zeitgeek.i.am
Today I set up a del.icio.us account, thus placing the cherry on top of my full embrace of the Internet community sociothrob. How deep am I? You tell me. This started off a couple days ago as a brain dump email. I decided there was too much information here to throw at one person. :-)
First off, this informtion is for your edification only. I'm not responsible for what you do on your own time or how you use these tools. Moreover, as Windows boxes are all different, my solutions may not work for you or your use. That's cool. Whatever successes I've had with these tools, however, doesn't qalify me to support your installations. So, um, don't ask me how to do things. Read the manuals/web pages/support forums, expect both trials and errors, and for G*d's sake, back yer shit up before you do anything...accidental.
While I consider myself a geek-oriented power user, I've never been a hardcore hack jockey. I'm not so much "into computers" as I'm into using a computer's full potential to express my creativity and unlock new possibilities. Technology is so fully integrated into my life it's as entrenched in my processes as electricity and running water. But no matter. Sure, I can build a PC from scratch, but I much prefer if the IT guy does it. However it seems I'm always turning people on to new tools, and I'm often asked how I find stuff, and my answer is always the same, "I use the Internet." Allow me to elucidate. :-)
Just as the original Mosaic browser changed the way I used the Internet, so has the proliferation of RSS and social networking (the the cognoscenti and the technorati call "Web 2.0" ;-). RSS allows me to catch up on myriad weblogs, news sites, and search topics without having to visit every single website. I now use it to manage email, news - even my Netflix account. I also use RSS to pubish content from one area of my infosphere (gawd) to another. For example, my new del.icio.us account is a place for me to store bookmarks enriched with descriptive meta-tags. I can instantly search for bookmarks through its tags (for example http://del.icio.us/tag+free+software), as well search for taggers into the same stuff as I am. I've configured del.ic.ious to provide an RSS feed to my (Blogger powered) weblog and my Mozilla Firefox browser's Sage extension (which I've augmented with my own CSS template). Blogger will publish my weblog on my hosted (via dreamhost.com), Linux-based namesake website that I designed myself, and will publish RSS and Atom feeds via Feedburner. My Joomla!-managed test site publishes its own feeds, just like my three flickr accounts and my gallery-powered imageplex site. Confused yet?
Pictures are infinitely easier to deal with now, thanks to Picasa 2, which, incidently, publishes directly to Blogger, unlike the Flickr Uploadr. I can even browse flickr in the Firefox sidebar, a feature that I hope will be native to the finished version the new Firefox offshoot Flock browser beta, which is full of some neat ideas, but is definately not yet ready for prime-time. I'm really impressed with the latest revision of Picasa, which finds all the images on yer computer (and local network if you let it), indexes them, and puts together all the basic touch-up tools in a simple but sexy interface. Picasa very easily creates attractive collages, slideshows, and webpages from large and small collections. Love it. Even so, I get a lot of mileage out of Shell Picture, which displays a thumnail and basic file management commands in the right-click menu when applied to an image file.
Mozilla Firefox is my browser of choice, but it's a lame duck without some essential extensions. I won't tic off my entire list, but the extensions I can't live without are the aforementioned Sage RSS feed reader, antipagination, IEtab, Adblock (with the Filterset.G Updater), the All-in-one Sidebar, downloadThemAll!, Checky, View formatted source, FlickrFox, download manager tweak, download pdf, flat bookmark editor, NoScript, fireFTP, Customize Google, Nuke Anything, Gmail Manager, EditRSS, and the Greasemonkey user script manager. I'm also using the Google Web Accelerator, which assists both FireFox and IE (and makes my home SharePoint installation much quicker to use).
Speaking of scripts, power users can save themselves a helluva lot of time by getting to know and use VBScript. Sounds scary? It's not. Microsoft has set up a great site with a real emphasis on those new to scripting. They also provide a repository of hundreds of demo scripts, which you are free to use and modify to suit your needs. There's also a portable version of the script repository in help-file format which fits on any floppy disk. If you think scripts couldn't help you, install Windows Script, check out the repository and see for yourself. Once you're comfortable with that, you can also try the Do-It-Yourself Script Center Kit and Microsoft's Script-o-matic.
