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Welcome to Clif Notes Newsletter

March 11, 2007

  
Hi Everyone.

Thanks for reading my newsletter. Each week, I will have freeware reviews, tips, tricks, news, and lots of cool websites for you to check out.

I hope you enjoy this week's letter. Be sure to write me for advice or yell at me for messing up.

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  1. Welcome to Clif Notes Newsletter
  2. REVIEWS
    1. Explorer Breadcrumbs - making MS Explorer a little better
    2. Xyplorer - better than Explorer can do
    3. Network Traffic Monitor
    4. PageBreeze - a free WYSIWYG webpage editor
    5. Little Setup Builder - create your own installers
    6. Asteroids+Plus - the game I wish I had way back when
    7. Sumatra PDF viewer - better than Adobe bloatware?
    8. Old Newsletter
  3. TIPS AND FEEDBACK
    1. Daylight Savings Time Bug?
    2. Online Word Processor Comparison
    3. Comments last week
  4. COOL WEBSITES
    1. Omnidrive - 1GB of free file space for sharing online
    2. Freeware for the Kids - the PricelessWare list for kids
    3. Websites I've visited recently
  5. NEW NEWS
    1. SnapFiles.com - new and updated freeware
    2. News from Sarah in Tampa
    3. Security news from Malware Advisor
  6. OTHER STUFF
    1. Chatting at FreewareWiki
    2. Frapper - you people live all over the world!
    3. Write your own review
    4. What do you have to say?


REVIEWS

Explorer Breadcrumbs - making MS Explorer a little better

review from ClifNotes, Mar 2007, permalink File Management

I've often tried alternatives to the Windows Explorer file browser. If a person could keep adding more features to it, it'd actually be a great tool instead of the same old Explorer it's always been. Explorer Breadcrumbs is one of those add-ons that really does help. I like it and so far it's been pretty stable. This may not be true on some systems, so be sure to set a restore point before trying it out.

click to expand picture
Quote from the website
Rather than navigating step-by-step through your folder hierarchy -- view your folders quickly and go directly to any location with a single click.

Explorer Breadcrumbs is an add-in for Windows Explorer which contains a contextual series of buttons that allows you to quickly see and navigate through the entire folder hierarchy without leaving the current window.

Features:

1. Saves time navigating through folders and files
2. Seamless integration with Windows Explorer
3. Changes appearance along with Windows themes

Windows XP, 2003, 2000, and 98/ME
http://minimalist.com/docs/ExplorerBreadcrumbs/


Xyplorer - better than Explorer can do

review from ClifNotes, Mar 2007, permalink File Management

You know Explorer, it's the file browser that pops up when you double click on "My Computer" on Windows systems. Most folks are either happy with Explorer the way it is, or they either don't know that there are alternatives. I've tried several free Explorer replacements and this is one of the best. I wasn't expecting much but I was really impressed by super fast previews and awesome file searching. To try out the search feature I searched for all exe's on my C drive and it found them in an amazing 72 seconds. For this feature alone, I may replace the My Computer icon with Xyplorer.

click to expand picture
Quote from the website
XYplorer (formerly TrackerV3) is an Advanced File System Explorer targeting everybody who is looking for a real alternative to the Windows Explorer. Features: Tabbed Browsing, High end find files engine with tremendous power and amazing speed, Instant preview of image, Thumbnails of image files , Instant preview of installed and uninstalled font files, Instant preview of HTML, MHT, PHP files, Instant display of complete file/version information for each selected file, Various revolutionary highlighting features add more visual grip to the folder tree, File Info Tips and MP3 Info Tips, etc., etc...

http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/page22.html#XYplorer


Network Traffic Monitor

review from ClifNotes, March 2007, permalink Network Monitoring

Network Traffic Monitor is an easy way to check to see what applications are connecting to the internet and how often. I was really surprised to see all the ports that a web browser listens on. NTM is fairly small and also gives you the ability to export it's monitoring to a text log.

click to expand picture
Quote from the website
Network Traffic Monitor shows you which processes in your machine are causing TCP/IP network traffic, how much traffic that is, and over which IP ports this traffic takes place. For each process it can show detailed information, including the path to the process executable. Network Traffic Monitor can give you a historic overview of the network traffic since the application was started, and save that info to a file for later examination.

