You know how annoying it is when you try to Copy & Paste formatted text from some applications like Web browsers and Word docs into other applications like Excel or Outlook and the formatting also gets copied!? PureText is a free and very light-weight productivity tool that pastes text as "plain text" without formatting.

If you are used to using command line tools for Copy & Paste, i.e. CTRL+C to copy and CTRL+V to paste then this little tool is a gem: You simply copy as usual using CTRL+C, but instead of using the CTRL+V hot-key to paste, you use the WINDOWS+V hot-key. (The WINDOWS key is the key with the Windows logo to the left of the [most-left] ALT key). PureText can be configured to use another hot-key combination, but the default makes sense and works for me.

PureText - plain text copy and paste app.

Cool site of the week, typorganism, has a few very neat interactive tools. I have no idea what the purpose is, but it’s fun :). I created this image using the ASCII-O-MATIC tool.

Typorganism is a Series of Communication Experiments exploring Computational Interaction Design and Interactive Kynetic Typography based on the Metaphorical Notion of Typography, Type is a Lifeform,…

Everyday the Giveaway of the Day project gives away an application, that is otherwise licensed and costs $$, for free. For instance, today (which only has about 6 hours left on their clock) you can download DiskAnalyzer Professional.

DiskAnalyzer Professional is a disk space analysis and cleaning software. It helps you search, monitor and clean oldest files, big size files, duplicate files, zero size files, graphics files, video files, compressed files, temporary and junk files from PC.

Besides the typical productivity type software that they give away daily, they also have a game giveaway of the day and they recently released a freeware library. I find it best to subscribe to their RSS feeds to not miss that free app opportunity.

As a side note, their site is WordPress driven and a good example of how traditional sites can be more effective when published in blog style.

PC Magazine has an interesting article on making a bootable USB key using BartPE. There are obvious benefits for having a Windows liveCD or rescue disk, but if you are hooked onto your USB drive then you’ll know the value of having everything you need on one little portable drive rather than a bunch of CDs: USB drives are readily rewritable and small. Most new computers can boot from USB drives, but you should make sure to check your hardware. I am hoping for a portable VMware Player to solve these kinds of needs, but until then a bootable BartPE USB key is cool. B.t.w. Flashboot costs around $27, so use this solution if you want it free.

Firefox’s “View Page Source” functionality has always been much better than IE’s “View Source” (which opens in Notepad) and sadly IE7 hasn’t changed that. There are so many much nicer text editors like Notepad++ (a portable app favorite) and Crimson Editor! More surprisingly, IE7 doesn’t even give users the option to change it. I thought that it should be an easy thing to change and it is, but I was surprised to see how many sites had misleading instructions or hack-like downloads. Most sites suggest that all you need to do is edit the default application path in your Registry, but in fact, there isn’t a default entry in the Registry unless you are running Windows XP and have Tweak UI installed. (more…)

This week I upgraded Firefox to 2.0 and also IE to IE7. Firefox has a few subtle improvements, but IE7 is all new. The main features of IE 7:

• Added tabbed browsing. It is more elegant than Firefox, has a preview tab “(Quick Tabs”) and an easier way to open a new tab.
• Collapsed menu bars. This opens a lot more of the browser window.
• Add-ons, similar to Firefox extensions. E.g. IESpell enables spell checking in forms (Firefox 2.0 does this natively)
• RSS feed handling, similar to Firefox.

Overall I think the that collapsed menu bars makes IE7 more elegant than Firefox and while I think Firefox will remain strong due to the Linux community, IE will retain and regain many users.

A friend of mine asked me to help because he had a very annoying “popcorn.net” popup. I suggested that he install Ad-Aware and Windows Defender, but he called back saying it didn’t help. So I had to try harder and I was surprised to see how much of a problem it is. Popcorn.net is not simple spyware and the removal process can be tough for non-technical people. PopCorn.net, also known as Movieland and MoviePass, is a P2P program that offers a free trial download for online users. PopCorn.net takes displays pop-ups to keep reminding you that payment is due. Anyway, we were able to remove it using a few free tools. (more…)

The second major release of the popular Firefox browser was released today. I like Firefox a lot for it’s tabbed browsing and also for the many useful plugins that are available. The one thing I don’t like about it is that it uses a lot of memory. Anyway Firefox 2.0 was released today and while it really looks very much like v1.5 it has a few improvements, most notably better support for RSS feeds and in-line spell checking (great news for bloggers!).

Looking at my Google Analytics reports I noticed that a lot of people are finding my site by searching for terms like “WinXP virtual appliance” and “windows live CD”. My guess is that they’re hoping to find a free download. Well, they are available - but, they’re not legal. Besides not being legal you shouldn’t trust them because it can’t be from a trusted source and who knows what’s installed on there. If it was a trusted source - like a friend - then it’s an illegal copy but hey at least you trust it

However, you can create your own VMware Windows virtual appliance or live CD if you had a windows installation CD. You really need a fresh Windows installation CD (with an unused license) to create a legal Windows VMware virtual appliance. However, you can legally create a Windows live CD from your original Windows installation CD using BartPE. But wait, you can run a live CD virtual appliance so then you do have a way to get a free WinXP virtual appliance! (more…)

Portable applications are becoming very popular and with good reason. Portable apps refer to applications that do not rely on registry settings and can run from USB memory sticks. That makes these applications easy to copy between computers and are therefore normally freeware. Another advantage is that they don’t need to be installed because they simply run from the folder where you downloaded and unzipped the files to. A beneficial side effect is that they don’t slow your computer down by adding registry settings and DLLs that are loaded into memory when the system starts up. The perfect application, in my opinion, is one that is free, portable, doesn’t require administrator priviledges and, of course, is useful. Here’s my list of essential portable apps and combined they take less than 512MB space. (more…)

If you ever wanted to test open source software, this is pretty slick! OpenSourceCMS gives you - as an administrator to their sites - access to test the best php/mysql open source software. The site’s name is misleading because you’d expect it to be related to content management, but the list of applications available is extensive, including:

• Portals; e.g. Drupal, Mambo, Joomla
• Blogs; e.g. Serendipity and of course WordPress
• eCommerce, Forums, Image Galleries, etc..

(more…)

In a previous post I discussed the very useful Hamachi personal VPN. OpenVPN is an open source VPN solution that has enterprise scale capabilities and is a “real” virtual private network solution. It’s a Tech World has a very good article on configuring OpenVPN. Like most open source applications, however, it can take some time to understand, but once you do it grows on you.

Live CDs have become quite popular, but I’ve always argued that it’s easier and more convenient to run virtual machines inside a host OS because it gives you the Internet and file access that you typically need when experimenting with something new. Never mind the hassle to actually burn live CDs. However, there are many more live CDs available than there are VMware virtual appliances. Here’s a neat little script that will enable you to launch a live CD, as an ISO image, inside VMware Player. Here’s what you need to do: (more…)

Over the last couple of months many people I know, mostly non-technical, have shown an interest in creating their own blogs. It is very easy to set up a free blog, but it gets a little more confusing when you are more serious like wanting your own domain name. So based on level of seriousness, here’s my recommendation to find a blog solution that works for you. (more…)

One of the motives behind blogs is earning some extra cash from ads. To add Google AdSense to a Wordpress blog is a breeze. First sign up for a an account with AdSense. It may take a few days for the account to get opened. In the mean time you can download the AdSense-Deluxe Wordpress plug-in. I have not tested it, but I am sure that the plug-in should work for most affiliate programs.