E-Utilities

Todo Backup

EASEUS Todo Backup is a free and comprehensive backup utility for system backup & restore, hard disk or partition backup & restore, and disk cloning - OS, data, applications, and settings. Features of EASEUS Todo Backup include - Backup system partition to image: Backup the entire system partition, including the system state and all files to an image file - a very useful feature if you wish to upgrade without reinstalling the OS and and applications, again; Restore the system partition by a bootable CD, would be a great help whenever a boot failure occurs; Compresses image file: The image file can be made smaller to save space, easy to store and transfer; Disk Cloning - Clone a disk to another one with fast file-by-file clone method; and Mount and Unmount - Mount the backup image file as a virtual physical partition.  EASEUS Todo Backup for Windows 2000 Professional /XP/Vista and Windows Server 2000/2003/2008, can be downloaded at http://www.todo-backup.com/download/.

SafeHouse Explorer

This free utility can hide everything -  make confidential documents, files and folders invisible until you enter your password. Its features include - fully-featured stand-alone security solution; hides, locks and encrypts documents, spreadsheets, photos, videos and others, just drag and drop; ideal for USB memory sticks and other portable media, including iPods; Super strong 256-bit Twofish advanced encryption; unlimited number of large private storage vaults; Graphical password strength meter to choose strong passwords; runs directly from USB memory sticks without prior Windows installation; and creates self-extracting EXE encrypted storage vaults. The 3.4 MB SafeHouse Explorer v3.00 for XP/Vista/Win7 can be downloaded at http://www.safehousesoftware.com/downloads/SafeHouseExplorer3.exe, just click and run. For more details you could view the video guide at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-OEl5BB_PE/.

GloboNote 

GloboNote is a platform independent desktop note-taking application. The saved notes can be accessed in any OS, using this program. Among its features are: Organize notes in group, Customize notes; Change color, font, behavior of your note; Save/Load customized note preference and assign hotkey(Alt+1~4); Supports
insertion of images on notes; Restores deleted notes; Option to make note stay on top of other windows; Option to auto rollup when not used; Lock note to prevent its editing or deletion; support rich text editing with bold, italic, colour etc; Supports URLs handling, Hide/Show, Find/Replace, Search notes and export note as plain text. GloboNote  can be run in Windows or Linux platform(J2SE 6.0 or higher required). GlobeNote, a free software - can be redistributed or modified under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Windows version at http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/globonote/globonote-1.1.1.exe?download, others at http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/globonote/globonote-1.1.1.zip?download.


Quick Config

Quick Config is a convenient tool to help change quickly various settings of your computer. This is a useful utility especially for those who travel with their laptops and wish to change network connection settings, set default printer and etc, with just a click. All one needs to do is to create one or more configuration profiles, set the required settings for each profile, and when a change is needed activate  the profile by double clicking on it. Features: The current version of Quick Config can change - TCP/IP settings (IP address, mask, gateway, DNS server, MAC), state of network connection; computer name, domain or workgroup membership;  map, unmap network drives; share, unshare local resources; Hosts file; Routing table, Sound volume and theme; Set default printer;  Start, stop, restart system services; IE, FireFox and Opera network connection settings, Desktop- Display screen dimensions, color depth; and change default applications such as E-Mail client and others. The 2942 KB  Quick Config v1.1.6.55 (24 Oct 09) can be downloaded at http://intelloware.com/Download/QuickConfig.zip.


Piwigo

Piwigo, a photo gallery software for the web, easily customizable. It's free and opensource, equipped with distinctly different features to publish and manage your collection of pictures. Piwigo has a snappy interface, and and amongst its features the "tree"  takes the cake. This feature lets users create photo categories that expand and flatten the tree structure to view all the photos. Visitors can also set up user permissions and also create rating tabs for each photo, or groups of photos.  Started in 2002, the project is now supported by an active community of users and developers. Piwigo supports numerous galleries of all sizes all over the world, from an individual ten-photos party to the images stock of an agency. This scalability is supported by smart browsing capabilities based on categories, tags and chronological search. Various extensions make Piwigo even more scalable and customizable to suit your own needs and desires. Piwigo v2.0 is compatible with computers running Mac OS 10.3 or newer or Windows 95 and newer. Piwigo is both web and photo standard compliant. For more details visit http://piwigo.org/.


