7 posts tagged “windows”

Digsby just added Facebook Chat to its impressive list : MSN, Yahoo, AIM, Gtalk, Facebook Chat, Twitter, Myspace (although just MS updates, not MySpace chat yet)... awesomeness and freebeeness. Download it now! (Windows only for the moment though)

(Better than Trillian, Pidgin, Miranda... hell, even Adium. And thats saying something).

you can now download AVG Free 8

I hope it means an end to those "buy AVG 8 now!" popups... grrrr

A couple more downloads for today. Microsoft have released the final of their HD Photo Photoshop plugins for Windows and OSX.

Download for Windows
Download for OSX

I've covered this plugin before, apparently it is being pushed as a standard, and the replacement for good old JPG. Worth trying out (Photoshop needed). If you already have the beta versions installed, upgrade to these new ones, because the betas expire soon.

source: Bill Crows HD Photo Blog

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Also, being a Twitter and Twitteroo user, I was really impressed to find WittyTwitter. This (unlike Twitteroo) actually looks like a Vista program, and works great. Try it:

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I'm delving into the xml of the sidebar gadget that came with Yahoo Messenger For Vista, to try and work out why it doesn't actually work...

The beta of Safari 3 for WINDOWS is available for download now

Awesome. Now all we need is iLife and we're sorted ;)

(Won't replace Firefox, but is handy for testing sites I've designed to make sure they're Mac capable)

Nokia PC Suite 6.83 has been released, and is Vista compatible. I've been taking part in the beta, so I've been using it for a while - nothing particularly "Vista" about this update, except that it works. For everyone else, there is a new content copier included, so is worth the update. Released today.

The more software you have installed on your machine, the more of a PITA it is to keep it all up to date. Windows update takes care of your... Windows (mostly), but what about everything else? On OSX its simple - when you run a program, it checks to see if there is a new version, and updates it. Quick and transparent. On Windows, things are slightly different. Sure, some software will check for updates when run, but more often than not unless its a piece of software you use every day (like Firefox etc) then you usually have to go searching for newer versions.

However, there are lights at the end of this constant-hunt tunnel. One of them is Radar Sync. This is a small program you download and run, which will then scan your PC and give you a list of drivers and software that have newer versions available, and will download them for you. The catch is, for automatic downloading you need to subscribe to the service, which is $29 per year. (Otherwise it will tell you which software needs updating, but leave you to go off and actually find it). I'm not sure its worth paying the money to for automatic downloading, but then I've become quite expert at hunting these things down. If time is more important than money to you, $29 may seem like small peanuts. Because it is an amazing time saver.

Another solution is the new beta of the Update Checker from File Hippo. This will scan your machine, like Radarsync, and tell you if you need updates, but as the software it "knows about" is on File Hippo, it means you won't have to go searching. This is free, but is limited (afaik) just to the software on File Hippo, as opposed to Radar Sync which has a greater range.

Hippoupdate

Now, OSX was made for GTD, the whole operating system seems like it was designed with it in mind. Not so on ye olde Windows platform. Unless you want to pay for a GTD plugin for Outlook (and by association pay for MS Office) you're a bit stumped. There are web versions, of course, some that you can download and run on your local machine/network. But unless you are really busy they are somewhat of an overkill.

I was surfing around, as you do, looking for a to-do app that was a bit more advanced than the To-Do Yahoo Widget. There are lots of nice shareware apps appearing now, but (me being skint) I decided against them. I found a gem, a piece of freeware. It was written to help programmers with their projects, but it can be used for practically anything. Think of it as a To-Do list on steroids. Very nice.

Todolist

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You can have tasks (eg Clean your desk), each task can have sub-tasks (eg empty bin, file papers, clean monitor, remove pizza carton). Then the task is only marked as complete when you've done each of the subtasks. A timer is built in (click to start, click to stop... keeps track of how long you have been working on a particular task), exports XML etc etc. A tad complex you would think. But when you customise it to suit your way of working, its really rather brilliant and easy. Did I mention that its free? Go get it then. (You'll need to create a Codeproject account to download it, but thats no big deal).

Next up is trying to get ye olde Nokia 6680 into the equation. This software looks pretty good. (I'm trying to avoid installing the Nokia PC Suite, because again, this syncs to Outlook. Bah). Oh for an iSync for the pc...