OS: Windows XP
http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/page2.html#ntm


PageBreeze - a free WYSIWYG webpage editor

review from ClifNotes, Mar 2007, permalink HTML Editors

I have a tough time passing up the chance to try out different web page editors. I've seen PageBreeze recommended by several people so I finally tried it. I'm pretty rusty when it comes to page design but PageBreeze's WYSIWYG editor really makes it easy for even a beginner. I did have some problems editing one old HTML page and the save feature seemed buggy and slow. That could just be a fluke so I can still recommend you try it if you need a good editor.

One last feature that may convince you to try it is that it includes a drag and drop HTML form builder. The author of PageBreeze also offers a free form submission service so you can quickly get feedback from visitors to your web site.

click to expand picture
Quote from the website

  • A full-featured but easy to use visual (WYSIWYG) HTML editor for creating web pages.
  • Our freeware visual editor is actually powered by Microsoft Internet Explorer. So you can always be sure you are seeing exactly what you will get.
  • Color-coded HTML source (tag) editor. You can switch between HTML source and visual modes at any time with a click of the mouse, and any changes you have made will instantly be reflected in both modes.
  • Preview mode lets you instantly see what your finished web page will look like in Microsoft Internet Explorer.
  • Included webpage templates and direct access to hundreds of free website templates to give you a fast start on creating a great looking site.
  • Drag-and-drop Form Builder makes it fast and easy to create powerful web forms.
  • Built-in integration with our form processing service, so you can make your web forms work almost instantly with no programming, scripts, or technical knowledge required.
  • Built-in in integration with our web knowledgebase, so you can easily add a 24x7 customer service system that will answer your customers' questions instantly.
http://www.pagebreeze.com/


Little Setup Builder - create your own installers

review from dhuser at DonationCoder, Feb 2007, permalink File Management

Note from Clif:
A person named "dhuser" has written a nice little review of Little Setup Builder. I rarely need this type of utility but I'll definitely try this one next time I do need one.

Review from dhuser:

Who is this app designed for:
- Software Developers
- New Users Wanting to Distrubite Their Products.

The Good
- Good program, easy to use
- Many Features
- Different Languages
- Installer Project Samples Given w/ Program

The needs improvement section
- I found that when I inserted an image into the installer (on the left side), I could not remove it from the dialog box.

Why I think you should use this product
LSB is one of the best installer tools I have found... Used it many times to package software

How does it compare to similar apps
It contains most of the features any software develper would want from a product.Generates EXE files.

Conclusions
LSB is a great tool, and along with other products, it works well.
read the rest of this review

Read more reviews at DonationCoder

click to expand picture
Quote from the website
Little Setup Builder is a setup-maker. That is, it builds a program that will be able to ship your application on a target computer and that will set up its environment for allowing your program to run properly. Such setup will follow the 'Windows installation guidelines' (a set of rules and suggestions that wants to plan the appearence and the behaviour of a compliant installer). It should be able to guide the user through the whole setup process, allowing him to understand what he is doing about and how to manage some possible errors.

Little Setup Builder home page
http://www.ammasw.com/LSB_Intro.html

PS: dhuser is also a freeware author and he told me this ...

Two sites that I run you can link to:
- DMS Online @ http://two.fsphost.com/dms
- QSale Point-of-Sale (My Free Software) @ http://one.fsphost.com/qsale


Asteroids+Plus - the game I wish I had way back when

review from ClifNotes, Mar 2007, permalink _ Games

Under review
Loved it. Played for about a half hour. Challenging but not too hard for newbies.

click to expand picture
Quote from the website
Asteroids+Plus is what Asteroids always wanted to be when it grew up. Utilize an arsenal of weapons and missiles against the alien armies that are bent on annihilating Earth. Pick up bonuses and take out asteroids and aliens to increase your score. When you're ready, face the ultimate alien boss in a final showdown.

http://cubex.de.googlepages.com/games#ap


Sumatra PDF viewer - better than Adobe bloatware?

review from ClifNotes, Mar 2007, permalink PDF Tools

Why would you want to use something other than the default Adobe Reader to view PDF documents online? I can think of two reasons, size and security.

