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Thursday, October 07, 2010

Tools that rule

Here goes a list of application that makes my computer life simpler (applications for Windows mostly, some of them are cross platform someway or the other).

  • Chrome:- Browser without any fuss, its fast (in fact lightning fast). Alas Firefox is no more my favorite.
  • Launchy: When you have laucnhy you forget your start menu. You would never need to use mouse to start any application installed on your computer. This nifty stuff indexes start menu to make your life easier.
  • Notepad++: I ditched textpad for this. This is a must have application when you are dealing with text file to source code that you want to edit quickly. (FOSS)
  • 7-zip: winzip is a malware, if you want something not annoying, 7zip simply does the job. It can handle a lot of different type of archive files. (FOSS)
  • Dropbox: Dropbox allows you to sync your files online and across your computers automatically.
  • Pidgin: Once you have Pidgin, you dont need to download several messengers. Connect to AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and more chat networks all at once. (FOSS)
  • Windows Media player: On windows Windows Media player simply does the job, plays music, plays movies. Just install codec appropriately and you would never need to use any other player.
  • Libre Office (Previously open office). Almost a drop in replacement for Microsoft Office. This stuff is undermined, yet hell powerful and yet completely free, if you are looking for something that works and works free of cost Libre Office is here for you. (FOSS)
  • Gmail: Simply the best Email one can have. Period.
  • Google Calendar: For managing your calendar. There are a lot of stuff that you can do with Google Calendar, reminders on SMS, Email, Birthday reminders etc.
  • Google Contacts: I use to hate Google Contacts, but hey Google is evolving, this is my "the" contact manager! It's dead simple and its easy to use and sync up with several devices and apps.
  • Google History: In case you surf a truck load of websites and you are lazy in bookmarking Google History can remember what you visited.
  • Google Reader: RSS reader, the best so far for me. Note that this can work offline as well with Google Gear.
  • Simplenotes / Evernote: This is by far the best "text" note taking platform. It functions cross platform, for that matter I got this working on my Android Phone as well :). In the past I used Evernote, unfortunately I find it painfully slow. The advantage of evernote is that it can clip websites and I hence your notes can have photos. If you are looking for fancy note taking application evernote is the way to go. 
  • Picasa: Photo manager free of cost. If fancy editing capabilities is not a requirement this stuff is simply awesome. It's lightweight has several cool basic features and its fast.

This list is not yet over, but I was a bit eager to post it. I hope to continue to update this as and when I come across something more.

2 comments:

  1. I would like to suggest WordWeb, comes very handy when you come across a word which is not in your vocab.
    Just select any text any where and press CTRL+ALT+W and a popup will show the meaning.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kapil did use it in the beginning, albeit, changing browser begged necessity to use different set of extensions in chrome.
    Google dictionary does a good job for me and chrome extensions simply eliminates some of its competition out of the box.

    ReplyDelete