Free Download A Day

I think we can all agree: if the system clipboard isn't the greatest thing since sliced bread, it's certainly among the "top 10". Copy, paste, text, images, links—it does them all. Clipboard add-ons give you access to clipboard history, allowing you to, in effect, maintain several clipboards at once. So what else could possibly be added?

Clipboard Rules is an application that takes your clipboard to the next level. Now instead of serving as just a passive holding area for data, your clipboard can actually make things happen on your PC. With Clipboard Rules, you set up rules so that when a particular snippet of text is copied to the clipboard, an application or batch file will run, for example. Other rules can tell Windows Explorer to open a particular folder on your system, pop-up a message, or even append to or replace the text you just grabbed to the clipboard. Rules can be active, or you can pause them to temporarily disable them, or you can go ahead and delete them when you don't need them any more.

Clipboard Rules is a free download for your Windows machine.

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We're exposed to all kinds of different data and information in the course of our daily lives. The time we spend planted in front of the computer is certainly no exception to this. Trying to make sense of it all—taking a bunch of individual little bits and pieces of information and organizing it—can take up a lot of your time. Hierarchical structures, like the folders on your hard drive, are one way to handle this. Stick your photos in the Photos folder, stick your reports in the Reports folder. But what happens when you have a report and a photo that you want to associate with a particular client? Now you have to decide whether to stick those in in the Photos and Reports folders, or put both of them into the Acme folder.

Elyse is a tool that you can use to help organize your world. Rather than your needing to sort your files into arbitrary categories, it lets you assign tags to your files. Once you've done that, it doesn't really matter where you physically put those files, because you'll always be able to retrieve them via their tags instead. Got something that's both a photo and pertaining to Acme? A pair of tags applied, now you can find that file either way. As you get more used to working with tags, you can refine your organization structure and tweak your tags, making it even easier to find your stuff.

A free download, Elyse is available for both Mac and Windows machines.

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There is a world of calculators out there for your computer. Most systems come with one of more of these tools built in, and there are tons to choose from if you decide that you want to do something a little more complicated than balance your check book. Even many of the so-called "scientific" calculators, though, leave something to be desired, in that they still operate like calculators, especially when it comes to entering the values and operators necessary to get your answer.

RedCrab is a different type of calculator. It features a full screen formula editor, which allows you enter your data much more like the way you would write out a problem on a sheet of paper or a whiteboard. It supports a full complement of trig and logarithmic functions, exponents, and more. It's easy to use for the novice, but just in case you want to really get in there and take advantage of its power, there is a big-deal PDF manual you can dig through as well.

RedCrab is a Windows application. You'll need a machine with at least a P4 processor and half-a-gig of RAM to use it.

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Everybody's always trying to make a better note-taking and organizing tool. After all, a lot of what we deal with in life is little bits and pieces of information. When the back of an envelope can't serve any more as your note-taking platform of choice, there is no end of little notepad apps and big deal outliners that are available for you to use.

MindRaider is a personal notebook and outliner. Instead of keeping several different lists of the stuff you need to take care of—including the inevitable list of the lists you are tracking—just stick it all in MindRaider. Enter your notes, important URLs, and more, with whatever annotations will help you to better remember and understand what you're talking about. Once entered, you can locate your information by drilling down through the outline structure or by using its robust search functionality. It supports several different views, which can help you to organize your data, as well as learn about relationships between different elements.

MindRaider is a free download. It's available for Linux and Windows, as well as a Java version, making it Mac-friendly as well.

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If you're as busy as most of us, when you sit down at your computer, you've got several different applications running at once, many of which have multiple open windows. You're humming along just fine until you need to grab something from the Desktop. Maybe it's an application icon you need to double click to start another tool, or maybe it's that file you just downloaded. Either way, you typically get to that stuff by hitting the Windows key along with the D (as in "desktop"). Magically, all your open windows minimize and your Desktop is laid bare before you. That's fine as long as you are doing what you came to do, but then it's time to return to whatever you were up to before. Now you've got to dig through all those minimized windows to figure out which ones you need to bring back, and then you've got to get them stacked in just the right order so you can find what you need to get the job done.

Or you can check out Desk Topmost. With this application, instead of getting all the stuff out of your way and off the Desktop, it brings the Desktop to you. Once activated, Desk Topmost lets the Desktop "float" on top of everything else on your system. Now you can do what you need to do with the Desktop without making you deal with all that other stuff. It's just got to help make you more efficient. And that's good.

