However, most of the apps you will come across will cost you or may not work properly. If you want to use the webcam of your computer as a surveillance camera with the aide of your smartphone, try AtHome Video Streamer.

Athome Video Streamer is a very handy tool that is available for all popular platforms, including Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. After installing the app on both your computer and smartphone, you can use your computer as a surveillance camera. In the free version, you can record up to 15 minutes of recording per day, and it’s limited to one connection ID. If you want to make use of more CIDs and unlimited recording, you have to purchase the Pro version. The Pro version is currently available for iOS devices only, but the developer plans on releasing it for other platforms as well.

Setting Up Athome Video Streamer on Your Computer

Point your web browser to the download page of Athome Video Streamer and download the software. Installing the software is pretty simple and straightforward; just launch the setup and follow on screen instructions.

When you launch it for the first time, it will ask you to give the computer a name and set up a username and password.

After registration it will take you to the main Athome Video Streamer page and will give you a Connection ID (CID) that will be used later.

Using your Smartphone to View the Surveillance

Install Athome Video Streamer Free on your device (I will be using my iPhone to view the surveillance video). After installing, it will show you a welcome screen from where you can add the camera. Tap the Add button.

Enter the CID from the application and login with the credentials you created in step 1.

It will show you the list of cameras. In the free version, you can only add one CID. Tap on it and you will have access to your computer’s camera to view live streaming of your webcam.

If you want, you can even schedule recording for a certain time period. Additionally, it can work via the motion detector. When the motion exceeds the specified sensitivity level, it automatically start the recording and will stop thirty seconds after the motion falls below the specified level.

From the settings, you can change the name of the camera, change frame rate and other basic settings as well.

Conclusion

Athome Video Streamer is a very handy app that can help you use your computer as a surveillance camera instead of having to purchase other costly equipment. Additionally, you have the option of remaining totally free with that version, or you can purchase the Pro version for $7.99.

Feel free to share your thoughts if you tried AtHome Video Streamer or a similar app setup.

Image credit: Webcam

The tool that we are using to create PDF with fillable form is LibreOffice, specifically Libre Writer – the document editing tool of the LibreOffice suite.

Assuming that LibreOffice is already installed in your PC (it is pre-installed in most Linux distro, and for other OS, you can download it here).

1. Open Libre Writer and create your document.

2. On the toolbar, go to “View -> Toolbar -> Form Control” and click it. This will add the Form Control toolbar to your Libre Writer interface.

You should see something like this:

This toolbar allows you to drag and drop the various form fields to the document.

3. Now, drag the “Text box” to the document. You can size it to be an one-line input field or a multi-lines text box.

4. Next, right click at the text box and select “Control” (or you can simply double click on the text box). This will bring up the Control window. This is where you can edit the meta-data of the text box, such as its name, label field, max length etc. You can also add events such as changing text on mouseover, focus, keypressed etc.

Once you have got the hang of it, you can proceed to add various form fields to your document. This is a simple form we have created.

5. After you have finished with the document, go to “File -> Export as PDF”. Make sure the “Create PDF Form” checkbox is selected. The most commonly used format for data submission is FDF, but you can select PDF, HTML or XML format as well.

Click “Export” and you are done creating the PDF form.

Now open the PDF file in your PDF viewer and you should see all the form fields in the document. To test it, you can fill up the form and save it. Close and reopen it again. You should see your form data intact.

Isn’t it simple?

Image credit: Filling in personal details on an application form
by BigStockPhoto

1. Wired vs. wireless

Whenever possible, connecting your PC to a wired Internet connection will always offer the best Netflix playback. Wired connections can get up to 100 Mbps depending on your ISP, modem and/or router configuration. Wireless connections, however, can be fickle depending on the weather and interference, and often have performance issues. The wired versus wireless scenario can vastly change the quality of streaming in Netflix.

2. Testing your Internet speed, contacting your ISP

Netflix automatically adjusts playback based on your Internet speed. If you have two computers in your home, depending on the circumstances, one could have better playback than the other. If you notice the picture in particular beginning to degrade as you are streaming, it is possible your Internet speed has slowed below what is required for optimal playback.

Netflix has recommended the following speeds for certain aspects of playback:

• 1 MB/s: Streaming on a laptop
• 2 MB/s: Streaming on a standard definition television
• 4 MB/s: Streaming in HD
• 5 MB/s: Optimal audio and video streaming

Testing your Internet speed through a service like Speedtest.net can give you an idea of what your download speed is so you can see if you meet the requirements of Netflix’s.

If your download speeds are low, you will want to check your hardware first, and then contact your ISP to see if there’s anything they can do on their end to increase it. This could involve a change in hardware or a better Internet plan.

3. Change your Netflix video playback settings

After logging into Netflix, click “Your Account.”  Then, click “Manage video quality” under Your Streaming Plan.

Netflix offers users a chance to control how much data is downloaded to offer better streaming quality. You can choose which quality you want; Netflix will not choose one by default for you. If you are not capped by your ISP, you can increase the quality for better overall playback.

4. Finding the right window size for playback

Window size can impact playback for many Netflix users utilizing monitors or screens 20″ or higher. If you are using two monitors or more, this can also affect playback, and at the moment, there is not many ways to combat that issue.

However, you can reduce the window size of Netflix in your browser for better playback. This will take some tweaking, as no two computers will have the same configuration. You will have to play with the Netflix window size to find the right streaming playback.

For example, on my desktop PC, I use two 27″ monitors for my setup. Coupled with the amount of temporary memory and Internet connection I have through Comcast, I have found if I reduce the Chrome browser window to about 1024 x 748 in size, I can get optimal playback as long as my wireless connection is steady.

5. What else is running in the background?

When you stream through Netflix, part of the video you are watching is temporarily stored in your computer’s memory. If you are using a lot of programs, playing games or doing other things while trying to stream, this can impact the quality of playback from Netflix. Ideally, you want to run the bare minimum when streaming Netflix, especially if you want to use full screen mode to watch a program.

Conclusion

There is no catchall solution for fixing Netflix streaming performance that will work on all PCs. It takes some time to find the right setup, but these five tips can help optimize your Netflix playback on your PC.

In case you are not aware, OVF, also known as Open Virtualization Format, is one of the way to standardize virtual appliance so they can be imported and use in different virtualization software. A virtual appliance in OVF format usually consist of a series of files. The OVA format is merely a single file distribution of the OVF, stored in the TAR format. In this tutorial, we will show you how to import and export an OVA file into/from Virtualbox.

Importing OVA file to Virtualbox

Assuming you already have your OVA file ready, in Virtualbox, you just have to go to “File -> Import Appliance” in the menu bar.

Click the “Open Appliance” button to select your OVA file. Once you have selected the file, click “Next”.

The next window will show you the configuration of the current virtual appliance. You can scroll through the configuration list and double click on any item (or check/uncheck the box) to make changes to it. Lastly, click “Import”.