I'm an environment stickler. I like my space a certain way, and I'm not prone to superbubbly animated interfaces. I know those that swear by WindowBlinds and other tools, but in my experience they've often been a one-way ticket to poor performance. I tend to keep it simple (I almost always start with the the basic, "classic" Windows 2000 look in Windows XP). When I find wallpaper, icons, fonts, and a color scheme I like, I go to the Display Properties and save it as a theme file. I then backup these theme files in case my OS goes poof. I configure other user interface (UI) elements either with Microsoft's TweakUI powertoy (lite duty) or the free, plug-in based Xsetup Pro (heavy duty). I manage icons with iPhile, which is hands-down the best free utility for managing icons in Windows. I do my best to collect configuration and settings files into a single directory that I name c:\!. Windows accepts "!" as a valid ASCII character, and since it's placed before "A" in the ASCII table, any directory name that starts with "!" will appear at the top of a directory list. It's a good way to mark "special" folders that should always float on top.
My "!" directory looks like this:
C:\!\apps - application settings and log files
C:\!\backup - registry backups and system restore points
D:\!\download - temporary download location
C:\!\gui - themes, local css, images, wallpapers, icons
D:\!\scratch - temp space for apps like Adobes Photoshop and Illustrator
C:\!\shortcuts - toolbar shortcuts
C:\!\stage - a staging area for web and file managers like Dreamweaver
C:\!\type - local fonts, managed throug Adobe Type Manager
In c:\!\apps, there's a folder for each major application I use. I configure each program to output system files and log files to its directory in c:\!\apps Having them all in one place is really convenient, especially for backup and restore operations. For certain essential tools like notepad2 and putty, I use Registry Crawler to export their registry settings to a file, so that if I need to reinstall them, I'll have my colors, fonts, and other settings just as they were before. For some configuration settings, like Outlook, I've taken screenshots of all the major settings windows in working order with SnagIt and then archived them in an Adobe Acrobat binder.
I keep shortcuts for my commonly used applications in directories underneath c:\!\shortcuts. This lets me create individual toolbars for each of the directories which I anchor to the right side of my desktop (it looks like this). This way I don't have to navigate the start menu for the common stuff and also don't have to clutter up the taskbar on the bottom of the desktop. That gives me room for an address bar, which isn't quite a desktop command line, but it's close. My icon sidebar is the only one I allow. The various sidebars from Google (part of Desktop) and others tend to be obnoxious and invasive.
The !\scratch and !\download directories are on a different partition. Scratch space is on the D partition to reduce impact on the operating system during heavy use. The download directory is kept isolated to better protect important files from virus attack. Every major download source (Firefox, Azureus, IE, FireFTP, etc) gets a separate folder under d:\!\download. Even the most casual downloader, and certainly EVERY user of LimeWire, eMule, BitTorrent, and the like, *must* have virus/spyware/malware protection in place. I prefer McAfee over Symantec/Norton, but both of those tools are expensive. At the very least, nobody should leave the gate without Avast!, AdAware, Microsoft Anti-Spyware Tool (which does other useful, undocumented tasks as well, HiJack This!, and Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool. No file enters or leaves my d:\!\download without a thorough scan and varification, including deep scans into zip, rar, exe, and other formats that may look good on the outside but act as a cover to more sinister things.
Power use generates lots of log files, bak files, and other crap, for which CCleaner (aka Crap Cleaner) is a good solution. It finds and reports on all the unused files, unnecessary logs, dud registry entries, and the like and lets you choose which ones you'd like to delete. Great stuff, and it's continually updated. As I mentioned before, the Microsoft Anti-Spyware tool also includes some of these features, but CCleaner is definately preferred for those with a healthy mistrust of the man.
Since my bread and butter is multimedia, I not only generate a lot of content, but I keep large stores of small files, such as images, fonts, Illustrator symbols and the like. And since I also use Napster successor LimeWire (legal uses only please), the amazing URLToys, and BitTorrent client Azureus, my file management duties often seem immense. Or they did, before Google Desktop and the highly technical Total Commander. Google Desktop is a bit of a misnomer...it doesn't replace your desktop, but rather indexes your files, web history, and email for searchable content. By default it searches nearly every text-based format, but other formats are supported through Google Desktop's many free plugins. So I do a Google Desktop search on "Simba" and I get a clickable index of blog entries and emails that mention him, photos I've taken of him, and vet records that I've saved. It's incredibly powerful, and will leave out directories you'd rather leave out of search results.
Total Commander is a really amazing Windows Explorer (not Internet Explorer) replacement, that lets you fully manage files in ways that Windows can't. Merging two directories with the same file name? No problem, you can rename files with duplicate names on the fly. Print out directory listings? No problem. Hotkey macros? Check. Total Commander is also plug-in based, and its essential features are highly extendable. Still, Total Commander is not designed for ultimate user friendliness - it simply can't be and still do what it does. New users will probably find some of its default configuration intimidating. As I told my friend John: learn it (and indeed any new tool) by poking around with it when you don't have to use it for something important. Most people use utilities, well, as utilities, and leave them alone when off the mission radar. But a crisis is never a good time to "get to know" a tool, or to use an unfamiliar tool that you've only just downloaded.