Desk Topmost is a free download. It's a Windows application.

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While forgetting your anniversary may be the worst thing you can do, date-wise, forgetting an important birthday probably comes in a close second. But with all the stuff on your mind, who could blame you for forgetting. If your brain is too full, maybe it's time for a dedicated birthday reminder.

The aptly named Birthday Reminder is a tool that can help you keep track of those important birthdays. Just enter the people you want to keep an eye on, add their birthdates, and decide how far in advance you want to be reminded—maybe only a day ahead for a co-worker, but two weeks for grandma, so you can send her package off—and you're good. And just in case this reminder isn't enough to keep you on the straight-and-narrow, you can set it so that your reminders will always appear on top of your other windows. That'll keep you from forgetting to take care of business.

Birthday Reminder is a free download. It's a Windows application.

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There's always something you need a timer for. Whether you're making tea or need to swap out the laundry, if you don't set a timer, either you're going to let the tea steep too long, or you're going to forget about that pile of wet clothes that need to be moved into the dryer. You can grab one of those crank-up kitchen timers for a couple bucks at Food 'n' Stuff, or you can check out this cool timer app.

VisiTimer is a timer like all other timers, in that it lets you know when a particular interval of time has passed. Its appearance, however, is anything but usual. Instead of digits counting down the minutes, or even a big clock dial spinning around, it shows the time passing by sweeping an an image across its face. The more time passes, the more the background shows—think of it as wiping condensation off a window to gradually reveal what's behind it. You can choose from their library of images, or add your own. Or if you prefer, use no image at all and just have a circle colored in for you. No matter which way you go, the bottom line is this: no more burned cookies.

VisiTimer is a free download. It runs under Windows.

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Building a website in PHP can be a big challenge, but when it's complete, it feels like it was worth the work. While writing your code in a generic text editor is a perfectly acceptable way to get things done, there are specialized tools that may help you finish the job easier and quicker.

CodeLobster PHP Edition is an integrated development environment (IDE) tool you can use to build a website or otherwise write and test your PHP and related code. It features syntax highlighting, so it's easy to recognize keywords and functions in your code. Its autocomplete feature helps you with your HTML and CSS syntax. Code collapsing gives you a hand in concentrating on the task at hand, instead of getting bogged down by a page of code that's not relevant to the task you're currently working on. Pair highlighting helps you find those missing parenthesis and brackets that can take a page of code that almost works and turn it into a disaster where nothing works. The built-in debugger helps you find problems in your coding before your pages go live.

You can download a copy of CodeLobster PHP Edition for free. It's a Windows app and will run on any system from WinMe/Win NT up through Windows 7.

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Working collaboratively is all the rage. Whether it's sharing files, teleconferencing, or more, working with people across the country or around the world is becoming more and more common. Of course it's easier to share information and resources with somebody in the next room than in the next state, but there are an increasing number of tools and services that can manage the heavy lifting for this, letting you focus on the work rather than the nitty-gritty of how it all gets done.

Tonido is a tool that lets you share files and more, all from your own computer. Rather than having to upload your data to servers that somebody else controls, with Tonido you share files directly from your computer. Install their app on your machine and create an account, and you can start sharing your files. You get a unique URL that you can share with others, or access yourself from a remote location via your laptop or even your smart phone. Your data's encrypted while in transit, and if you want to just share files in your own home or just within your network, you never have to worry about your data out on the 'Net. And there are no arbitrary limits on storage capacity or bandwidth, because all of the data is on your machine.

Tonido is available for free. There are versions available for Linux, Mac, and Windows, as well as apps for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and more.

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If you're super busy, you probably have some high-powered scheduling tool you use to keep track of your life. If your requirements are a bit less than that, maybe you don't want to have to deal with all the complexities of a big tool like, that. For you, a simpler solution like Xcalday may be more to your liking.

At its heart, Xcalday is a little calendar application. You can look at your world a month at a time, with the usual forward- and backwards buttons to walk you through the year. Once you get to the month you want to deal with, click on a particular day in the calendar, and you can add a note for that day. It saves your note and makes that day bold in the calendar, so you can see at a glance that you've added a note there.

Xcalday is a free Windows application.

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