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.

Sometimes when I either need a break at my desk, or it’s late and I want a little non-challenging entertainment before bed and don’t want to have all the noise associated with turning on the TV and the risk of waking the family, for this I use Hulu.

The big recent news for Hulu is that they have created a set of experimental projects and are offering them for use to the public À la Gmail labs.  The coolest of the new offerings is a desktop Hulu video player that let’s you watch Hulu content without a browser.  The picture is sharp and clear and will look on your computer monitor or laptop.

If you’d like to give Hulu Desktop a try, visit Hulu Labs and download it.  Or just stop by in an idle moment and watch a show in your browser.  I just watched Jay Leno’s last Tonight show episode.

If you’re interested in the background of the company, it’s owned by NBC Universal, News Corporation, and Disney.

You can even use Hulu to watch a little something while your working, like I did here.

Oh, yeah, this site is supposed to be about productivity.  Never mind.

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.

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.

We got the rumor from the Googling Google blog over at zdnet and it would make sense. The story of a Mac version of Picasa has been kicking around at least a year since TechCrunch carried this one, Google Developing Mac Version Of Picasa , Due To Be Released This Year.

Why the excitement?

No matter what the PC or Mac fans tell you, there’s not really much difference between what you can do with a PC or a Mac, but Picasa is one of the coolest, most useful pieces of software that  can’t be run on a Mac (the other, if you really want to know, is Microsoft OneNote).  Making Picasa available directly available for the Mac would be one less reason to need to run a solution likeVMware’s Fusion which allows you to run Windows on a Mac.

There is already a slightly lame version of Picasa that runs on Linux.  It’s somewhat lame because it uses WINE technology to work.  WINE is the famous, this-would-be-so-cool-if-it-only-actually-worked way of running Windows on other platforms without needing Windows, kind like how useful it might be to have your blood pumped through your body without needing a heart.

Related articles

• Picasa for Macs Might Launch at Macworld 2009 [Picasa]

Q-Dir is a freeware file manager that is really great if you have a lot of file copying and moving to do, since it can keep many windows and folder views open at the same time.  The default view is four windows, but it looks like anything is possible.

Views can be saved as favorites and you can add shortcuts to frequently-accessed folders.

There is also a an extension that can be added to your right-click menu for launching Q-Dir to view a folder.

Download Q-Dir [via lifehacker ]

More features from their web page after the jump.

Favorites:
Quick access to most often used folders.
Drag&Drop:
Move files by dragging in Q-views, and other programs such as MS Explorer.
Clipboard:
Copy/ Paste between the Q-Dir directory views, and other programs such as MS Explorer.
Folder-Type:
ZIP-, FTP-,cabinet-,network-, system – folders, shortcuts …
Views:
Large icons, tiles, list, detail, thumbnail (Vista: extra large symbols) .
Export:
to XLS, CSV, TXT, HTML.
Popup Menus:
Desktop, My Computer.
Screen magnifier:
anything on the screen can be enlarged.
Color Filter:
Different colors for different item types (e.g. *.log;*.txt).
Highlight-Filter:
Effective way for fast items highlighting.
File-Filter:
Allows for quick and easy filtering of the items.
Columns:
All columns support, and save function .
Quick-Link’s:
For fast folder access.
Folder-Select:
Fast & flexible folder selection address-bar/ desktop menu/ my-computer menu/…
Multi-INI:
Several INI files for Q-Dir.
Tree-View:
Simple and quadruple.
Preview:
Allows a quick preview.
Portable:
from 2.77 is Q-Dir portable.

I love sticky notes, though.  Especially electronic ones.  Once I open the first note I can suddenly think of tons of things to write each in different notes.

This confession probably explains why I like Pnotes so much.  Pnotes means either pinned notes or portable notes.  The Pnotes folks say you can decide.

What’s Pnotes?

A free very lightweight and portable sticky notes system for Windows that let’s you open, write and manage multiple sticky notes.

Some of the features are:

• Portable – Can be installed on a removable USB drive so you can take them with you
• Multiple Skins – Different looks to choose from or keep them “skinless” for max flexibility
• Scheduling for reminders – Set reminders for individual notes
• Docking – Make them dock together on your screen
• Groups – Put notes together in groups
• Control Panel – Manage the notes

Download Pnotes [via portableapps]

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]

Related articles

• Mind Map 101
• Mind Map Recipes
• Conveying Information with Mind Maps