Ari’s Blog

I was on my way to work on the van and a friend of mine was sitting near me reading the manual for PaintShop which he had just purchased because photoshop was too expensive. I had asked him if he had used GimpShop? He said he had used gimp and found it hard to use as all the features were hard to get at. He was not used to the menus/toolbars . I suggested he try GimpShop which is gimp but with a PhotoShop look and feel.

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7-Zip is a free and open source alternative to WinZip and WinRar. It integrates in to the windows shell and can open almost any format you can throw at it!

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HexTool is a neat utility for converting Hex and decimal numbers. It also has a binary display. It is much easier than opening calc and going back and forth between Decimal and Hex views.

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Have a disk on key? Have a computer that you can’t install an application on? Want to take applications with you? Portable applications may be the answer for you!

The people at http://portableapps.com have taken some essential utilities and made them portable. This means you can run them from a removable device (Like a disk on key) or on a system where you do not have permissions to run an installation.

There is also a cool portable launcher that can organize and launch you portable applications from one neat place. It is bundled in the Portable Apps Suite which gives all the tools most people would typically need in one place.

There are also portable versions of Firefox, Putty, and many more applications and utilities.

You ever just want to work?- No pop-ups – no fonts to choose – No Clippy- Just you and you thoughts and the text. Enter Dark Room. Dark Room is a text editor that just allows you to focus on writing. There are no distractions. No extraneous bells and whistles. No Menus.

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Lclock is a nice mix of eye-candy and functionality. This utility takes the clock style from Vista and brings it Windows XP. In addition to a nicer looking clock the utility adds a useful calendar- which is FAR better than right clicking on the clock and going to adjust date/time.

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Ok – I have updated the blog!

I have updated the WordPress to the latest version – Which was really easy. If you are thinking of starting a blog I highly recommend WordPress ( http://wordpress.org/)

Also I have added a new post which you can see below! (http://blog.billauer.com/?p=48)

Hopefully I will continue to update the site more frequently!

-Ari

Launchy is a great Open Source utility that will allow you to start applications bypassing the Start Menu. It allows you to start your programs with just a few key strokes. It is MUCH quicker than the Start Menu!

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