Tips today

Make Your Text Editing Jobs Better With Dolphin Text Editor [Windows]

2011-05-04T00:28:00.000-07:00

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posted on May 2, 2011 by Saikat Basu
The purpose of software is to make our life easier; even when it comes to a function like sprucing up plain text. Plain text is the basic building block of the writing we do on our editors. But plain text lacks functional extras that we wish could give us some control over the text we type.
Dolphin Text Editor v1.6 is a lightweight Windows app that adds some functional extras to any Windows program that handles text. Sitting in the System Tray, it can be brought up with a hotkey and the text formatting commands applied on the selected text. Dolphin Text Editor is a free text editor (for personal use) and it runs on all Windows versions and all Windows software (Notepad, MS Office, code editors, and even browsers, and online chat apps like Facebook Chat etc).
Just how useful is this utility when all you are typing is vanilla plain text? Let’s take this productivity app and run a few laps around to see how we can make use of it.
Coming in at 884KB, Dolphin Text Editor is a small bundle. You can even install it as a portable app with an approximate size of 1.52MB. It sits quietly in the background and doesn’t cut in too much into your memory space. Set the option to load it at startup or click to open it on the System Tray where it sits and awaits your next command.

Dolphin Text Menu as the name indicates has a menu of text functions which you can simply call up with a hotkey. The default hotkey is CTRL + 0 (Numpad). You can change the hotkey from the Options settings.

The software page and the screenshot above describe the menu functions. So, I won’t go into each one, but instead show some of the more important ones with the help of a few screenshots and examples of how I use it.
Quickly arranging names in alphabetical order:

This simple utility is really helpful if you are working in Notepad or even a simple text box and quickly want to arrange names or numbers in a particular order.
Quickly arrange text in blocks by removing extra space:

Paragraphs of text with trailing lines can be quickly arranged in blocks of text by removing blank lines, leading spaces, trailing spaces etc.
Quickly format sentences into titles (or change case):

This is especially useful if you do a lot of writing on the web and need to format your titles, headings, and sub-headings with a click. Word does have a similar feature but if you are using an editor which doesn’t then this is handy.
Quickly clean text:

Word does help to strip text of any formatting if you working with it. But think of a forwarded email message or replies to your comments on discussion boards: if you want to spruce them up, then Dolphin Text Editor can help you clean text by converting everything to plain text, removing HTML tags and also stripping any BBCode tags.
Quickly get word count:

Minimalist text editors like Notepad lack a word count feature. Dolphin Text Editor meets the gap with functions like word count which breaks up the figures in detail (as in screenshot). You can also copy it straight to the clipboard.
These five uses are pretty much the common ones you can expect to encounter each day. Which other free text editor can you think of that tackles theses simple things from the system tray?Take a look at Dolphin Text Editor and let us know if you can put it to any other use unique to your requirements.
Image Credit: Shutterstock
Saikat Basu
Saikat is a techno-adventurer in a writer's garb. When he is not scouring the net for tech news, you can catch him looking for life hacks and learning tidbits. blog comments powered by

Leafpad – An Ultra-Lightweight Text Editor [Linux]

2011-05-03T19:50:00.000-07:00

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posted on May 2, 2011 by Danny Stieben

I know that a handful of people value lightweight programs, especially after I read some comments on my previous articles. I must admit, it’s a great thing when a program is light on resources and does the job right every time. In today’s feature I’ve found another very lightweight program for your personal enjoyment called Leafpad. Leafpad will more than likely remind you of other programs, but we’ll get into that in just a bit.

Looking after how much resources a program uses is a great skill to have in order to maintain a cleanly running, stable system. The more resources it uses (compared to other programs that achieve the same thing), the more inefficient the program will run, causing your system to become laggy. Over time you might accumulate a number of resource-hogging applications, and you’ll feel your system become slower and slower. Linux is still vulnerable to this problem, although it doesn’t suffer performance decay like Windows does after a while. Trust me, I haven’t yet mastered this skill. My laptop’s setup is currently more about customization rather than running at tip-top speed, and it shows in my boot time.

Just look at the screenshot, and you’ll know exactly what program this Linux text editor looks similar to. If you answered with Window’s Notepad, then you’re correct! However, don’t think that I’m actually running Notepad through Wine; this is indeed a Linux-native program.

The program, you could say, is as simple as it gets. There are no buttons anywhere to be found, and the menus don’t offer a lot of options, aside from the basics like printing. The “Options” menu only has four items: Font Options, Word Wrap, Line Numbers, and Auto Indent. However, for an extremely lightweight application, those are probably the four great features that you could want from it. They definitely help you for whatever you want to do with it.

