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.

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.

Let’s look at a couple of simple AutoHotkey cases:

Hotkeys

#m::Run http://www.google.com/mail

This is a simple example of a hotkey, when I type the Windows Key + m,  AutoHotkey opens my Gmail.

The # means use the Windows Key and the double colon :: is a delimiter.

Hotstrings and Autoreplace

::w4l::Win4Lin

My company has a product called Win4Lin, good product and brand, but a pain to type.  With this, every time I type w4l, AutoHotkey replace it with Win4Lin, as I type.  Very useful.

The string to be replaced is delimited by the double colons, followed by the repacement string.

Longer text autoreplace

::tx::
(
Thanks,
Dan
)

Here’s how I often sign my email messages (when I’m being polite).  Now when I type tx,  AutoHotkey replaces it with my multi-line  salutation.

Thanks,

Dan

When using multiple line output, enclose the actions in parenthesis.

Remapping keyboard keys

RCtrl::^+p

Finally, this little fragment remaps the right CtrlKey (I know, who knew the two Ctrl keys can be different?) to be Ctl Shift-P which is an awkward hotkey required by a screen clipping program that I use.

Let’s get going

As you can imagine, my examples are on the preschool to kindergarten level, so much more can be done with AutoHotkey.

There is a useful tutorial for AutoHotkey here.  The website also has plenty of good resources for using and developing scripts. Download AutoHotkey and install from www.autohotkey.com.

Another tip, if you Google-around, you’ll find useful text files of AutoHotkey scripts that you can download and use.

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.

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.

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

Gmail – 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.

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 – 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 – 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 – 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 – 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.

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.

George Washington's Teeth

Even in our excremental economy, PCs are cheap.  Microsoft wants to run their entire advertising campaign on that basis, but whatever.  I often use a well-loved MacBook, but in the last year have had occasion to buy two PCs.  Bought a Desktop PC for about $400 and a netbook, mini-laptop for about $300.

After the immediate glow of geek happiness wears off (new PCs always seem fast), the question becomes how to become productive fast.  (I actually had to buy the netbook because we went away for the weekend and I forgot my laptop and needed to do some work).

What I do is connect to Internet and download these 11 apps, and I’m ready to go in about 20 minutes in a productive work environment.

Let me explain.

• AVG Antivirus – Sure you need anti-virus, the world is weird, but AVG Free does a great job and it’s, well, free.
• Google Chrome – Sorry, Microsoft Internet Exporer doesn’t work for me.  I can’t be productive with such a slow browser.  I install the new-ish Google Chrome, which isn’t yet full-featured but is extremely fast.
• Firefox – I also install Firefox, the major open source competitor to IE.  Firefox becomes very full-featured by use of plug-in technology.
• FreeCommander – You owe yourself something better than Windows Explorer.  FreeCommander has plenty of features for making your file and PC management easier.   The dual-interface alone is worth the download.
• Evernote – I store all my information in Evernote (and so should you).  Download the PC desktop version to sync to your web based data.
• Picasa - The best way of managing and editing digital images and videos.
• Skype – For free phone calls to other PCs, conference calls and video calls to other team members.  I also use it for video calling my family.
• Foxit Reader – A lightweight PDF reader, to replace the slow and heavy Adobe Reader
• notepad++ – A hardy open source replacement for Notepad.  Use it for any text editing work that you can get by doing without a word processor.
• Videolan – An open source video player that plays just about any videos you’ve got.
• Revo Unistaller – Finally install this utility to uninstall some of the crap that is often pre-installed on new consumer PC’s.  What comes quickly to mind is the trial version of Symantec Internet Security which is probably already installed on your new PC.  If you activate it, you’ll get it free for a couple of months and then will be nagged to death by the program trying to get you to buy the full version — just saying.

The rest of the apps I use:

• Gmail - Web-based email
• Office Suite – Either Google Docs or Zoho Office, both free and web-based.

Okay, you’re ready to work.

PDF files were invented as a lingua franca for document and graphic files – in theory they will look and print the same way on any computer and printer.