Total Commander has a good batch file renaming feature, but I found I prefer the freeware Flexible Renamer, a free tool that does the job perfectly, though its best features require some cursory understanding of regular expressions. Also handy are the TrueType font renamer (which looks in the ttf meta data and pulls the actual font name so that "384423univ.ttf" becomes "Univers 57 Condensed.ttf"), and the Funduc Duplicate File Finder. Microsoft's new SyncToy directory synchronizer powertoy is a great tool and a long time coming.
About those powertoys. Microsoft, for all it's "user friendly" focus, creepy-ass business practices, and the (often justified) derision from the UNIXland, is a very geeky company that coddles developers and anybody with a geeky bent. Inside the company are geeks sympathetic to the power user and when one or more of them puts together a particularly useful tool, Microsoft will offer the tool as a downloadable "powertoy." Powertoys are also ways of piloting features for future operating systems that groups of uses cry out for now. Microsoft offers, but does not support, powertoys for Windows XP, its development environments, and certain applications. If you use one and inadvertantly screw up something important, you're at the mercy of your own backups.
Most of the powertoys are unnecessary (but cool) applets you can totally live without, like the Webcam Timershot and the Taskbar Magnifier (which doesn't actually magnify the taskbar). The ones that I truly can't deal without are:
TweakUI - extends control over hidden and undocumented areas of the operating sytem
Open Command Prompt Here - open a Command Prompt (aka DOS Prompt) directly to a folder through the right-click context menu
Power Calculator - Replaces Windows' sorry-ass native calculator with something much preferable
SyncToy - lets you safely synchronize and combine directories with something like real file management
ClearType Tuner - soon, your favorite font will be Calibri, which is ClearType enabled. Many people complain that when they enable ClearType (through the Display Properties>Appearance>Effects dialog), things appear fuzzy. This powertoy, and a properly set display resolution, fixes that.
Picture Resizer - Simple image resizing through the right-click context menu.
The Virtual Desktop Manager also gets honorable mention, but it tends to dislike my custom wallpapers and such and disables them until I reset the entire theme. It could just be weirdness with my AMD-based computer. There are also PowerToys for individual applications and for developers at Microsoft's website, including a tool for Microsoft Office OneNote that turns your handwriting into a TrueType font (sadly, it only works on Tablet PC's).
Speaking of fonts, I love love love them and have 2.56 GB of them (that's 58,000+ files to you 'n me). Most of those fonts are in TrueType and OpenType format, and the Microsoft OpenType properties extension is very helpful. Serious font geeks will appreciate all of Microsoft's free typography tools. I don't know if I'm quite at that level if technicality, but I know I'd be lost without FontExpert 2004 for browsing my font files and Adobe Type Manager for dynamically managing them. Technically, you don't need both, but I prefer FontExpert's browsing capability as well as ATM's reliability.
All this is because Windows *still* can't handle more than several hundred font files at once. Adobe Type Manager makes it so you don't have to. Both ATM and FontExpert are commercial apps, and there are many freeware font browsers out there, FontLister being one of the most convenient. Under any circumstances, the native Windows Character Map will not do for anything, and I highly recommend Extended Character Map 1.41, which is hard to find. I've located it on this list of freeware apps that have been discontinued or have gone commercial, but I'm also hosting it here.
There are a lot of freeware and shareware tools out there, most of which are total crap. Then there are the big, popular ones like CDex, and many others that are more obscure or extremely tiny, but so useful I wonder how Windows gets along without them. Among these are
When it comes to video, dealing with a hundred different players is unnecessary. It's not necessary to use Windows Media Player or any of the other superproprietary players like QuickTime or (god help us) RealPlayer. WinAmp remains my choice for music, but it is commercial (an AOL product), and it can be a little sketchy with certain video formats. So video duties fall either to the scrappy and cool BS Player (which can play video *as* your desktop, behind icons and windows and everything, or to the venerable Windows Media Player Classic hack, part of the indispensable K-lite Codec Pack. WMP Classic presents the basic DRM-free classic Windows 95 version of Media Player, but retooled from the inside to support nearly everything, even Real media and Quicktime.
If you have enough storage space, you shouldn't be dabbling in disc media unless you're archiving. Data CD's offer much better performance when they reside as a disc image on your hard drive. Alcohol 120% is an awesome commercial tool for using those images in "virtual disc drives" that play CD and DVD images. Alcohol's interface mimics Windows XP so it's really easy to use. If I need a CD (say, to play a game or use a disc-dependant application), I find the image file, right-click, select "Mount as Drive" and choose a letter. Voila, the "CD/DVD" is mounted and performs at the speed of a harddrive. I use DVD Decrypter to backup DVDs and CDs, to create image files, and to burn copies of images I've already made.