Size?
Do you want to download and install the 27.5MB Adobe reader or the slightly less than 1MB Sumatra reader? I guess that depends on what you need it to do. If you just want to see the PDF file, I'd say Sumatra is fine. It's also a portable application that you can copy to a floppy disk or USB thumb drive to run on any PC.

Security?
I see security update notices on the Adobe Reader so often that I tend to ignore them. That's not good. Who knows when the update you didn't get will bite you in the rear? Sumatra doesn't do anything except view the PDF. That makes it almost bullet-proof from a hacker's point of view. It's also an Open Source program which makes it even harder to hack since so many people look at the code and offer their advice on making it even safer.

click to expand picture
Quote from the website
What is Sumatra PDF?

Sumatra PDF is a slim, free, open-source PDF viewer for Windows.
Why another PDF reader?

Sumatra has a minimalistic design. Simplicity has a higher priority than a lot of features.

It's small and starts up very fast.

It's designed for portable use: it's just one file with no external dependencies so you can easily run it from external USB drive.

http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/

Old Newsletter

I like to look back and see what I was thinking about. Here's another letter from the wayback machine.

http://freewarewiki.pbwiki.com/ClifNotesNewsletter040515





TIPS AND FEEDBACK

Daylight Savings Time Bug?

tip from JohnHood, Mar 2007, permalink Windows Tips

John Hood wrote me this week about the change in Daylight Savings time. It's here early this year and it seems that our PCs didn't know about this. I asked John what problems it could cause ...

John said:

Your computer clock and calendar will be an hour off for three weeks in the spring and one week in the fall. Not earth-shattering, but inconvenient; waaay less than the media hype surrounding it. Media is treating it like another Y2K.

The facts about the “Daylight Savings Bug”

The Scoop: It’s a lot of news hype. It’s not a bug, it’s just an update (unless you consider an Act of Congress, a bug).

I have Windows. Do I have to update? Reading Microsoft’s page on the matter, is an exercise in frustration.

Here’s my rundown, based on reading, meeting discussions of IT admins and general scuttlebutt.

Note this is only for Windows. If you have other Microsoft products, you’ll have to check and update them separately.

1: How to find out which version of Windows you have right-click the “My Computer” icon and go to “Properties”

Under “System” the listing of the Windows version and the service pack level.

Check it out below:

Windows Vista – You’re cool

Windows XP - You may be cool, but it really wouldn’t hurt to grab this thing http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931836/ or visit Http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com a couple of times to make sure.

Windows 2000 – You have to do it manually. Or use the unofficial Windows 2000 Update tool at IntelliAdmin: http://www.intelliadmin.com/blog/2007/01/unofficial-windows-2000-daylight.html -

Windows98 and WindowsME – again manual update a la Microsoft, or use the unofficial tool. http://www.intelliadmin.com/Daylight%20Saving%20Fix%20Download.asp

Be sure to visit John's website all about free software for your PC
http://www.jhoodsoft.org/

Here's what time it is where I live (Eastern Standard Time)


Online Word Processor Comparison

note from ClifNotes, Mar 2007, permalink Web Service

Like the fella below, I've come to the conclusion over time, that my time is best spent authoring most of my articles on the web and not as an application installed on a PC. It just makes sense. Fortunately for me, I've got lots of free wiki's to write stuff in. If I need a special document like a spreadsheet, I've been using Google's Docs & Spreadsheets to create them. My friend BillWebb recommends Zoho.

I found this great review of the most popular online document editors. It's worth reading ...

Quote from the website
I’ve been using a Word Doc to keep my notes and ideas in, but it has started getting long and it is a pain to keep a current copy between work (If my boss is reading this I only blog on my breaks) and my house. Sure there are a lot of options to remedy that. I could email it to myself or use a USB drive, but then I have to remember to take that extra step at the end. I also tried using Blogger’s New Post option and just saving my partial posts as drafts, but I kept accidentally posting half finished ones so that option is out. I decided using an online word processor is probably my best option. It lets me work on my partial posts from home or work without having to keep track of where the most recent copy of each one is since the most recent copy is always stored online. I checked out Zoho’s Writer, Writely Google Docs, AjaxWrite since they seem like the most common ones. read the rest

article from andymerrill.com

Comments last week

Thanks to everyone who commented on the articles last week. You gave me more ideas and some good advice. If you see comments on an article, you will be missing out if you don't click on them to take a look.

