It's been a while...

Hello to anyone out there who might stumble upon this blog...

It's been a crazy year and I am rarely on the computer anymore, so it is pretty hard to review new programs.

However, I now have a smartphone that runs android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich and I'm loving it.

Seeing as I've already tried a lot of free apps, I figured I could try to chime in here now and then with some quick reviews of what I find, to keep the great free software coming to you.

So check back now and then, who knows what cool apps we will discover... There are so many to choose from! ;-)

Spex

App Review: Save To Phone

I like to browse images online quite often. I love finding new things, cool shots and funny pics too... And I've always been a fan of beautiful panoramic landscapes. But some apps do not include an option to download and save the images that you are viewing, so what do you do then?

Here is a very handy app to solve that problem. Named "Save To Phone" it does just that when you send the image to it using the Share menu which pretty much every app has. You can set a default download folder and have it save the image automatically or ask you for a filename each time.

I have been using this app for quite some time now without a hick. It is small, simple and very fast. While browsing images in an app without a save option, I simply share the image to Save To Phone and voila, I see a notification telling me that it has been saved successfully.  I'm loving this and am wondering why this kind of feature is not available natively on my phone out of the box.

Try it out today!

Check out "Save To Phone"

Review - MailStore Home v7.0.7.7671

Every now and then a server goes down. It's a fact of cyber-life. For a simple website hosting a video game, a song, a video or the like, this won't be such a big deal, but what if it was your email that was unaccessible?

I present to you the free version of MailStore. It will fetch mail from your accounts using POP3 or IMAP4 and store them on your hard disk for searching and reading. It comes ready to access many popular servers such as Hotmail and Gmail, and can export to text files or certain email client database formats.

Of course this won't let you read new mail while the servers are down, but at least your old messages will be there.

Free, easy to use, small learning curve. The rest will become a habit that you won't regret the next time you'll need to find that bit of info that you didn't write down when your email goes offline.

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URL: http://www.mailstore.com/en/mailstore-home.aspx/

Review - Nocs v2.3

I like writing things in plain text files such as to do lists, memos, quotes, etc. Since they have ridiculously small file sizes and are universal, so to speak, being compatible with any system. 

When I'm not at my computer however I cannot access them. I could use an online service to store them, but what if the server is offline when I need it? Let's make all this much simpler... 

Nocs is a tabbed plain text editor which allows you to save your files to disk like notepad, but also to your Google docs (now Google drive) account, allowing you to access them when not at your PC. As a bonus, since you can save the files on your hard disk, you could also sync them with a client installed, such as the one from Dropbox. Copies and backups everywhere! 

Nocs hasn't been updated in a while, but runs smoothly on my machine none the less. It's free and requires .NET 4. 

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URL: http://code.google.com/p/nocs/

Review - F.lux

We all wind up staying at the computer late at night from time to time, be it to read up about something interesting, chat with some friends or just mindlessly surf around. During this time however, our eyes are staring at a bright light for hours on end. Not a good thing. Here's a nice "set it and forget it" type program that will help ease their pain. 

By telling f.lux your location you allow it to automatically change the warmth of your display when the sun has set, which in turn lets your eyes relax instead of being burnt. This is not the same as turning down the brightness however. This is much nicer. 

You can adjust the lighting settings and disable the effect for an hour if you are doing color-specific work. 

Give it a try, it comes in Windows, Mac, iPhone/iPad and Linux versions. You've got nothing to lose, but much to gain! 

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URL: http://stereopsis.com/flux/

A quick update…

The blog has been quiet for a while now as you have surely noticed.  I’ve recently moved to a new town and have been offline, therefore unable to write up some new reviews.  Check back soon though, there’s so much great software out there to try out! ;)

Review – Aviary

When I need to quickly touch up an image or create a simple one to upload somewhere I hate having to load up a big editor on my PC.  I figure why not have one that can get the job done in a snap and start-up quickly too?  That's when I find Aviarys website particularly useful.

The apps are made in flash and are rather powerful.  This also means that you don't have to install them and can use them anywhere.  On the site you can find many handy apps like a vector editor and an image editor (which easily beats stuff like MS Paint) and even a sound editor.

I uninstalled a program I was using to learn a bit about creating vector images when I found this site just to give you an idea of how impressed I was.

There are many other online image editors out there but I've found that this one is the most complete.

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URL: http://www.aviary.com/

 

Review – Avira AntiVir Personal v9

I've tried many anti-virus programs in my day.  Some were too slow, some were too resource intensive, others just became so bloated that it was darn right silly.  Why, in a time where computers had much less RAM and hard drive space, would you make your security program so big and laggy?

The computers we use today no longer have such limitations, but it is no excuse to stop using well-made software.  Avira Antivir is a commercial anti-virus which also comes as a very good free version.  In fact, it rates highly in the av-comparatives.org test results every time.  The only price to pay for such security is a pop-up window once a day during definition updates.  But that's not that bad now, is it?  You have a small, fast scanning, regularly updated anti-virus to protect you.

I've tried others and yet I keep coming back to Avira.  Why use anything else when you have a free product that is as good as or better than pay products after all?  Save yourself some money and get yourself some peace of mind.

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URL: http://www.avira.com/en/avira-free-antivirus

Review – Canabalt

This little flash game got me hooked on the first try.  Imagine if you will a game so simple, you only need to use one key on your keyboard.  Sounds like an old school game from Atari or something, right?  Well what if I told you that you didn't even need to move around, but only jump using that one key?

Canabalt is a very fast-paced side scrolling game where your player is running at high-speed through a city under attack and you must help him jump over obstacles, through windows and from one rooftop to the next.  It sounds rather simple but you really must pay attention because anything can and will happen.  The events and buildings are generated randomly every time you start the level so there's no way you'll be memorizing a way through it all anytime soon.

This one is a classic and a definitive keeper.  Most highly recommended to anyone.

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URL: http://www.adamatomic.com/canabalt/

 

Review – CCleaner v3.04

Privacy on a computer may be an oxymoron, but a bit of help never hurts.  Enter Ccleaner (formerly called Crap Cleaner), a small and fast utility that can be used to remove certain traces of your computer usage to give you back a bit of privacy from snooping eyes.

The most basic function that this program offers is to clear out MRU (most recently used) lists from Windows and supported apps on your computer, such as text editing programs and web browsers.  It also goes beyond that to clear out temp files, invalid registry entries and your DNS cache.

Two other included features are basic control over what programs start with Windows and an alternative to the Add/Remove control panel list which loads up faster than the OS equivalent.

As with all system utilities however, caution must be used so that your system doesn't get pooched, but I am including this review for the more tech-savvy user anyhow.

Enjoy!

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URL: http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/