Poke Me In The Eye

Do you have so many different passwords that it’s hard to keep track of them all? Sure, you could use the same password for everything but if someone ever figures out your password you could be in a world of hurt. Using different passwords for the multitude of sites out there, it can be a real pain in the butt remembering them all. This is where KeePass comes in.

KeePass is a free/open-source password manager or safe which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key-disk. So you only have to remember one single master password or insert the key-disk to unlock the whole database. The databases are encrypted using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known (AES and Twofish).

If you are like me and you are trying to be secure and using different passwords but having a hard time keeping them all straight I highly suggest you give KeePass a try, it’s free so you’ve got nothing to lose.

Download KeePass Password Safe

I have no idea why we haven’t added this one to our list. It is, perhaps, the greatest free Google program ever created (at least so far).

It all started back in the day with Mapquest. This handy little website showed all us somewhat internet-savvy people how to get somewhere without getting lost. It wasn’t always accurate and didn’t take anything like traffic, road conditions, weather, repairs or any of that stuff into account. You could count on it getting you near your destination but that was about it.

As time progressed things got better. More information was available online and trip planning became smoother and more efficient. You’d like to stop for food along the way? Perhaps you’d like a hotel? We were able to add things like this to our online travel planning and life was better.

But what does the place you are going to actually look like? How tall are the buildings? What landmarks are around the area?

With Google Earth you can see that and more…much more. Every day they are adding new (and occasionally controversial) content. I won’t be the first to admit that it’s getting a bit creepy. Pretty soon we’ll have real time viewing of the world available to us all…at any time…for free.

It sure will be cool to watch myself drive home though. I wonder if anyone saw me pick my nose…

Download Google Earth

In a perfect world with a perfect operating system this piece of software wouldn’t be necessary, unfortunately we don’t live in that world. Have you ever tried to delete, move or otherwise modify a file or folder and seen one of the following messages:

Cannot delete Folder: It is being used by another person or program
Cannot delete file: Access is denied
There has been a sharing violation.
The source or destination file may be in use.
The file is in use by another program or user.
Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.

You get these messages even though the object in question isn’t being used by something? The reason that I found this program in the first place was that I had a folder on my desktop that I just couldn’t get rid of. No matter what I did my computer would tell me that something was using the folder and I couldn’t delete it. I could even restart my computer and as soon as it was booted up I would try and delete it and still I would get the error message. It was then that I went looking for a solution and found Unlocker.

Unlocker is an Explorer extension that allows you with a simple right-click of the mouse on a file or folder to get rid of error message such as error deleting file or folder, cannot delete folder: it is used by another person or program and kill the process.

While this may seem like no big deal it can be a real life saver and save you from some annoying computer headaches.

Unlocker is a small program, very unobtrusive and of course, free.

Download Unlocker here.

You’ve got to drill down a bit to find the free version, but here is a link that’ll get you close.

This one is pretty well known in the computer world but it definitely deserves a write up.

Most computers you buy from a store come with some sort of anti virus program built in. That’s very nice of them to do! But the sneaky part is that they are only free for a short amount of time. After that you have to pay for either continued service or updates. And with how Windows operates you get flagged with all kinds of messages when your anti virus software isn’t up to date with the latest information. Sure you could pay for continued service or disable those Windows announcement annoyances.

Or…you could get free anti virus…free quality anti virus!

AVG has been around for a quite a while now and was free for a long time. Unfortunately they did start charging for their full services. But being the good company that they are they still made a free version available. It doesn’t have all the fancy bells and whistles that the “full” version has…but if you are looking for good old fashioned basic protection I’ve found none better.

Once installed it sets itself up to do automatic scans daily (they do slow performance a little when running…but it’s not overwhelming with a modern computer.) You can right click on any file to do a scan (perfect for those suspect ZIP files you randomly download). I also believe it can be configured to run with most email programs (although that may only be part of the full package currently).

Of course the best way to avoid getting a virus is to play it smart…don’t open random attachments, don’t download random programs and use a good internet browser (FIREFOX!!!). But a little extra security is always nice…especially when it’s FREE!

The Font Thing is about as old as dirt but it has been a loyal piece of software for me. I do a considerable amount of design work and I can be a bit anal when it comes to picking out the right font for the job. What the Font Thing does is it allows you to enter in some text and then see that text in all of the fonts you have installed on your computer. You can change the font size, enter any text you want, sort the fonts by family. It makes it really easy to find the right font for the job. There may be newer and better programs out there that do the same thing but the Font Thing has been good to me over the years.

Here is a screenshot of the Font Thing in action.

Download the Font Thing

I like to know what my computer is doing. And we all know a quick way to see what is currently running…ctrl-alt-delete. But that brings up a list of things that…well…confuse me. What the hell are these processes that are using my RAM, my processing power, my whatever?

That’s where What’s Running comes into play. Start it up and it gives you a far more comprehensive Task Manager list with processes divided up by name, type, association, etc. It gives you a far better name for each one that the usual Microsoft Task Manager. And of course it allows you to stop them.

But there is more to it (but of course!). You can see current services, drivers, even IP connections! And it gives you nice access to the startup items which you can disable if you choose.

So really it’s just a fancy version of the Task Manager…and that’s a good thing.

Download What’s Running

If you liked that one I also would suggest Process Explorer. It’s a very similar program but created by Microsoft but with graphing. Neato!

I have been on the net for a long time and over the years I have met a lot of really cool people. I spend a good amount of time chatting online with my friends spread throughout the world. One thing that bothered me is some of my friends would use AIM, some would be on Yahoo!, others on MSN, etc. It got to be a pain having three or four programs running to keep in touch with my friends and this is where Trillian comes in.

Trillian allows you to connect to pretty much all of the popular chat programs from one program.

Here is Trillian’s own description of their product:

Trillian is a fully featured, stand-alone, skinnable chat client that supports AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, and IRC. It provides capabilities not possible with original network clients, while supporting standard features such as audio chat, file transfers, group chats, chat rooms, buddy icons, multiple simultaneous connections to the same network, server-side contact importing, typing notification, direct connection (AIM), proxy support, encrypted messaging (AIM/ICQ), SMS support, and privacy settings.

Without stealing your home page and with no other included software, pop-ups, or spyware, Trillian provides unique functionality such as contact message history, a powerful skinning language, tabbed messaging, global status changes (set all networks away at once), Instant Lookup (automatic Wikipedia integration), contact alerts, an advanced automation system to trigger events based on anything happening in the client, docking, hundreds of emoticons, emotisounds, shell extensions for file transfers, and systray notifications.

Trillian has been a life saver for me. It is so nice being able to manage all my chat buddies from one central location. I have since upgraded to Trillian Pro which costs $25 but the free version does pretty much everything you could want. I have had no real big issues with Trillian at all. Sometimes webcam support can be a bit finicky in Yahoo! but my webcam rarely gets used so that’s no biggie for me. I was able to find a skin for Trillian which closely matches the Royal Noir windows theme I use so everything looks all pretty and matches (yes I am anal). Best of all, the software is free. If you are using more than one chat client I highly suggest giving it a try.

You can get Trillian here: Get Trillian