I've been chatting online for close to 15 years and these days I use Gaim to aggregate my AIM, Yahoo, MSN, IRC, and Google Talk accounts. I'm a recent Gaim convert and I really like the newer, more stable Windows port (it started life as Linux/UNIX only). Truth be told, I'm also a huge fan of Cerulean's Trillian Pro 2.0, but I loathe the bloat and unreliability of Trillian Pro 3+, which is the first application in a long time to bring back memories of Netscape Communicator.
There are also some online web tools that I think are essential. Of course, there's the obvious: The best way of finding information on the Internet (and the real answer to all those who ask me "Where do you find this stuff?") is, unquestionably, Google. This is not news. But as powerful as Google is, it's power multiplies when you know how to use it. All the information you need to Powergoogle is at the Google website, starting with complete how-tos for Basic Search, Advanced Search, and refining results. There's a list of operators for narrowing your search down and a printable cheat sheet. Once you've gone over that, I recommend trying out advanced stuff with Google's Advanced Search and Advanced Image Search pages.
There are several Google tools avilable, every one (save, perhaps, GoogleTalk) at the top of their classes. These include Blogger, GMail, Google Image Search, Google News, Google Groups, Google Translate, Google Local (aka Google Maps), Google Earth, Google Blog search, and the aforementioned Google Desktop. Also check out Google Labs to try out some of the new stuff the oompa-loompas are working on, like Google Video, Google Ride Finder, and the Google Web Accelerator. Google Reader could be very cool, Google Suggest is a feature more than a product, Google Sets is odd, but logical. Google SMS is awesome. I've never used Orkut, Google's answer to Friendster, but then I've never used Friendster either.
I've always disliked the cluttered and clunky feel of My Yahoo, despite its customability and rich content. The personalized Google page at www.google.com/ig is a great alternative. If you have a Google account (which are, of course, free), you can set up a customized Google page, which I've set as my default browser page. You can add modules for custom bookmarks, stock quotes, Gmail inboxes, and RSS feeds , and then move those modules around the page like puzzle pieces (or SharePoint web parts). A personalized Google page is by no means an RSS solution (*cough*sage*cough*), but it's a great way to bring together the feeds and bookmarks and search parameters that I want to access at home *and* at work *and* at yer friend's house.
On the non-Google Web, the Wikipedia still rocks. I use Onelook.com for all my dictionary/thesaurus lookups, FolderShare and dropload.com to share files with friends for free, and findsounds.com for sound samples. I use imdb.com for movie information, but insist on mrqe.com (the Movie Review Query Engine) for film reviews and criticism. Allmusic.com is the essential music guide. Metacritic.com brings together movie, music, book, and game reviews in a single, attractive site. I use SearchIRC.com and irc.netsplit.de to search for IRC channels. I could spend years at the Internet Archive and Wayback Machine. Good torrent files can be hard to find, unless you're looking at tvtorrents.com, torrentspy.com, torrentreactor.net, thepiratebay.org, isohunt.com, phazeddl.com, and torrentz.com. I usually find the shareware I need either at majorgeeks.com, or filehippo.com, and I find OS tweaks and registry hacks at shellcity.com and tweakxp.com.
Written erotica has had a home for years at the free Nifty Archive. My stories there date from 1994. Craigslist is probably the only web marketplace where you can instantly find sex, drugs, rock 'n roll, your next job, vintage Joni Mitchell LPs, old issues of Omni and Sky and Telescope magazines, an apartment, a new PC, a dog, and a partidge in a pear tree, and then have them all show up at your door after midnight. Scroll down to the end of any Craigslist results page and there's a link for an RSS version of those search results. Looking for a job? Try searching on Craigslist for different terms and then aggregating the RSS in a location like Sage or your personalized Google page. Yahoo! Hotjobs also offers RSS feeds for job searches, and nearly all offer some kind of daily email alert. When I look for work, in addition to Craigslist and Yahoo! Hotjobs, I'm at Dice.com, Monster.com, Guru.com, CareerBuilder.com, net-temps.com, job.com, jobs.com, bajobs.com, bayjobs.com, bayareahelpwanted.com, and of course, gaywork.com.
*whew* I'm sure I missed a thousand things, and while that list is associative and random, I've saved the most important site/concept/tool for last. Creative Commons: learn about it and why it's important. Then use it, live it, love it, support it, create, learn, and then share alike.