Virtualbox will proceed to import the virtual machine into your library. Depending on the size of your OVA file, the import process could take quite a while.

Once the process is completed, you should be able to see the new VM in your list.

Exporting VDI to OVA file

To export a VDI file (the default format for Virtualbox) to a OVA file so you can re-import in another virtual machine, you just have to go to “File -> Export Appliance” in the menu bar.

It will then prompt you to select the disk image that you want to export. In this case, I select the “Windows 7″ image. Note that you can select multiple image at the same time.

Next, select the path and filename where the OVA file will be exported. You will notice that Virtualbox will automatically append a .ova extension to the end of the appliance. You can, if you wish, change it to the .ovf extension. In this case, multiple files will be created instead of a single file.

The next screen is the Appliance Settings page where you can review and edit the appliance configuration. In most cases, I will just leave this as the default.

Lastly, click the “Export” button. Note that Virtualbox will first convert your image to vmdk format (the default in VMWare) first before packaging it in OVA format.

That’s it.

What other ways do you use to import and export OVA files in Virtualbox?

The differences between Analog and Digitial sound

Even though man has the ability and the means to record sound, that record will never be an exact representation of the original sound.

The following image shows the waveform for analog and digital sound wave. As can be seen, the analog sound wave (1) is rather different from the digital one (2).

The analog waveform is continuous and have successive crests and troughs that represent highs and lows of our voice whereas a digital waveform is like a barchart where the highs and lows are represented as number. The quality of a digital sound wave is often linked to its “sampling” rate. CD has a quality of 44100 samples per second (44.1 KHz), which is a quite good representation for our ears.

Lossless vs Lossy

There are two different kinds of digital audio file formats – the lossless and the lossy. As the name suggests, the lossless file is made without any losses relatively to the original tracks. For example, when you rip an audio CD to your hard drive in lossless format, the files you get are the exact same tracks contained within the CD. However, if you select the lossy format, some information that is unnecessary for the listener, such as sounds that we cannot hear, are discarded.

Lossless formats include WAVs, FLACs, AIFF, and Apple Lossless. Inside this group, the first two are probably the better-knowns.

Inside the lossy formats, other than the popular MP3, we still have WMA, AAC, MP2 and OGG. The main difference between these formats is the multiple encodings technology used.

There is still another thing to consider: whether the format has a variable (VBR) or constant bitrate (CBR). Some formats have variable bitrates, since they use higher bitrates for complex segments of the file, and lower for the other segments. VBR formats have a better quality-to-space ratio, compared to CBR ones. Even inside each format, there are different kinds of bitrates. For example, MP3 is usually found in V0 (~245 kbps), V2 (~190 kbps) and 320 kbps.

The Size Issue

If you have noticed, FLAC files are usually much bigger than the MP3 ones (usually about 10 times bigger). This is because their bitrate is higher. “Bitrate” is the amount of information processed per second whenever you play a file. So, the higher the bitrate, the higher amount of information will be processed and the better sound quality will be presented (the same happens for images and photos). In this case, a sound file created with a higher bitrate (such as FLAC) will be bigger in size than a sound file with lower bitrate (such as MP3).

In the above image, I compare 2 folders from my music collection: the first is a FLAC album, the second is an MP3 (128 kbps), and they have, respectively, 14 and 13 songs plus the album cover. As you can see, the FLAC album is much bigger in size than the MP3 one. Lossless formats such as FLAC give a better music quality, but they take up much more space than the lossy ones.

Which audio format is suitable for you?

There are many factors that can affect which format you should choose for your music:

• If you have plenty of storage space, be it offline or online, you will want to go for the lossless format (such as FLAC).
• If you are an iPhone, iPod or Mac user and you purchase your music from iTunes, you are mostly stuck with AAC.
• If you purchase music from Amazon or any other source, you will be mainly dealing with MP3.
• WMA is a proprietary format by Microsoft. It is usually smaller in size (than MP3), but not well supported in other platforms.

For MP3, the 320 kbps files are really the better ones, but again a regular person won’t tell the difference between those and the V0 ones. A regular V0 album with about 15 songs is about 65 MB in size, so I personally believe that V0 (VBR, if possible) really is the best quality-to-space ratio option for your music collection.

Is this article helpful? Let us know in the comment.

For some people it’s easy to skirt the topic by just telling yourself everyone does it, so why shouldn’t you. But for others, they find it hard to do something they know on some level is wrong. Is it really harmless or are there some people being hurt in the process? We asked the staff here at Make Tech Easier to chip in and tell us how they feel about the ethics of pirating apps, music, and other media.

Laura Tucker and Aaron Peters:

I like to say that I’ve probably built a wing on Steve Jobs’ home with all my iTunes downloads. That wasn’t always the case though. I started out acquiring my music through some email groups that operated under the guise of “sharing music with friends.” Once the Napster “scandal” (or is it not?) hit, I began to see the issue a little differently and realized if everyone obtained their music that way, the musicians wouldn’t be able to support themselves. As a fellow creative person, it had an effect on me. I pay for my music now, as well as all my apps and movie downloads. Aaron used to participate in “the free-for-all that was Napster,” but has also changed his stance since and even began replacing his music with legitimately paid copies.

Emmanuel Banks and Bertel King

Neither Emmanuel or Bertel pirate music or software. Emmanuel feels “the ease and quality of just buying the song or movie is worth it instead of just hopping on a pirate website.” He admits to being very paranoid about his computer and fears viruses that pirated media could have attached to it. He’ll preview music on YouTube before spending money to buy it. Bertel doesn’t pirate out of principle and will go to Creative Commons to find free music instead of pirating.

Ruji Chapnik

For Ruji, “the ethics of pirating vary according to the nature of the pirated material and the pirate’s intentions.” She doesn’t support pirating independent music, but does see it as excusable for a poor graphic design student to pirate a copy of Photoshop. She feels Adobe will be harmed far less by pirating than the musicians would be. Like Bertel, she recommends finding free and open source alternatives before pirating. I understand this one, as when I was a graphic designer, I “borrowed” software from my employer, as I couldn’t afford several hundred dollars to buy it, yet now I will find cheaper alternatives, even if they aren’t as good.

Soumen Halder and Miguel Leiva-Gomez

Soumen and Miguel look at pirating more from a business standpoint. Soumen believes piracy is needed for the industry to thrive. “While purchases grow a business, piracy makes it popular.” Miguel believes it’s the very act of piracy that makes software expensive. He likens it to electronic cigarettes, saying, the only industry that wants them banned are the pharmaceuticals that could lose money over them, suggesting the industry just doesn’t want to compete. When it comes to software, he doesn’t feel it will even be an issue soon, with more and more software being available to use over the Internet as opposed to it being available in hard copy form, suggesting that it’s the act of piracy that has taken the industry to this point.

