Tag: UTILITY

Techy types like the typical Download Squad reader are just fine with manually tweaking our systems and using utilities that less savvy folks would cringe at. For them, it's not always such an easy task to find an easy-to-use program which actually does what it promises. One newly launched app which is perfect for neophytes is Soluto. Just launched at TC Disrupt, Soluto calls itself ...

I'd expected GameSaveManager to be something of a one trick pony. Instead, just 30 seconds after installing GameSaveManager (GSM), it became painfully apparent that this is a tool that every gamer should install. You see, GSM doesn't just back up your save games -- it does settings and personalization data too. Imagine my surprise when, after a quick scan, both my TeamSpeak settings and World ...

Scanner lets you visualize disk space usage using a futuristic-looking, color-coded pie chart. Having tested it, I must say it does not come close in usefulness (or even visual appeal, but that's subjective) to WinDirStat, which is my go-to for this type of thing. Pros: Once scanning is done, navigation is very snappy. It looks nice! Easily remove unwanted files using the context menu ...

OK Seb, careful now. Avoid the euphemisms. Speak frankly, without bias. You can do it... Ladies! Girls! Husbands or significant others of girls and ladies! Thanks to the work of plucky teenager Tina Marsh, you can now calculate the starting date of your period for the next twelve months. Just plug in the date of your last period, your usual cycle length and click 'calculate'. Voilá -- a ...

It's not often that you find a decent commercial utility being given away for free. It's usually a marginally-useful app or a program for which there's a better (and often free!) alternative. Today, however, you can score Driver Magician at no charge from Giveaway of the Day. It's a very good driver backup, restore, and removal utility - and there aren't a ton of good free programs that offer ...

Here's a segment we don't often cover: toolbars! Actually, we do cover them, but usually it's how to remove them, not add them. Well, that's about to change: today, I bring you a neat little toolbar called Sub DiggerPlus. Its single purpose is to enable faster scanning of your Digg friends' submissions. That's it, but boy does it do it smoothly. To get going, all you do is head over to the ...

The inner geek in all of us is constantly curious about what exactly is going on under the hood of our computer; the trusty ol' Task Manager is usually pretty good at letting us keep an eye on things. Sometimes, however, said inner geek needs a little bit more control over their not-always-well-oiled machine. Process Hacker is an open source application that incorporates all of Task Manager's ...

I'm a procrastinator. If something needs to be done by 2:00 PM, I'll often finish it at 1:59. My procrastinating tendencies sometimes make me late though. Like many people I've tried the old "set your clock ahead 15 minutes" trick, but it doesn't work -- I just find myself mentally calculating every time I look at one of my clocks. This week Component X released an interesting little Mac utility ...

"Daddy, what's a bookmarklet?" A childish question, perhaps, but not a question a child might ask. The kid might also call them favelets if he was raised on a diet of Internet Explorer. A bookmarklet, or favelet comes from "bookmarks" and "favorites" that you would save in your browser. Bookmarklets are Javascript applications in the form of URLs, and wherever you can store a URL, you can store a ...

Having moved from Windows to Mac OS X, one thing that has given me trouble is dealing with hidden files and folders, and particularly hidden system files and folders. OS X does a good job of hiding these folders from regular users - so good, in fact, that there is no way to interact with them without knowledge of Terminal commands, or using an external utility. And while I don't mind learning ...

That popular Unix and Linux text editor known as Vi is now the proud brother of an online clone that should run in most javascript enabled browsers. It's called jsvi, and now you can write your own programs and HTML code from anywhere! Such remote locations include but are not limited to: your local library the internet cafe down the street from work your aunt's house those ...

Have no idea what an ACE file is? Got a few ISO files laying around but you have no idea what they are? Well peek inside using Freeware archival utility TUGZip. TUGZip opens every archive format you could possibly care about, and several more, you probably don't. Archive formats - ZIP, 7-ZIP, A, ACE, ARC, ARJ, BH, BZ2, CAB, CPIO, DEB, GCA, GZ, IMP, JAR, LHA (LZH), LIB, RAR, RPM, SQX, TAR, ...

Imagine you just finished writing an important document with your favorite word processor. You hit save, and turn in for the night, satisfied that everything is fine. Unbeknownst to you, something happens as you slumber. Maybe it's a wayward nephew, maybe it's your cat, but at some point, something or someone deleted your precious file. What do you do? Rest easy, friend, and take a look at this. ...

Earlier this week we previewed Bento, the new personal database application by FileMaker. Today we take a look at another Leopard-only Mac application aimed at keeping your files organized and easy to find: Together 2.0. Together, previously known as Keep it Together (KIT), is a pretty slick application from Reinvented Software that promises an easy way to keep all kinds of files in one place, ...

DonationCoder has produced a number of useful utilities, and today they contacted us to let us know about a new one: TapTap Hotkey Extender. As is often the case with DonationCoder applications, TapTapHotkey Extender is a tiny little utility that takes up almost no resources, and does one simple thing well. The idea behind TapTap Hotkey Extender is to to take typical hotkey shortcuts, and ...