Useful Freeware

Getting Things Done: ToDo List Applications for Windows

Recently I’ve been looking for ways to organize and prioritize better and have been looking at different todo lists for windows. Seems like there is plenty of software for Mac (or at least easier to find), but for Windows there hasn’t been that many. After looking at many desktop and online solutions here is what my search revealed (I have shortened the list to the desktop applications I liked the most):

• ToDoList – The fastest and smallest, but no less featured. I have been following it’s development for years now and every next release it gets better and better. This is the application I finally settled on and use the most, but am considering Chandler as a very close runner up.
• Chandler – Probably the most full featured of all programs mentioned here. Supports contexts, tags, multiple views, priorities, recurring tasks, etc. It is very convenient to use and with a pleasant user interface. The only disadvantage is it’s size and I have experienced slowness when the list starts getting bigger.
• FusionDesk Starter Edition – Supports tags, contexts, and priorities. It has a paid version, so I was reluctant to include it, but the starter edition is full featured and very convenient to use. It lack backup features, time tracking and recurring tasks, but it would be helpful for most.

Make edits in your pdf files with PDF Exchange Viewer

PDF Exchange Viewer is a fast and lightweight pdf reader. Don’t let the name fool you – it allows you to do some editing, which makes it very valuable tool. Here are some important features at a glance:

• Allows you to add callouts, text fields, highlighting, drawing different shapes, sticky notes, arrows, etc. in a .pdf file
• You can neatly overlay text, which is very useful trying to fill a scanned form
• Deleting, Rotating and Cropping pages is also a worthy feature.

All edits you do are later visible in Adobe Acrobat Reader, so annotating and exchanging notes is easy. All things considered I think it is a very nice addition to your freeware collection.

Manage your Sony Ericsson phone with floAt’s Mobile Agent (FMA)

floAt’s Mobile Agent (FMA) is an application that will help you manage you mobile phone (list of Supported Phones). Even though it is going in the direction to support other phones, currently only supports Sony Ericsson devices.

You can connect to your phone via Infrared (IrDA), Serial, Bluetooth and USB (which appears as a virtual serial interface).

After you get your phone connected you can:

• Transfer files (photos, ringtones, themes, etc.) from and to your device
• Synchronize you address book with FMA’s internal address book or with Microsoft Outlook. Add, remove or edit contacts.
• Manage your missed, placed and received calls, etc.
• Write, send and receive SMS messages on the computer (believe me it is much easier to type)
• Various cool statistics like battery temperature, power consumption, serial numbers and software versions, etc.
• Has a scripting framework, which can attach to various events to customize the program behavior in certain situations.
• You can also make calls from your computer, but this feature requires some bluetooth software and I have connected via USB cable, so I have not tried it.

And more…One very nice feature I would much like to try is controlling your PC through the phone via a bluetooth connection. This is a perfect tool for presentations – instead of carrying a wireless presenter you can control the presentation with your phone, and since most new laptops nowadays have a Bluetooth connectivity should be very easy. How cool is that, huh? You will make an impression!

Overall I love the program and use it with my W810i.

Update: Apparently many of the Sony Ericsson phones have the Bluetooth remote control feature out of the box and FMA provides additional profiles and customization. Here is an article about the feature and a profile editor.

Manage multiple remote desktop connections

Two useful programs if you need to work with multiple remote desktop connections. Both have some overlapping features, but it is a matter of preference which one you’d use.

Terminals is a remote desktop client program with a multi tabbed interface interface. Using multiple tabs it allows you to manage multiple connections at a time. It also allows you to store the connection properties, so the next time you connect it is enough to either type or choose your connection.

Edit (25 Oct 2007):  Terminals (1.6b Release) now supports the following protocols in addition to RDP – VNC, VMRC, RAS, Telnet, SSH, ICA Citrix. It is getting ahead of the other softwares…

Royal TS goes a little further with more features. It is using an explorer like interface. You can organize your terminal connections in categories and can have multiple category/connection sets. It can display the session information, including the username used for the session. Another useful feature is the ability to connect to the remote console session. Similarly to Terminals can store your username and password, so you don’t have to type them every time.

Even though both programs have many advantages over the remote desktop client included with windows I tend to favor more the Royal TS over Terminals. Both are definitely worth a try!

P.S. I looked at Royal TS 1.3.2 and Terminals 1.01

Update 7 Sept 2007: I have come across yet another terminal tabbed client – RD Tabs. Looks like it is worth a look.

Convert your PowerPoint documents to flash

I looked around for some time for a freeware to convert PowerPoint documents to flash (.swf) for publishing to web sites and have found only three alternatives. Both have their pros and cons, but I will just list them and not go into much details.

To test I have picked a 12 slide presentation heavy with graphics and animations. Here is what I think:

AJSoft PPT2SWF – offers a very basic user interface and very few options. Quality and dimensions can be set. Be careful not to switch to other applications during conversion, because it will capture the topmost window for some reason. I couldn’t quite make it work with transition effects either. Overall I would use this one if all other options are exhausted. The generated .swf was quite much bigger than the presentation itself.

authorPOINT Lite – Most options of the three and most polished user interface. The UI was very intuitive, even though it needs some more work on the import dialog. authorPOINT supports slide notes and titles, presenter’s logo, batch conversion for queuing multiple files (a very useful feature since the conversion may be slow). The produced flash presentation is very nice looking and you can choose from several different templates for the presentation and the presentation contains a Print button. The generated folder with files was about twice as small than the .ppt file and took about 25% of the time it took PPT2SWF. Very nice application and strongly recommended! This would be my first choice when I do a conversion.

Speechi Light – Installs as a add-on to PowerPoint and creates it’s own menu. There are no settings at all in the light version. Just a simple Print to Flash. It generated the smallest set of files about 20% of the .ppt file size and was the fastest. The quality of the generated view is very good, but it has the large Speechi logo in two places in the presentation. It would be my second choice if authorPOINT didn’t work. Another annoyance is that in order to download and install you must register with their web-site and activate the product after installation. Generated content on the left.

My conclusion is that authorPOINT Lite is far ahead of the other two in both capabilities and options for generated content.