Speaking of how lightweight it is, you’ll probably want to have some numbers as proof. If the minimal UI doesn’t say much to you, try this: when you first run the program, it uses a measly 2.8MB. gedit, arguably the most popular text editor for Linux users, uses about 5.6MB at start. Both numbers are very small, but for those with weak computers, every megabyte counts.

With most lightweight applications, and especially ultra-lightweight ones, you have to take into consideration that the program might not offer some features that you’d be comfortable with. Therefore, when using Leafpad remember that it is very much like Notepad, and doesn’t offer much more than that. For people who want plenty of features, this may not be the best Linux text editor for you. However, for those who want a program that just lets you type what you want without doing anything fancy with it, this is definitely for you.

Of all the text editors I’ve seen so far, Leafpad has probably been the most lightweight option I’ve seen. It has extreme simplicity, and it stays out of your way to let you do what you want without any gimmicks.

What text editor do you use? Do you think Leafpad is a good option or is it too lightweight for your use? Tell us in the comments!

Danny Stieben
Danny is a high school junior who enjoys all aspects of open source software and Linux. He is also a contributor for the Fedora Project. You can follow his Twitter account here. blog comments powered by

How Does iPhone & Android Location Data Collection Affect You? [MakeUseOf Poll]

2011-05-03T15:18:00.000-07:00

Last week we asked readers if they thought Bing would catch up with Google. It seems most people don’t believe Bing has a chance – Google has won.

We collected a total of 442 votes for the poll, which made the result pretty clear: 70% think Bing will never catch up to Google; 12% think Bing will catch up to Google; and 18% think it’s possible that Bing might catch up to Google.

Full results and this week’s poll after the jump.

MakeUseOf readers clearly believe Google will lead against Bing forever.

This week’s poll question is: How Does iPhone and Android Location Data Collection Affect You?

Recent news reports have shown that both iPhone and Android phones have been collecting the location data of their users. Ostensibly it could be useful for law enforcement and rescue operations, but many users feel that it’s an invasion of privacy. How do you feel about it?

This poll only barely touches the tip on the emotions you might have on the issue of location data being collected without your knowledge. If you have some good reasons why this data should or shouldn’t be collected, feel free to let us know in the comments!

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Cool Websites and Tools [May 1st]

2011-05-03T12:17:00.000-07:00

Check out some of the latest MakeUseOf discoveries. All listed websites are FREE or come with a decent free account option. You can make use of them without spending a dime. If you want to have similar cool websites round-ups delivered to your email daily email subscribe here.

These are just half of the websites that we discovered in the last couple of days. If you want us to send you daily round-ups of all cool websites we come across, leave your email here. Or follow us via RSS feed.

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5 Must-Have Free iPad & iPhone Cydia Apps

2011-05-03T07:44:00.000-07:00

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posted on May 1, 2011 by Nancy Messieh
Jailbreaking your iPad or iPhone has a wealth of advantages, not least of all, the ability to install apps from Cydia that didn’t make the grueling cut into the iTunes App Store. Most of the time, these apps give you new ways to get something done, whether it’s changing the gesture for taking a screenshot, or improving the resolution on your iPad when using and iPhone-specific app.
While you’re at it, don’t forget to take a look at this tried and trusted list of the best apps available through Cydia. Some may be outdated, such as Backgrounder, now that iOS has been updated to include multitasking, but others like SBSettings are just as useful today as they were then. And if you haven’t already, be sure to download MakeUseOf’s Underground Guide to the iPhone.
This is a must-have for any iPad user who doesn’t own an iPhone. It’s pretty frustrating when, as an iPad user, you find that an app has not been optimized for the larger format. FullForce basically tricks the app into thinking it was made for the iPad’s larger screen. In order to activate FullForce with any given app, you have to toggle the feature through your Settings panel.
FullForce is not without its glitches, and doesn’t work with just any app. They have a list of compatible apps, and even that list is filled with issues. While it does solve the resolution issue, it sometimes comes at the price of using only half of the screen and at times even causes the app to crash. That said, it still is an improvement on the way that the iPad handles iPhone apps.
An example of how FullForce works can be seen with the Tumblr app. Before activating FullForce, the app, when scaled to fit the iPad’s screen looks like this:

Once FullForce is activated, it improves the resolution, but the execution still does leave a little to be desired:

To download FullForce, just fire up Cydia and search for the app. If you’re willing to pay for this feature, their sister app, RetinaPad is available for Cydia for $2.99, which simulates the iPhone 4's retina display.
Activator used to come with the multi-tasking app Backgrounder. Now that Apple has finally integrated multi-tasking into its OS, if you want to benefit from Activator’s features, you can just download the standalone app, which is compatible with both the iPad and iPhone.

