While Google Translate is probably the most popular online translation service, there are others that may be less popular but are often equally good when it comes to translating contents into other languages. Microsoft’s Translation service is without doubt not as popular as Google’s service. The service is available over at Microsoft Translator. It works [...]

Text Lightning is a free Microsoft Outlook add-in that integrates seamlessly into the desktop email client. The add-in offers a host of features that improve productivity, from one-click insertion of text, images and files to customizing text templates, one click searching and message archiving with a single click. Installation of the Microsoft Outlook add-on should [...]

While various charts are added easily to Microsoft Office PowerPoint or Excel, it is not guaranteed that the resulting charts look visually appealing. Especially the axis labeling and scaling is often causing readability problems. Chart Chooser is a free service by Juice Analytics that offers 17 new Powerpoint and Excel charts that are provided as [...]

Today I’m going to take a look at another lightweight Linux (and UNIX-like) file manager (and this time I WON’T get the name wrong) called emelFM2. This particular file manager will pull at the heart-strings of old school Linux and UNIX users because it is based on the old Norton Commander file manager (which was [...]

You sometimes may need to send large files to friends, colleagues or other people on the Internet. Think about photos of the last party that you want to share with someone, or a new music album, video, document or application. Email is the obvious choice for many, mainly because everyone has an email client (be [...]

Continuing with our look into OpenSuSE, we examine YaST. One of the best things going for OpenSuSE (and SuSE as well) is their take on the tried and true “control panal” YaST. YaST is, quite literally, a one-stop-shop for configuring Linux. Among the cornucopia of Linux configuration tools, YaST might very well be the top of the [...]

It’s widely believed that Amazon S3 offers the best storage on the internet amongst all cloud platforms. It’s a great web service which works like a charm with high volumes of data and allows developers to develop highly scalable solutions. As with any web service, when the volume of data increases, the complexity increases as [...]

The trash (or “Recycle bin”) is a sane concept of our operating systems. A file sent to the trash can be recovered if the user realizes the file was still needed after all. Now, the problem is: when should you empty the trash? If you never empty it, it grows and wastes valuable disk space [...]

Recently I showed you how to get the open source osTicket up and running (see my article “Install osTicket for a free – open source – help desk tool“). That article only got the tool installed. But now what? How do you make that tool come to life and serve as your one and only [...]

Nagios is not just a tool, it’s one of the best open source network monitors available. Nagios has a simple plug-in design that allows administrators to easily create their own checks and monitors. The problem that so many see with Nagios is that it is supposedly so difficult to install. That is not the case. [...]

FTP Sync is a free command line application to synchronize files between two ftp sites or local directories. Its main purpose is to automate the synchronization of files between two ftp servers or between a ftp server and a local directory. This can be helpful for instance for webmasters or coders who design their websites [...]

Every now and then we look back at services that we have reviewed before. Print What You Like was reviewed by us in 2008. It is an online service that allows a user to optimize printing jobs before they are send to the printer. It is limited to optimizing printouts of websites and offers controls [...]

Tags are an essential part of nearly every WordPress blog. Webmasters use tags to categorize posts. One side-effect of tagging posts in WordPress is that these tags are sometimes indexed by search engines. Visitors from those search engines will then see a page containing excerpts of the posts that have been tagged with that tag. [...]

Just a little heads up for you guys. Safari’s new update has been released. Mac OS 10.5.x and 10.6.x can update right now. Check your software update if you have not been notified yet. Screenshot on the other side. It improves on three major points and one of them is better stability for third-party plug-ins. [...]

The folks at Mac are at it again. They are offering to give you 6 great Mac apps completely for free. if you were to buy them individually, you would have to pay $154 for them. But in the MacHeist’s NanoBundle, they will be yours for free. Do not lose any time and get over [...]

The Ubuntu desktop distribution is full of nifty tricks. One of those tricks is the ability to create a bootable USB Ubuntu drive quickly and easily. Used to be this trick wasn’t so easy. Not only did you have to format the USB drive, you had to manually create the file systems, copy the files, [...]

