Eli the Computer Guy

Archive for the ‘Software Utilities’ Category

Google Chrome 2.0 has fixed issues that I was encountering before. I can now use Google apps without random problems occurring, but there are still odd issues that have not been resolved. I have noticed that the photo plug-in that I use for my WordPress blog does not show up properly when I use Chrome. When I use FireFox or IE everything appears and works fine, but when I use Chrome the plug in seems to fail randomly. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it does not.

I have to say that Chrome is a great browser for surfing the web, but if you have to use web based applications I would stick with FireFox.

ChimpFeedR allows you to combine multiple RSS feeds into a single feed.  It is a completely free service that requires no registration or annoying hoops to jump though.  You just add as many RSS feeds to it as you like, click the "Chomp, Chomp" button and you get the feed.  It’s as simple as that.

This has numerous uses, but I found it while looking for ways to add multiple feeds to my Facebook profile since Facebook only allows you to have one feed.

Take a look for yourself at www.ChimpFeedR.com

I have finally found a decent Windows based network scanning utility. Auto Scan Network Network Monitoring and Management Tool is a graphical scanning application that scans your network and tells you what is currently on it.  This is the best piece of free software I have found.  It can tell you what the IP address of devices are and has a good chance of determining what the device is.  This is an absolute life saver when installing network devices that use DHCP to determine their initial IP addresses.

If you are a field tech, or are just curious who you’re sharing the LAN with download it at http://autoscan-network.com/

GDocBackup is a great little utility that allows you to download all of the documents out of Google Docs.  It is the only one I know of that allows you to download all of your documents.  It is free and seems very stable although it’s still a beta.

If you want to backup your documents out of Google Docs you should take a look at it at http://gs.fhtino.it/gdocbackup

People, including myself, seem to have this misguided notion that if you want to edit your photographs you have to have an Adobe product.  For years I tried to muddle though using the $699 Photoshop software under the false impression that I needed to be able to use Photoshop if I wanted to make my pictures look good.  And then one day as I was wandering around the Internet and I decided to download Google’s Picasa and see what it was about.

Simply put I found Picasa to be everything that I needed, simple to use, and absolutely free.

You can easily import, edit and print pictures.  Not only that, but you can create an online web album account and quickly upload your entire picture library.  This means that instead of copying your pictures to CD’s for a friend or wasting your time printing pictures for other people you can just give them a web address and they can see, download and print the pictures they like.

You can do all of this for free.  A computer literate person can fully understand the program within an hour or two, and it works very well.

Just go to http://picasa.google.com and within a few minutes you’ll have a phenomenal photo editing package that even an average person can understand.