What Activator does is allow you to create custom gestures or shortcuts to access certain apps or features. From controlling your iPod, locking your screen, toggling WiFi or bluetooth on and off, launching a specific program or even taking screenshots, you can determine the exact gesture to achieve your task. The gestures you can use including shaking your device, connecting or disconnecting the power and pressing the home or power buttons.

Compatible with both the iPhone and iPad, WeatherIcon is a simple little app which adds the current forecast as a little badge over your Weather icon.

WeatherIcon doesn’t just work with the native Apple Weather app, but works with a whole list of apps including The Weather Channel, The Weather Channel Max for iPad, and WeatherEye.
If you don’t have access to your computer, where you can easily organize the apps on your iPad or iPhone, it’s a bit of a hassle dragging one icon around at a time placing it in the desired folder or changing it’s location. With MultiIconMover you can move as many icons at a time as you want.
First, you have to press down on any given icon until you activate the delete/move feature on your iPhone or iPad. You can then begin to select as many apps as you want, as long as they are not inside a folder. You can then drag just one of the icons to the desired location, hit the home button, and the rest of the selected apps will automatically be moved.

If you’ve installed a lot of Cydia apps to your iPad or iPhone, it can also be a hassle removing them. Normally you have to go through Cydia itself, unlike removing iTunes apps by simply clicking clicking a little X at the corner of the app to get rid of it. Cydelete allows you to delete Cydia installed apps in exactly the same way. Of course with most of the apps listed here, Cydelete isn’t much help since none of them leave an icon on the home screen.

Other articles you might be interested in:
Jailbreak Your iOS 4.3.1 Devices With Pwnage Or Redsn0w
A Newbie’s Guide to Jailbreaking
What are you favorite free Cydia apps? Let us know in the comments.
Nancy Messieh
Nancy lives in Cairo, works at a publishing house, is half poet, half geek, and suffers from a heavy dose of techno-joy. blog comments powered by

Facebook Adds “Send” Button [News]

2011-05-03T04:08:00.000-07:00

Social networking giant Facebook isn’t usually associated with sharing privately, but that’s exactly what the new “Send” button is for. In addition to being able to “Like” much of the indexed web, users can now specifically target friends privately (and not for the first time ever, remember email?).
The button is designed to be used alongside the familiar “Like” button on existing websites, giving users the option of sharing publicly by “Liking” the item or bringing it to the attention of a few specific people (or both).
When clicked the new button opens a small window within the page with fields for body text and recipients; much like a Facebook message. Web items can be sent to individuals who are already on Facebook, Groups and non-Facebook users via an email address.
Abe Parvand announced the feature in a post on the Facebook Developers Blog, last week:
“The Send button drives traffic by letting users send a link and a short message to the people that would be most interested. They don’t need to leave the web page they’re on or fill out a long, annoying form. Compared to the alternatives, the Send button has fewer required steps, and it removes the need to look up email addresses by auto-suggesting friends and Groups.”

Webmasters and developers interested in introducing a “Send” button can either use the web form or code in the Facebook development documentation.
Will you “Like” and “Send”? Email for the lazy? A breakthrough in quick sharing? Let us know what you think!
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Ensoul: Your iPhone Wallpaper Editor and Manager for Mac [Giveaway]

2011-05-03T00:33:00.000-07:00

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posted on May 2, 2011 by Bakari Chavanu

While it’s certainly easy to add wallpaper, home screen images, and contact photos to your iPhone, a new 3rd Mac application, Ensoul, provides some advance features that extends what you can do with image stylizing for your favorite, sleek mobile device.

Ensoul is a handy app for iPhone users who like to have a wide variety of wallpaper to choose from. It’s way to add, manage, and edit wallpaper images and contact photos without using iPhoto or some other image editing application.

Ensole works similarly to iPhoto and other self-contained image editors. First off, it includes a media pane that accesses your iPhoto and/or Aperture libraries, as well as your Pictures Folder on your Mac. If you happen to have more than one iPhoto or Aperture library, Ensole will access them all at once, which is something that can’t be done in iTunes.

Ensole also comes installed with a set of stylish wallpapers to get you started. On left side of Ensole, you can quickly add wallpaper images from anywhere in Mac’s Finder or from image downloads from the Internet, such as the website, iPhone Themes, which has a large collection of wallpaper and wallpaper themes.