When I switched to a Mac, I did not purchase an iPod for a few months. I previously had a Creative Zen Vision M media player. Unfortunately, this device was not mass storage, but utilised ‘Media Transfer Protocol’. Whilst several pieces of software on Windows provide the facility to move music to the device, OS [...]

Google Reader is the website I open more than any other. Except maybe Gmail, but that’s always open. Totally doesn’t count. Point is, I use Google Reader a lot. I use it to follow blogs and websites, to keep track of all my favorite people, and much, much more. Reader’s the center of all my [...]

On top of being a technical writer I am also a writer of novels. Writing novels is a much different beast than writing tutorials, reviews, and documentation. Writing novels requires some serious organizational skills. You have to keep track of characters, storylines, plot devices, etc. Keeping those pieces in their proper place demands more brain [...]

To many Thunar is just a file manager. But if you’ve played around with it you know it is much, much more. You may remember my previous article “Create custom actions with the Thunar file manager” which shows you one method of extending the application. There is one extra tool that comes with Thunar which [...]

ATutor is an open source Content Managment System (CMS) focused on education and the class room.  If you think about it, a CMS is the perfect springboard for the creation of a tool designed to manage a class. With a CMS you get: Communication, Content management, file storage, feedback, FAQ, forums, news and announcements, and [...]

I host my website on shared hosting. My connection is too slow and unreliable to justify running my own server and I have no need to hire a dedicated server or a VPS. Consequently, many other websites are hosted on the same box as mine and I have often wondered their nature. In addition to [...]

I’m a student. I’m also a writer, a researcher, and a number of other things that all seem to involve a ton of research. Particularly that student thing. An increasing number of us, regardless of what we do, rely on the Web to get information, do research, and get work done. For most of us [...]

Computer software packages that can be loaded on an usb device seem to become more common these days. Many experienced computer users maintain a collection of computer troubleshooting and recovery tools on a DVD or removable device which comes in very handy when troubleshooting computer problems. Liberkey is another portable computer software collection that can [...]

Yesterday I sat down at my main desktop PC to do some work and, out of nowhere, error message after error message popped up informing me the hard drive was at 100% capacity which meant the operating system had no room to write to. This baffled me as I was 100% sure there should have [...]

If you are one of those users who use the two-finger typing technique you might want to invest some time in a typing course to improve your words per minute count. Several free computer typing courses are available on the Internet. One of them is Typing Web’s Online Typing Tutor which can be accessed by [...]

Evernote used to be a quite little commercial app which a few people knew about. It wasn’t bad, but then someone thought that there was much more potential in a market dominated mostly by OneNote. So they went free and since then it has been booming for Evernote, their newest release will let you use [...]

No matter what hard drive size you have, if you spend a lot of time on your computer, you will fill it up eventually. A lot of times I have 1Gb stuff which I don’t need and can safely throw out, I just never bump into these because they are outside my normal file browsing [...]

The biggest time saver you can implement in your coding practices is some sort of searchable database of all the data you need when you’re working on a project. I mean code snippets, images, data sets, tips & tricks, whatever you use a lot and can be copy pasted. A great way to manage these [...]

I think I just found the best screen capture software ever, or at least the best looking one. The aptly named PrtScr is originally intended to fill the void created by the Windows snipping tool which can only be found on tablet Vistas and some other select distributions. It has the same basic functionality, with [...]

Often you will be certain that you have a DVD but cannot remember where you placed it or if you lent it someone. The best way to keep track of your possessions is to catalogue them, allowing you to remind yourself of where they are, but also letting you quickly value them. It may seem [...]

It seems that Gmail is set to read your mind, it now suggests recipients to your emails! No, Mr Brin and Page are not inside your head, the application simply monitors groups you frequently send emails to. If you frequently send emails and sometimes there are some “crossovers”, this is a handy feature which can [...]

I’ve been searching for a Photoshop replacement for a while, and the obvious choice was GIMP, although I never really liked it much. I am 100% sure that GIMP is an awesome application, but to me it just doesn’t feel right. So instead, I gave Paint.net another go, an application which I have tried before, [...]

