Solving a Mac annoyance – Ejecting Volumes with Open Files

August 1, 2009 By Leave a Comment

whats-openEver try and eject a disk on you Mac and can’t because it says there’s a file open?

You close everything that seems obvious and then try again and you still can eject the darn thing?

At this point you either give up, restart or just throw caution to the wind and pull out the plug on the disk.

With this small free utility you don’t have to get frustrated– WhatsOpen will tell you what files are open on the  volume you’re trying to eject and allow you to close them so that the disk will eject. Simple.

Download WhatsOpen install and rid yourself of one of those frustrations that makes you want to toss you Mac out the door.
whatsopen-screen

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Filed Under: freeware, Mac, Utilities Tagged With: , , , ,

My new best friend — AutoHotkey

June 18, 2009 By Leave a Comment

autohotkey-logoWhen you’re like me, a natural time waster, you need to be as productive as possible when you are working. That’s why I have recently learned to love AutoHotkey, a free Windows download that allows you to automate repitive actions, create hotkey and scripts and at its most basic is really easy to use.

Some of AutHotkey’s key features include (their words):

  • Automate almost anything by sending keystrokes and mouse clicks. You can write a mouse or keyboard macro by hand or use the macro recorder.
  • Create hotkeys for keyboard, joystick, and mouse. Virtually any key, button, or combination can become a hotkey.
  • Expand abbreviations as you type them. For example, typing “btw” can automatically produce “by the way”.
  • Remap keys and buttons on your keyboard, joystick, and mouse.
  • Convert any script into an EXE file that can be run on computers that don’t have AutoHotkey installed.

The basic idea is you create text file scripts with small coded fragments that can replace text as you write, perform simple actions or perform more complicated actions.  The script needs to run once to be put into memory and then each time you need it, it’ll be there.

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Filed Under: freeware, Productivity, Windows Tagged With: , , , ,

Tabbed Windows File Handler Hits the Spot

June 10, 2009 By Leave a Comment

nomad-logoRegardless the level or age of your Microsoft Windows configuration, the one built piece of functionality that can always stand a helping hand is the Windows File Explorer.

Nomad.NET is a free Windows Explorer replacement with plenty of useful features.

Features include -

  • Tabbed interface.   This is our favorite feature, you can open tabs, like a browser for directories with which you’re working and keep them open.
  • Bookmarks system. You can bookmark you favorite folders, ftp sites or even searches.
  • You can create very complex search rules, with ability to search in different encoding (complete encodings auto detect), use IFilter filters, apply custom text search rules (including regular expressions), search in hex, duplicates search and so on and for mortals there is a simplified search that is not scary.
  • Filtering system, based on the same core as search.

nomad-screen

Normally we recommend FreeCommander as our favorite free alternative file handler, but Nomad.NET is a worthy competitor and well worth a try.

Download Nomad.NET [via lifehacker.com]

If you haven’t installed Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0, it will need to be installed first, there’s a link for the free download from the Nomad.NET download page.

Filed Under: freeware, Technology, Utilities, Windows

What’s up with old friends? Updates to our favorite apps.

May 15, 2009 By 2 Comments

Here at Enquiring Mimes we have a set of Web apps that we use every single day.  We’re always happy to see them improved, so here’s a summary of what’s new around our world of working online.

Oh yeah, it’s also a good time to give them a try if you haven’t yet.

gmail_logoGmail – Our always favorite web mail has made it easier to perform Google searches while you’re reading your email.  Through the Labs technology, you can place a Web Search widget into your sidebar that when searched, does not disrupt emails you might be reading or writing.  Also, new today, Google has made it much easier to import email from older web email services (read Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL).  Now you have no excuse not to move to Google, Jim.

gcal_logo Google Calendar – The Google To-do list function called Tasks which had previously been integrated into Gmail is now also available in Google Calendar.  It’s a good way to create tasks with due dates and be able to see the To-Do items created in Gmail in your calendar.

zoho_logo Zoho – The Zoho office suite continues to develop and evolve, some of the more recent updates include being able to gadgetize (a word?) your Zoho documents and apps and put them in blogs, websites and Facebook.  Zoho is an excellent alternative to Google Docs for a free web office suite plus extras.  It is now spiffily accessible from mobile devices such as the iPhone.

evernote_logo Evernote – The best note-taking, information sharing uber-app around continues to update their product.  Recently they’ve added support for Blackberry mobile devices, the ability to direct your Twitter messages to Evernote account and localization into Russian.  We’re still waiting for Evernote for the Android G1.

mindmeister_logo MindMeister – This web-based mind mapping tool continues to be spruced up and enhanced.  What’s new includes localizations for German and Japanese, inline images, new formatting and a new widget for embedding your mind maps externally.  Since mind mapping is not a skill that’s in everyone’s repertoire,  playing with Mindmeister is well worth the time.  If you are of us who find it easier to visualize your world rather than just see it as lists, you’ll be surprised to find how intuitive it can be to create a mind map of exactly what’s on your mind.

vlc_rc1

VLC – While not a web app, VLC, the open source video do-everything is approaching their production 1.0 release with a release candidate.  The RC sports a spiffy new user interface and, as always, VLC is the best and easiest way to view your digital videos.

Filed Under: Evernote, freeware, gmail, Productivity, Updates Tagged With: , , , , ,

Five more ways to supercharge your new PC

April 29, 2009 By Leave a Comment

greatfalls

Last week I posted Got a new PC? Supercharge it fast with 11 free apps.  That explained when you get a new PC, inexpensive as they are now, what free apps you needed to get productive.  Today 5 more free apps that you ought to consider.  This list is for more advanced users.

  • Paint.NET –  A lightweight graphic and image editor that has most of the functionality most people would ever use from the very heavy and expensive Adobe Photoshop.
  • FileZilla – FTP may be old and creaky but it doesn’t go away and someday you’re going need to up/download files.  This open source FTP client is full-featured.
  • Fastone Image Viewer – A fast image viewer that dispays digital images in a zillion grahic formats.
  • Seesmic Desktop – Do you use Twitter?  Seesmic Desktop is the best of the current crop of Twitter Clients.
  • Windows Live Writer –  Do you blog either for yourself or your company?  Windows Live Writer is  by far the best client for writing blog entries from your PC.  If you don’t use the online interface for your blog, use Windows Live Writer.

Go ahead now, make yourself productive.

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Filed Under: freeware, Windows, Windows Vista Tagged With: , , , , ,
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