Guy's Ezine 165 - Nifty utilities | Flexense, Wink, Jumpchart

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Guy's Ezine 165 Nifty Utilities

Jumpchart - To Design Your Website

It always amazes that for any given program, how different people focus on different aspects of the application. To take the case of Jumpchart, it was designed so that non-experts in html could produce a quick mock-up of a website. The idea is that managers without web design skills could create menus, pages and content, then the web designer could take over and focus on the programming tasks and thus create an effective website. My point is that each combination of manager and designer uses Jumpchart in a different way. Indeed, for small websites one person may undertake the whole project.

As I said to Paul De Brino, who recommended the program, I wish that I had Jumpchart before I started designing my first site. Both Paul and I think this is a wonderful tool if you have ever wanted to create a website, but did not know how to start. For more comprehensive information take the Jumpchart tour.

Wink - To Create Learning Materials

If you have any involvement with education, or part of your role is creating tutorials and 'how to...' guides, then Wink is the tool to assist with capturing screenshots and adding explanations in text boxes.

To digress, I phoned up my pension provider for a valuation this morning. Now I had 5 different funds, before they gave me a quote, FOR EVERY FUND, they bored me rigid with a 30 second disclaimer. This experience reinforces why I don't subject my readers to disclaimers; I will just say that most of these utilities are freeware, or trial-ware. Furthermore, I get maximum satisfaction from recommending a small one-man-band, who may be on the cusp of a glowing career in programming. I still cling to the view that there are opportunities for the current generation of programmers to create nifty gadgets for the rest of us to enjoy.

FleXense

I think FleXense Pro costs about $50, however there is free express (Lite?) version. At first the program did not seem to offer much that I could not get by tweaking the native Explorer in Vista or Windows 7, but after a little experimentation I changed my mind and I put FleXense in the 'Something for everyone' category. Guy liked the duplicate file detection best, whereas my friend 'Mad Mick' enthused about the file synchronization feature. Thus don't be deceived by the file organization part, there is more to this suite of programs than you see on the surface. Recommended by the co-author Alex Shraib.

Spiceworks

This is just an update of a previous recommendation researched by Paul De Brino, Spiceworks have now released version 3.5. Just to remind you that Spiceworks combines Network Inventory, Help Desk, Reporting, Monitoring and Troubleshooting.

SCUP (System Center Updates Publisher)

SCUP works hand in glove with WSUS (Server Update Services). The idea is that SCUP defines the updates and publishes them, while WSUS distributes the software catalogs to the clients. Now I realize that this is a specialist tool, but I have a hidden agenda here, and that is to encourage you to have a look around the enormous Microsoft site, there are zillions of strange utilities there, I bet at least one will interest you, why not start with SCUP?

Network Utilities from Tools4Ever

Tools4Ever provide not one but a host of handy network utilities. They have a professional stable of products for example, SpaceGuard Disk quota manager, Self Service Password Reset, and my favourite FreePing. Tools4Ever use the popular internet utility model where we download a trial version, and if we like it, we return and buy the full version.

Will and Guy's Humour

This week Will and Guy have researched topical humour based on funny pictures and jokes about the swine flu.

Guy's Ezine 165 - Nifty Utilities