I use a lot of applications and now that Luanchy is so great I can do this relatively quickly. However, there is another app that allows even simpler launching, and not just for applications, but for folders, text files, anything you need. PS Hot Launch VVL is an applications that lets you bind any application, [...]

Everyone should back their data up in case their computer suddenly fails or is even lost or stolen. Many will back their data up on mediums like external hard drives, but it requires a certain amount of disciple to remember to hook your laptop up to one. Another problem with backing data up on such [...]

We had a look at how you use your medial player not long ago and I’ve taken a look at some of the ones you mentioned  I particularly liked Billy (thanks for the tip Xaro), a no-frills (but also no complications) music player, which does exactly what I want it to do. Play my music [...]

In today’s world of internet connections and everything readily available at the push of a button, do we really need 1Gb of printer drivers? Ok, that goes for Vista, not XP, but XP still has a bunch of camera drivers, printer drivers, scanning devices and a whole lot of things we don’t ever need, since [...]

A few months ago, Mozilla generated lots of buzz through its Geode extension, which locates users through the WiFi access point they were using. Other popular tools have similar features, such as ‘Locate me’ on iPod Touches. So, a very interesting question is how does such technology work? They consult a service called Skyhook Wireless. [...]

If you do any work on your computer, especially if you do some sort of writing, a keystroke counter isn’t just a fun tool for stats, it can be a serious output measurement device. I’ve taken a look at some tools available to do this, and surprisingly there is not too much out there. Two [...]

SSH is a way to remotely and securely access command prompt/terminal on another computer, giving you access to that computer’s files, services, network connections and programs. Some services offer free SSH accounts, to edit and access files anywhere, host websites, use them as proxies (or IPv6 gateways) and some even let you run processes like [...]

gHacks has a diverse range of editors, living in, amongst other places, the UK, Germany and Hungary. All write in the medium of English, but learning a foreign language is no easy task. I am currently trying to learn French and German and often find myself using many computer-based resources to ease my learning, some [...]

If you are a teacher or have any need for a classroom-based Wiki project, I have the perfect solution for you. I discovered CourseForum a few years back when I was looking for a web-based software that could help a peer create a web site for her class that could help students stay organized. There [...]

While looking for something completely different I found a handy little tool called Bookmarked Reporter which can parse your site (or use an XML sitemap) and create a report of the delicious bookmark count for all the sub pages. This is great for blogs with many posts, it makes everything easier to track. Once you [...]

While taking a look at my calendar today I noticed that Google has rolled out their offline feture for Google Calendar, and after some searching I found that this is indeed the case for everyone. Since we have become so reliant on the web for everything this should come in handy for times when your [...]

Your hard disk space may seem increasingly small but you may not be aware what is taking the space. I, for example, subscribed to dozens of podcasts but naively overlooked them when trying to clear space. In fact, they took up 5GB of space! Whilst disk space is no longer seen as a problem, considering [...]

There are a number of reasons you would need to an archive. You might need to create backup archives of files, or you might want to be able to store project files together. Whatever your reason, the GNOME File Roller tool makes creating archives simple. File Roller is the Winzip of Linux. Of course you [...]

Recently I installed the amazing desktop Elive Compiz. After getting it up and running I decided I needed to get some screencasts of the desktop in order to show off what it could do. I thought the task would be simple. It wasn’t. Although there are plenty of applications to handle capturing videos of a [...]

Generally, I geotag my photos using Flickr’s Organizr. Unfortunately, I often find Yahoo! Maps to be much worse than Google Maps and whilst recently tagging some photos of Northern France and Flanders, I simply found it intolerable (being unfamiliar with placenames etc). I began to reminisce about the days when geotagging was somewhat more complex [...]

ZumoDrive is a online storage service that follows an easy to grasp concept. Today’s users use a variety of devices including desktop computers, laptops, netbooks, mobile phones and pda. Some data is required to be on all devices, be it documents, media files like music or other files. Copying large amounts of data across multiple [...]

As someone who spends most of the day in front of his laptop I frequently forget things like “Wake me in an hour please”, or “Can you tell me to come out of the bath in 20 minutes?”. Not that I forget, just if I’m enjoying my work time flies by. Cooktimer is a small [...]