July 2007

I’ve created a group over on Tangler for the discussion of the best free software. If you have any suggestions for reviews, or any comments regarding freeware in general, that’s the place for it.

In case you’ve not heard of it before, Tangler is like a message board or forum, but runs in real time. It’s very easy to use and is becoming popular, particularly with new Web 2.0 startups. It’s worth a look, even if you don’t wish to join in the BestFreeApps discussion.

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Here’s an application that covers all my requirements for a slick piece of software - simple to use and efficient. Texter, from LifeHacker, is, at heart, a macro recorder. I’ve tried many in the past, but most of them seemed to require more work than the work it was meant to simplify!

The idea is very simple - define some text you frequently type, for example your email signature. Give that text a shortcut, such as #sig and a “Trigger”, such as the space key. Then, when you need to enter that text, simply type #sig, hit the space bar and there’s your text. You can enter Script as well as plain text. So, let’s expand on the email signature example. The screenshot below shows the script for the signature I use when emailing about my Flight Simulator site (which you can find here, in case you’re tempted to look!):

So now, when I press #fsig and the space bar, I get the following on screen:

Cheers,

Mark

—
FlightSimX - http://www.flightsimx.co.uk
Join the Flight Simulator Network - http://.flightsimulator.ning.com

Now, how many key presses a year is that going to save me?

You can write scripts for just about anything you can use the keyboard for. This program really is a godsend. I do a lot of coding in my day-to-day work, and this is great for code-snippets etc.

Texter also supports clipboard support. Simply place %c anywhere in the script and it’ll be replaced with whatever’s in your clipboard at the time you execute it. You can also insert %| in the script and the cursor will be positioned to that point once executed.

Texter sits unobtrusively in the Windows Task Bar and can insert text into any Windows application. If you find yourself constantly entering the same text, you owe it to yourself and your keyboard to give this application a try.

Flock have released version 0.9 beta of their web browser as a Release Candidate.

I’ve been trying it over the last day or so and whilst it retains all that was unique about Flock from its initial release, it’s added some new touches.

The obvious of these is the “My World” tab which opens when you launch the browser. This is, effectively, a very cut down version of NetVibes, functionality wise. It contains Favorite Sites, Favorite Feeds (which links to the updated internal news reader) and Favorite Media. I’ll have to use these some more before I’m convinced they’re better than my normal tools, e.g. Google Reader.

It has a brand new theme which looks pretty slick, but obviously adds nothing functionality wise.

They’ve added Ma.gnolia to the favorites sharing, and dropped (their word!) Shadows, although no explanation has been given.

There are more blog services provided for the built-in blog editor, although my initial impressions are that it’s still nowhere near as flexible as Windows Live Writer.

It has retained the excellent photo bar (now named the Media Minibar, although I couldn’t get it to dispense any drinks) making it very easy to drag photos from, say, your Flickr account into a document.

It’s early days, but my initial thoughts are that there’s some good stuff in there, but nothing eye-popping. I can’t see me stopping using my current news reader or my current blog editor. Firefox has plenty of extensions to allow me to use my del.icio.us account as I want to. My World’s not a patch on NetVibes or any other number of aggregators. I’ll keep trying it for now, but I won’t be throwing away my existing suite of apps just yet.

Not so much software as a service, but it is free!

If you’ve not heard of Feedburner before, they provide a much more robust method for you to handle your RSS feed for your web site or blog. Recently acquired by Google, they are now offering their Pro service for free, which offers additional stats, e.g. “Reach”, which lets you know how many people have actioned an item from your feed.

If you’ve not used them before, I’d recommend them. I’ve been using the Wordpress plugin to handle the RSS feed here at BestFreeApps and on FlightSimX and it provides a wealth of information relating to your feed.