Simple but powerful: http://live.sysinternals.com.
What they say:
“This is a file share allowing access to all Sysinternals utilities. We have developed this to test an alternate distribution mechanism for our utilities. This will allow you to run these tools from any computer connected to the Internet without having to navigate to a webpage, download and extract the zip file.”
What you get:
Have you realized? del.icio.us got a new URI: http://delicious.com. Johannes Meinecke pointed out the new toolbar for Internet Explorer which is quite an improvement to the previously offered buttons.
Since I use multiple machines for development at work and university but also at home, delicious became one of my favorite tools for managing bookmarks. The best feature coming with the new toolbar is definitely the complete integration into the browser. By selecting one of the bookmarks you can directly change it’s properties without browsing to the delicious site.
Source: http://delicious.com/help/tools
I am currently asked a lot what tools I usually use on my machine. Finally, I thought of starting making an regular inventory on my software base. I’ll try to update this list somewhat regular.
Research
EndNote – currently I run Endnote X, however, meanwhile there is Endnote X2 available. There have been various issues getting the version working with Word 2007. Since it works I haven’t upgraded.
PersonalBrain – which is a mind mapping tool. In contrast to MindMap it provides some dynamic flow of information. Once you got used to it, you maybe don’t want to miss it again. The Core Edition I run does not provide Outlook support and multiple attachments. But I am not sure if these two functions I miss are reason enough for spending 100 more bucks. Beside the price it’s a great tool.
Coding
ReSharper – a valuable add-on providing a bunch of functionality you miss in Visual Studio. On-the-fly code analysis, extended highlighting, automated brackets and parenthesis are only a few things that come along with this plug-in.
Notepad2 – I am not sure, but I think this thing is not developed anymore. Provides highlighting for various programming languages including XML, starts rapidly and has a small footprint.
TortoiseSVN – almost perfect user interface to Subversion, providing Explorer integration and context menus for direct access to Subversion commands.
Imaging
SnagIt – one of the coolest tools I have ever bought. They just upgraded to version 9 an I immediately got the update. Provides great screen capture functionality.
Microsoft Image Composer 1.5 – a long long time ago, this came with Microsoft FrontPage. I still provides me most of the imaging functionality I need during a day. Frankly spoken, it’s the only imaging tool I can really work with. Photoshop or stuff like this is way too complex for me. And for a imaging tool it starts right away. 10 years old the footprint of this app is literally nothing.
Microsoft Digital Image Suite 10 – unfortunately, Microsoft has discontinued this product line as some of the features went into Windows Vista.
System Tools
Daemon Tools – somehow usually the first tool I install right away on a fresh system. Gives you everything you need when dealing with ISO images.
Acronis TrueImage Home – my weekly backup of my laptop. Furthermore this tool helped me already twice moving my current HDD to a new one. I still run version 10 that works perfectly with Windows Vista.
DU Meter – A small tool providing exhaustive network traffic overview with a great logging functionality. The new version 4.01 works even better under Windows Vista. Haven’t seen anything better for 25 bucks (or 21 €). The new version also supports e-mail notification when a certain traffic limit is exceed.
Networking
Vistumber – a free monitoring UI for wireless networks under Windows Vista – as NetStumbler is not supported under Windows Vista at all.
TabletPC
InkSeine – while trying out some new concepts using digital ink, this app is great if you look for something to draw a quick sketch on you TabletPC.
Blogging
Windows Live Writer – what can I say: THE offline blogging tool. I think I would even pay for this one a few bucks but it’s for free.
Rss Bandit – More likely some kind of reverse blogging – reading blogs of others. I tried some tool in the beginning and stuck one day with Rss Bandit. Quite good but takes ages until it starts.
twhirl – a lightweight twitter client created with Adobe’s Air. Rich functionality and the best twitter client I’ve tried so far – and I tried a lot of them.