Once pirating is looked at in these terms, it makes me compare it to healthcare in the United States, yet another hotbed topic. Prescription prices are so astronomical, because the pharmaceutical companies know the insurance companies can pay for it. This leaves uninsured people forced to look for other alternatives, such as buying medication from other countries. Likewise, Adobe knows they can charge astronomical prices for their software, knowing the big graphic design companies can afford it, yet this leaves freelance designers to find other alternatives, such as open source or pirated software.

Is piracy a necessary evil?

While many people treat piracy as evil and condemn those who did so, others treat it as necessary for the industry to thrive. There will always be a thin fine line between what is correct and what is wrong. How do you view the ethics of pirating apps, music, and software? Is it a necessary evil or one act that should be eradicated forever? Let us know in the comment section below.

Image credit:Young boy in pirate outfit by BigStockPhoto, XKCD

For those who aren’t in the know, LaTeX is an open source typesetting system and document markup language used often in scientific publishing and academia. It is based on the older, lower-level markup language TeX. LaTeX is known for producing attractive, high-quality documents of all sorts.

LaTeX is commonly associated with the initialism “WYSIWYM” – What You See is What You Mean. WYSIWYM is an alternative to WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get), which is the style of graphical editing used by most word processors to show you exactly what the final product is going to look like as you type it. WYSIWYM, in contrast, is a paradigm that emphasizes deliberate structural choices, generally through the use of a markup language and style sheets. The computer does the work of exporting it into a readable document, such as a PDF.

For example, try typing this in Microsoft Word:

Not happening, right? In LaTeX, all you have to do to generate that symbol is type \LaTeX. Similarly, LaTeX has built-in commands for many mathematical symbols and will semi-automatically handle the presentation of equations for you.

Needless to say, LaTeX has a learning curve. Consider this article a cheat sheet, because I’m going to show you how to use a LaTeX résumé template without even knowing LaTeX.

Requirements

To follow this tutorial, you’ll have to download a few things:

• TeX Live
  • For Linux, visit the link above or use your package manager.
  • For Mac OS X, install MacTex.
  • For Windows, follow these instructions.
• Texmaker for your operating system (it’s available for Linux, Max OS X, and Windows)
• The “Two Column One-Page CV” template (get the cv_3.tex file, not the PDF)
• The fonts used in the template:
  • Hoefler Text or the free alternative Linux Libertine
  • Gill Sans or the free alternative Sans Guilt
  • Zapfino or the free alternative Freebooter Script

Necessary Tweaks

Go ahead and install TeX Live, Texmaker, and your fonts. Now open up cv_3.tex in Texmaker, which is a graphical editor for TeX/LaTeX. You should see something like this:

If you’re a get-straight-to-the-point type and you noticed the “Quick Build” and “View PDF” buttons at the top, you might be tempted to run them and turn the sample résumé into a PDF right away. If you run Quick Build now, Texmaker will respond with an error message in the bottom console:

That is because this particular template relies on the XeLaTeX compiler, which is not used by default in Texmaker. To fix this, you can add a custom command. Go to “User::User Commands::Edit User Commands”:

In the dialog that opens up, fill out the following:

Now you will see XeLatex in the User Commands menu, which will run your document through XeLatex rather than the standard pdftex. If you have the non-free fonts Hoefler Text, Gill Sans, and Zapfino, running the XeLatex command followed by clicking the arrow next to “View PDF” should produce PDF output. To see it, click on “View::Pdf Viewer” in the top menu:

If you used the free fonts instead, you’ll have to make a few adjustments to the source code. Right now, lines 35 and 36 look like:

\setromanfont[Mapping=tex-text]{Hoefler Text} % Main document font
\setsansfont[Scale=MatchLowercase,Mapping=tex-text]{Gill Sans} % Font for your name at the top

Edit those lines to change the names of the fonts like so:

\setromanfont[Mapping=tex-text]{Linux Libertine} % Main document font
\setsansfont[Scale=MatchLowercase,Mapping=tex-text]{Sans Guilt DB} % Font for your name at the top

Now scroll down to line 75, where the Zapfino font is called for, and change it to Freebooter Script (I have also modified the code to fix a sizing issue with the font substitution):

{\color{headings}\sffamily\Huge\fontspec{Freebooter Script}Curriculum {Vit\fontspec{Freebooter Script}\ae}\\[15pt]\par}

And… Go!

Now that you’ve substituted your fonts, you can hit “User::User Commands::XeLatex”. If the build goes according to plan, you’ll get encouraging output in the lower console, and you can now build the PDF. In split view mode, you’ll see something like this:

The technical part is behind you. Now that Texmaker and your template are set up to work together, you can start the actual hard work: filling in your résumé.

Knowing a bit of LaTeX syntax couldn’t hurt for this part, but you will be able to figure out a lot of it simply by copying and pasting. The source code of this particular template is also filled with helpful comments (anything following a % is a comment in LaTeX).

Conclusion

LaTeX is a powerful typesetting tool, and I recommend that you use it for your serious documents. If you followed this tutorial to make your résumé with LaTeX, good luck with the job search, and may you never resort to Microsoft Word for your C.V. needs again!

1. TuneWiki

Any karaoke fans in the house? TuneWiki displays the lyrics to the song you’re currently playing and scrolls through them in real-time. If no one has synced the lyrics to that particular song yet, TuneWiki gives you the option to sync them yourself (hence the “wiki” concept).

2. MusiXmatch

I don’t see any significant differences between TuneWiki and MusiXmatch except that (A) TuneWiki is more popular, and (B) MusiXmatch seems to have more lyrics available for the assorted music tests I’ve put it through. This varied, though; for example, TuneWiki was more keen on Leonard Cohen’s lyrics than MusiXmatch was. Oh, and MusiXmatch automatically features artist photographs in the background of the lyrics display. Like TuneWiki, MusiXmatch gives you to option to sync lyrics that aren’t already synced, as in the screenshot below.

3. Last.fm

Last.fm is a wonderful music service unto itself, dedicated to tracking your music listening habits and suggesting related music. The Spotify app for Last.fm lets you “scrobble” – the Last.fm term for recording the tracks you listen to – and access most other features of Last.fm, such as artist information and similar artist recommendations, straight from the Spotify interface. To get the most out of this app, you should make a Last.fm account.

4. Moodagent

Moodagent is a mood-dependent playlist generator. It’s great if you just so happen to be in a sensual, tender, happy, or angry mood, as those are the four pre-defined moods you can click on. Alternatively, you can enter a song of your choice into the search bar and find other music that matches its mood. Moodagent will also recommend recent songs you’ve listened to that are popular enough to have gathered playlist data.

The results screen gives you a playlist along with the ability to manipulate the five-factor control curve. This lets you base the generated playlist on Moodagent’s assessment of your base song’s sensuality, tenderness, happiness, angriness, and tempo.