First off, this informtion is for your edification only. I'm not responsible for what you do on your own time or how you use these tools. Moreover, as Windows boxes are all different, my solutions may not work for you or your use. That's cool. Whatever successes I've had with these tools, however, doesn't qalify me to support your installations. So, um, don't ask me how to do things. Read the manuals/web pages/support forums, expect both trials and errors, and for G*d's sake, back yer shit up before you do anything...accidental.
While I consider myself a geek-oriented power user, I've never been a hardcore hack jockey. I'm not so much "into computers" as I'm into using a computer's full potential to express my creativity and unlock new possibilities. Technology is so fully integrated into my life it's as entrenched in my processes as electricity and running water. But no matter. Sure, I can build a PC from scratch, but I much prefer if the IT guy does it. However it seems I'm always turning people on to new tools, and I'm often asked how I find stuff, and my answer is always the same, "I use the Internet." Allow me to elucidate. :-)
Just as the original Mosaic browser changed the way I used the Internet, so has the proliferation of RSS and social networking (the the cognoscenti and the technorati call "Web 2.0" ;-). RSS allows me to catch up on myriad weblogs, news sites, and search topics without having to visit every single website. I now use it to manage email, news - even my Netflix account. I also use RSS to pubish content from one area of my infosphere (gawd) to another. For example, my new del.icio.us account is a place for me to store bookmarks enriched with descriptive meta-tags. I can instantly search for bookmarks through its tags (for example http://del.icio.us/tag+free+software), as well search for taggers into the same stuff as I am. I've configured del.ic.ious to provide an RSS feed to my (Blogger powered) weblog and my Mozilla Firefox browser's Sage extension (which I've augmented with my own CSS template). Blogger will publish my weblog on my hosted (via dreamhost.com), Linux-based namesake website that I designed myself, and will publish RSS and Atom feeds via Feedburner. My Joomla!-managed test site publishes its own feeds, just like my three flickr accounts and my gallery-powered imageplex site. Confused yet?
Pictures are infinitely easier to deal with now, thanks to Picasa 2, which, incidently, publishes directly to Blogger, unlike the Flickr Uploadr. I can even browse flickr in the Firefox sidebar, a feature that I hope will be native to the finished version the new Firefox offshoot Flock browser beta, which is full of some neat ideas, but is definately not yet ready for prime-time. I'm really impressed with the latest revision of Picasa, which finds all the images on yer computer (and local network if you let it), indexes them, and puts together all the basic touch-up tools in a simple but sexy interface. Picasa very easily creates attractive collages, slideshows, and webpages from large and small collections. Love it. Even so, I get a lot of mileage out of Shell Picture, which displays a thumnail and basic file management commands in the right-click menu when applied to an image file.
Mozilla Firefox is my browser of choice, but it's a lame duck without some essential extensions. I won't tic off my entire list, but the extensions I can't live without are the aforementioned Sage RSS feed reader, antipagination, IEtab, Adblock (with the Filterset.G Updater), the All-in-one Sidebar, downloadThemAll!, Checky, View formatted source, FlickrFox, download manager tweak, download pdf, flat bookmark editor, NoScript, fireFTP, Customize Google, Nuke Anything, Gmail Manager, EditRSS, and the Greasemonkey user script manager. I'm also using the Google Web Accelerator, which assists both FireFox and IE (and makes my home SharePoint installation much quicker to use).
Speaking of scripts, power users can save themselves a helluva lot of time by getting to know and use VBScript. Sounds scary? It's not. Microsoft has set up a great site with a real emphasis on those new to scripting. They also provide a repository of hundreds of demo scripts, which you are free to use and modify to suit your needs. There's also a portable version of the script repository in help-file format which fits on any floppy disk. If you think scripts couldn't help you, install Windows Script, check out the repository and see for yourself. Once you're comfortable with that, you can also try the Do-It-Yourself Script Center Kit and Microsoft's Script-o-matic.
I'm an environment stickler. I like my space a certain way, and I'm not prone to superbubbly animated interfaces. I know those that swear by WindowBlinds and other tools, but in my experience they've often been a one-way ticket to poor performance. I tend to keep it simple (I almost always start with the the basic, "classic" Windows 2000 look in Windows XP). When I find wallpaper, icons, fonts, and a color scheme I like, I go to the Display Properties and save it as a theme file. I then backup these theme files in case my OS goes poof. I configure other user interface (UI) elements either with Microsoft's TweakUI powertoy (lite duty) or the free, plug-in based Xsetup Pro (heavy duty). I manage icons with iPhile, which is hands-down the best free utility for managing icons in Windows. I do my best to collect configuration and settings files into a single directory that I name c:\!. Windows accepts "!" as a valid ASCII character, and since it's placed before "A" in the ASCII table, any directory name that starts with "!" will appear at the top of a directory list. It's a good way to mark "special" folders that should always float on top.
