Routine Order

Here’s an amazing example of how the same thing, or almost the same thing can come in various shades of free. I have been looking high and low for software that helps me help family members without their having to jump through firewalls, setup VNC and play with port forwarding setting on the router.

Fogcreek’s copilot is the first candidate for such a remote desktop solution. See the demo. It helps you help someone over TightVNC. The copilot website acts as a go-between helping you connect your desktop to that of the person you are helping. The downside is price - copilot is not free, though it is built upon TightVNC which is free - both in terms of price, and the freedom to build on. Fogcreek’s copilot costs $5 per day (if you buy their daypass). I can pay for it, no problem, I thought, but then I found crossloop.

Crossloop is the free equivalent of Copilot, as it is free for use. You ask the person you are helping to download the software and install it, by clicking “Next” a few times. Then you ask them to be the “Host”. The UI can’t be simpler - it has two tabs - “Join” and “host”. So after they setup their machine as a host, you get a number/code to enter in the “Join” tab and you are connected. It uses TightVNC too, as listed on the page about Crossloop’s technology, so it is essentially the same as FogCreek’s Copilot.

CrossLoop promises much, and I can see myself promoting this among my own little circle of friends and coworkers. It is ideal when you want to connect to a friend’s PC. I wish it worked on Linux/Mac systems though. Copilot works on Macs too. Of course, if anything I said above is incorrect, or if there are any better tools, please let me know.

CleanUp! is a powerful and easy-to-use application that removes temporary files created while surfing the web, empties the Recycle Bin, deletes files from your temporary folders and more.

CleanUp! frees disk space and reduces the “clutter” on your computer helping it to run more efficiently. It also can be used as a way to protect your privacy on the Internet. You can even instruct CleanUp! to securely delete files making it impossible to retrieve their contents using lower-level disk tools - just another way of protecting your privacy.

I tried it, it works - often I stumble upon files in my computer that I don’t know the purpose for, and I let them be, lest my computer crash on me at random some day in the future. I rand CleanUp! on this computer a month ago, and nothing bad has happened, so I guess I can vouch for its safety. It gave me an extra 3.5 GB of free space by deleting a lot of unnecessary crud, and this goes beyond just emptying the recycle bin and the temporary internet files. The options are simple and easy to follow, and I loved the experience of using it, in general. Highly recommended to spring clean your Windows machine.

“We pride ourselves in offering some of the most comprehensive comparisons between Apple and Microsoft’s operating systems on the Internet.”

Quite a commendable goal - will make deciding between Windows and OSX much easier. Or more difficult, if you are the kind who is confused by your brain, and prefer to decide with your “heart” instead.

This list of features for comparing the GUIs of Windows XP and OSX is interesting - I have often wondered about how best to compare the GUIs of two different OSes/Desktop environments. If there was a scientific, standard way of evaluating GUIs, we’d know for sure which of GNOME and KDE are better!

Oh, here’s the final score of the OSX Vs. XP comparison, by the way. OSX comes out on top.

Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP: Virtual Desktop Manager: Manage up to four desktops from the Windows taskbar with this PowerToy. This is so cool - not!

There are so many other clones out there, little apps, some freeware, some not that provide the same feature - that of having more than one “desktop” in Windows.

Linux operating systems have had this feature for ages, and were it not for my multiple desktops, I would have lost sanity a long time ago. The windows “power toy” only shows you a list of four buttons on your taskbar - click the number to go to the desktop with that number, in Linux, you see small screencaps of the four virtual desktops, and in some window managers, you can drag and drop items from one virtual desktop to another using icons in the pager. You also can specify default virtual desktops for different applications and have all your startup programs to start in particular locations on the different virtual desktops.

Windows, apparently, has a little catching up to do in some areas, before it measures up to, say, Ubuntu.

If you take Peter Coffee’s word for the 25 Killer Apps of All Time, then you will end up with the astonishing fact that only about 10% of the greatest killer apps of all time have been developed in the last decade.

I call BS! A decade ago, the internet was slower than my dog, and less tentacled than an octopus. The guy must have had enough sense to call it the top 25 innovative, or path-breaking, or first-of-their kind apps. But the list is none of those, either.

And, of course, not one of those apps is a Linux App, though there are a lot of Windows-sepcific apps, and a whole OS - OSX. The last time I checked, an OS was significantly different from an app. This trend of almost anyone turning tech guru and throwing up lists is alarming - I hope the next year will bring with it a few less top-X lists.

Mirek’s Free MWSnap Windows Software is a small yet powerful Windows program for snapping (capturing) images from selected parts of the screen.

The current version is capable of capturing the whole desktop, a highlighted window, an active menu, a control, or a fixed or free rectangular part of the screen. I find it very handy for creating presentations, tutorials etc. You can configure keyboard shortcuts for the different kinds of screenshots you take, and it will save the picture files in a directory with serial order numbers!

MWSnap also contains several graphical tools: a zoom, a ruler, a color picker and a window spy, and a fast picture viewer or converter. Installation is real simple, and it works beautifully - did I mention you can even minimize it to the system tray, so it’s running in the background - ready to take screencaps when you bid it to? MWSnap is freeware, so no bugging “register now” or “buy now” messages, ever!