Adobe Illustrator alternative

I just discovered a great tool to create vector graphics - Creative Docs .NET. It is free for personal use.



The application requires .Net Framework 2.0 to run. I haven't explore every single features in Creative Docs. I guess it is a good companion to Paint.Net, a free image and photo editing software built using .Net 2.0 as well.

On the other hand, both Creative Docs and Paint.Net are still get stuck at .Net 2.0 world. May be the poor performance of WPF is scaring the development teams away...or there are other concerns...I am curious....

Earth Day 2008: Eco-friendly logos

Major search engines changed their logo in support of Earth Day.

Google


Yahoo


AOL


And most surprisingly, green Flock browser...


You can download Flock Eco-Edition from here.

Startup Delayer: Make Windows startup faster

A slow Windows startup is caused by too many applications are launching when Windows has started. One way to solve this problem is to disable some applications from launching during Windows startup. However, some applications have no way to allow you to disable this feature, but you can use msconfig to change the behaviour.

Completely disabling an application may not be desirable. This is where Startup Delayer becomes useful. Besides allowing you to enable or disable applications from running, Startup Delayer permits you to specify how many seconds after Windows has started up before running each program.



Startup Delayer is a free software. So far, I haven't encounter any problem running Startup Delayer on Windows Vista.

CubeDesktop: 3D virtual desktops

Sometimes it is desirable to work in multiple desktops environment. CubeDesktop allows me to have up to 6 virtual desktops. The navigation between desktops is presented in 3D, somewhat similar to Flip3D in Windows Vista. Like Flip 3D and DreamScene in Vista, the effects look cool at first sight, but very soon you will find them having not much practical values....

In CubeDesktop, you can switch desktop in 3D cube. The practical problem is, no matter how I rotate the cube, it is no easy to find the 5th and 6th desktops from the cube.


So, how about the 3D carousel views? Carousel views are better than the cube. I can see all my 6 desktops on the screen which is what I want.




Another navigation option is Desktop Explorer, putting all 6 desktops on a flat panel. I can zoom in and out the panel. However, it is hard to pan around on this view. If I am not careful with my mouse click, CubeDesktop will switch to that desktop although I only want to move the panel....


Another feature is Windows Exposer, which is similar to Alt+Tab in Windows. It display all the open applications on that desktop on a 3D panel. It does not look better than Flip 3D in Vista. And I am sticking to Alt+Tab to switch applications...


Here are the screenshots of CubeDestop's Options screen and its memory usage on my laptop. I would say the memory usage is still reasonable for a 3D application.




One annoyance 'feature' of CubeDesktop: When my mouse cursor moves too close to right bottom corner of the screen, my desktop will zoom out into 3D cube automatically....while I only want to interact with my system tray icons.

In conclusion, CubeDesktop is good, but I don't need, and will probably will not use, most of the fancy features. I hope CubeDesktop has a free lite version with those not so useful features removed.

How to play Flash Video (FLV) in Windows Media Player?

Install PlayFLV plugin then you will be able to play FLV in Windows Media Player (WMP). PlayFLV will create file association for you, i.e. when you double click on a FLV file, WMP will open up and play the video.

PlayFLV is free and open source.

WorldWide Telescope: Microsoft's answer to Google Sky

It is not good to blog about Google Sky (including Google Moon and Google Mars) but leave out WorldWide Telescope (WWT). WWT is created by Microsoft and it is coming in Spring 2008 as stated on its website (but it is mid-March now).



The key distinction of WWT from Google Sky is that WWT is using high resolution imagery. WWT also seems to have smoother zooming and panning (at least this is what I see in the demo video). WWT has interactive guided tours and a mini-zoom-map located at a corner, but in Google Sky, the navigation tends to be less systematic, I simply click randomly to discover things and I don't know where I am. Otherwise, I can't see much difference from Google Sky.

WWT is expected to be available as free download.

I need to pay $19.95 for a FREE software?