My "!" directory looks like this:
C:\!\apps - application settings and log files
C:\!\backup - registry backups and system restore points
D:\!\download - temporary download location
C:\!\gui - themes, local css, images, wallpapers, icons
D:\!\scratch - temp space for apps like Adobes Photoshop and Illustrator
C:\!\shortcuts - toolbar shortcuts
C:\!\stage - a staging area for web and file managers like Dreamweaver
C:\!\type - local fonts, managed throug Adobe Type Manager
In c:\!\apps, there's a folder for each major application I use. I configure each program to output system files and log files to its directory in c:\!\apps Having them all in one place is really convenient, especially for backup and restore operations. For certain essential tools like notepad2 and putty, I use Registry Crawler to export their registry settings to a file, so that if I need to reinstall them, I'll have my colors, fonts, and other settings just as they were before. For some configuration settings, like Outlook, I've taken screenshots of all the major settings windows in working order with SnagIt and then archived them in an Adobe Acrobat binder.
I keep shortcuts for my commonly used applications in directories underneath c:\!\shortcuts. This lets me create individual toolbars for each of the directories which I anchor to the right side of my desktop (it looks like this). This way I don't have to navigate the start menu for the common stuff and also don't have to clutter up the taskbar on the bottom of the desktop. That gives me room for an address bar, which isn't quite a desktop command line, but it's close. My icon sidebar is the only one I allow. The various sidebars from Google (part of Desktop) and others tend to be obnoxious and invasive.
The !\scratch and !\download directories are on a different partition. Scratch space is on the D partition to reduce impact on the operating system during heavy use. The download directory is kept isolated to better protect important files from virus attack. Every major download source (Firefox, Azureus, IE, FireFTP, etc) gets a separate folder under d:\!\download. Even the most casual downloader, and certainly EVERY user of LimeWire, eMule, BitTorrent, and the like, *must* have virus/spyware/malware protection in place. I prefer McAfee over Symantec/Norton, but both of those tools are expensive. At the very least, nobody should leave the gate without Avast!, AdAware, Microsoft Anti-Spyware Tool (which does other useful, undocumented tasks as well, HiJack This!, and Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool. No file enters or leaves my d:\!\download without a thorough scan and varification, including deep scans into zip, rar, exe, and other formats that may look good on the outside but act as a cover to more sinister things.
Power use generates lots of log files, bak files, and other crap, for which CCleaner (aka Crap Cleaner) is a good solution. It finds and reports on all the unused files, unnecessary logs, dud registry entries, and the like and lets you choose which ones you'd like to delete. Great stuff, and it's continually updated. As I mentioned before, the Microsoft Anti-Spyware tool also includes some of these features, but CCleaner is definately preferred for those with a healthy mistrust of the man.
Since my bread and butter is multimedia, I not only generate a lot of content, but I keep large stores of small files, such as images, fonts, Illustrator symbols and the like. And since I also use Napster successor LimeWire (legal uses only please), the amazing URLToys, and BitTorrent client Azureus, my file management duties often seem immense. Or they did, before Google Desktop and the highly technical Total Commander. Google Desktop is a bit of a misnomer...it doesn't replace your desktop, but rather indexes your files, web history, and email for searchable content. By default it searches nearly every text-based format, but other formats are supported through Google Desktop's many free plugins. So I do a Google Desktop search on "Simba" and I get a clickable index of blog entries and emails that mention him, photos I've taken of him, and vet records that I've saved. It's incredibly powerful, and will leave out directories you'd rather leave out of search results.
Total Commander is a really amazing Windows Explorer (not Internet Explorer) replacement, that lets you fully manage files in ways that Windows can't. Merging two directories with the same file name? No problem, you can rename files with duplicate names on the fly. Print out directory listings? No problem. Hotkey macros? Check. Total Commander is also plug-in based, and its essential features are highly extendable. Still, Total Commander is not designed for ultimate user friendliness - it simply can't be and still do what it does. New users will probably find some of its default configuration intimidating. As I told my friend John: learn it (and indeed any new tool) by poking around with it when you don't have to use it for something important. Most people use utilities, well, as utilities, and leave them alone when off the mission radar. But a crisis is never a good time to "get to know" a tool, or to use an unfamiliar tool that you've only just downloaded.
Total Commander has a good batch file renaming feature, but I found I prefer the freeware Flexible Renamer, a free tool that does the job perfectly, though its best features require some cursory understanding of regular expressions. Also handy are the TrueType font renamer (which looks in the ttf meta data and pulls the actual font name so that "384423univ.ttf" becomes "Univers 57 Condensed.ttf"), and the Funduc Duplicate File Finder. Microsoft's new SyncToy directory synchronizer powertoy is a great tool and a long time coming.
