Guy's Ezine 165 Nifty Utilities
This week I feature five more utilities recommended by readers.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
Check out the network utilities from
Tools4Ever.
Calculating IP Address
ranges is a black art, which many network managers solve by creating custom
Excel spreadsheets. IPAT cracks this problem of allocating IP addresses
in networks in two ways:
For Mr Organized there is a nifty subnet
calculator, you enter the network address and the subnet mask, then IPAT
works out the usable addresses and their ranges.
For Mr Lazy IPAT
discovers and then displays the IP addresses of existing computers.
Download the Free IP Address Tracker
Will and Guy's Humour
This week Will and Guy have researched topical humour based on funny pictures
and
jokes about the swine flu.
Lots of useful utilities
•
E 200 Stuxnet •
Metro UI •
Review of Real-time Bandwidth Monitor •
Windows 8 Remote Desktop
•
E 199 Apps •
E 197 iPad •
E 188 Toast •
E 183 Utilities •
E 182 Ripper •
E 178 LoJack
• E 165 Nifty Utilities •
E 125 Nifty Tools •
E 106 Tips •
E 99 Tips •
Virtualization Manager • Ezines
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