Free Download A Day

List your files with FileList

Chippy — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:00:46 +0000

If you want to know which files live where, all you need to do is open Windows Explorer and take a look. If you want a list of those files–maybe to put into a report or some other document, or to do some sort of analysis–you'll need a better answer. Opening a DOS [...]

Lightweight spell check tool for Mac

Chippy — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:00:32 +0000

Not every app I use has built-in spell checking, but they all seem to have built-in misspelling. Seems like the classic problem of the nut behind the keyboard. One way to take care of this is to copy your potentially problematic text to the clipboard, fire-up Word, paste your text into it, run [...]

PDF to Word Converter

Chippy — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:00:57 +0000

Everybody uses PDFs. These Portable Document Format files can be used across platforms, so there's no system compatibility issues, and the Adobe Acrobat Reader app is free, so everybody can access the content of these documents. There are bunches of tools out there that convert Word DOC documents into Adobe PDF files, making it easy [...]

Scheduled shutdown with Switch Off

Chippy — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 13:00:46 +0000

What goes up must come down. What turns on must turn off. There's a reassuring symmetry to the whole start-and-stop thing. Sometimes, however, one side of the equation takes more effort than the other. Take your computer, for example. If you want to turn it on, you just push that [...]

Keep your private stuff private with LockNote

Chippy — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 13:00:34 +0000

Sensitive stuff. When you were a kid, your secret decoder ring—just send in three boxtops—was all the protection you needed to keep things private. Things have gotten a bit more complicated since then. Locknote is a small, secure memo pad. Use it so protect any kind of information you want to keep private: [...]

Check your mail without downloading it

Chippy — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:00:30 +0000

You're out on the road, but you want to be in touch with what's going on back at home or in the office. You know the email is piling up, but you don't want to grab all those messages just yet, since you know a fair percentage of them will be from some Nigerian [...]

Only hackers and thieves like weak passwords

Chippy — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:00:04 +0000

For much of the modern world, all that stands between you and utter disaster is a password. Lots of online accounts depend on an email address as a user name, so if somebody's after your stuff, they're halfway there just by virtue of knowing that address. That means that choosing a good password [...]

Quickie file sharing solution

Chippy — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:00:44 +0000

Your mom always taught you it's nice to share. We recently looked at Cl1p, a service that lets you share clipboard-type information across the 'Net. Here's a similar type of setup that lets you share files instead. Drop.io is a simple file drop. You create an arbitrary directory name on their site and [...]

Dear (Digital) Diary

Chippy — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:00:05 +0000

Keeping a journal has always been a way to track of your deepest thoughts and feelings. It's also been a way to keep an eye on what you've been up to, as well as great ideas that have sprung from your mind to resounding success or utter failure. Digital Diary is a tool that can [...]

Affinity diagramming made easy

Chippy — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:00:05 +0000

You know the drill. You and a bunch of co-workers are sitting around in a room throwing ideas out about how to make or do the Next Big Thing. People are capturing the essence of these and scribbling them on sticky notes, which are then fastened on every vertical surface in the room. [...]

Easy to use backup tool for Windows

Chippy — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 13:00:58 +0000

Backups are important. Sure, it can be a pain in the neck to set them up and run them, but the first time your system dies and you lose the last week (or month or year) of work, you'll be glad you decided to suck it up and do them. Getting an easy-to-use tool to [...]

Clean up images with PhotoWipe

Chippy — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 13:00:31 +0000

Has this ever happened to you? You've got a digital photo that you really love, except for that thing you need to take out of it. It could be anything from the bars on the cage at the zoo that get in the way of that cute Panda cub, to that great picture [...]

Convert text files between Unix, Mac, and Windows

Chippy — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:00:43 +0000

Everything in the world is connected. This is especially true with computer stuff. There are servers talking to servers, and desktop machines, smart phones, and all manner of other electronic goodies that talk to one another. The wonder of it all is that for the most part, they each understand what the [...]

Track hours, dollars, miles with 1DayLater

Chippy — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 13:00:15 +0000

Whether you work as an employee, or you're under contract for somebody else, you need to keep track of what you do. Whether it's the hours you put in on a given day, expenses you've incurred, or miles you've driven, it all needs to be tracked. After all, if you're an employee you [...]

Replacement for Windows Explorer

Chippy — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:00:13 +0000

Windows Explorer is the built-in file management tool for Windows systems. Generally it gets done what needs to get done, but it certainly isn't the most efficient tool out there. It's pretty much unchanged over the past several versions of Windows and just doesn't give you much of what you expect in other [...]