If you work on more than one computer (e.g. home and work) then chances are that you have needed to transfer files or documents from one to the other. If you need to do it frequently then Dropbox makes this really easy by seamlessly synchronizing folders between computers and you can also access your files online. All you need to do is signup for a free Dropbox account.

Combining Dropbox with portable apps makes the ultimate portable solution, for instance as a password syncer. Another very nice feature of Dropbox is a “public” folder that makes files available online – all you need to do is to copy or save a file to that folder on your computer and it becomes publicly available link on the Web.

Their wiki also has a useful list of tips and tricks for using Dropbox.

Link: Dropbox

In the online marketing world, research tools like comScore Media Metrix, Nielsen Net Ratings and Hitwise are considered the authority for competitive metrics. But their measurement methods have been challenged and new and interesting competition has been booming. Significantly Google, the uber online force, has entered the space which means that the premium services are under pressure to reduce prices and deliver better products – great for us consumers!

No one market research tool is perfect and often it is best to look at more than one to get the information that you need. It is so much easier when they’re free! So here are four of the best free tools that you can use for competitive analysis. (more…)

People have remarked on how fast Chrome seems to be and so I put it to the test on slickspeed, a speed tester for JavaScript frameworks, against Firefox and IE. Each PC is different and extensions or add-ons to Firefox and IE probably make them slower, but it is interesting how much faster Chrome is on my PC than IE and Firefox:

(The number shown is time in milliseconds to perform certain tasks.)

Chrome was much faster than Firefox which was much faster than IE. Of the frameworks, JQuery was generally fastest, with MooTools and Dojo a close second with Prototype and Yahoo! UI Selector a distant third. Note that it is a MooTools developed test so it may be biased, but it seems like an honestly objective test.

Google released it’s own Web browser today called Chrome. It’s clean, simple and light weight and at first glance seems to be developer friendly. The announcement was made via a comic book, quite entertaining

UPDATE: Matt Cutts has some interesting facts about their new browser. In particular I found it interesting that “Google Chrome uses WebKit for rendering, which is the same rendering engine as Apple’s Safari browser”. Considering that Google has been pro Firefox, I wonder what that means…?

PDFCreator is a handy little application that installs as a printer and creates PDFs from any file that you are trying to print. To convert a document to PDF simply open the document up the usual way, select Print and choose PDFCreator as your printer. PDFCreator then opens up a window that allows you to enter meta data for the file like Document Title and Author and then you hit Save to save it as PDF.

Here’s a tip on how PDFCreator can be used to help with filing expense reports. When you’re making hotel reservations or airline bookings while working remotely and without access to a local printer, you can print your reservation confirmations to PDFCreator and save them as PDFs on your computer. Now you can email the PDF version of the confirmation to someone who can print it for you and you have easy access to your invoices when it’s time to file your expense report.

I bet that you have tried to copy a DVD before, but didn’t succeed because it was either copy protected or it failed without clear reason. In a previous post I have described how to copy a DVD to an iPod, but here’s a way to simply backup your DVDs to DVDs. There are two main problems with copying DVDs, one is copy protection and two is that commercial DVDs have larger storage capacity than regular DVDs that you can burn at home. The media industry uses DVD copy protection technology that makes it *very* difficult to copy DVDs, yet most copyright laws allow owners to make backups or their property. There are a lot of wrong reasons for copying or backing up DVDs, but there are also many good reasons. If you have young children then you would know the value of backing up your DVDs and so here’s how to do it using DVD43 and DVD Shrink. For free!. (more…)

PuTTY is a popular free, open source Telnet and SSH client. Being open source there are many PuTTY variations, one of the more popular being portaPuTTY which I have recommended as an essential portable app before. I found a new favorite called PuTTY Tray: It is another variation of PuTTY, but offers some interesting features including:

If your system is suffering with performance issues or is simply cluttered with old applications then Revo Uninstaller could save you time vs. a full Windows reinstall. Revo Uninstaller shows you all applications and components installed on your PC and allows you to remove unwanted apps. It does a scan before and after the uninstall to find files, folders and registry keys that may have been missed during the uninstall process. In Hunter Mode, you can uninstall programs with one click or by simply dragging application shortcuts on your desktop or quick launch bar to the Revo Uninstaller system tray icon. A portable app version is now available so you can now run it from a USB drive without installing it.