So how did it do? Pretty well, I thought, though it didn’t have data for all of the songs I tried it with. I don’t know exactly how their algorithm works except that it takes into account your starred songs, top tracks, and current playlists as a starting point for gauging your tastes.

5. Tastebuds

Tastebuds is a social app for meeting people in your area with similar music tastes. To get started, scan your library:

Next Tastebuds will present you with your matches, which you can filter by age, gender, and location.

After you log in, you can edit your own profile. This is what mine looked like after I logged in through Facebook; as you can see, it guessed on some of the details:

I found the interface a little buggy at times. For instance, I would try to type information into the form fields, but no characters would show up. This may be a bug in my version of Spotify, though, which is the beta for Linux.

Tastebuds presented me with an impressive number of matches in my area, proving that it has an active userbase. If you’re rebounding from an epic breakup or just looking for some new friends in your area, this is a nice alternative to traditional online dating and meetup services.

6. Songkick Concerts

Songkick has a simple goal: To show you upcoming concerts by the artists you listen to.

By default, it seems to only show mainstream artists on your front page, but you can log in at the Songkick website to edit your tracked artists if you’d like to switch the focus.

Did we miss your favorite Spotify app? Which ones do you use?

Configuring UMS:

To get started, download and install the freeware on your PC (tested on Windows 8). During the installation, you will be prompted to install AviSynth 2.6 MT, go ahead and click Yes. The graphical interface provided by the Universal Media Server is more comforting than other popular UPnP media servers for any average user.

First of all, you will need to take a look at the Navigation/Share Settings tab. This is where you will have to add folders to share with other devices. To add a folder, you need to use the folder icon at the bottom. A new dialog will open where you will be required to add folders that contains the files to be shared. You can also choose a drive as a whole.

Once you have added the folders to share, you will need to configure the HTTP settings and the network for your media streaming server. There are other options in this tab which controls several preferences to tune UMS to meet your needs.

The plugin management tab lets you install additional features with plugins like streaming music from services like Grooveshark, Google Music etc. Last but not the least, the Transcoding settings lets you control the file transcoding for proper playback on the rendered devices. If you are unsure of what it does, the default settings work just fine on most devices.

Supported Devices:

Supported devices are Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony Bravia, Google Android, Freebox HD, Freecom MusicPal, Pioneer Kuro, Nokia N900, Philips Aurea, Philips Net TV, Yamaha RX-V671, OPPO blu-ray players, DirecTV HR, Popcorn Hour, Asus O!Play, Xtreamer, AC Ryan PlayOn!HD, Brite-view CinemaTube, Samsung televisions, Philips Streamium, Western Digital WD TV LiveXBMC Media Center, Boxee, LG Smart TV Upgrader, Samsung UPC Horizon and more.

One thing to be noted here is that your devices should be DLNA compliant else this freeware won’t work as expected.

Being a JAVA application, the freeware is available for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms. The media server is powered by MEncoder, FFmpeg, tsMuxeR, AviSynth, MediaInfo and more. It supports all major audio and video file formats. Packed with advanced features the media server app promises a better experience than other similar tools. Follow this link to take a sneak peek at quick overview of features UMS provides compared to others.

On a concluding note, the easy installation and configuration UI of UMS sets it apart from other tools that only provide command line setup which is a little tricky for average Joes. Considering the wide range of supported file formats and devices, the tool is a one stop solution. For those who are willing to set up a desktop media server, UMS is definitely a choice to consider.

Download Universal Media Server for Windows 2.2.0

Usage

When you open Batch Marker, you will notice the background of the main window is a brief usage instruction of the software. This is pretty useful for the first time user.

To get started, add your images to the dashboard. You can either add files or select a folder with images (using the big “Add” button on the top left corner). Once added, all the images will appear in the bottom scroller panel and you can move through the scroller to view individual image.

After you have added the images, this is where the fun comes in. At the left panel, you can select to add Copyright, Watermark text, logo/image, date/time and lines. For each section, you can also configure the text option such as the font type, font size, color, position etc.

When you make the changes, it will be updated real time so you can see how it appears in the image.

When you are done with watermark settings, you can select the location and the file format to save the images. Lastly, just click the “Save Image” button to run the batch conversion.

Giveaway

I must say, not everyone will need this software, but for those who need, this is indeed a great software that can save you plenty of time and effort. I am also glad that Roman, the developer of Batch Marker, has sponsored 10 license keys to give away to you. Here is how you can participate:

1. Go to our Facebook page and click the Giveaway code. You will need to “like” our Facebook page in order to access the code.

Alternatively, if you are not a Facebook user, you can also check out our Twitter stream and Google+ page for the code.

2. Enter the form below, together with the giveaway code. This form allows us to contact you if you are the lucky one to win the prize.

Contest Closed.

Winners:

1. shawn poole
2. Holm Hansen
3. Robert Horvath
4. Ashley Costello
5. B.Doedens
6. Kjell Inge Sandvik
7. Jon Clifford
8. Mark
9. David Chiappone
10. Craig Wilson

3. Share this post in either Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus.

That’s it.

Contest ends August 20, 2012.

Thanks to Batch Marker for the kind sponsorship. If you would like to sponsor a giveaway, do contact us here

Batch Marker Photo Watermarking Software

NovaPDF Professional is a software for Windows that allows you to convert your documents to PDF format. It also comes with features like sharing, send email after conversion, password protection, links preservation, font embedding and many more features.

Once you have downloaded and installed the application, you can easily convert your documents by selecting the source file and clicking the “Create” button.

A window will then pop up to allow you to configure the options before the PDF conversion. From here, you can merge this file with another PDF and whether to append to the existing PDF or insert before it. In addition, you can also select the “Send Email” checkbox to get it to send yourself an email once the conversion is completed.

Advanced options include setting the password and encryption level, compression ratio for images, and editing document properties.

NovaPDF also integrates itself with Microsoft Office so you can print directly within your Office apps. For other applications that support printing, you can easily access NovaPDF via the Print option.

More Configurations

This is not easily visible, but if you go to “Control Panel -> Devices and Printers -> NovaPDF -> Printing Preferences”, you will find that there are plenty of configuration options that you can play with. Among them all, the one I like most is the ability to create multiple profiles for different print jobs. This is useful if you need to do PDF conversion on a regular basis.

Free Giveaway

The developers of novaPDF has gladly sponsored 10 license keys for NovaPDF Professional to be given away to Make Tech Easier’s readers. Each version of NovaPDF Professional costs $49.95. Here is how you can win your copy:

1. Go to our Facebook page and click the Giveaway code. You will need to “like” our Facebook page in order to access the code.

Alternatively, if you are not a Facebook user, you can also check out our Twitter stream and Google+ page for the code.

2. Enter the form below, together with the giveaway code. This form allows us to contact you if you are the lucky one to win the prize.

Note: This contest is now closed.

