Tools and Technology for Adults
The full-featured XMind, mind-mapping, application that previously sold for $299 a copy has been open sourced and is now available without charge. It’s cross-platform and available for Windows, Linux and Mac.
It has been one of the better professional applications for creating the mapping diagrams that are an intuitive way to take notes, brainstorm, collaborate and manage projects (among other things).
Here’s the XMind mind map of it’s features.
Download XMIND [via TUAW]
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Here’s an interesting idea, a word processor in a word processor. Let me explain, Jarte, from Carolina Road Software, uses the Windows WordPad freebie that’s included in all versions of Windows since Windows 95 as the guts engine for a more advanced word processor.
With Jarte, WordPad becomes a lightweight easy-to-use freeware Windows word processor that can read and edit Microsoft Word documents rather than a long-in-the-tooth free app.
Jarte is designed on their website as being for “students, writers, small business people, and home users”.
Their feature list:
Picasa is a great free Windows Photo Organizer and Flickr is a great online media hosting and social web site. Maybe since Picasa is a Google product and Flickr is a Yahoo! product, it’s not always intuitive as to how to make them work together.
Ideally you would store all you digital pictures on your Windows computer in Picasa and then be able to automatically upload them to your Flickr account. Out of the box this process takes several steps.
If you’d like to make this workflow painless you need to do about five minutes of installing and configuring and then your uploading will be a breeze.
We’ll assume you’ve already downloaded Picasa, if not, get the version 3 beta, it’s great. Got an account on Flickr? No, go to Flickr.com and sign up with your Yahoo! username and password.
Next download and install FlickrUploadr. This is an official Flickr application that let’s you upload and configure bulk digital images from your PC. Get it here.
Okay, now the last step. Download a little piece of “glue” called “picasa2flickr”, sounds right, doesn’t it? Download and click on this magic piece of glue will install a new button in the control panel at the bottom of your Picasa screen called “send to Flickr”.
So this is the way the magic will happen, you will choose the picture/s in Picasa that you want to upload to Flickr by selecting the picture/s, then press “Send to Flickr” which activates FlickrUploadr which will give you the opportunity to add titles, descriptions and keywords to you picture. You’ll press “Upload Pictures” and when the pictures have been uploaded to Flickr, you’ll be given one more chance to see and manipulate them online before they appear in your Flickr account.
See the entire sequence after the jump
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="In Picasa on the PC"]
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[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="71" caption="Press Send to Flickr Button"]
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[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Flickr Uploadr Screen"]
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[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="317" caption="Your Pictures are on Flickr"]
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[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="417" caption="This screen is optional, only if you want to further manipulate titles"]
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[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="311" caption="On Flickr - Total time 24 secs"]
[/caption]
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Remember when you bought that new PC and you looked at the size of the disk drive and said "How could I ever need more than 250 gigabytes?"
Then you started to load programs.
Then you started to add your digital pictures.
Then you started to rip your CDs and store the MP3s in iTunes.
Then you started to shoot video and play with it on your computer.
Now you’re down to 5 GB and you’re wondering where all that free space went.
Jam Software has created a handy and simple free Windows utility, TreeSize Free, to show you visually where all your disk storage has gone.
I like this quote from their site “Every hard disk is too small if you just wait long enough.”
Download it, install it and run it to see a visualization by folder of what’s occupying your hard disk and then start deleting. Trust me, there’s a lot out there you don’t need. TreeSize Free can also be started by just right-clicking in Windows Explorer on the folder you want to investigate.
Download TreeSize Free [via lifehacker]
Many of the reasons why Microsoft developed Windows Vista to replace Windows XP were related to security. It’s a scary world on the network with bad guys always trying to get you. That being acknowledged the question remains does Vista just go too far sometimes?
The most annoying aspect of Vista for many people is that when you install new software on your computer, Vista may ask you whether you really want to give permission as many as three times for the same installation.
This request for permission is by something called the UAC or User Account Control in Vista. It’s different from the old days of Windows XP where if you had administrator privileges on your computer, you could install software with no more questions asked. In Vista, even if you have Administrator privileges, you don’t really use them most of the time, so when you install software, the UAC keeps checking with you to make sure you want to, as an administrator, perform the requested action.
Poor Vista means well – it really does, but like an overly protective parent, sometimes it just gets in the way.
This leads us to a hint for Vista configuration from the popularmechanics.com website. You can, fairly easily, turn off the UAC feature meaning no more questions from Vista asking permission.
Here goes from The 3 Biggest Vista Headaches and How to Fix Them
If the endless warnings are really bothersome, you can disable the UAC feature altogether. Just click on the Vista icon in the lower left corner of your desktop, type in “msconfig” and hit Enter. This will open up a system configuration utility. From there, select Disable User Account Control under the Tools tab and reboot your machine. But be warned: Disabling UAC means disabling a key line of defense against malware. A Microsoft representative told us the company is in the process of reducing the number of unnecessary prompts for programs that have a low security risk, but until they do, we are left in the uncomfortable position of choosing between safety and sanity.As the Popular Mechanics’ note says – beware – beware – beware. You are turning off some of your systems’ defenses against the bad guys – but if you feel you know what you’re doing – it makes your system so nice and quiet.
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