Evernote - Everything Microsoft OneNote Should Be

I am super enthused with this program I ran across in a news article, "Evernote" - the elephant in the logo stands for "never forgetting", and it can certainly be that for you - best of all, 40 mbs of storage per month are free...for a nominal $5/month or $45/year, you get to store 500 mbs per month.

What do you store? Notes to yourself, ideas you have, audio messages, photos. Text, audio and photo, and you upload these to an account on the web. You get a web clipper for your favorite browser(s) so you can copy web pages, links and all, and effortlessly snag pages you don't have time to read right now or contain info you want to follow up on later.

Evernote isn't accessible only by the web: Both Windows & Mac have programs for download to your desktop. (Meant for the laptop crowd.) The Windows desktop has a synchronize button to sync with the web, and the option to copy Evernote onto a U3 portable flash stick. It was easier to copy from the desktop version than the web version. A meter shows you how much of your allotted space you've used so far for the month.

If you have a web-enabled phone, you can access the Evernote web site and check your notes. I tried to put the email address they gave me to use into my Motorola RAZR V3m phone, but there wasn't enough room for it. I put the email address in my address book to send emails I want to keep. They have special downloads for the Iphone and Windows Mobile. This is where I think they've got Microsoft beat on OneNote, as if the website doesn't cinch it.

The Web Site shows all your notes in thumbnail view - double-click on one and it expands to fill the whole browser. You can tag your entries for later search, and the program saves searches. I was thrilled that my unruly list of Delicious bookmarks were importable, and I can work with them in Evernote. You can export to OneNote, but this action will not increase the amount of room you have left on Evernote each month.

I plan to use this program for price comparisons, to keep things I don't want to lose (it's not perfect, but Evernote can read the print on a graphic as well as handwriting and include it on searches), photos I want to keep (after I've cropped and reduced them), blog leads, and maybe I'll share a notebook or two.

Signing up couldn't be easier, and what I liked most was that everything pretty much worked as it should the first time around. I heartily suggest you look into it. Evernote should be a treat, and they have a good Question & Answer section as well as a blog that talks about what's coming next to Evernote.

Write your impressions in the comments section!

Technorati Tags: Evernote,free web app

Fax In and Out for Free

Technorati Tags: free fax,Faxzero,jConnect

You have an important fax to send and your machine malfunctions, or your online fax service is down. You've got to send a fax if only to let the receiver know your predicament. There are a few services on the web that will let you fax and receive faxes for free. Here are the two that I tried.

Faxing via the computer assumes that you have your document on your hard drive.

Faxzero is an unassuming interface and easy to use. You are allowed to send 2 faxes per day, up to 3 pages each. They must be in .doc or .pdf format.

Faxzero will hold your fax until you confirm the email they send you. It will also add a cover page with an ad - my recipient told me it was an ad for Faxzero. Anyway, this service allowed me to get an order out on time and caused little disruption to my day.

jConnect will allow you to receive faxes and voicemails by email, here is where you sign up. Your limit is 20 faxes every 30 days, go over that and they will attempt to convert you to their Premier plan or cancel your account completely.

jConnect can handle 45 different formats and is related to eFax, a popular Fax service. You'll be downloading software for this program. These services run about $20/month, so if you don't receive many faxes, jConnect Free is a good way to go. If my fax service goes down again, I know where I'll be signing up!

StickySorter: Free Software from Microsoft Office Labs

You have probably seen Post-It Notes for your computer - you may have tried some, like I have, but not been happy with the results. Here is a free software program from Microsoft Office Labs team members Sumit Basu (Researcher, Microsoft Research) and Julie Guinn (User Researcher, Microsoft Office Design Group), co-creators of StickySorter. They developed this for their work and it became a program for the rest of us. Intended to organize large amounts of data, Microsoft Office Labs recognizes that this application can be used in the home, too.

This easy-to-use program starts you out on a white canvas, and when you click "add note", a full-size yellow Sticky comes up. You can't format the text, but you can change the color of the Sticky, write on the back of it, and it will export and import to Excel, Access, Notepad...any program in .csv format. Then you set up a "Group", or a header for the topic you want to organize, and add the Sticky to a group. You can duplicate the Sticky and add it to any other group. 

The stickies reduce to 1/2 size (or you can keep them enlarged) and go to their groups where you can pile them, tile them, or have them display in a nice column (stack). And you can delete stickies and remove them from groups, too.

If I had a family I would set up tasks for my kids to do, give them their own canvas, and color code by jobs, fun, and other hobbies - then I'd make a pile for what they had to do today. I'm using this to organize the work to be done on our new web site. 

To download StickySorter, you have to give Microsoft permission to see how you use it, and agree to accept all updates to the program. I have no qualms with doing this, I like to be a guinea pig for product development, but this is the first time I've ever seen it mandatory. To learn the program, read the FAQ - it is very informative and will have you up and running in short order. If you want to comment on the program (many are asking for new features), go to the discussion area.

This is my kind of sticky program, check it out if it sounds like yours!

AVG 8.0 and Clamwin Antivirus .92 - Which One is Right For You?

I recently loaded ClamWin Antivirus on my "work" machine, it's an open source program and doesn't have the constrictions that AVG carries for non-commercial use. If you're paying for antivirus via Norton, McAfee, or even AVG I'd encourage you to consider either of these two programs in the future and save your $30 to $50 - they both perform well.