About those powertoys. Microsoft, for all it's "user friendly" focus, creepy-ass business practices, and the (often justified) derision from the UNIXland, is a very geeky company that coddles developers and anybody with a geeky bent. Inside the company are geeks sympathetic to the power user and when one or more of them puts together a particularly useful tool, Microsoft will offer the tool as a downloadable "powertoy." Powertoys are also ways of piloting features for future operating systems that groups of uses cry out for now. Microsoft offers, but does not support, powertoys for Windows XP, its development environments, and certain applications. If you use one and inadvertantly screw up something important, you're at the mercy of your own backups.
Most of the powertoys are unnecessary (but cool) applets you can totally live without, like the Webcam Timershot and the Taskbar Magnifier (which doesn't actually magnify the taskbar). The ones that I truly can't deal without are:
TweakUI - extends control over hidden and undocumented areas of the operating sytem
Open Command Prompt Here - open a Command Prompt (aka DOS Prompt) directly to a folder through the right-click context menu
Power Calculator - Replaces Windows' sorry-ass native calculator with something much preferable
SyncToy - lets you safely synchronize and combine directories with something like real file management
ClearType Tuner - soon, your favorite font will be Calibri, which is ClearType enabled. Many people complain that when they enable ClearType (through the Display Properties>Appearance>Effects dialog), things appear fuzzy. This powertoy, and a properly set display resolution, fixes that.
Picture Resizer - Simple image resizing through the right-click context menu.
The Virtual Desktop Manager also gets honorable mention, but it tends to dislike my custom wallpapers and such and disables them until I reset the entire theme. It could just be weirdness with my AMD-based computer. There are also PowerToys for individual applications and for developers at Microsoft's website, including a tool for Microsoft Office OneNote that turns your handwriting into a TrueType font (sadly, it only works on Tablet PC's).
Speaking of fonts, I love love love them and have 2.56 GB of them (that's 58,000+ files to you 'n me). Most of those fonts are in TrueType and OpenType format, and the Microsoft OpenType properties extension is very helpful. Serious font geeks will appreciate all of Microsoft's free typography tools. I don't know if I'm quite at that level if technicality, but I know I'd be lost without FontExpert 2004 for browsing my font files and Adobe Type Manager for dynamically managing them. Technically, you don't need both, but I prefer FontExpert's browsing capability as well as ATM's reliability.
All this is because Windows *still* can't handle more than several hundred font files at once. Adobe Type Manager makes it so you don't have to. Both ATM and FontExpert are commercial apps, and there are many freeware font browsers out there, FontLister being one of the most convenient. Under any circumstances, the native Windows Character Map will not do for anything, and I highly recommend Extended Character Map 1.41, which is hard to find. I've located it on this list of freeware apps that have been discontinued or have gone commercial, but I'm also hosting it here.
There are a lot of freeware and shareware tools out there, most of which are total crap. Then there are the big, popular ones like CDex, and many others that are more obscure or extremely tiny, but so useful I wonder how Windows gets along without them. Among these are
- FreeWheel - makes your scroll wheel work with *everything* (even old versions of FrameMaker!)
- iPhile - simple, solid icon manager
- notepad2 - notepad replacement that adds everything that should fall in good concience under "basic features." Follow the instructions on the website for actually replacing notepad with it. Once you do, you can't go back.
- puTTY/psFTP - rock-solid, secure ssh telnet and ftp clients for Windows
When it comes to video, dealing with a hundred different players is unnecessary. It's not necessary to use Windows Media Player or any of the other superproprietary players like QuickTime or (god help us) RealPlayer. WinAmp remains my choice for music, but it is commercial (an AOL product), and it can be a little sketchy with certain video formats. So video duties fall either to the scrappy and cool BS Player (which can play video *as* your desktop, behind icons and windows and everything, or to the venerable Windows Media Player Classic hack, part of the indispensable K-lite Codec Pack. WMP Classic presents the basic DRM-free classic Windows 95 version of Media Player, but retooled from the inside to support nearly everything, even Real media and Quicktime.
If you have enough storage space, you shouldn't be dabbling in disc media unless you're archiving. Data CD's offer much better performance when they reside as a disc image on your hard drive. Alcohol 120% is an awesome commercial tool for using those images in "virtual disc drives" that play CD and DVD images. Alcohol's interface mimics Windows XP so it's really easy to use. If I need a CD (say, to play a game or use a disc-dependant application), I find the image file, right-click, select "Mount as Drive" and choose a letter. Voila, the "CD/DVD" is mounted and performs at the speed of a harddrive. I use DVD Decrypter to backup DVDs and CDs, to create image files, and to burn copies of images I've already made.