The winners are:

Hisham
Josh Rice
david craker
Prabu
Sal
Trinh Huu Tung
Tom Saunders
Tek
Duncan Bradley
Gerard Sayawan

3. Share this post in either Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus.

That’s it.

Contest ends August 13, 2012.

Thanks to NovaPDF for the kind sponsorship. If you would like to sponsor a giveaway, do contact us here

NovaPDF

Installation

The installation of FotoMix is rather tricky. It can install a host of other software if not installed carefully. When I first started installing FotoMix, it asked me if I wanted to install Babylon along with the software. You will need to uncheck “Download and Install Babylong 9″.

Then you’ll see a dialog box confirming the operation. You will need to press “Cancel” in order to not install Babylon search engine in your browser.

Next came another ad about SpeedUpMyPC. You’ll need to uncheck the checkbox in order to avoid installing another software.

The last one was in Spanish so it was a difficult task for me to translate. You will need to select “No estoy de acuerdo”. This will prevent the advertisement software from installing. The advertisements may vary but you’ll need to be careful on each and every screen. After all these are done, the actual FotoMix software will download and install.

When you start FotoMix for the first time, you’ll see a very user friendly interface. On the left hand menu, you’ll see buttons like resize, crop, rotate and mirror flip and on the top menu you’ll see buttons like background, foreground composition, touch up, finish.

The top menu actually guides you through the photo editing process. First you’ll need to select a background, then a foreground and then make a composition of the foreground and the background along with other options like adding text to the picture, adjusting fading, transparency etc.

Touch tab will let you use brushes like color brush, tint brush, clone brush, blend brush and smooth brush on the picture.

The Finish tab will finally let you adjust the frame size, save, print or copy the final image.

FotoMix software supports a lot of languages. You can click on the globe icon on the top right of the software window. It will display a list of languages which are supported. You can select any language to change the language of FotoMix immediately.

Overall, FotoMix is a great choice for those who don’t have much experience with photo editing especially for combining two images together to form a new image. What are your thoughts about this nifty software? Will you use for your own purpose or do you prefer any other image editing software? Please share your thought in comments below.

Download FotoMix

Image credit: Photo camera with photos by Big Stock Photo.

Installation and Usage

The installation is pretty simple. Since it is java-based, it will work on every OS that has java enabled. It does come with an installer package for each OS, so you don’t need to run the jar file manually in the terminal. Head over to the Download page and download the version for your system. For Linux – Debian/Ubuntu users, you can head over to its deb download page and download the version for your system.

On the first run, it will prompt you to setup your accounts by entering your username and password to the various IM and XMPP/SIP accounts.

Once you have set it up, it will run like any other SIP/XMPP/IM client.

On Windows and Mac, it integrates quite well with the system theme, but on my Ubuntu machine, the java GUI sucks. In addition, this application will cause an invisible “JavaEmbeddedFrame” window to appear in the menu bar and can’t be removed until you quit the app. This doesn’t affect the functionalities of Jitsi, but still, it can be rather annoying.

For the chat, there is one feature that I like best: the ability to encrypt your chat session. During a chat, you can click the padlock button to encrypt the conversation. However, this works only when both parties are using Jitsi, else it won’t work.

To make a audio/video call, you can easily click the Phone or Video icon below your friend’s name. You can also click the Screen Sharing icon to share your screen, though I can’t get it to work, perhaps due to my firewall configuration.

During the call, you can also toggle Record to start the session recording. All voice calls are recorded in the MP3 format, although you can change it in the Options menu.

Conclusion

As a multi-protocol and cross platform compatible desktop client, Jitsi has done a great work. The ability to share screen and create conference calls make it even better. The only grit I have is with the security feature that can only be useful when both parties are using Jitsi. Other than that, it is rather useless.

Do you use Jitsi? What do you think of its functionalities? Have you come across other desktop clients that can do the same? Share it with us in the comment.

Jitsi

With these numbers in mind, it can become an issue for the users to update their software to the latest version, particularly if they have installed hundreds of software on their PCs. To counter this problem, the concept of automatic software updaters was introduced which would check for updates of all the software installed in the computer and notify the user of all the updates available for their PCs. These software are also called software updates monitors.

In this article, we will be discussing almost all the software updater available publicly today. If I miss one, you can share it in the comments below. Please note that all these software are not alike. Some software may be used for monitoring general software updates while some may be related to security apps and patches only.

1. FileHippo Update Checker

FileHippo Update Checker is one of my favorite as it is extremely small in size and very easy to use. After the installation, FileHippo Update Checker will scan for installed software and send the information to FileHippo servers to compare the versions of software installed on the PC and available on FileHippo.com.

It will then display a list of updates available and the download links to new updated software. One has to manually download the software and install it on the computer. FileHippo Update Checker is very good for those who want to keep an eye on everything that is being updated or installed.

One drawback of FileHippo Update Checker is that it does not support all the new software being released daily but it supports majority of the popular software. FileHippo Update Checker works on all versions of Windows but it requires .NET Framework 2.0 or later to be installed.

Download FileHippo Update Checker

2. CNet TechTracker

CNet TechTracker is from the owners of download.com which is considered to be a one stop destination for software downloads. Usually the updates to the software are available on CNet software catalog sooner than other sites. Another advantage of installing CNet TechTracker is that most of the software are tested for spyware and malware before being updated.

CNet TechTracker is the best tool for those who want to have a “set it and forget it” functionality. One thing to note that while installing this software updater, it will also install a search toolbar which can be annoying for many users. You have to be careful while installing TechTracker and select “I do not accept” when the toolbar offer is made.

Download CNet TechTracker

3. SUMo

SUMo (Software Updates Monitor) is another great software updater which is easy to use and can automate the software updates process. The biggest disadvantage of SUMo is with its installation procedure. You have to be very careful while installing SUMo because it will ask you to install some useless toolbars and software which you should always decline.

After the installation, SUMo will give you an option to either open SUMo settings or automatically detect installed software. After automatic detection, you have to click on the next button “Check for updates for your installed software”. The scanning and updating process is very fast and takes just a few moments to get the results. You can update the software by selecting it and clicking on the Get Updates button. You can also select multiple items by using Ctrl and Shift keys.

SUMo makes use of different software download sites in order to get the updates. The download sites include FileForum, Softonic, Download.com, Softpedia, Snapfiles, FileHippo etc.

Download SUMo

Note: The best way to keep away from bundled software which comes with SUMo is to download the zipped versions of SUMo instead of the installer.

4. UpdateStar

UpdateStar is another popular software updates client. UpdateStar is one of the first software updater that I started using. The interface of UpdateStar is not as user friendly as other software updater discussed above. There are two editions of UpdateStar – free and premium. The premium edition is paid and is fully automated. You don’t have to touch anything in order to update the software installed in the system. UpdateStar premium will automatically update the software and let you know in the system tray. This feature is not available in the freeware edition of UpdateStar.

