Little applications that make big differences

Have you ever used  little “unknown” applications so much, that it frustrated you when you had to do something on someone else’s PC and they didn’t have the “special” app installed or correctly configured?

Most of us have these frequently used applications. I have the following applications installed on both my work and home PC and I use them every single day.:

• Launchy – a free utility that allows you to catalog, index and LAUNCH your most used folders, files etc, from a single point! No more need to browse through folders and files looking for that file or shortcut. It even launches your browser with a search query or doubles-up as a basic calculator. It also remembers the last app that you opens via Launchy. This is extremely handy when you are a developer and you have test applications in which you run your code. It also has predictive text, calculating what it thinks you will need and as you type, will alter the search results.

My Launchy, when launched via the hot-key, Ctrl-Space

Launchy, when in "predictive text" mode.

Launchy is fully customizable, ranging from skins, catalogs, startup mode, opaqueness, fade-times and extra plugins. Very useful for any developer or PC user.

• Project Fred is an “entirely pointless program which counts the number of keys you press and the number of times you click your mouse“. But oh so fun to have! You can upload your stats as often as you like. I usually upload my stats at the end of each work day, so that I start out fresh the next day. NOTE that Project Fred does not record what you type, it just counts keystrokes and mouseclicks. After you have created an account on the website and downloaded the very small application, an icon will appear in your systray (next to the time in the bottom RH corner). If you hover over the icon, it will give you your current stats.

Project Fred System Tray icon and current stats

Project Fred full statistics

I use Project Fred to track whether my day is worthy of being called busy. If my keyboard strokes amount to about 50k and the total distance travelled by mouse is over 0.5km, then the day is worthy of being called busy or relatively productive.

Project Fred starts up when your PC boots up and doesn’t slow down your system at all. Another very nice to have toy for your computer.

• Microsoft OneNote & OneNote Screen Capture is the replacement for print-screening-opening Paint-paste-cut out what you need-copy selection-create new file-paste selection-save. Instead of using the PrtScn button located somewhere on your keyboard (usually above the Insert-Home-Page Up button set), you can now use OneNote’s screen capture abilities. I only recently found out of this totally brilliant concept and have been using it ever since. MS Paint is as good as dead on my PC. With the use of the hotkey combination Windows Key + S, OneNote print-screens your whole screen (and greys your screen out). You can then point, click, drag and select exactly what you are after. It then opens up OneNote and displays your screen clipping. You can then either leave it there (it doesn’t get deleted) or right-click and copy the image directly from OneNote into your email / Word document.

OneNote screen clipping

The quality of of OneNote’s screen clippings is much better than Paint’s (comparing JPEG’s and PNG’s). OneNote saves all images in PNG format (which is supported almost everywhere). OneNote comes installed with Office 2007 but can be run as a standalone too. A 60 day trial is available from here. I use OneNote’s screen capture functionality every day, even if it is only to capture something I want to remember or use  later in the day.

• Fire Gestures as a FireFox addon: this is the best ever tool that I have used within a web browser. This little utility works so good that I even want to use it while browsing file directories. It is a FireFox extension which allows you to do cetain things (such as browse back, close a tab, save file etc) with 5 different mouse gestures:
  • Mouse Gestures (Move mouse with holding right-click)
  • Wheel Gestures (Scroll wheel with holding right-click)
  • Rocker Gestures (Left-click with holding right-click and vice versa)
  • Keypress Gestures (Mouse gesture with holding Ctrl / Shift key)
  • Tab Wheel Gestures (Scrolling wheel on the tab bar

The gestures I mostly use is the Mouse Gestures, especially dragging the mouse pointer to the left (same effect as clicking on the Back button in your browser), dragging the mouse pointer to the right (same effect as clicking on the Forward button in your browser), dragging the mouse down and then to the right (closes the tab).

FireFox extension - FireGestures

To see all the mapped gestures, you click on Tools then Add-Ons then you select FireGestures and select Options. Here you will be able to see all the mappings, change the colour of the FireGesture etc. I personally think that Microsoft can incorporate similar functionality into their operating systems!