Free Download A Day

Databases are valuable repositories of information. You can store data in plain old text files, or even in spreadsheets, but the results may be less than satisfying. Unfortunately, creating real databases can require a lot of heavy lifting to get them up and running. The biggest ones even have their own database administrators (DBAs).

FileAmigo LE tries to lower the bar for creating and maintaining databases. When you start it up, you can choose to create a new database by using a template, importing data, or starting from scratch. You can easily add fields and populate your database. Once the data's in there, you can manipulate it to get done what needs doing. Print directly from the data grid or create reports that grab the relevant information for you. You can even store other files in your database, by either embedding them in your database, or linking directly to them.

FileAmigo LE is a free Windows application. It runs under Windows 9x or later.

Download FileAmigo LE

Every time you type a letter, it's the same old thing. Get to the end and you've got to type the closing and signature, complete with all the tabs, returns, and all. It's the same thing every time, but here you go , typing it all out again. There's got to be an easier way, right?

Texter is a text snippet macro tool that takes the tedium out of having to type the same stuff over and over again. Instead of typing "Sincerely, [Enter][Enter][Enter]Mr. Joe Blow", create the hotstring "sinc", for example, and whenever you type that string, Texter will automatically expand it out for you. You can how your replacement is triggered—type your hotstring followed by [Enter], [Tab], or [Space], or even have it triggered automatically as an "instant replacement". Texter can also function as an AutoCorrect tool, so that the stuff you always type wrong will always be corrected for you on the fly. It even supports its own scripting language, so you can send keystrokes, like [Enter] to your applications.

Texter is a free Windows application.

Download Texter

You're reading along in a document or web page and come across some numbers. You want to do a quickie calculation, but now you're stuck—do you start-up the ten-key sitting on your desk—you do still have a desktop calculator, right—or do you fire-up Excel? Neither of those is a particularly satisfying option. Wouldn't it be nice to have an on-screen calculator that would let you do that quick calculation without making a major production of it?

Calq is just such a tool. You can start Calq up when you need it, or add it to your start up items and call it up with a hotkey combination. Either way, you get a calculator that overlays the windows on your screen and lets you do calculations through the keyboard. It's so unobtrusive that once you're done using it, it even puts itself away—after several seconds of inactivity, it hides itself, just waiting for you to call it up again.

Calq is available for both Mac and Windows. The Macintosh version requires OS X version 10.4 or later. The Windows version wants XP or Vista.

Download Calq

Outlook does everything. It's email, it's collaboration, it's scheduling; heck, it's even a development platform. The bad part? It does all that stuff.

I've got a bunch of stuff I need to do. What I don't need is a tool that takes more attention than the tasks I'm trying to get done. Like going after a pesky fly with a thermonuclear device, sometimes Outlook and its ilk are just too much for the job at hand. All I want to do is to make a list of what I've got to do, remind me to do it, and let me cross it off the list when I'm done. Nothing more.

Doomi may be just the ticket here. It's just a simple "to-do" list manager. Not a lot of bells and whistles, you can create and edit tasks, set reminders, and archive the stuff that you've done. No learning curve. No layers of stuff to have to dig through. It's a tool that lets you get your work done while it stays out of the way. 'Nuff said.

Doomi runs on both Mac and Windows machines. It uses the Adobe AIR platform, which requires either OS X 10.4 or later, or Windows 2000 or better.

Download Doomi

You're having a super productive day. You're coding like a demon, or you're banging out the blog posts, or letters to Santa or whatever. You're almost done. "Just this one little tweak," you say. Two hours later not only doesn't your tweak work but you can't get back to your original, because it went away several Saves ago. Oops!

AutoVer is a real time backup system. Never again will you have to worry about clobbering your only copy of some important document because of a bad edit. You can use it to make a full backup copy of any document each time you save it, or you can just grab changes, making it act more like a version control system.

AutoVer runs in the System Tray, so it's always there and you never have to remember to turn it on. You can configure it to watch or ignore certain files—temp files, the Windows directory tree, etc.—that change often, so you don't have a zillion copies of all the .TMP files that you really don't care about anyway.

AutoVer is a Windows tool. It requires Windows 2000 or later, and .NET Framework version 2.