If you commented last week, check to see who commented on your comment!

Here are the comments from last week.

DriverMax - back up all of your WinXP or Vista drivers •
XMPlay - great internet radio and mp3 player •
Moveit - move installed applications to another hard drive •
Yugma - web conferencing software •
Letter Swapper - free game to flex your spelling muscles •
World upon Worlds - space theme for your desktop •

Reactions to Distractions - can drive you to distraction •
How do I overlay music on pictures? •

Carol's Corner Office - Microsoft Office tips and help •
A visit with Tom Mercado •





COOL WEBSITES

Omnidrive - 1GB of free file space for sharing online

review from ClifNotes, Mar 2007, permalink Web Service

I just ran into this service a day or two ago. I haven't had much time to play with it, but so far, I can't complain, even though I can't always get my links to work. After all, it's free space online that I can use almost any way that I can think of.

The website offers free space for you to store your files. The also provide a free utility that you can download and install. This Omnidrive utility creates a folder on your PC that you can drag and drop files into and out of. This kind of functionality is really convenient and I'm going to keep playing with it.

Here's what I see on my end.

Here's a file I'm trying to share. It's a photoshow from Tiffany.
Thesimplelife.pps

click to expand picture
Quote from the website
Omnidrive allows you to easily drag and drop files into Omnidrive online storage. With the web interface, you can edit common document types such as Word Documents in your web browser without the need for desktop software.

Right-click on any file or folder on your computer and Omnidrive will give you a public URL for that file or folder - all with a single click. Instantly publish any content to the web, embed it in your blog or send the URL in an email.

Free web service, also has paid deluxe accounts with more space and features
http://www.omnidrive.com/


Freeware for the Kids - the PricelessWare list for kids

review from ClifNotes, Date, permalink Software Collections

I visit alt.comp.freeware to stay informed of the lastest happenings in the Freeware multiverse. This week, I saw Susan B mention this list she added to the group's website. I trust anything I find on this site and so can you.

Thanks very much Susan!

Quote from the website
These pages include some of the programs have been mentioned in ACF posts. Several thousand programs are listed. Minor differences in spelling, hyphenation etc. sometimes have a large affect on the alphabetical location. Use "find" or the Google search box to locate programs quickly.

http://www.pricelesswarehome.org/acf/P_KIDS.php

Websites I've visited recently

Have you seen any cool websites you want to share with us?





NEW NEWS

SnapFiles.com - new and updated freeware

Source - http://snapfiles.com/freeware

News from Sarah in Tampa



Security news from Malware Advisor

blog by TeMerc Internet Countermeasures, source
Infected? Go to http://temerc.com for help





OTHER STUFF

Get Gmail! and Get Firefox!

You need a free 2.8 GB Gmail account to access many of the cool features at Google. After more than two years in beta testing Gmail is open to the public. Just go to http://gmail.com and sign up for an account.

I think Gmail works best in the awesome Firefox browser. It's free, easy to use, and it's way more secure than Internet Explorer. My favorite thing to do is to customize Firefox so that it does much more than IE ever could. You can select new button controls for your toolbars, install extensions to add new features, or change the look of your browser with themes - the way Firefox looks and works is under your control.

Get Firefox!


Chatting at FreewareWiki

permalink

Now you can chat with anyone visiting a website by using Gabbly. To see who's gabbing at this website, click here.

Find out more about Gabbly.com

Frapper - you people live all over the world!

Wow! Over 400 people and still growing! I invite all of you to record your locations on this map. You can include as little or as much information as you wish. I think you'll enjoy seeing yourself there.

Here's a small look at my frapper map.



Write your own review

I get many of the reviews in the newsletter from the readers. You don't have to be a genius or computer guru. Just answer a few questions and send me a review. I'll probably put you in the newsletter.


What do you have to say?

Just tell me what article you are talking about and leave me your comment.

Have fun and surf safely.

Clif

http://clifnotes.net & http://freewarewiki.pbwiki.com
Devoted to promoting Freeware and Free Information

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