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Showing posts from October, 2007

OxygenOffice Professional: OpenOffice on steroids

OxygenOffice Professional (previously called OpenOffice.org Premium) is an enhanced version of the multi-platform office productivity suite, OpenOffice.org, that contains additional materials like templates, cliparts, samples, fonts and VBA support.

Increase productivity with Piky Basket, the file copy-paste manager

Piky Basket is a software that can reduce repetitive tasks when copying/moving files and folders in Windows. Say, you have to copy several files from several different locations to one folder. You have to tackle this task by copying and then pasting files from each of the location to the destination folder, one by one. It's like copy-paste, copy-paste, copy-paste and so on. How about copy, copy, copy and then paste all at once? This is what Piky Basket will do for you.

Increase productivity with Ditto, the clipboard manager

One thing that Windows lack is a clipboard manager. If you are unsure what a clipboard manager does and when you can use it, then let me give you an example. Suppose you are working on a document and you have two more documents open, doc A and doc B, as reference from where you are taking data and other snippets of information while preparing your document. Say, you have a certain piece of text X that you have to insert repeatedly at a number of position on your document. Apart from that, every now and then you are copy pasting lines, tables and other pieces of information from doc A and doc B to your own document. Now since you have only one clipboard, i.e. at any time only one object can be copied to the clipboard, every time you have to insert the text X you have to copy it and then paste it and then it would be replaced by some other item and again you have to copy it the next time you paste it. A lot of time is wasted in copying the same item over and over again. This is when a cl

Artweaver: Finally a free Photoshop clone

Artweaver is a Windows Freeware image editing program that can simulate natural brush tools. Artweaver offers you a clear program window, which can be used without training immediately. It looks very similar to Photoshop, unlike Gimp which has a weird look with too many individual windows. Anybody who is used to Photoshop's interface finds it diffcult to work on Gimp and prefer to work on Photoshop, even though Gimp is capable of minor to moderate photo editing and retouching of images. But with Artweaver you will find completely at ease. And it's only 8.4 MB!!

15 Free CD/DVD burning alternatives to Nero

When it comes to CD or DVD burning, the software most people tend to use is Nero. But Nero isn't the be all and end all of CD burning solutions. There are other softwares as well that perform much better than Nero in terms of resource usage and speed. Here is a list of 15 free burning softwares that you can use in place of Nero.

Windows fonts that shouldn't be deleted

Windows usually come with a lot of fonts to help you stylize your documents. Some of the fonts are pretty and nice while some others are just simply horrible. Nobody actually uses all these fonts. And if you install some graphics or publishing software like those from Corel and Adobe, they install some more fonts of their own. So when you are editing a document and desire to change the font you will find yourself scrolling through hundreds of fonts which is both tedious and annoying. Apart from that, the more the fonts you have on your system the more is the time required for Windows to startup. So it's always advisable to limit the number of fonts installed on your system.

JPEG, GIF and PNG: When to use what?

JPEG, GIF and PNG are all image file formats that provide a standardized method of organizing and storing image data. The file format most commonly seen is the JPEG. Almost all images and photographs are stored in the JPEG format. Even digital cameras use JPEG to save photos. Another image format that we see often in web pages is the GIF format. You must have noticed that the same web site sometimes contain both JPEG and GIF images. Why do they use different formats? Why not stick with one? Let's try to find out the reason and advantages of using different image file formats and learn when to use what.

Scribus: Open source alternative to Adobe Pagemaker

Scribus is powerful desktop publishing (DTP) software that helps you create professional looking documents of all kinds. It has a broad feature set of page layout features comparable to leading commercial applications such as Adobe PageMaker.

Absolute Color Picker: A must have for web designers

Absolute Color Picker is a free software for webmasters and web-designers. This is a simple application based on Absolute Color Picker ActiveX Control that lets you select and pick colors by means of various color models and convert them into HTML-based hexadecimal representation. Being a great compact color designer it features a free color picker, color scheme generator, color history builder, color scheme management system, screen color grabber and much more.