Everything about Windows Vista is 'slow,' even empty Recycle Bin is slow. I can't believe I have to wait for ages to copy files to my external hard disk. I remember there is a utility called TeraCopy which can speed the the copying process and it works nicely in Windows XP.



So I tried googling and landed on the CodeSector website (the maker of TeraCopy), and I found this....



CodeSector is charging $19.95 for a free utility?? It actually means TeraCopy is free for home users and there is a charge of $19.95 for the Pro version. Apparently, combining two two statements into one sentence can be confusing.

Evolution of Microsoft Word for Windows (1989-2007)

Prior to 1989, Microsoft Word was originally a DOS application with complex set of commands. It was later added with more graphical features but only available for Mac OS. The first Word for Windows appeared in 1989 and was designed for Windows 3.0.



When Word version 2.0 was released as part of Microsoft Office 3.0 in 1992. Word became the market leader which was partly due to major competitor, WordPerfect, failed to produce Windows version. You can see that most of the basic features we use today are already in Word 2.0.



Office 4.0 was released in 1994. Word was called Word 6.0 at this point despite the fact the previous version number was 2.0. The purpose was to use common version numbering with the Mac OS version. Word 6.0 is the first version of Word that I used, I was still a primary school kid at that time.




Word 7.0 was part of Office 95 which released in 1995 for Windows 95. Word is already more than a word processing application at this point, it included drawing tools, multilingual supports etc. The best feature is the real time spelling checking - the red-squiggle line.



When Word 97 released in 1996, it included a most stupid feature ever which had irritated most Office users - Office Assistant (the 'clippy-guy') which in fact wasn't assisting at all.



If I am no mistaken, Word 2000 (Part of Office 2000) released in 1999 was the las t release that support Windows 95. Office macro viruses were getting more widespread. Office Genuine Advantage was introduced at this time which allowed legal copy of Microsoft Office to download updates from the web. The major addition was the clipboard which allowed to hold multiple copied objects at once - very nice feature.



I can't believe they kept Mr Clippy until Word 2002 (Part of Office XP) which released in 2001. I remembered back in those days, I have to ask Mr Clippy to piss off every time I use Office at my University (Mr Clippy comes back again for the next user after you log off from the machine). Clippy was supposed to be switched off by default in Office XP but the university settings were different.



When Office 2003 was released in year 2003, Microsoft Word was renamed as Microsoft Office Word to emphasize Microsoft's intention to make Office application suite into a more integrated Office system. Besides the appearance changes to match Windows XP design, I don't feel any difference from Word 2002.





Word 2007 (Part of Office 2007) was released on 30 jan 2007 took approximately 3 years to develop. This release includes numerous changes. The most obvious one are the Ribbon user interface design and the new XML-based file format (which is incompatible with previous versions). Microsoft claimed the new Ribbon design is result-oriented (as oppose to command-oriented). However, many users complaint about the interface overhaul because they couldn't find the menu items they want. Having said that, majority users are satisfied after 2 months according to a survey conducted by Microsoft.



The next release is Office 14 (There will be no Microsoft Office 13 due to superstition). No announcement is made regarding its release date yet.

Samurize: Desktop enhancement software

Excerpt from Samurize website:

Samurize is an advanced system monitoring and desktop enhancement engine for Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista. IT professionals, overclockers, gamers and desktop modders alike use Samurize for system information, weather reports, news headlines and much much more. And best of all, Samurize is 100% free!

Still very vague of what is meant by desktop enhancement? When you browse its screenshot gallery, you will be fully amazed....

Nice system monitoring gadgets....


Windows OS turns into Mac OS....


Absolutely no hint it is Windows...

Windows Sidebar Styler: Customize your Windows Sidebar

Windows Sidebar Styler provides extensions to the existing functionality of Windows Sidebar. It allows you to customize the appearance of the sidebar and even resizing it. For software developers, we can now create WPF gadgets for the sidebar. In addition, Windows Sidebar Styler is available in a number of languages. Various styles by other designers are available at the gallery here.

