I found a tiny, basic and very practical bandwidth meter that just sits in the menu bar: MenuMeters. Can also display CPU, memory and drive use. Free.
A fancier and more comprehensive alternative which monitors many more system functions is iStat Menu, but it’s $10.
Over at IconPot, there are links to a couple dozen icon sets that can be used free for both personal, and more importantly, COMMERCIAL use.
In just a matter of a couple of weeks, I’ve discovered three different screenshot capturing tools, each one better than the next… and my new favorite is ScreenCatch. A tiny 193KB tool.
Captures the entire screen with a single click and then allows for cropping before uploading the image and hosting it for free.
Most definitely the easiest way to install all your basic apps after a fresh install of Windows is using Ninite. You simply go to the website, select some popular apps you would install anyways (like Winamp, iTunes, Firefox, Adobe Acrobat Reader, uTorrent, WinRar) and the site checks for the latests version of those apps and then gives you a package to download of all of those apps, and then runs all their default installations disabling all the annoying installation options like ad-ware, toolbars, etc. And done!
Great topic over at reddit.com asking “What’s your favorite software that no one has heard of“. I’m discovering and discovering a lot of gems as we speak.
When LogMeIn acquired Hamachi, I was hoping that they would release an official Hamachi client for OS X, but unfortunately they didn’t. I was looking for an alternative secure easy-configuration file sharing solution to use between Windows 7 64-bit and OS X Snow Leopard, and for a moment I thought I had found the solution in Remobo. It works on both OS’s and has most of the features Hamachi had, but it’s just not quite like browsing shared folders over VPN.
It’s still a great little app and some might find it useful.
Previously, when I wanted to show someone a screenshot from my computer, I would use Jing, but I thought having an account with them was unnecessary for how little I used it and it’s little app is a bit too feature laden and takes too many key strokes to do what I want.
So now I’m using Pict.com’s “Pict Uploader” screenshot tool. Sits in the taskbar, very quick and easy.
So apparently Canon hasn’t gotten around to writing a Windows 7 64-bit compatible driver for viewing their digital camera CR2 RAW images as thumbnails in Windows Explorer. Easy fix: these guys at FastPictureViewer have it as a free download here.
In trying to help out my friends that were promoting some events (with 300-1,000 attendees and tickets ranging from $15 to $25), I did some research to compare the various online ticket service alternatives.
Of course all these services provide you with the basic ticketing process, email collection, and credit card processing through internal or external integrates merchant accounts from PayPal or Google Checkout. And then most of them also have the “cool” features social networking integration (like links to help promote your event on Facebook).
Eventbrite seems to be the most popular service right now, but maybe it’s just because their custom subdomain URLs like ‘[yourevent].eventbrite.com’ are just so noticeable when people promote them. They do have a lot of features, if you really need them all.
But in the end, it comes down to total commission rates and/or fees, and when you are doing a few hundred tickets that might be $500 in extra savings or profit to you or your attendees.
So here’s a quick summary of the pricing schemes of March 2010 (in many cases, doing the simple math on the number of attendees you have and your ticket price will make one of these choices stand out as a superior choice for your event).
The above are great for simple events like concerts, shows or raves, and not necessarily something like a trade show, conference or seminar (where you might be collecting more user information, have many tiers of pricing or be sending out regular communications; for that there are better alternatives like RegOnline).
I run this site on Wordpress but a small project came up where I wanted to research some database-less CMS / blogging alternatives (still need PHP, just no databases to store the content).
After researching this a bit, the two I’ll be trying first are:
And some others I came across and may try next: