Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on January 09, 2007 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

We have officially plowed our way into the New Year, and it’s time that we all should focus on working even more efficiently. To help us get that done Donation Coder has started the N.A.N.Y. (New Apps for the New Year) Challenge to present new applications to save you time. All of the available programs (totaling 24 right now) have simple concepts but for some of us they will conquer big tasks.

–Backup Revision Folder (Homepage)–

Have you ever accidentally saved over a document just to realize later on that you need something that you already got rid of? This program will help eliminate that problem from occurring, but I wouldn’t exactly say it is the easiest thing in the world to use. Not because it is complicated, but more because the prompts can get annoying if you are a frequent file saver like I am.

To use this program you simply place a file in the “monitored” folder. Then, every time that you save the file it will ask you for details on the changes that occurred since the last time that you saved it. After receiving that information it will add it to the log and make a backup copy of the file in a designated backup folder. Personally, I am always afraid of not saving too often so my fingers often rest in the “Ctrl+S” position when not typing. For that reason this quickly became annoying because I save often…and seeing a pop-up every time defeated my productivity. This should definitely have a “no pop-up” mode but the preferences seem to lack that.

Note: Installation is required to use this application.

–What’s Its Color (Homepage)–

This creation isn’t actually a program that you download, instead it’s a website that does the processing. It has you upload an image to their server and then it will analyze it pixel by pixel for the complimentary and primary dominant colors throughout the photo.

Obviously there are some background colors in photos from time to time so this offers the option to remove the background color from the processing. For security sake they will delete your image after 10 minutes, and it is renamed to prevent other people from directly accessing it.

Now you’ll know the answer the next time you ask “what’s that color?”

Note: No installation is required.

–WorkCoach (Homepage)–

Keep track of how your time is spent with WorkCoach! Are you constantly visiting websites, playing games, or do you actually do what you’re supposed to? There will be no more wondering once you get this free application installed!

In just seconds you can have WorkCoach setup to monitor what you spend your time doing on your PC. It is wonderfully configurable so that you can tell it to watch for certain applications and even get more specific my specifying a portion of what appears in the title of the window. That means you can have it watch your Web browser for “CyberNet” to appear in the title and that will allow you to keep track of how often you view our site.

This could also be useful for anyone who gets paid by how much time they spend working on a specific project, like creating a website. The developer also says that he would like to implement an option of having it notify you when a budget has been reached or a timer expires, which would really work well for anyone trying to manage multiple projects and divide time equally.

Note: Installation is required to use this application.

–PesterMe (Homepage)–

If you have a hard time remembering to do something, PesterMe is the answer. It lets you manually set a reminder duration and some text that it will pop-up with at the interval that you specify.

As you can see in the screenshots to the right there really isn’t much to the application. It is kept to the bare minimum but there is also a System Tray icon that you can use to have it stop pestering you or to configure what it is pestering you about. So when something needs to get done…there is no better way to remember than to receive the pop-ups that we all normally dread! Oh yeah…and it can play a sound as well.

Note: No installation is required.

–Virtual Resolution (Homepage)–

I have seen several programs do similar things to this, but this is by far the simplest. When developing applications or testing websites it is always nice to know exactly what things look like at certain resolutions. Virtual Resolution will draw a frame on the screen based upon certain dimensions that you choose. You can then use that as a guideline to adjust any of the given windows to the same size.

The only thing that would be nice to have seen this done is automatically resize specified windows. There are freeware programs that already do exactly that and WindowSize one of them. Just enter in your dimension using one of the preset values or your own value, and then choose the window you want it to resize. Anyone that writes applications or websites will find one of these two programs useful!

Note: No installation is required for both Virtual Resolution and WindowSize.

–TPClock (Homepage)–

I saved this one for last because it is more just for fun. TPClock is a binary clock for your System Tray, but I highly recommend that you become familiar with binary before this things drives you insane! In the screenshot to the right I have it setup to show the hours on the first line (at the top), minutes on the second line, and seconds on the bottom line. At that time the clock is showing “22:17:49″ which is equivalent to 10:17:49 PM. You can change the colors that are used but in this example the dark blue represents a binary “1″ and the lighter blue represents a binary “0.”

While the appearance of the clock isn’t bad it just doesn’t seem to layout the binary like I would want it to. Another free application, called Scott’s Binary Clock, breaks it up into digits so that it is much quicker to read. Doing it the way that clock does means that the largest number you have to add up in the conversion is 8…but that also means you’ll have more digits that you’ll have to convert. Also, with Scott’s program you can switch it into “12-hour” mode which is something I definitely need. So what’s the downside to that program? It doesn’t offer a System Tray version of the clock…instead it just sits quietly on your desktop which is something some of you might like more anyways.

Note: No installation is required for TPClock but you do have to install Scott’s Binary Clock if you decide to try it.

–Overview–

I’m sure you’ll find one or more of those programs to be useful. I think my favorite is TPClock just because it confuses so many people…including myself from time to time (literally). We also want to thank Donation Coder for naming CyberNet one of the “Favorite Website Discoveries” of 2006. We look forward to seeing more quality software that increases productivity!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Your Week in Review with Sunday’s SummaryDonationCoder’s 35 Free “New Year” AppsDonation Coder’s New Apps for the New YearMore Freeware Apps from DonationCoderYour Week in Review with Sunday’s Summary

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