Tools
Xobni – I usually don’t like Outlook plug-ins, maybe because I don’t Outlook that much. Anyway, with Xobni, Outlook got a 150% productivity boos. Outlook search is indeed slow -Xobni search is great and even runs if the Windows indexer is stopped. I like the attachment list of previous conversations and was recently pointed out on the statistics when people write to you. Why this is cool? Because when the have a peak at 2 p.m. writing emails, there is a high probability you might reach them also on the phone.
SmartFTP – that’s the FTP tool you should use. I have never tried anything else. But the splash screen sucks when using the personal version that comes for free. Maybe I will spend the 37 bucks one day to get rid of this annoying dialog.
For a while now there is a new release of RSS Bandit out there. So, finally I did upgrade my installation. The nice thing about RSS Bandit is indeed its very nice integration with Windows Live Writer, del.icio.us, Twitter… any alternatives out there? Wondering what anybody else is using…
Being tired of typing http://dict.tu-chemnitz.de into my browser’s address bar when looking for an English expression, I created a Beolingus De-En translation button for the Windows Live Toolbar.
I’ve submitted the button to the Windows Live Gallery, and it can now be downloaded from here.
Or whatever other language you prefer. Windows Live Translator went online and allows you to translate what other people are talking to you. First you need to install the Windows Live Toolbar and add the button.
Ypu can also add the translator button directly to a site. The code can be found here. Simply adding the code to the your site.
For some days, it looks like there are some issues with the Akismet API. A couple of SPAM entries found their way into my blog not being monitored by the service at all. Now I decided to give ReverseDOS a try.
It’s a small HttpModule developed by Michael K. Campbell. Let’s see what he is going to say about ReverseDOS:
“ReverseDOS is a very simple HttpModule that checks various parts of incoming requests against a list of crap that you don’t want pushed on to your site. If ReverseDOS detects a match, it attempts to stall the requesting client for a number of seconds (specified in a .config file). During this loop, which uses virtually no server resources – and only a tiny smidgen of bandwidth, ReverseDOS checks every .3 seconds to see if the client is still connected. If the spammer disconnects, good riddance. If the spammer sticks around, they’re finally rewarded with the Response Headers – containing an HTTP 403 – Access Denied Response Code.”
Does not sound too bad, does it? Since I run my own server now it is a cinch to get it run. Deployment is quite easy, copying the bits, the configuration file and adding one line to your Web.config. Following the installation instructions, it took a few minutes to get everything set up. So far, it looks like it runs fine with dasBlog 2.0. I’ll give the default configuration file a try, before I see what to add there.
The careful observer realized that I am using Twitter for microblogging for a while. I tried a couple of tools such as Twadget for the Vista sidebar. I created also some Jabber account to post using the IM feature of Twitter. Jabber doesn’t work for me since I can’t connect to the server from within corporate network. The tool I finally ended up with is Twhirl. I haven’t found any time to play with all the features. It is based on Adobe’s ARI runs quite smooth and makes it a lot more fun to twitter. Only fact I am disappointed about is the footprint of almost 30 MB. Anyway, the tool is worth a look if you are using Twitter especially since it is also available for Mac OSX. Go and try it and follow me.
To keep updated, I am just starting publishing my free/busy times to Office Online. First of all, register with Office Online, this shouldn’t take that long if you have already a Windows Live account.
Open Outlook and chose the calendar you want to publish by right-clicking it in the task pane.
Now select ‘Publish to Internet’ and then ‘Publish to Office Online…’. After doing some registration you can finally choose the options for publishing the calendar.
We are going to choose the granularity of details we want to publish. In my case I choose the ‘Availability only’ option.
Then I am going to allow everybody to see these availability times. If you are going to publish more details, you might want to consider to share your calendar only with invited users.
At the end I am going to check the ‘Advanced Options’.
In this case, I am fine with the automatic uploads. After confirming, the initial upload is performed. In the task pane you’ll now find another icon for your calendar indicating that it is shared.
Finally, my free/busy times are now available.
After upgrading to the Windows Search 4.0 Preview, I was quite happy about the new “index now” and “pause” functionality, finally provided by the preview. Brandon Paddock now came along with the missing tool to control the indexer.
Download, install and run. Works perfectly. No more locking down my system due to SearchIndexer.exe.