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Author Archive for the doc
Mashable has a great list of sites that cater to Windows PDA (or “Pocket PC” if you wish) freeware. One site that I have personally used is PocketPCFreeware, a bilingual site in English and French. I would say that a program like BatMemTime is indispensable for your PDA. At least for my PDA, an Axim, there is no good way to monitor the battery. So you don’t know how much you have left until it’s about ready to crash on you.
Anyway, the other sites look like great resources worth checking if you’ve got a PDA and are desperate to cram it with cool, free, software.
There’s an article at the Washington post looking back to 25 years ago. It concerns PC World’s editor and the birth of freeware (and its evil twin, shareware). Worth a look.
I love a good all-in-one system tweaking & cleanup program. Glary Utilities provides just that! Packed with features, it really satisfies. Let’s take a look at the program bit-by-bit.
Continue reading ‘Freeware Prescription of the Week: January 30, 2008: Glary Utilities’
I’ve not tested this Vista installation program out yet, so I’m not sure how good it is. However, the lowdown is that it allows you to customize a Vista installation so it won’t be so dang bloated. If you’re like me, you want a slim installation of an OS with no bells and whistles. Unfortunately, Vista has way too many bells and whistles. Here’s a good screenshot of some of the things you can change.
When and if I test it I’ll post about it.
Via Hexus.
Started in 2004, The Portable Freeware Collection lists–you guessed it–the best freeware that is portable. The webmaster of the site talks in detail about what constitutes portable freeware on his “about” page. Essentially, it needs to be very compatible, very unobtrusive, and without an installation requirement. There’s a feed to subscribe to and new portable freeware is added frequently. There’s also a great “all” page where each piece of freeware is sorted by type.
With the advent of flash drives and uber-portability, this is a key resource for free software. That’s why it gets a coveted drfreeware.com blogroll spot!
Yellow folder, yellow folder, yellow folder. Dull, dull, dull.
Windows XP doesn’t really make it all that easy to change the color or icon of your explorer folders. With iColorFolder, an open source application, you can change your folders individually via the good ol’ right click contextual menu, and more importantly you can change folders globally. There are some pretty cool designs, too, and there is an extra icon pack you can download.
So, start Vista-izing or MacOS-izing your system right now!
Via Digital Lifestyles.
Some of you may want to live like Martha Stewart. Many of us, though, want to live free! We want freeware. And lots of it. And we’re ecstatic about the freeware revolution known as open source. Open source, according to Wikipedia, “…is a set of principles and practices on how to write software. Literally ‘open source’ means the source code is available to the users.” The definition goes on to say that there should also be the implication that the source code can be modified.
With that said, there is a site that I came upon called Open Source Living. It’s so good that I’m adding it to the blogroll. It has a no-nonsense, easy-to-navigate layout that lists open source software by category. It does have some Mac and Linux mixed in, but it looks like it is mostly Windows-based.
Try it on for size and you’ll likely agree.
Indiegames.com, which as you might imagine indeed does focus on independent games, has a “best games of 2007” section, which this year highlighted the best freeware adventure games, the best freeware arcade games, and then another general category for the best freeware games of 2007.
With names like Fractal Fighter, Burn the Trash, Thule Trail, Nelly Cootalot: Spoonbeaks Ahoy, Death Worm, and Cottage of Doom, these are some lists worth looking through. Each of the lists goes into detail about each game, with screenshots, so you can see what the game is about in detail before downloading it. I’ve played Thule Trail, and it’s a pretty hip remake of a classic game that anybody over 25 or so should remember.
Via the random Gnomes’ random Lair (love that name), who listed the link for the best freeware adventure games of ‘07.