ooSooM

ooSooM is a task/todo management tool, free for personal use. It lets the person get on with the job on hand after securely logging the thoughts, ideas, etc in such a way that they can be found whenever needed. ooSooM does not attempt to force a predetermined 'methodology', it's a free format, lets you use it the way you want. You can prioritise and categorise your Todo Information,  and each Todo or Vault Item can have it's own Colour Scheme, Font Size and Style. ooSooM has a Easy to use interface, requires no installation, no Modifications made to computer, Requires no additional Runtime installation, and can be run from a USB drive.

Developed by Arten Science, UK, the 32 MB ooSooM for Mac OSX, Windows XP, Vista, 2003 and 7 can be downloadedhttp://www.artenscience.com/autoupdate/latestversions/oosoom_win.zip (for Windows), and for Mac at http://www.artenscience.com/autoupdate/latestversions/oosoom_osx.zip. After downloading ooSooM and deciding that you would like to get rid of the nag screens, you need to contact Arten Science for a Serial Number (support@artenscience.co.uk). 


Defragmenter 

Disk Fragmenter, a built-in tool with almost every version of Windows, can pre-arrange all the “fragmented” pieces of a file close together to help reduce the time it takes to open files or load programs on your computer. Usually, the built-in disk defragmenter will defragment the entire hard-drive at once and tend to ignore files that are smaller than 64 MB. But, now,  Microsoft offers another free utility Contig (short for contiguous) that lets you have better control over the defragmentation process.  Contig, at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897428.aspx, lets you defragment individual files, folders, or the entire hard drive. You can run Contig from the command prompt, or try Power defragmenter, at http://my.opera.com/rejzor/blog/power-defragmenter-3-0-released, an easy and more visual interface for Contig. Power Defragmenter which internally uses Contig to perform the defragmentation process. You can also run Contig, online, at http://live.sysinternals.com/Contig.exe. Unlike others Contig uses Windows’internal defragmentation APIs, hence, won’t cause disk corruption, even if the programme is terminated suddenly. Please note you’ll need to run the utility as an administrator as it will throw an “Access denied” error. Defragmentation is recommended for traditional hard drives only.

FreeFileSync 

FreeFileSync is an Open-Source folder comparison and synchronization tool. It is optimized for highest performance and usability without restricted or overloaded UI interfaces. Its features include  Compare files (bytewise or by date) and synchronize them; No limitations: An arbitrary number of files can be synchronized; Support for multiple folder pairs with distinct configuration; Full support for Windows/Linux Symbolic Links and Windows Junction Points; Create Batch Jobs for automated synchronization with or without GUI; Support for filesizes larger than 4 GB; Filter functionality to include/exclude files from synchronization (without re-compare!); Create sync jobs via GUI to synchronize automatically (can be scheduled or executed directly);  Subfolders are also synchronized, including empty folders; Progress indicators are updated only every 100ms for optimal performance!; Delete before copy: Avoid disc space shortages with large sync-operations; Network support; many advance features for the techie/professional. The 2.1 MB FreeFileSync v3.1 can be downloaded at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/freefilesync/files/freefilesync/v3.1/FreeFileSync_v3.1_win32.exe/download


OneSwarm

You need no more worry about the indiscriminate sharing of data, thanks to OneSwarm, a new peer-to-peer tool. OneSwarm can help you decide to share data in a variety of ways, like sharing it with some and not with all and sundry.  Features of this friend-to-friend (F2F) data sharing utility are Privacy preserving - OneSwarm uses source address rewriting to protect user privacy. Instead of always transmitting data directly from sender to receiver (immediately identifying both), OneSwarm may forward data through multiple intermedaries, obscuring the identity of both sender and receiver;  User friendly: web-based interface supports real-time transcoding of many audio and video formats for in-browser playback, this eliminates the need for casual users to master a new application’s interface or search for custom media codecs; Open: OneSwarm data sharing features are built on cryptographic standards, e.g., X.509 certificates and SSL encryption; OneSwarm can operate as a fully backwards compatible BitTorrent clien, and more. OneSwarm, a free and open source software, v0.6.7– 10 October, 2009, for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera, can be downloaded at http://oneswarm.cs.washington.edu/download.html


