7, and so I started looking around for something similar on the Mac since I frequently work with two windows side-by-side. Not only did I find an app, Moom, for my Mac that would let me resize my windows, but it also blew away any expectations I had for such a utility.
Windows only I use PDF printers quite a bit since I've grown accustomed to having the feature built-in on my Mac. In order to do this on a Windows machine you'll need a third-party application, and there are quite a few that you can choose from. Most of them all do the same thing, but we came across one recently that we liked.
I'm sure we've all quoted Mission Impossible at one time or another saying "This message will self destruct in...". Your average Joe creating a message that can actually self destruct, on the other hand, may be a little more difficult. If you don't mind going the digital route a service called Privnote is looking to accomplish exactly that though.
For many of us it is difficult to test a website from another country, but there are online tools that try to make this kind of thing more accessible to everyone. One service I tend to gravitate towards the most is the WebPageTest.org site we previously covered. If you are looking to troubleshoot network issues, however, that site may not provide the details you are looking for.
Windows only There are a lot of apps out there that will calculate hashes for popular formats such as MD5, SHA1, and CR32. Some of them try to conveniently integrate into Windows Explorer so that you can just right-click on a file and view the hash, but very few apps have an option where they can recursively crawl through an entire folder and record the hash for each file it comes across.