Remote assistance program that works

Although I never use it, I heard that Crossloop works very well, and able to connect no matter what kind of firewalls and proxies are between two computers. Another popular choice is UltraVNC. However I don't know the difference between RealVNC and UltraVNC, only heard that UltrVNC is better than RealVNC.

Clipdiary: Keeping your clipboard history

Windows Clipboard is a nice utility, when we copy something, clipboard keeps the data in memory, which allows us to paste the data some place else. But, sometimes I have a problem, I copied something, but forgot to paste it. Worse, I copied another piece of data before pasting the old one, etc etc. So here comes a nice utility, Clipdiary. Clipdiary keeps all your clipboard data in a database. I can always get back to my old data easily unless I clear the history cache.

GreenPrint: Combat printing waste

GreenPrint can help you to avoid printing wastes. GreenPrint analyzes pages sent to printer (in this way, GreenPrint should work with any applications and printers) and highlights any unnecessary content like banner ads, footnote, etc in red colour. You can un-highlight any parts to include them in printing. Also, GreenPrint allows you to print as PDF file, i.e. it is a PDF writer as well. GreenPrint offers a free edition called World Edition but it is ad-supported.

Use tab-browsing in Windows Explorer

I like tab browsing!! Tabbed MDI architecture is made famous by Firefox. QTTabBar is an add-in for Window XP and Windows Vista that gives tab browsing feature to explorer windows. Again, this software is based on .Net Framework 2.0, Windows XP users must make sure .Net Framework 2.0 is installed in your PC.

Disable WIndows Vista from connecting to Microsoft's server

There are reasons to disable my PC from connecting to Microsoft's server, e.g. I always make sure the automatic Windows Update is disabled to prevent unexpected changes to my PC, etc. So, Vispa can help you to manage Windows Vista in ths regard, it is yet another tweaking program that bring all the relevant settings into one place.

Tweaking utility for Vista

VistaTweaker is a tweaking utility designed for Windows Vista, it works on Windows XP too. This software is currently in beta. I have grabbed 2 screenshots from VistaTweaker website - judging from the screenshots, I would say it is a lots easier to manage Windows Vista now. Since it is written in VB2005, you need to have .Net Framework 2.0 installed if you want to run it on Windows XP.

Turning Windows XP into Mac OS X

Want to make your Windows XP looks like Mac OSX? Flyakite OSX allows you to do so. The web site announced the upcoming version will work in Windows Vista, too. I saw Flyakite OSX on my friends PC before, it works quite nicely.

Free Icon Editor

My favourite icon editor is actually Axialis Icon Workshop (which is not free). The reason I use Axialis software is because I am not the designer myself and the imange object packs offered by Axialis become very handy when I need new icons.

IcoFX is a free icon editor and I like to use it to process existing PNG files or icons files. Not only that IcoFX can support Vista icons, it also allows batch processing on files, has many built in effects and it can extracts icons from EXEs and DLLs. Click here to check it out.

Hard disk analyser

Xinorbis can analyzes your hard drive content structures and sorts them different categories: e.g. music files, video files, Office files etc. You can save reports then compare how your hard drive contents change over time. I think the most amazing factor of this little application is the scan speed - the speed is really really fast.

Launchy: Keystroke launcher

I think Windows Vista users should be very familiar with the search in the start button.

Every time I want to open a file or open an application, I simply type in some characters in the search box, then I select the item I want from the search results - no need to browse through the menus and Windows Explorer. Part of the reason I come up with this habit to launch an application is because the redesigned 'All Programs' menu is very hard to use and slow. Many users complained about it and switched back to classic flyout-menu style.

However, Windows Search is still slow. Sometimes it is even faster to cancel the search and browse through the 'All Programs'. Here is an application called Launchy that can provides solution. It offers the function as I described and it works faster than Windows Search. It works on Windows XP too.