Download AutoVer

How much stuff do you collect? No, not the dust bunnies under the couch—we're talking real collections here. Stamps. Coins. Baseball cards. How about CDs? Movies? I'll bet you can come up with a sizable list…or lists, if you have to manage a separate list of each collection.

Data Crow lets you manage everything through one tool. Designed to help you manage your stuff, it lets you enter a closet full of goodies. To help make things easier on you, it's smart about the data you're entering. Keeping track of a list of books? It can use Amazon to help flesh-out that list—give it the title, and you'll get back the publication date, author, cover art, all that good stuff. You'll get similar help with music and movies, as well as software. Data Crow will also look a the meta data that your music files and image files carry with them, so you won't have to re-enter all that. Tweak the UI so that you can enter things the way that makes sense to you.

Features include auto-numbering, automated backup, and reporting. A quick and easy loan management system helps you remember why you can't find your favorite Starland Vocal Band album: you loaned it to your brother-in-law.

Data Crow is a Java app, so it should run on most any machine that has a current Java runtime. For Windows users, there is a regular installer.

Download Data Crow

Life is full of choices. Paper or plastic. Credit or debit. Small, lean text editor or behemoth full-featured word processor. What's a geek to do?

Angel Writer is a free rich text editor. More than just a text editor, it knows all about formatting. While you can save documents off as straight ASCII text or HTML code, Angel Writer can also create Microsoft Word-compatible documents, and gives you the flexibility to be able to choose fonts, add pictures, insert tables, create hyperlinks, and more. It's much smaller than Word, zips along at a pretty good clip, and costs much less than the High-Priced Spread. The learning curve is pretty shallow, since many of the commands are similar to Word, meaning that you probably already know how to use it.

Angel Writer is a Windows application, and should run on most any system you've got.

Download Angel Writer

You spend a fair amount of time tooling around the Web. You see things; you want to remember them. You flag the good stuff so you can come back. It would be nice if there were an easy way to get back there.

Delicious Tray is a tool that sits in your System Tray and gives you immediate access to your del.icio.us links and tags. When you set it up, it goes out and grabs all your tags and creates a context (right click) menu that includes all your bookmarks. To cut down on clutter, you get flyout lists for each letter (e.g. click on "A" to list all your "A" entries, etc.).

If you're busy adding tags, you can force Delicious Tray to update your list; otherwise, the default is every ten minutes, so you'll always be working with a current list.

Delicious Tray is a Windows app and runs under WinXP. It requires the .NET framework.

Download Delicious Tray

They may not be glamorous, but FTP programs are vital to getting through the day. Whether it's uploading new web pages, posting downloads, or sending that huge spreadsheet to headquarters, you've really got to use a dedicated tool. Sure, if you're gutsy enough-or nerdy enough—you can do all that from the command prompt, but who needs that kind of grief, right?

Core FTP LE is a free FTP client. With an easy-to-understand GUI, it helps you get your work done, instead of becoming a job in its own right. Along with standard quick-and-dirty FTP transfers, Core FTP LE supports secure SFTP as well. With regular FTP, all your data, including passwords, travels out in the open across the Internet; with SFTP, everything is secure, so you don't have to worry about who's looking at your data as it moves up the wire. It's even HIPAA compliant, so you know that your data is secure.

Core FTP LE is free for personal and educational use. It's a Windows application and runs under Win98 or later.

Download Core FTP LE

"Tonight's forecast: Dark. Continued dark throughout most of the evening, with some widely-scattered light towards morning." —  George Carlin as the Hippy-Dippy Weather Man

While we could each probably make a forecast at least as accurate as that, getting the real weather forecast is a little more complicated. Whether you read the paper, watch TV, or listen to the radio, there are plenty of ways to find out whether it's going to be sunny or stormy.

Weather Channel Desktop hooks you directly into the resources of The Weather Channel. Sure, it's not the most exciting station on your local cable or satellite system, but you know you can always get weather info from them. With this tool, you get the local temperature in your System Tray. One click gets you current local conditions, severe weather warnings, and short- and long-range forecasts.

If only you could keep it from raining right after you wash the car.

Weather Channel Desktop is a Windows app. It runs under Win98 or later.

Download Weather Channel Desktop