I've been chatting online for close to 15 years and these days I use Gaim to aggregate my AIM, Yahoo, MSN, IRC, and Google Talk accounts. I'm a recent Gaim convert and I really like the newer, more stable Windows port (it started life as Linux/UNIX only). Truth be told, I'm also a huge fan of Cerulean's Trillian Pro 2.0, but I loathe the bloat and unreliability of Trillian Pro 3+, which is the first application in a long time to bring back memories of Netscape Communicator.
There are also some online web tools that I think are essential. Of course, there's the obvious: The best way of finding information on the Internet (and the real answer to all those who ask me "Where do you find this stuff?") is, unquestionably, Google. This is not news. But as powerful as Google is, it's power multiplies when you know how to use it. All the information you need to Powergoogle is at the Google website, starting with complete how-tos for Basic Search, Advanced Search, and refining results. There's a list of operators for narrowing your search down and a printable cheat sheet. Once you've gone over that, I recommend trying out advanced stuff with Google's Advanced Search and Advanced Image Search pages.
There are several Google tools avilable, every one (save, perhaps, GoogleTalk) at the top of their classes. These include Blogger, GMail, Google Image Search, Google News, Google Groups, Google Translate, Google Local (aka Google Maps), Google Earth, Google Blog search, and the aforementioned Google Desktop. Also check out Google Labs to try out some of the new stuff the oompa-loompas are working on, like Google Video, Google Ride Finder, and the Google Web Accelerator. Google Reader could be very cool, Google Suggest is a feature more than a product, Google Sets is odd, but logical. Google SMS is awesome. I've never used Orkut, Google's answer to Friendster, but then I've never used Friendster either.
I've always disliked the cluttered and clunky feel of My Yahoo, despite its customability and rich content. The personalized Google page at www.google.com/ig is a great alternative. If you have a Google account (which are, of course, free), you can set up a customized Google page, which I've set as my default browser page. You can add modules for custom bookmarks, stock quotes, Gmail inboxes, and RSS feeds , and then move those modules around the page like puzzle pieces (or SharePoint web parts). A personalized Google page is by no means an RSS solution (*cough*sage*cough*), but it's a great way to bring together the feeds and bookmarks and search parameters that I want to access at home *and* at work *and* at yer friend's house.
On the non-Google Web, the Wikipedia still rocks. I use Onelook.com for all my dictionary/thesaurus lookups, FolderShare and dropload.com to share files with friends for free, and findsounds.com for sound samples. I use imdb.com for movie information, but insist on mrqe.com (the Movie Review Query Engine) for film reviews and criticism. Allmusic.com is the essential music guide. Metacritic.com brings together movie, music, book, and game reviews in a single, attractive site. I use SearchIRC.com and irc.netsplit.de to search for IRC channels. I could spend years at the Internet Archive and Wayback Machine. Good torrent files can be hard to find, unless you're looking at tvtorrents.com, torrentspy.com, torrentreactor.net, thepiratebay.org, isohunt.com, phazeddl.com, and torrentz.com. I usually find the shareware I need either at majorgeeks.com, or filehippo.com, and I find OS tweaks and registry hacks at shellcity.com and tweakxp.com.
Written erotica has had a home for years at the free Nifty Archive. My stories there date from 1994. Craigslist is probably the only web marketplace where you can instantly find sex, drugs, rock 'n roll, your next job, vintage Joni Mitchell LPs, old issues of Omni and Sky and Telescope magazines, an apartment, a new PC, a dog, and a partidge in a pear tree, and then have them all show up at your door after midnight. Scroll down to the end of any Craigslist results page and there's a link for an RSS version of those search results. Looking for a job? Try searching on Craigslist for different terms and then aggregating the RSS in a location like Sage or your personalized Google page. Yahoo! Hotjobs also offers RSS feeds for job searches, and nearly all offer some kind of daily email alert. When I look for work, in addition to Craigslist and Yahoo! Hotjobs, I'm at Dice.com, Monster.com, Guru.com, CareerBuilder.com, net-temps.com, job.com, jobs.com, bajobs.com, bayjobs.com, bayareahelpwanted.com, and of course, gaywork.com.
*whew* I'm sure I missed a thousand things, and while that list is associative and random, I've saved the most important site/concept/tool for last. Creative Commons: learn about it and why it's important. Then use it, live it, love it, support it, create, learn, and then share alike.
YAY! I got mentioned! =)
-John
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