Three Free Useful Productivity Programs

Here are 3 free programs I use that might be useful for the Geek on the Go.

PrintAnywhere can be used to send documents to anyone’s printer. I wouldn’t send anything that is confidential though. Use a VPN for the confidential stuff. It is useful for laptop users and printing directly to another printer.

Here is the article at Lifehacker: Lifehacker PrintAnywhere

This is the link to PrintAnywhere: http://www.printeranywhere.com/

I use foldershare to pass around files from my laptop to my home pc or vice versa. I use it to synchronize one specific folder on my home pc with my laptop. That way whatever I do at home and store in a folder it will also put that same file on my laptop in the folder I specify. I do most of my work on the home pc but sometimes I need a certain file when I only have access to my laptop. This fixes that problem plus it is free and its owned by Microsoft. It works great for backing up all your important files, photos and music to another pc.

All you have to do is install and create a account then install the software on your other computer and use the same account info to start using Foldershare.

https://www.foldershare.com/

You could also try this one by Microsoft but its still in beta(testing) so it could be buggy: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C26EFA36-98E0-4EE9-A7C5-98D0592D8C52

I use MWsnap for screen capturing. Its spyware free and works as good as any paid for screen capturing program. if you have vista you will not need this. Vista has a snipping tool.

Here is the MWsnap webpage: http://www.mirekw.com/winfreeware/mwsnap.html

Great tools for the Geek on the Go.

The PrintAnywhere program is fairly new to me but Foldershare and MWsnap I have been using for quite awhile now and I have yet to see any bugs or spyware.

I discovered the PrintAnywhere and Foldershare program here: http://lifehacker.com/

The MWsnap program was found thru Google Search

Windows Vista Home Premium Performance Score

Here is a snapshot(Look Below) of my performance score running windows vista, with my pc that is over three years old and the Asus A7N8X motherboard that is even older.
The lowest score is from my graphics card. I did have a 2.3 score but then I added a 1gb usb flashdrive that I bought at BestBuy for $19.99 and that brought my score up to 3.2. because of Vista’s ready boost feature. I’m running 1gb of ram and I haven’t seen any slowdown or sluggishness at all before using ready boost, but the ready boost feature does help and it did raise my score.

Read about Ready Boost here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/details/readyboost.mspx

Try out Songbird

This is a cool new player built by the same platform as Firefox. Mozilla cross-platform and open source code.

I’ve been playing with it for a few hours now and it seems to work very well. You can listen to music and browse the internet with the player. You can also install extensions just like the Firefox browser. Most of the extensions are for optimizing the songbird music player.

It will play any type of music file. MP3, AAC, OGG, FLAC, WMA, and more.
Here is a description of Songbird from the official site at:

http://www.songbirdnest.com/

Play music.
Play the Web.™
Songbird™ is a desktop Web player, a digital jukebox and Web browser mash-up. Like Winamp, it supports extensions and skins feathers. Like Firefox®, it is built from Mozilla®, cross-platform and open source.

Download Songbird, Click the Icon below:

I have also provided a link in the right hand sidebar of my blog.

Watch the Screencast here or go to this link:

http://www.songbirdnest.com/screencast for a better resolution video.

Gmail is the best defense against Spam.

One of the many reasons why I use Gmail. Spam is a thing of the past with Gmail. Gmail is definitely improving on the battle against spam in the Inbox.

From the first quarter to the second this year, Gmail got nearly 15 times better at distinguishing legitimate commercial e-mail messages from spam, according to a new report from Lyris, a maker of e-mail marketing software.

Read the rest of the article here:

Gmail Learns How To Spot Spam

Want a Gmail Invite?
techtweaker@gmail.com

Salary Search From Indeed.com

Search salaries from over 50 million jobs in the past year. How much should you be making? Enter your occupation title, city, state and zipcode, and Salary Search and salary search will show you what you should be making.

“Indeed Salary Search is based on an index of salary information extracted from over 50 million job postings from thousands of unique sources over the last 12 months. Many job descriptions don’t contain salary information, but there are enough that do to produce statistically significant average salaries for millions of keyword, job title and location combinations - in fact, most job searches you are likely to think of. As new jobs are added each day, the Indeed Salary Search index is automatically updated with fresh salary data, so the salary results are as up-to-date as they could possibly be. Indeed Salary Search is in beta.”

Try it out: Salary Search Indeed.com

By the way if you need a job, or you need a new job also check out Indeed.com’s job search feature.

Indeed.com

Release Candidate 1 for Firefox 2.0 RC1 available

Firefox is giving Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7 RC1 a run for its money. This latest release is quite a improvement from the recent Firefox 2.0 beta2. The theme looks SWEET.

Give it a try.

Firefox RC1:

Windows Version

Mac

Linux

To make all extensions compatible use: MR Tech Local Install