AVG is by far the slicker interface, and they'll try to sell you their pro package, but you can have it for free, schedule your scans, have real-time file scanning and email scanning as well. AVG is harder on your resources than ClamWin - at least on my machine, the fan is always going full speed and I experience momentary screen freeze-ups when working with AVG running in the background. 

ClamWin's interface in comparison is primitive, but it came up with two viruses that AVG never reported to me. ClamWin is not scanning all the time, you have to run the scanner or configure it to run daily, weekly, or on weekends. When you see it's "preferences" menu under tools, you'll find a myriad of options, including email notification of a virus. You can scan memory or hard disks, or configure for both to be scanned. The more advanced user may appreciate the options you have with ClamWin. 

As it stands for me, ClamWin will be on my "work" machine and AVG on my "personal" machine, at least until ClamWin develops further. At least I'm legal!

Find Your Password within IE, Foxfire & Google Chrome

The thing about letting your browser save your password is that over time, you tend to forget it. There's a way to get your password (as well as your user name), and they are small programs that are very easy to operate. And they're free software!

PasswordFox, IE PassView and
ChromePass download as zip files. Above, see a screenshot of each program and the information it provides...IE is the least friendly, giving you an IP address rather than the name of the site. To me, ChromePass is the friendliest, giving you the create date and time.

If I used my browser to store passwords, I'd download my browser program and get a copy and store it in a safe place. I don't know how browsers are about sharing passwords like they do bookmarks, but it might enable you to transfer to another browser. I use both Firefox & Chrome, and could see how having your passwords in Internet Explorer might hinder you in trying another browser.

A good read-me file accompanies each program, with a command line listing for different formats. You can get these programs at:

http://www.nirsoft.net/password_recovery_tools.html

While you're there, have a look around at other little utilities you might find helpful.

OpenOffice 3.0 - Your New Office Suite

OpenOffice, an open source package of productivity, has been around since 2000. Sun is very involved with it, and the culmination of version 3.0, recently released, finds a suite to be reckoned with, and it's free. It contains software that can read and be read by Microsoft Office 2007, as well as more obscure file formats. The new features in 3.0 are well documented and a welcome upgrade. In fact, the only criticism of OpenOffice I've ever read is that they're interface was boring - the new icons really jazz things up!

The programs you get are word processing (with html & xml capabilities), spreadsheet, database, presentation software (Impress) and draw. There are also extensions you can download and add to your Office. The index appears thorough, and there is help for the many different phases of tasks you will want to perform.

OpenOffice.org is also available for the Mac OS X - you might want to check out Computerworld's article, it provides links for the Mac and more information about Intel machines vs. older machines.

"In Pictures" is a web site that teaches by pictures of the screens, and offers Writer, Calc, Base and Impress tutorials for free - I went through the Base one and learned my way around. While these tutorials are for version 2.x, there's that old adage, "the more things change, the more they remain the same". I bet you can find your way around, and they should come out with version 3 soon. Also available at this site are Microsoft Office programs, both 2003 & 2007.

For further reading, try "PC & Network Support Services Limited" blog, and check out "The Tech's Blog".

I'm enthusiastic about OpenOffice.org version 3.0 and look forward to working with it. A database without the "Access" price!

Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop: Are You Ready for a New Email App?

Zimbra is an email, contacts and calendar in one application. It runs on Windows, Mac's and Linux.

When I downloaded Zimbra my first reaction was "such a good-looking screen!". As I've used this for a couple of days I think Zimbra may push Outlook Express and Windows Live aside. At first glance, I was distressed at the short subject column, but soon learned that by hovering my mouse over the subject, I could see way more than I see in Outlook. And I found the information in Windows Live to hook up my hotmail accounts to Zimbra, too. You can also set up AOL, Gmail and Apple email accounts (any POP or IMAP email account) in Zimbra, and have all your email in one place.

In the email section you have flags, priorities (!) and tags to mark your email. You can search your messages by folder, picture, date, person, subject or attachment. You can even save searches as virtual folders, i.e. "Matt's photos". Drag and drop messages into new folders or the trash. Automatically, you can reply with the correct 'from' address when you have multiple email accounts. The amount of storage for your emails is unlimited. And if you're offline, you can compose messages - they'll stay in your outbox until you're online again.

Highlights of the contact section includes storing all the contacts from your accounts in one place. With these contacts you can create groups and tags to organize them. You can add photos to contacts, and import new contacts from other apps as .csv files or export contacts as .csv files for backup.

The calendar is being upgraded, currently you can manage multiple color-coded calendars. You can view in day/week/work week/month/list views. Use drag and drop to change events to a different day or time. And you can import public web calendars (iCal format), like sports schedules, for example.

The new features enable Zimbra to work with Google, Microsoft, Apple, AOL and Mozilla calendars. You will have the ability to set instant messaging or SMS reminders for events and a to-do list. Eventually, Zimbra will automatically sync with Microsoft Outlook and Apple IPhone. The beta will be rolled out later this year - a handful of users got the beta on October 8th.

In all my reading about Zimbra I could not find what "Zimlets" are, but they're another feature of Zimbra. If you're tired of your email program or would like to have more features (many I have not touched on here), I suggest you try Zimbra.