ObjectDock™ 

ObjectDock™ can help organize shortcuts, programs and running tasks into an attractive and fun animated Dock. With ObjectDock™ users decide where the icons and shortcuts ought to be on the desktop, all with an unique style. ObjectDock can also be used to replace the Start bar entirely, freeing up valuable screen space. Many interaction modes are available, you can choose the dock availability that's right for your kind of work. Among the features are: Easy to use shortcut organizer, Simple drag & drop operation, Convenient autohide and "keep in background" modes, Fully customizable - backgrounds and images freely available, Smooth animations, Super-smooth minimize animations in Vista, Low system resource usage, and many more. Version 1.9 of ObjectDock™ , one of the most popular program of its kind - 3.5 million users to date, can be downloaded at
http://www.stardock.com/products/objectdock/downloads.asp#download

BUDDI

BUDDI, developed by Wyatt Olson, is a software to manage personal budgets. It is a programme which can be used even by people who have little or no financial background. Buddi is easy to use, has useful functions, for example the way it can display statistics to present a quick overview, would satisfy most home users. Though not a professional account software, Buddi is indeed great for the quick overview it provides. Several plugins are available that can add import and export functions. Buddi requires a Java Virtual Machine which means it can be run on most operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Linux and Apple Macintosh. If you have been using an Excel sheet to record your earnings and expenses, Buddi is the next step up. To download Buddi, released under the GNU General Public License, visit http://buddi.digitalcave.ca/download.jsp. A tutorial can be found at http://buddi.digitalcave.ca/quickstart/index.jsp, and an FAQ athttp://buddi.digitalcave.ca/faq.jsp.


Sonarca Sound Recorder

Sonarca Sound Recorder Free is a handy sound recording software to record various sound inputs to WAV and MP3 audio formats. Its features include: supports multiple sound input, audio/video files playback, CD player, line in, microphone, internet radio, even the obsolete tape/VHS cassette, CD quality sound recording (claims the developer), uses latest Lame MP3 encoder; On-the-fly recording -no temporary file generated, Intuitive output file management, Diagnose and print detailed sound device info, Supports majority of modern sound cards: multi
channel/professional/external USB sound cards, Supports several sound cards, Fully visualize the recording process, Supports global hotkeys, start recording anywhere.


FloorPlanner

Floorplanner is easy, quick, and a great way to create and share interactive floor plans. Using point-and-click, drag-and-drop tools, you can make your house plan in minutes, and rearrange it as often as you want.
You can save, send, and print your designs to share them, or place them on your own website. It is easy to use and works in any modern browser, no extra downloads required. You can create only one plan, and save up to five designs in either 2D or 3D. To  watch a demo visit http://www.floorplanner.com/demo, and to know what others say about Floor Planner you may visit http://www.floorplanner.com/press. 


DocPad 

DocPad can be an alternative to Notepad. In addition to Notepad features DocPad has many more : block indent/unindent, bookmarking, case conversion, customizable toolbar, encoding conversion, file history, jump to line/offset, keyboard macros (unlimited in size and number), print preview, skinnable interface, spell checking, statistics, variable pitch font, and much more. It also has a built-in calculator, calendar, and character map.

Among the other features are:  Alphabetization of paragraphs, File drag & drop, Text drag & drop, Convert to lower/upper/title/sentence case, Search and replace, including case-insensitive, whole-word, and wildcard searches, Undo up to 100 changes, Toolbar, Status Bar, Selectable character set, Recent file history, Statistics on characters, words, lines, and paragraphs, Variable-pitch fonts support, and a Help file. DocPad version 8.0 (October 20th, 2009) for 2000, ME, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, or 7 can be downloaded at http://www.gammadyne.com/setup-dp.exe.  The 3.5 MB DocPad takes up approximately 7 MB of hard disk space.