What’s even more useful about Ensole is that you can preview — using the included iPhone emulator — how your selected wallpaper images will look on both the Lock Screen and Home Screen of the iPhone. While some images work great for the Lock Screen, they may get obscured by the display app icons on your Home Screen.

Ensole also includes a built-in image editor for cropping, rotating, fixing and enhancing your images. This means you don’t have to open iPhoto or some other image editor to make image adjustments.

If you’re a wallpaper aficionado, you will no doubt want to keep a significant collection of images on your iPhone. If you want to add wallpaper images stored and edited in Ensole, alongside existing photos from your iPhoto or other libraries on your iPhone, then you need to select wallpapers in Ensole and choose Share > iPhoto in the Ensole menu bar. Your selected wallpaper will be copied and inserted into an iPhoto album titled, “Ensole.”

When your iPhone is connected to your iTunes, you simply check the Ensole folder along the other iPhoto albums you want include in your iPhone library.

If you want your iPhone library to consist solely of wallpaper and contact images from Ensole, you need to choose the “Sync Photos from” button in iTunes when your iPhone is connected to your Mac. In the drop-down button, select “Pictures” and then click the box for the Ensole Library folder in your Pictures Folder.

Ensole also includes other sharing features for exporting your wallpaper to your Twitter and Facebook account, as well to any part of your computer. You can also create more than one Ensole library which is useful if you’re sharing your Mac with another iPhone users, or if you want so simply change up a set of wallpapers.

It’s simple, just follow the instructions.

Please fill in the form with your real name and email address so that we can get in touch if you are chosen as a winner. Click here if you can’t view the form.

The giveaway code required to activate the form is available from our Facebook page.

You’re almost done. Now, all that’s left to do is to share the post. There are 2 options to choose from or you can do both!

Giveaway eligibility
In accordance with Facebook’s Promotional Guidelines 2.4.2 and 2.4.3:
Individuals who are over the age of 18. If you are under 18, get your parents to participate on your behalf;
Individuals who reside in Belgium, Norway, Sweden, India or any country embargoed by the United States are not permitted to enter.

This giveaway begins now and ends Friday, May 6th at 2100hrs PDT. The winners will be selected at random and informed via email.

Spread the word to your friends and have fun!

MakeUseOf would like to thank Macpaw for their generosity while participating in this giveaway. Interesting in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via email.

Bakari Chavanu
Bakari is a freelance writer and photographer. He‘s a long-time Mac user, jazz music fan, and family man. Bakari‘s business blog: http://bakarichavanu.net; Twitterme: @bakarichavanu blog comments powered by

DOWNLOAD Microsoft Office 2010: Ultimate Tips Tricks

2011-05-02T20:23:00.000-07:00

Learn to get the most out of the latest version of Microsoft Office with our latest free guide! Office 2010 includes many improvements over 2007. As with all Office releases, however, these improvements are far from obvious to the average user.
Enter Office 2010: Ultimate Tips and Tricks. This manual, by author Matt Smith, points out all the best new features of Microsoft’s latest office suite, and explains them all in one handy guide. In most programs, it’s not hard to find every single feature, but Office 2010 is so expansive that even veteran users will often find that they aren’t expert in even half of the capabilities the software offers.
Whether you recently purchased Office 2010 and want to get the most out of it, or are considering an upgrade, you don’t want to miss this free guide. There’s much to be learned here, so check it out!
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Leafpad – An Ultra-Lightweight Text Editor [Linux]

2011-05-02T16:19:00.000-07:00

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posted on May 2, 2011 by Danny Stieben
I know that a handful of people value lightweight programs, especially after I read some comments on my previous articles. I must admit, it’s a great thing when a program is light on resources and does the job right every time. In today’s feature I’ve found another very lightweight program for your personal enjoyment called Leafpad. Leafpad will more than likely remind you of other programs, but we’ll get into that in just a bit.
Looking after how much resources a program uses is a great skill to have in order to maintain a cleanly running, stable system. The more resources it uses (compared to other programs that achieve the same thing), the more inefficient the program will run, causing your system to become laggy. Over time you might accumulate a number of resource-hogging applications, and you’ll feel your system become slower and slower. Linux is still vulnerable to this problem, although it doesn’t suffer performance decay like Windows does after a while. Trust me, I haven’t yet mastered this skill. My laptop’s setup is currently more about customization rather than running at tip-top speed, and it shows in my boot time.