In that role they work pretty well and can be a convenient way to send documents through email.  They are also a very convenient way to share a web page with another person while expecting they are going to see all the same information as you saw.  It’s also a very reliable way to save web site pages.

But how to easily create a PDF from a web page?

PDF Download, which has been available as a Firefox plugin, is now available as a bookmarklet.

Bookmarklets are handy little pieces of code that can be dragged into your bookmark toolbar and just need to be pressed to activate.

In the case of PDF Download, go to the page you want to convert, press the Save Page as PDF bookmarklet and your page will be converted and downloaded for you.  It’s a great way to use PDF Download without installing a plug-in, especially in browsers such as Google Chrome, Opera and Safari, but works equally well in Firefox.

Get the bookmarklet [via downloadsquad.com]

Image by dead_squid via Flickr

I worry about wasting time, but since the concept of “wasting” can be subjective, I’ll just call it being “productive”.

There is no way to be more productive without having some way of measuring how you actually go about using your day – that’s where ManicTime helps.

ManicTime is a free Windows-only time management tool that tracks how long each of your applications are active each day.

I tried a couple of hours test on myself today,  ManicTime appeared to be very accurate but the results were eye-opening.

How do I think I spend my time?  Visiting web sites, writing about them, writing email – that kind of thing.

These are my results for the a couple hours today.  When I look at what applications I was using all seemed fine.  I use two browsers and flip back and forth – that seemed fine, and since I tend to use Web apps, I also wasn’t surprised at the time I was spending  in the browser.

The surprise came when I ran the cursor over that fancy colored bar and I found that there was detailed information about what I had been doing in the browser. Working?  Well, spending about twenty minutes on a jag through the Wikipedia on prurient topics – oops.  ManicTime tells all.

Another really useful feature of ManicTime is the ability to tag time working and time away so that you really have a record of your day – especially being able to tag meetings and phone calls.

I’m going to watch for a couple of days and maybe I can shame myself out of some of my time wasting behavior – we’’ see.

A  less used Apple  iTunes function is the built-in radio that offers a fairly exhaustive list of categories of streaming Internet radio stations.  Some of these stations are regular broadast stations others are Internet-only.

I like to list to some of my favorite Public Radio stations from places I’ve lived like WBUR in Boston, WAMU in Washington and my current favorite KQED, here in the Bay Area.

If you don’t have iTunes, it’s a free download. After you install it, choose Radio and your favorite category.

I’ve happy to report that at this week’s MacWorld, Google has released a beta of their superb free photo organizer and retoucher, Picasa. 

Picasa was available first on Windows, then curiously on Linux, all before the Mac.

My own first use and other reports show that the Mac implementation of Picasa is both very feature-true to the Windows version and seems faster than Apple iPhoto which since included with a Mac has always been the top choice for Photo organizing on that platform.

I could say that having Picasa now available for the Mac eliminates on the few remaining deficits in the Mac vs. PC debate, but it’s probably more accurate to say, having Picasa for the Mac eliminates one of the last reasons for using Parallels or VMware Fusion to  run Windows on a Mac.

From the Google Press Release:

Picasa for Mac makes it easy to manage large photo collections and helps users make professional-looking edits without any technical knowledge, including:

• A drag-and-drop photo collage tool that gives users control over layout and content
• A retouching brush to wipe out scratches and blemishes – and repair old photos
• A slideshow movie maker that uploads users photo montage videos to YouTube with a click
• Smart auto-cropping that guides user

Picasa for Mac "plays nice" with iPhoto, and takes a read-only approach to editing photos stored in the iPhoto library, duplicating files as needed, so that users’ iPhoto libraries are never affected when they use Picasa. Avid iPhoto users who currently use our Picasa Web Albums Uploader plugin can continue to do so, although features like automatic web sync, photo collages, and more will only be found in the Picasa application.

This first beta of Picasa for Mac matches the speed and most core features of Picasa on Windows — and we’ll be working on more refinements to the Mac interface and feature set as time goes on.

Download Picasa for Mac (beta)

Picasa for Mac running on my laptop.