Security Essentials 

Security Essentials is a free antivirus from Microsoft. It is a light-weight anti-virus & anti-malware tool for users who run a genuine Microsoft Windows(XP, Vista, 7) OS on their PCs. Features of Security Essentials: Least system requirements - unlike other antivirus tools, Security Essentials puts a minimum load on your system configuration, claims Microsoft; works on netbooks as well as older computers having limited hardware support; and a more speedier experience for users. It can also operate in a virtual environment, like Virtual PC.; Easy to use Interface; Installation file is only 10Mb in size & installs quickly; Protection mode activated as soon as the installation is completed; Automatic Updates; Microsoft’s Dynamic Signature Service looks for the latest virus definition updates as soon as it senses a threat - these include malicious or potentially unwanted software on the computer; and is active against all kinds of threats. The 4 MB+ Security Essentials can be downloaded at http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/

My Lockbox

If you wish to keep file(s), folder, or directory away from prying eyes, My Lockbox can help. It is a secure application that lets users to lock an important and otherwise unsecured folder from being accessible except with a secure password. The salient feature of My Lockbox is that not only will the newly locked folder be accessed directly, but it will also disappear completely from view - a feature not found in similar applications.

The other features include -  any folder can be password protected; Instant protection; folders can remain inaccessible to system administrators, and in Windows safe mode; and Hotkeys support. Installation is simple, make sure to enter in a secure password! To create secure passwords you could check out PassPub, an online password generator at https://passpub.com/. The My Lockbox Control Panel also lets you change basic lockbox parameters like lockbox location, protection status, and password. My Lockbox (Windows only) can be downloaded at http://fspro.net/cgi-bin/sws/go.pl?distr=13. A Quick Start Guide at  http://www.fspro.net/my-lockbox/quickstart.html


BlueScreenView

When the Blue Screen Of Death happens on your computer it would be a good idea to identify the device driver that is causing the problem and take necessary steps to resolve it. In order to help zero-in on the ‘culprit/s’ which caused Blue Screen Of Death of your Windows, BlueScreenView, a free utility, can help. It is a tiny utility that scans the dumps of BSOD, analyses the data and provides useful information to understand the crash. For every crash this application can display Device driver or module ((filename, product name, file description, and file version) that possibly caused the crash of the system, date and time of crash, the device drivers that were loaded during the crash, and crash details on a blue screen. No installation required.

The application works with Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, and Windows 7, as long as Windows is configured to save minidump files during BSOD crashes.  BlueScreenView can be downloaded at http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/bluescreenview_setup.exe


SUMO Paint

SUMO Paint, a free online image editor, is built with Adobe Flex and can run from your browser. SUMO Paint has a Photoshop look alike interface - the floating toolbar, palettes and color bars are fartoo familiar. All the required tools to create a professional image are provided onlline - Ink, Pencil tools, brushes, filters, customise shapes for vector work, and multiple layers for various effects. You can either upload the image from your computer or type-in the url of an online image. You can also create a SUMO account to upload your images. Once done you can download the edited images to your computer in jpg/png format or store it online with your SUMO account. If you wish, you can set the image that you save in your SUMO account to made be available for public viewing. Sumo Paint can prove to be a useful image editing and painting software in your browser. More details of SUMO Paint v1.0 at http://www.sumo.fi/home/. At http://www.sumo.fi/video/ you can also get to know the features of SUMO and the tricks you can do with it.

XSearch

XSearch can search files on your computer quite quickly. To search you just use the word options, like, “any of the words”, “all of the words”, “exact phrase”, “without the words” and others. To search by words separate the words by using the space character, to separate names and folders use the “;” character. For example: Words: “StringA String B”, Names: “*.a;*.b;kk*.*”, Folders: “C:Test;D:MyFolder”. You can enable the context menu for XSearch, to help search for files in any folder by right-clicking at the folder in Windows Explorer and choosing the “XSearch” menu item.

XSearch also supports search words in files in unicode or UTF8 formats. You can carry out search in hexadecimal, and provides a tool to view the contents. XSearch supports search for files in specified size, date and time - search files that were created at noon on 1st Aug 2009, or by the exact size in bytes, KB, MB or GB. The search results can be saved. Search histories are recorded, however, you can also clear them too.

XSearch supports most of the file operations in Explorer such as Copy, Cut, Rename, Drag and drop etc. The freeware version of XSearch can be downloaded here.

http://www.easexp.com/xsearch/xsearch.exe. No installation required.