Free Software File » Productivity

VisiTimer 1.0 : Great Timer Application

randi — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 11:07:55 +0000

VisiTimer is a handy and relianle countdown timer designed to enable you to time anything from baking a cake, taking a break, or rationing out time for kids to do things like play video games or use the computer. VisiTimer gradually reveals an image with a sweeping radial motion similar to the movement of the arm of a clock. It’s a great choice both for kids and for adults who do better with visual representations than with numbers.

VisiTimer interface is plain and easy to navigate. You can choose either an image to use with VisiTimer or a plain circle in the color of your choice. The program comes with a variety of high-quality images, including some that will appeal to kids (cute cartoon animals) and others for adults (such as nature scenes and cars). We were impressed with the number of audio alerts that the program comes with; there are traditional alarm sounds as well as animals, horns, chimes, nature sounds, and more.

Once you’ve configured the timer’s appearance and sounds, simply enter the number of hours, minutes, and/or seconds that you want counted down. Clicking on the timer’s image will hide or show the numbers, which will count down once the timer starts. A built-in Help file provides an overview of how VisiTimer works, but it’s easy to figure out without assistance. VisiTimer would be a great idea for kids who need to time how long they brush their teeth, stay in time-out, practice the piano, or anything else, especially if they don’t have a firm grasp on how time works yet.

The program is also a fun and flexible choice for adults who’d rather look at a pie chart representation of the time elapsed than a set of numbers ticking away. The program features an extensive library of fun, built-in images to use as well as the ability to use your own image or even just a simple circle to be “painted” as time counts down. You can also run several instances of the timer and label each one so that you know what it is being used to time.

Need to use the same set time more than once? Set the timer for any amount of time and save it as a preset for quick and easy re-use in the future.

Portable Efficient To-Do List : Elegant Task Management Software

randi — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 04:49:58 +0000

Efficient To-Do List makes every effort to assist you in following the “First Things First” principle. Sometimes the programs we end up liking the best are the ones that aren’t particularly innovative or exciting, but that simply do one thing and do it in a commonsense, elegant way. Efficient To-Do List Free Portable is just such a program. The portable edition is designed to run from a USB flash drive. Now, with the USB drive, you can manage your tasks on different computers (such as one at home and another at work), and do not need to worry about data synchronization.

Efficient To-Do List Free Portable interface is sleek and intuitive, reminding us of recent versions of Microsoft Office products. In the dialog for creating new tasks you enter a subject, comments, start and due dates, status, and level of completion. You can also specify each task’s priority level and add custom labels to tasks.

Tasks can be scheduled to recur on specific days of the week or at intervals ranging from daily to yearly. You can assign custom sounds to each alert. The list of tasks can be ordered by subject, start date, due date, status, level of completion, or priority, making it easy to re-sort your tasks and focus on whatever is most pressing.

The program also has some advanced search features that let you find tasks quickly no matter how long your list is. We couldn’t get the built-in Help file to load any content, but this wasn’t a huge problem; everything about the program was easy to figure out. As its name implies, Efficient To-Do List Free Portable is small enough to fit on a USB drive, making it easy to keep your to-do list with you wherever you go. Overall, we think that this program is a great choice if you need a flexible, intuitive way to manage your tasks.

Portable Efficient To-Do List Free features :

Multiple Interface Styles :

· 8 interface styles are provided to meet your individual needs! They have various tones of color like blue, green or metallic, and have Vista standard and XP standard windows appearances separately.

Easy to Search :

· Efficient To-Do List has powerful search capabilities so you can quickly find your information.

Powerful Document Editor:

· Efficient To-Do List has embedded a powerful document editor similar to MS-Word, which can be used to write your comments for tasks.

Information Safety Safeguards :

· There is a Recycle Bin in this task management software, you do not need to be worried that you may delete some important information by mistake. The functions of Backup and Restore can help you conveniently save and migrate data.

Efficient To-Do List Free Portable comes as a ZIP file and is accessible after extraction. This application will help you boost productivity and benefit from promotions faster than you expect.

Dia 0.97.1 : Excellent Diagram Software

randi — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 21:24:43 +0000

Dia lets users quickly draw customized flowcharts and diagrams. While the program markets itself toward a more technical crowd, we think it’s a great tool for just about anyone looking to create a custom flowchart. Dia is an open source general-purpose diagramming software, inspired by the commercial Windows program “Visio”, though more geared towards informal diagrams for casual use. Technical flowcharts and diagrams are a great way for IT project managers to visually demonstrate the ins and outs of a project to all involved.

Dia interface resembles a little to GIMP, and like it, has a modular structure as well. So you’ll find all the shapes you need nicely organized in packages. Dia is very simple to use also, just pick the symbols you need from the package and select an area in the Canvass to place them.