UpdateStar delivers only major releases of the installed programs making sure that you always have the stable version of software installed.

Download UpdateStar

5. R-Updater

R-Updater is a light weight software updates monitor program which does not take a lot of resources when running. It is available as an installer as well in portable edition. R-Updater starts with Windows and keeps on checking for new versions of installed software every now and then. You can also change the checking schedule in the settings.

The best feature of R-Updater is that in addition to checking for new updates, it also offers to download Giveaway of the day software daily. Going to giveawayoftheday.com and checking for new giveaway daily is hard while R-Updater notifies about the latest giveaways on your desktop.

Download R-Updater

6. Secunia PSI (Personal Software Inspector)

Secunia PSI is another popular automatic software updating solution. When it comes to security updates and patches, Secunia PSI is the best in the competition. I’m currently using Secunia PSI 3 beta. With version 3, the software gets a really simple and user friendly interface. It takes a few moments to open. You will need to scan your PC for installed software in order for Secunia PSI to start working. It will also scan for Windows security updates and let you install the updates from within the program interface.

Overall Secunia PSI is a bit slower than other software updaters but it delivers solid security and software updates.

Download Secunia PSI

Other software updaters

The above mentioned software updaters were the most popular update monitoring software used by millions of users. There are a few others worth mentioning. I found all these updating software while researching for this article.

• Carambis Software Updater – includes multilingual support and a very quick scanning engine with one click scanning option.
• Glarysoft Software Update – informs whenever a new update of a software is available. You can share information and comment on the new software updates.
• RadarSync – automatically download and installs new updates to installed software.
• Appupdater – very similar to Linux apt-get and yum and provides the automated installation and maintenance of installed software.
• Update Notifier – a portable software updater with a watch list feature where you can add programs to your watch list.
• Ketarin – Ketarin keeps the setup packages up to date instead of the installed programs. So if you have a software repository in your computer, Ketarin will keep it up to date.
• Software Informer – lets you find new software according to your needs while keeping the installed software up to date.
• FileREX Update Checker – automatically detects installed apps and then gives download links to the latest versions available.
• Patch My PC – checks for the latest versions of popular software. Patching those popular programs in time keeps the hackers away from the computer.
• Seven Update - very much like Windows Update but it keeps third party software updated. It is free and open source.
• Software-UpToDate - a very simple program which notifies about the recently updated software and gives download links to those software.

The good thing about these software updaters is that usually they do not conflict with each other. If you want to install multiple software updater monitoring programs, you can do it without any problems.

I have tried my best to collect all the software updaters in one place but in case I have missed one, please share it in the comments below.

Image credit: update button concept by Big Stock Photo.

Uses of Virtualization

Virtualization technology is used to make the hardware resources expandable without having to shift the software and data from one place to another.

Virtualization is also used to lower the costs of computer hardware as multiple virtual servers can be hosted on a single server hardware.

Virtualization can be used to setup separate environments for each software application so that one application cannot interfere with the other. This is especially useful when testing a software product on different environments. Rather than dedicating a separate hardware machine, one can easily setup virtual servers on one hardware machine.

Virtualization can be used as a standardization tool. This means that we can setup one Operating System environment as a standard and then replicate the same virtual machine as many times as we want.

What is Virtualization?

According to Wikipedia:

Virtualization (Computing) is the creation of a virtual (rather than actual) version of something, such as a hardware platform, operating system, storage device, or network resources.

Let’s take a simpler example of Virtualization. If you are a frequent computer user, you should already be knowledgeable about the partitions of your hard drive. You can create more than one partition in your computer. In Windows, the partitions are named as C:\, D:\, E:\ etc. We call all the partitions as separate drives. We also know that our computer consists of only a single physical hard drive. These drives are logical partitions of the single physical hard drive. This can be termed as Virtualization as we are creating a multiple virtual versions of a single hardware.

Types of Virtualization

Virtualization is a term which can be used with wide variety of topics but the most popular subject in which Virtualization is used is Operating System Virtualization. Operating System Virtualization means that multiple Operating Systems are being run simultaneously on the same hardware. Other types of Virtualizations include Software Virtualization, Network Virtualization, Storage Virtualization and Server Virtualization.

We’ll discuss other types of Virtualization solutions some time later but in this post we will give the most popular Operating System Virtualization solutions available for Windows.

Operating System Virtualization terminology

Before we go to discuss the actual solution, let’s first get familiar with the terminology used in Operating system Virtualization.

• Host: The Operating System on which the Virtualization software solution runs is called the host.
• Guest: The Operating System which is run inside the Virtualization software is called the guest.

1. Microsoft Virtual PC

Microsoft Virtual PC, as the name implies, is a free Virtualization product from Microsoft. The latest version of Virtual PC is Virtual PC 2007. It can run almost any Operating System as a guest, but only a few hosts are supported, listed below:

• Windows Vista Business, Enterprise and Ultimate
• Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition (32-bit and 64-bit supported)
• Windows XP Professional (32-bit and 64-bit supported)
• Windows XP Tablet PC Edition

Although Virtual PC does everything which a standard Virtualization software can do, it has certain limitations. It does not have USB device support and it cannot save multiple snapshots of the Virtual machine. Other than these limitations, Virtual PC is quite fast especially if you want to install any version of Windows as a guest Operating System.

Download Virtual PC 2007

Please note that Windows XP mode in Windows 7 is just an extension of Virtual PC. It will create a preset Windows XP environment in Windows 7 so that Windows 7 users may be able to run the programs which are only supported to run on Windows XP.

2. VirtualBox

VirtualBox is a Virtualization product from Oracle. The advantage of VirtualBox over Virtual PC is that VirtualBox can run on most platforms including Windows, Linux and Mac. VirtualBox is free and Open-Source. It supports resizing the guest Operating System screen according to the VirtualBox window. You need to have “scale mode” enabled for this purpose. If you click on the guest OS screen, your mouse and keyboard will be locked inside the guest OS so that you can use the keyboard and mouse in the guest OS without interrupting the host. To release the mouse and keyboard to be used in the host, just press Ctrl + left arrow key. This hotkey can be customized in VirtualBox options.

VirtualBox also comes with an extension pack which can be installed along with VirtualBox in order to get additional functionality like USB device support, remote desktop connection and PXE (network) booting capability for Intel NIC (LAN) cards.

Although VirtualBox runs in Mac OS but it has many problems and creates stability issues. So it should only be used in a home environment when Mac OS has to be used as a host Operating System. VirtualBox runs fine on Windows and Linux as hosts.

Download VirtualBox (All Operating Systems)

3. VMLite Workstation

VMLite Workstation is a Virtualization product based on VirtualBox (Open Source). It works very similar to Microsoft Virtual PC but gets rid of the limitations of Virtual PC. An interesting feature of VMLite Workstation is that it supports running of a 64-bit guest Operating System on a 32-bit host Operating System. So if you are running 32-bit Windows 7, you will be able to run 64-bit Windows XP with the help of VMLite Workstation.