In addition, Revo Uninstaller also comes bundled with other useful utilities like the Autorun Manager which let’s you enable or disable programs that autostart at Windows startup and the Junk Files Cleaner which scans and deletes temporary files that should have been deleted.

Revo Uninstaller is portable, free and with no spyware or tricks – a great productivity tool just the way we like it.

Revo Uninstaller (Look for the Portable version download link)

Portable apps have proven to be very popular and quite resilient in spite of the popularity of on-line apps. On-line apps like Google Apps, Zoho and Basecamp offer solutions for collaboration and portability, but there aren’t many good on-line solutions for applications like text editors, image editors, operating systems and browsers. Because of the need for these types of applications and the benefits of using USB apps I have been adding to my USB app collection. To be fair I have replaced some portable apps with on-line apps, e.g. I prefer Google Reader to GreatNews because desktop RSS readers become bloated and slow down as you add feeds, but at the same time I have discovered a few new portable applications. (more…)

LetMeType is an open source application that suggests words and phrases as-you-type. The clever little application builds an index of words that you type and pops up with auto-complete suggestions of words as you are typing. LetMeType is built into the OS and so it works in all applications. Like PureText, a plain text copy tool, this is a small little app and it doesn’t take much time to get used to, but can give you great productivity boost.

Most people know that I am a portable app fan and that I would almost exclusively try to use portable applications or Web applications rather than “installs”. The problem with regular, non-portable applications is that they rely on the Windows registry and that they are typically distributed in many folders. So when you need to reinstall Window all your settings are lost and you need to completely reinstall the applications. In this post I would like to describe the reasons why I prefer portable apps and how you can manage them better. (more…)

Over the last couple of weeks I tested various note-taking applications. I was looking for software to help me to better organize my typical daily notes, memos, ideas, to-do lists and to clean up the myriads of text files that I have used for the purpose. KeePass is perfect for saving and organizing passwords, but there are many other important snippets of text that didn’t have a good home. The criterion is that I wanted a free, light-weight and portable note-taking application to help me be more productive. There are hundreds of on-line tools, but I prefer off-line tools for this purpose and I also discovered dozens of sticky note applications which I find generally messy. Wherever I looked, EverNote showed up and it turned out to be my favorite, but other applications that I reviewed include TiddlyWiki, NeoMem and wikidPad. (more…)

WordWeb is a free English dictionary and thesaurus application, and can be used to look up words in just one click. This is a very handy productivity tool and it’s really fast. I found their “for free use” licensing agreement quite amusing (though I fail on both accounts!):

You may use the program free of charge indefinitely only if
* You take at most 4 flights (2 return flights) in any 12 month period
* AND you do not own or regularly drive an SUV (sports utility vehicle).

I also like that it can be installed as a portable USB application (under Advanced Options during install).

Via Lifehacker

You finally caved and got the first season of 24 or Lost on DVD. Now you’re hooked and you would use every opportunity to watch it. Then you realize: “Hey, my iPod! It’s perfect for traveling and for the gym, but how can I copy my DVDs to my iPod?!� . So you do some Googling, but you discover that there are hundreds of solutions out there and, worse, that copying DVDs has become a money making scheme! Besides that, nobody tells you that there are two big technical problems with copying or converting DVDs:

1) Most commercial DVDs are encrypted for copy protection;
2) There are many encoding variables (bitrates, aspect ratios etc.).

It isn’t publicized, but commercial DVDs are normally copy protected with encryption technology (including region codes) and most commercial DVD copy software does not allow users to copy protected DVDs. Without going into the legalities suggested in #1 above or the complexities suggested in #2 above, here is a free solution to copy DVD to iPod. It’s really very easy, but the first time will take a few minutes longer. (more…)

As a portable application addict, I have become rather resistant to installing applications. But then again, quite frequently, I want to try out new applications that typically seem to require installation. For example, applications that can be downloaded as Windows Installer (.msi) packages appear to need to be “installed”. However, quite often developers simply package their applications that way to make it easier for their users to install, yet the applications don’t really need to be installed and can run as portable applications. The Universal Extractor was designed as an easy, convenient way to extract files from installation packages. The Universal Extractor is itself available as an portable app (look for the UniExtract Binary Archive download link). Using this app you can extract the files of a .msi or .exe installation file, extract it to a folder and test if if works without installation. Note that this is not a hack to get larger, more complex applications to run as portable apps.