The window opens with a blank, gridlike “canvas” in the center. A toolbar sits at the top with various edit, view, and layers options. A toolbox with tools for adding text, scrolling, magnifying, and adding shapes and lines resides below that, as do various objects used for creating a basic flowchart or technical diagram. We immediately jumped in and added specific shapes that represented technical commands, connecting them with lines. For example, the diamond object represents “Decision,” while the circle represents “Connector.” From there, we were able to customize our flowchart by adding colors to our shapes as well as text.

Dia has the ability to create diagrams using UML, or Unified Modeling Language, as well as a long list of other special object categories such as Cisco, Database, and Sybase. After you create your diagram you can style it with labels and boxes and export it to one of the many formats that Dia has, like:

PNG (Portable Network Graphics);
JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group);
SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics);
DXF (Autocad’s Drawing Interchange format);
EPS (Encapsulated PostScript);
WMF (Windows Meta File).

Dia’s wide swath of technical objects makes it perfect for IT professionals, but its basic tools and ease of use make it appropriate even for non-techies. Dia installs and uninstalls cleanly and without issues.

Manage Contact Information with E-Z Contact Book 2.2

randi — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 23:38:44 +0000

This simple program makes it easy to keep track of friends, family, business associates, and anyone else, and it includes a few extra features that set it above the no-frills competition. Contact managers don’t have to be complex to be useful, and E-Z Contact Book takes that fact and runs with it. you can save all this data in one simple application. E-Z Contact Book is a lightweight tool and free.

This freeware interface is plain and intuitive, and we had no trouble getting started with it. To add contacts, you must first create a new group within the All Contacts heading. This makes it easy to keep contacts from different parts of your life organized and easy to find. For each contact, you can then add both personal and business contact information, a birthday, and notes.

The program has a search feature, an important component of any contact manager that you’re going to use for more than a few people, but what really impressed us were some of the other features that you don’t always see in programs of this type. You can click on a contact’s e-mail address to launch a default e-mail program and click on Web addresses to go to the Web site fairly typical features but you can also click on a phone number to initiate a call using Skype.

You have to have Skype installed for this to work, of course, and the typical fees apply, but those who are already fans of Skype will appreciate this feature. We also loved it that the program will automatically launch Google Maps and show the location of a contact’s address. An online Help file is well-written and thorough.

E-Z Contact Book features :

Store, enter new and edit contact information such as phone numbers / addresses / emails / web pages / notes / birth dates
Organize contact information in groups (Friends / Family / Business, etc)
Sort data by any column and change sort order (ascending / descending)
Unique fast “wildcard” search within entire book, or a selected group
Send emails using your default email program
Open web pages using your default browser
Start phone calls using Skype in one click
Import contact information from other sources
Export data from entire book, or a filtered part of it into a comma-delimited (*.csv) file, or Microsoft Outlook
Preview and print either a single contact card, or the entire book, or a filtered part of the book
Print postal envelopes
Store birthday information and set advance reminders, so you will never forget to send a postcard or buy a gift for your loved ones

Overall, we were quite impressed with E-Z Contact Book; we loved that it doesn’t go overboard with features of questionable value but instead includes just a few, really useful extras in an easy-to-navigate interface.

Easy Cash Manager 3.1.3 : Simply Accounting Software

randi — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 07:22:26 +0000

Easy Cash Manager is developed as a simple book-keeping application. While some financial management programs are complex and require some time to learn, Easy Cash Manager strips away all but the most simple money tracking elements. You can use the program to keep records of your incomes and expenses. It’s easy to learn, but it may not fit the bill for everyone needing to manage their money.

Easy Cash Manager 3.1.3 has a bold, all green display that is laid out fairly simply. The green is a bit over the top, but the simplicity of the screen makes it easy to get started. The left screen is merely blank space. The right offers simple buttons to add deposits or subtract expenses. In simple black type, your original balance, and all deductions and incomes are added for the grand total. Easy Cash Manager also offers users opportunities to filter their figures, as well as run surveys and sort by specific criteria.

Easy Cash Manager is meant for people who just want to manage their financial stuff without having to read three books “Excel for beginners” before they know how to. Excel is a spreadsheet program that a lot can be done. That versatility is in itself very useful, because you have all kinds of functions in a single program.

The disadvantage is that you sometimes long should search for the proper functions or that you do not know how you get some good settings. Easy Cash Manager is a very simple program with relatively few features. Easy Cash Manager 3.1.3 is intended for people who just want to track their finances and have no meaning for three courses “Excel for beginners to follow before they can do so.

However, it doesn’t have the range of features found in similar money management programs. The trade-off for the simplicity of using Easy Cash Manager is the lack of advanced features. The program is focused on ease of use and the word ‘convenience’ is central here.

