tips and tricks

Freeware Lover

There are certain applications that I need to have as staple in any machine that I work with apart from the default OS, Office, and AV. This includes: Yahoo! Messenger, Mozilla Firefox, Adobe Photoshop, SnagIt, and WinZip/WinRar.

When I decided to have the operating system of this machine I’m using now upgraded from Windows 2000 to Windows XP, I was very confident that I will be able to restore all my applications. I kept the installers of my favorite software in my hard drive for future use all the time. However, I forgot that there were certain applications that I installed using a common team installer – both licensed and pirated. The pirated software I had was installed even before our company issued a memo on the use of such versions due to software auditing. I just realized the loss the last week so I busied myself looking for replacements.

I’d like to think that I’m one lucky person. The internet provides a lot of web sites that offer LEGITIMATE freeware applications anyone can utilize. It’s just a matter of selecting which tool will provide the most feature I need. This way, I can install similar applications to Photoshop and SnagIt – which are both licensed, without spending a single penny. Also, this way, I’m not violating any company rules on software licenses. The following are my new favorites.

Notepad ++
Not that I don’t like the current Windows Notepad but I find this one easier to manipulate. I find this super useful when I deal with text that includes programming languages (HTML and JAVA) as it highlights that code automatically.
GIMP

“GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.

GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

GIMP is written and developed under X11 on UNIX platforms. But basically the same code also runs on MS Windows and Mac OS X.”

More information available at the GIMP Official web site.

This is similar to Adobe Photoshop. It’s tools are very similar as well as it’s UI. This is the tool I used to change the current background of my blogger site. For a newbie like me, I found it really easy to use though one still needs familiarization.
PicPick
I used to use SnagIt as my main screen capture tool. Similar to Photoshop, this is also a licensed software.

“PicPick is an all-in-one software for software developers, graphic designers and home user.

It has an intuitive interface and simple, elegant operation. After starting the software, you simply select one of the tool from the PicPick Tools trayicon menu when you want.
It features a powerful capture tool, image editor, color picker, color palette, pixel ruler, protractor, crosshair, whiteboard and etc. You can use all these tools freely…….”

More information available here.

I need this software because I hate using print screen to capture images I have to use for my blog and for my work. I have given PicPick a try before this blog and I must say, It’s performance is really comparable to SnagIt, without the price!

Thank you to all developers out there who created these wonderful software! More power too you guys and hope you continue to create more helpful tools.

Blog Make-over

I’m loving my new and lighter page background! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Thanks to GIMP, my new image manipulation tool. It’s freeware so I don’t need to worry about licensing. I lost my pirated copy of Photoshop CS2 when I asked our IT to upgrade my OS to Windows XP from Windows 2000 last week.

Anyways, have you noticed my other add-ons?

Here are the other things I added to this blog: some are DIYs while the others are blogger widgets.

Store Banners
If you’re not aware, I have a little business hosted in multiply. We sell unbranded and branded disposable diapers at a much cheaper cost. I can attest to their quality as we also use the same diapers for our little princess. All our diapers have cloth-like back sheet cover, most have re-adjustable magic tape (velcro strap). Check us out and compare with the ones you’re using now.

Apart from diapers, we also sell gadgets – mobile phones (Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Blackberry, LG and iPhone), mp3 players, PSP, and digital cameras. Check our prices and we might have something that suits your budget.
Customized Blogger Banner
The Blogger logos found in the widget section are rather too small for my taste and my sidebar so I decided to create my own blogger badge. One of the DIYs that I super love!
Blog Roll
I didn’t know that I can create a Blog Roll without having to do it manually! Thanks to Blogger for this widget. I just did a minor tweaking to have a scrollbar for this list so that it will not take a lot of space. Want the same feature? Check out this blog.

I hope you like my improved blog site.

Problems with Favorites using IE 7 on Vista

Thanks to hubby for sapphire and for setting up a wireless connection at home, I can work in any part of our house/room. Sapphire has been a great help for my mobility at home. I can work while putting Ayex to sleep, which happens most of the time I work at home.

Initially, I didn’t want to put Vista on sapphire because I heard a lot of negative feedback about it. But hubby won so sapphire has Vista.

Recently, I worked at home several times. Unlike here at the office where all the URLs I need to do my daily work are already bookmarked, at home, I have to rely on my browser’s history. So if I have or want to check an office URL that I haven’t visited so far, I have to guess it or ask the link from my colleagues. Then I remembered to start building my favorites/bookmarks list. Unfortunately, after trying to bookmark a page, I got an access denied error. At that time, I was already tired and didn’t want to research my issue anymore. I shut down sapphire and whine to my hubby. Hahahaha! Things I have to go through with Vista!

Last Sunday, I was online at hoe again. I remembered this problem. I went to Google and searched for my issue. I really think that searching is a skill. You get exactly what you need if you know what questions to ask. With one try, I found the answer to what I need. Below is what I did so I can finally bookmark the URLs I need.

Open the command prompt with Administrator access.
I only know how to open the default command prompt in Vista so I had to do another search in Google so I can do step 1. I found that pressing Ctrl + Shift + Enter after typing cmd in the Vista Start Run box instead of just hitting Enter does the trick. It worked perfectly for me because I like shortcuts. Thanks to Mr. Byte for the tip.
In the command line, I pasted this command: icacls X:pathtoFavorites /setintegritylevel (OI)(CI)low but did not hit Enter yet.
I have to change the X:pathto with the exact values. I checked my directories to see where my Favorites folder is located. Then in the command prompt, I modified the path to the correct one. After that, I hit Enter.

Vista processed my request and returned to the default C:Windowssystems32> after a while. Thanks to Microsoft forum for this command. It pays to read forum posts!
I opened a link from my browser’s history, tried to bookmark it and it worked! I was able to create a new folder inside my Favorites folder where I can save all my bookmarks. Hooray!!!

If you’re having the same problem, I hope this can help you. This is definitely easier to do than the export-import solution others suggested in the forum. Happy bookmarking!