List of Useful and Free Software v2

I didn't see this in the OP and I haven't gone through all the replies to see if this has been mentioned previously, but I recently downloaded a handy program called Dropbox. Basically, it opens up a special folder on your hard-drive and everything you put in it is instantly uploaded to the net and sync-ed with all your other PCs and mobile devices, regardless of platform. You get 2GB of storage for free, although you can get additional free space by inviting your friends to join. You can also pay for more space if you need. No more emailing files to yourself, and it's so much more convienient than a flash drive.

http://www.dropbox.com
 
I think its been mentioned like 3 times already :p
 
Is there some free tool or online service where I can upload my website logs and see where all the unique IPs come from? I'm interested in that :) Manually checking my site's apparently popular in Germany?!
 
Not sure about that but you should definitely stick Google Analytics on your website. Takes 5 minutes and tells you pretty much everything you could possibly want to know.
 
Yeah, I actually installed that second day in. But I don't really know how to use it.
 
Oh, well, if you log in to google analytics, then click on your website's report, then on the left click "Visitors" -> "Map Overlay" and you get a nice map of your visitors over the past month. You can change the time period or drill down to particular pages etc too.
 
Yeah I managed to find that. There's a lot of buttons everywhere and I'm not sure what they all mean. I googled "beginners guide to google analytics" but the results seem a bit dated.
 
The Google Analytics help (top right) is pretty good, and it's searchable. But honestly Aimee you're smart enough to figure it out yourself, just play around with it.
 
In Google Chrome browser, I started using the extension AutoPager. It's awesome for forum browsing. It works in the CFC forums, but the official Bethesda Software forums doesn't like it for some reason.
 
For multi-page articles it combines the pages into one. sometimes it glitches though
 
For anyone with an ageing and/or slow netbook, laptop or PC that they want to revitalise, try installing Chromium OS (open source Chrome OS build) or Android (x86 port):

http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/
http://www.android-x86.org/

I haven't tried sticking Android on an x86 myself, but Chome OS works pretty well if you just want a quick machine that can surf the web and do nothing else. The Chrome OS build I linked to was made by a 17 year old kid from Manchester, which is pretty awesome when you think about it.
 
^^ Just tried the Android on x86 in a virtual box. Quite clunky, not sure why anyone would want to use it. Most importantly, the keyboard didn't work predictably (especially, but not exclusively, the spacebar). I don't think it was the virtual machine aspect of it that was causing the issues, either. I'd much rather use a mainstream Linux.

Haven't tried Chrome OS, but I'm not sold on why you'd want to not be able to do anything other than surf the Web. At least with a regular PC or even cell phone you can do things when you don't have Web access. Why not just use a lightweight regular Linux on an old machine - you've got a local hard drive already, so why not utilize it?
 
Yeah, I tried the Android x86 port on my mum's 9 year old laptop, and I wasn't impressed. It actually worked ok for me technically speaking - the keyboard and mouse worked fine, and for the most part the interface was pretty quick. It got incredibly slow (unusably slow) when you tried to click popup menus, though, but they are few and far between. The thing that annoyed me most though was the screen resolution... Surprisingly difficult to browse the web with a low screen resolution and no scroll wheel! It was a nice little experiment but it's very far from a functioning GUI and I wouldn't recommend it.

There's no reason an advanced user would use Chrome OS over a lightweight Linux distro. And there are plenty of those around - some even directly rival Chrome (like Joli OS, which looks pretty neat). But Chrome OS would be perfect to stick on your knackered old netbook or laptop and give to your mum or gran so she can check her emails and stuff. It's just more "familiar" - and, of course, there's less to go wrong, so fewer annoying tech support calls when you're watching TV :p

Don't get me started on the official "Chromebooks" though. :gripe: Those things are god damn ********.
 
I found it horribly difficult to find a GIF editor for just cropping and deleting frames -- I dont know why theres so many stick-figure editors but anyways I found this:
http://www.benetonsoftware.com/Beneton_Movie_GIF.php
The installer will try to install RelevantKnowledge which is something I dont like -- just decline that
 
My mom upgraded to Firefox 5.0 (already? or whatever the latest version is). It killed her Google Toolbar which made her upset because it made it harder to check her emails. But I didn't feel like uninstalling & reinstalling so I installed her the Gmail Notifier which goes in the system tray. And now she's not upset anymore.
http://toolbar.google.com/gmail-helper/
Its not compatible with the toolbar.

There is also a Mac version but we don't have a Mac so that won't work.
 
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