Just look at the screenshot, and you’ll know exactly what program this Linux text editor looks similar to. If you answered with Window’s Notepad, then you’re correct! However, don’t think that I’m actually running Notepad through Wine; this is indeed a Linux-native program.
The program, you could say, is as simple as it gets. There are no buttons anywhere to be found, and the menus don’t offer a lot of options, aside from the basics like printing. The “Options” menu only has four items: Font Options, Word Wrap, Line Numbers, and Auto Indent. However, for an extremely lightweight application, those are probably the four great features that you could want from it. They definitely help you for whatever you want to do with it.

Speaking of how lightweight it is, you’ll probably want to have some numbers as proof. If the minimal UI doesn’t say much to you, try this: when you first run the program, it uses a measly 2.8MB. gedit, arguably the most popular text editor for Linux users, uses about 5.6MB at start. Both numbers are very small, but for those with weak computers, every megabyte counts.
With most lightweight applications, and especially ultra-lightweight ones, you have to take into consideration that the program might not offer some features that you’d be comfortable with. Therefore, when using Leafpad remember that it is very much like Notepad, and doesn’t offer much more than that. For people who want plenty of features, this may not be the best Linux text editor for you. However, for those who want a program that just lets you type what you want without doing anything fancy with it, this is definitely for you.
Of all the text editors I’ve seen so far, Leafpad has probably been the most lightweight option I’ve seen. It has extreme simplicity, and it stays out of your way to let you do what you want without any gimmicks.
What text editor do you use? Do you think Leafpad is a good option or is it too lightweight for your use? Tell us in the comments!
Danny Stieben
Danny is a high school junior who enjoys all aspects of open source software and Linux. He is also a contributor for the Fedora Project. You can follow his Twitter account here. blog comments powered by

Make Your Text Editing Jobs Better With Dolphin Text Editor [Windows]

2011-05-02T11:54:00.001-07:00

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posted on May 2, 2011 by Saikat Basu

The purpose of software is to make our life easier; even when it comes to a function like sprucing up plain text. Plain text is the basic building block of the writing we do on our editors. But plain text lacks functional extras that we wish could give us some control over the text we type.

Dolphin Text Editor v1.6 is a lightweight Windows app that adds some functional extras to any Windows program that handles text. Sitting in the System Tray, it can be brought up with a hotkey and the text formatting commands applied on the selected text. Dolphin Text Editor is a free text editor (for personal use) and it runs on all Windows versions and all Windows software (Notepad, MS Office, code editors, and even browsers, and online chat apps like Facebook Chat etc).

Just how useful is this utility when all you are typing is vanilla plain text? Let’s take this productivity app and run a few laps around to see how we can make use of it.

Coming in at 884KB, Dolphin Text Editor is a small bundle. You can even install it as a portable app with an approximate size of 1.52MB. It sits quietly in the background and doesn’t cut in too much into your memory space. Set the option to load it at startup or click to open it on the System Tray where it sits and awaits your next command.

Dolphin Text Menu as the name indicates has a menu of text functions which you can simply call up with a hotkey. The default hotkey is CTRL + 0 (Numpad). You can change the hotkey from the Options settings.

The software page and the screenshot above describe the menu functions. So, I won’t go into each one, but instead show some of the more important ones with the help of a few screenshots and examples of how I use it.

Quickly arranging names in alphabetical order:

This simple utility is really helpful if you are working in Notepad or even a simple text box and quickly want to arrange names or numbers in a particular order.

Quickly arrange text in blocks by removing extra space:

Paragraphs of text with trailing lines can be quickly arranged in blocks of text by removing blank lines, leading spaces, trailing spaces etc.

Quickly format sentences into titles (or change case):

This is especially useful if you do a lot of writing on the web and need to format your titles, headings, and sub-headings with a click. Word does have a similar feature but if you are using an editor which doesn’t then this is handy.

Quickly clean text:

Word does help to strip text of any formatting if you working with it. But think of a forwarded email message or replies to your comments on discussion boards: if you want to spruce them up, then Dolphin Text Editor can help you clean text by converting everything to plain text, removing HTML tags and also stripping any BBCode tags.

Quickly get word count:

Minimalist text editors like Notepad lack a word count feature. Dolphin Text Editor meets the gap with functions like word count which breaks up the figures in detail (as in screenshot). You can also copy it straight to the clipboard.

These five uses are pretty much the common ones you can expect to encounter each day. Which other free text editor can you think of that tackles theses simple things from the system tray?Take a look at Dolphin Text Editor and let us know if you can put it to any other use unique to your requirements.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Saikat Basu
Saikat is a techno-adventurer in a writer's garb. When he is not scouring the net for tech news, you can catch him looking for life hacks and learning tidbits. blog comments powered by