As opposed to Virtual PC, VMLite supports saving of multiple live snapshots of the virtual machine. This is like versioning. If you don’t like the current version of the environment, you can always revert to a previous state using a previous snapshot saved by VMLite Workstation.

VMLite supports most of the Virtualization formats used in the industry like VMDK (VMWare), VHD (Microsoft), VDI (Sun) and HDD (Parallel).

VMLite comes with its own version of Windows XP Mode for Windows 7. It gives the same functionality as the original Windows XP mode and does not require any hardware Virtualization.

Download VMLite Workstation (Registration required to download the setup file)

4. VMWare Server

VMWare Server is a free Virtualization software from VMWare. Although its support has ended but it can still be downloaded and used for free. VMWare Server supports almost all the Operating Systems as guests or hosts but 64-bit guest OS cannot be installed on a 32-bit host. VMWare Server has support for USB devices and also supports bridged, NAT and host only network interfaces.

VMWare Server comes with administrative tools package which can be installed from the File menu. The administrative tools make it easier to communicate between the host and the guest Operating System without locking the mouse and enabling of cut, copy, paste and drag and drop operations across host and guest OS.

Download VMWare Server

Other Virtualization Solutions

While researching for this article, I have come across some very useful software which may not be free but are worth a look. While free solutions can be used for home and SOHO businesses, commercial products can satisfy the needs of large enterprises. I’m listing down the software that I came across during my research:

VMWare Workstation is very similar to VMWare Server but it is still supported by VMWare.

VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop are the perfect but paid alternatives to VirtualBox if you are using Mac OS as host Operating System. If you are looking for a free solution for Mac OS, try Boot Camp.

QEMU is another popular Virtualization solution but I couldn’t find QEMU for Windows. The downloads are only available for Linux.

Paragon Go Virtual was another good Virtualization software but it seems to have been discontinued. It can be downloaded from Majorgeeks.

I hope this article will serve as a good guide for Virtualization software. If I have missed anything or you have suggestions about this topic, please communicate via comments below.

Note: You may also be interested in our already covered topics on MTE about Virtualization:

How to run multiple linux distros without Virtualizations

A comparison between Virtualbox and VMWare Server

Image credit: Laptop In Laptop In Laptop by BigStockPhoto

1. OpenOffice/LibreOffice Draw

OpenOffice Draw and LibreOffice Draw are two separate software but since their usage and functionality is very similar, I would mention them together. These are the closest and the biggest open source competitors of Microsoft Visio. Draw is an all purpose drawing, diagramming and charting tool. The feature that I love in Draw is the grouping feature. You can easily group different objects together and then do different actions on the group like moving the group, connecting with other groups etc. In addition to other formats (XML format is the default), you can also export your diagrams as SWF Flash files.

Download OpenOffice Draw

Download LibreOffice Draw

2. Dia

Dia is an open source software very similar to Microsoft Visio. When you start it for the first time, you will see that the user interface resembles with Visio a lot. The feature set of dia is also very similar to Visio. You can create UML diagrams, flowcharts, network processes and architectures, entity relationship diagrams etc. easily with Dia. The default file format for any file created with Dia is .dia but there are a lot of file formats that you can export your diagram including Microsoft Visio vdx format.

Download Dia

3. LucidChart

If you are looking for a web based alternative to Microsoft Visio, LucidChart is the perf5 Best Free Alternatives To Microsoft Visioect choice. It provides a drag and drop web interface to draw any kind of diagram. LucidChart gives you an option to build your diagrams in collaboration with your team. Multiple people will be able to work with the same diagram making it the perfect choice for small teams. One of the great features of LucidChart is that it can export or import Microsoft Visio vdx files very easily in your LucidChart account. One thing that is missing in LucidChart is the built in categorization of different shapes for different areas like networking, engineering etc. You don’t need to signup for an account on LucidChart. You just have to open the site and start drawing.5 Best Free Alternatives To Microsoft Visio

Visit LucidChart

4. Diagramly

Diagramly is another web based diagramming and mind mapping software. It has a very responsive and easy to use interface with the tools on the left hand column and the drawing on the right hand column. You don’t need to signup for an account to use Diagramly. You can just visit Diagramly and start working on your diagram or mind map. When finished, save the diagram in an XML file locally on your computer. If you need to edit the diagram again, just visit Diagramly again and open your locally saved file for further editing.

Visit Diagramly

5. Pencil Project

Pencil Project is an Open Source alternative to Microsoft Visio which is actively maintained by the development community. Their goal for Pencil Project is to make it a tool to make diagramming as easy as possible and usable for everyone from a newbie to an expert. It is very similar to other desktop based tool with a distinction that it can be installed as a Firefox extension so that you can easily create your diagrams while browsing the Internet.

Download Pencil Project

I hope you will find these free alternatives to Microsoft Visio very useful and I would like to have your thought on how much these free software have been able to replace Visio in your work?

Image credit: Big Stock Photo

1. Openproj

Openproj is so far the best free and open source alternative to Microsoft Project. Openproj is the best alternative because there is very little time and effort required to shift from Microsoft Project to Openproj. It can even open MPP and MPT files created from Microsoft Project but one drawback of Openproj is that it will not be able to save the file back to MS Project file format but rather save it in an XML file which can be opened universally by any XML reader.

Download Openproj

Openproj is compatible with Mac OS, Windows and Linux.

2. Gantter

Gantter is a free web based project management application that is especially targeted for small businesses and home users. The biggest feature of Gantter that I like the most is that it can be easily integrated with Google docs. You can also import your MPP files created in Microsoft Project but Gantter will save files in XML format. You can either save your projects locally or on Gantter cloud servers.

Visit Gantter

3. Teambox

Teambox is another free web based project management tool.  Teambox is much like a social network of all the people who are working on a project. You can easily assign tasks, leave comments and fix due dates and this functionality is given just like we post anything on Facebook or any other social network. This makes it stand off from other project management tools. If your requirement is heavy collaboration among the team, Teambox is the perfect solution for you. The free edition of Teambox supports up to 3 projects and 50MB of online space.

Visit Teambox

4. Rally Community Edition

Rally Community Edition is another web based free and easy to use project management tool. This tool is an ideal solution for small business free for up to 10 users. You can easily plan and track tasks with Rally community edition. The distinction of Rally Community Edition is that it provides personal dashboards for all the users and combines social media tools for better collaboration and getting the right things done at the right time.

Visit Rally Community Edition

5. FreedCamp

FreedCamp is another feature rich web based alternative to Microsoft Project. The thing that attracts me towards FreedCamp is their claim on their homepage:

Over 48 universities, and 31 thousand professionals from 188 countries use Freedcamp every day!

FreedCamp offers an extremely easy to use dashboard which even newbies can get familiar with easily. FreedCamp works in modules and you can install any application that suits your project. This approach is especially successful as people have the flexibility to work on only the tasks and tools that they would like to use. All extras will never be installed. You can install the basic apps during the signup process. The basic apps includes a to-do list, discussions, milestones, time and files.

Which is your application of choice for managing your projects whether at the office or at home? What do you think is the best way to manage projects easily? Is it through using the software or doing things manually?

Image credit: Big Stock Photo

TimeSlotTracker is created in Java, and that explains why it is cross-platform compatible. To make it easy to install and use, there is the native installer for both Windows and Linux. If there is anything unpleasant about a java-based app, it must be the ugly interface and the inability to integrate with the OS theme. This is what it looks like in Ubuntu.

Luckily, you can change the theme layout in TimeSlotTracker.

Once installed, the app comes with a list of task and sub-tasks. You can only have one main task, but you can add unlimited sub-tasks (and sub sub-tasks) to it. Each sub-task is equivalent to a project. Using the Play, Pause and Stop button at the toolbar, you can quickly and easily get it to track the time spent on each project.

At any point of time, you can pause or restart the timeslot. I love the part where you can edit the selected timeslot. This is particularly useful when you have forgotten to start the time tracking while working on a project and only remember it an hour later. You can start the time tracking and edit the start time to an hour ago.

Taking screenshots while tracking time

Another feature of TimeSlotTracker is to take a screenshot of your desktop on a regular interval. This allows you to track the task you are doing while the time tracker is active. It is a good way to convince your client that you are indeed working during the tracked time.

The screenshot feature can be enabled under the “Configuration -> Monitoring” section.

Reporting feature

TimeSlotTracker also allows you to export your data to several formats, including HTML, XML and CSV. You can also choose to export a Summary report, Detail report or Journal report. It will be great if it supports PDF format too.

Conclusion

I am not sure about Windows or Mac, but in Linux, the TimeSlotTracker is almost the perfect app for me. Being cross platform compatible also means that you can easily port your data from platform to platform without any issue, which is important since my work requires me to work in different OS. In Ubuntu, I do have a minor issue with the “Minimize to tray” feature. Once minimized, I am not able to restore back to maximize mode. The “Tip of the day” popup is rather annoying too, but it can be turned off at the Configuration section, so it is not too bad. All in all, if you are looking for a good, useful, and free time tracker software, TimeSlotTracker could be the one for you.

TimeSlotTracker

1. Evernote

Evernote is the most popular and the closest alternative to OneNote. Evernote can help users organize different types of information without having to follow a defined set of architecture. The biggest advantage of Evernote, which even OneNote doesn’t have, is the synchronization feature. All your notes created in Evernote will automatically be synchronized on the Evernote servers. These notes can be access from anywhere else as it’s saved on the cloud. There are two editions of Evernote; paid and free. The difference is the cloud storage capacity.

2. Tiddlywiki

Tiddlywiki has been my favorite for quite some time now. I had organized all my documents in separate Tiddlywikis before I started using Microsoft OneNote. For those who don’t know, Tiddlywiki is a non-linear web notebook. All the data is stored in a single document. The best feature of Tiddlywiki is that it does not require any software download and installation. You just have to download the Tiddlywiki html file and start using it in any standard web browser. The down side of Tiddlywiki is that it is not very user friendly and you have to learn a lot of shortcuts in order to create different tiddlers.

3. CintaNotes

CintaNotes is a relatively simple notes taking application and not a standard alternative to Microsoft OneNote. If you want to organize only text snippets to your liking, then CintaNotes is for you. It is portable and light weight. The strongest features of CintaNotes include the tagging system. By tagging different snippets of text, you can easily organize your notes the way you want without having to drag and drop things around.

4. Tomboy

Tomboy works very similar to a web content management system and makes it easier for you to organize and connect to the information. The feature of Tomboy that I like the most is that it makes those words in any note a hyperlink which match the title of any text snippet. You can organize your data using different fonts and styles, highlighting and making use of bullet points. You can extend the functionality of Tomboy by installing different add-ins.

5. Nevernote

Nevernote was created in response to Evernote. In the beginning, it was only meant for Linux but now it can also work on Windows. Although it is very similar to Evernote, I don’t like the user interface of Nevernote. It’s not because it is not functional or easy to use, it seems to be designed in Java and is not very fast and sleek. But the overall interface is easy to use and self explanatory.

If you don’t have Microsoft Office suite and don’t want a paid note taking application like OneNote, you may want to select one of the above mentioned apps for this purpose. What are you using for your note taking needs and organizing information?

For further reading you may want to learn about Growly, an alternative to OneNote for Mac and Webnotes which is an online alternative to OneNote.

However, by clicking that box saying that you understand the Terms and Conditions, you are still just as bound to abiding by them if you read them or didn’t. This means the Terms and Conditions aren’t there to read as much as they are there to hold you to something you would be willing to do.

In this world of business that is conducted online, the people placing the Terms and Conditions on their website or software probably aren’t reading it either. Google shows over 20,000 Terms and Conditions generators out there to generate the wording and code to make it easier for business and websites to place it on their site or add it to their software package.

In lieu of being a speed-reader, the best way to know what you’re agreeing to before you click that box is to skim the text. There is so much information contained within this text it’s often laid out in outline form. It starts with roman numerals, and includes indents with capital letters, regular numbers, lowercase letters, etc.

Much of this is information you don’t need to read. Looking at the above sample, you know who the buyer is. It’s you. Why read the text explaining what it is? If you know what the word conspicuous means, there’s no reason to read most of the next five paragraphs. Simply skim it to make sure they aren’t applying a different meaning to it.

There are a few words you want to pay particular attention to while skimming, and perhaps read those areas a little more in depth. One of those words is liabilty. This pertains to how you will be held responsible for buying or using the software, app, or website. You want to be sure you know what you are agreeing to with this.

The other words you want to pay close attention to are “fees”, “compensation”, or anything else that translates into money going out. That’s always my fear when downloading software. I’m always afraid that while it says it’s free, I’ll be expected to pay after a certain time or when I use it a certain way. Be absolutely clear with this wording to be sure you don’t get stuck paying for something you don’t want to.

EULAlyzer

If you need even more understanding being following a few key terms, there is software out there that will help you understand the Terms and Conditions of software. EULAlyzer is a Windows-based software that will tell you how safe the software you are about to install is, and also helps analyze that Terms and Conditions agreement highlighting the key phrases that you should pay particular interest to.

By skimming and ignoring portions of text that either don’t pertain to you or are explanations of terms you already understand, and by knowing where to go for more help when you need it, you will be able to click that checkbox at the end with much more confidence. You can change hours of boring reading into minutes of skimming, skipping, and double-checking.