Chronos eStockCard Inventory : Designed for Small and Medium Businesses

randi — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 03:45:03 +0000

Chronos eStockCard Inventory Software packs a lot of useful inventory management features into an intuitive interface, making a complicated process easier to handle. Chronos eStockCard helps many businesses to improve their inventory accuracy, reduce stock holding, track item shelf life and FIFO usage, improve sales picking & invoicing process, reduce purchasing workload, and to alert the person-in-charge for any inventory abnormality detected.

Chronos eStockCard Inventory Software interface is attractive and easy to navigate, with tabs down the left side for sales, purchases, inventory, reports, tools, and settings. Within each of these features are displayed in a format that is similar to a flowchart, which organizes the features in a way that makes a lot of sense. For example, the sales quotation icon is followed by the sales order icon and then the picking list icon, each feature progressing logically from the previous one.

Clicking on an icon brings up a screen that, in many cases, takes some time to figure out; there are plenty of dropdown menus and text boxes in each one, and it will likely take users a while to familiarize themselves with all that the program has to offer. Unfortunately, some potentially useful features, such as the stock transfer tool, are only available in the paid version of the program, but the free version still brings a lot to the table, including a full complement of sales, profitability, and payment reports.

Increase Business Efficiency

To establish real-time inventory information
Any product, anywhere
Warning e-mail, inventory anomalies, al right item / location in seconds, Reserve important items without physical quarantine, Integrated Barcode System’s own processes.

The program comes with a very thorough Help file that explains its features quite well. Overall, we liked eStockCard Inventory Software, although it did sometimes seem sluggish when changing from screen to screen. The Free Edition is free for life. It only comes with some limitations such as up to 100 Codes (80 Items + 10 Suppliers + 10 Customers), 100 Locations Bin, Standalone Setup, etc.

Chronos eStockCard Inventory Software installs a desktop icon without asking but uninstalls cleanly. Version 3.1.1 is a minor update with a number of enhancements on the existing features/reports and also fixed some bugs.

Using Amortization Schedule for Your Finance

randi — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 01:37:33 +0000

Loan financing is a standard aspect of many people’s lives. Borrowing the funds to acquire an item is a convenient way to pay for the luxury of not having to save up in advance. Many factors affect how a loan is paid off. The interest rate and payment schedule can vary widely resulting in considerably different styles of financing. A loan amortization table makes it easy to compare different scenarios and see how small changes in one variable can affect the total payment amount.

Amortization Schedule is very easy to use. Just plug in your numbers (loan amount, loan term, and interest rate) and voila, an amortization schedule quickly appears. You can easily change the variables, too. Just enter information into any box and the schedule will automatically reset to your new terms. This flexibility is especially useful if you choose to apply extra payments toward your principal at any point during your loan. (And, yes, this also works if you neglect to make that payment.) Check the rounding box and the schedule will round to the nearest cent, which lets you compare your results with many other amortization schedule programs.

The program is designed for the layman and makes it easy to create a loan amortization table that quickly visualizes the relationships between a loan’s principal, its time period and interest rate. Once created, the table may be changed by adjusting any of these variables on-the-fly. The flexibility of this template makes it easy to see how the loan is affected by the occasional extra payment. It also demonstrates the consequences of a missed payment. The table supports all the popular payment schedules, from weekly to annual payments. It optionally allows payment information to be rounded.

The company that makes Excel also makes its own amortization tables available to users. These are provided for free from the Microsoft Office website. The template takes advantage of Microsoft’s own financial formulas built in to the Excel program. The variables for a fixed interest rate, payment schedule and loan principal are input and the template creates an interactive amortization table to show all the relationships. In addition to the table itself, the Microsoft template also creates a loan summary section where the overall parameters and outcomes of the loan are spelled out. This includes the total amount of interest paid after the loan cycle completes.

The Amortization Schedule for Excel is very matter-of-fact, which is probably what you want in such a sobering enterprise as the spending of your hard-earned money. This schedule is for fixed rate loans only, and accommodates up to 780 payments, generous enough for most loans, weekly and otherwise. This is truly an amortization schedule; look elsewhere if you want a calculator that includes other expenses such as anticipated taxes and insurance.

No need to install the Amortization Schedule for Excel as it is already accessible after extraction. And what it lacks in pizzazz, this simple utility makes up for with solid data and ease of use.

Dictionary .NET 3.5.4178 : New Multilingual Dictionary Tool

randi — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 03:13:25 +0000

This freeware is a small, easy and smart multilingual dictionary translating from/to 66 languages using Google and Bing services. It’s not very intuitive, but once you get it figured out, it’s a handy tool to have around. Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, Belarusian, Bengali, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese-simp, Chinese-trad, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Gujarati, Greek, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Malayalam, Maltese, Marathi, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Welsh, Yiddish, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Basque, Georgian, Urdu. Integrates Google Dictionary, Translate, Search, Suggest, Virtual Keyboard, Text To Speech, Wikipedia search, Bing wallpaper, and more Google APIs without installing them.

This freeware interface is mysterious, with an empty space where you’re supposed to enter your search term, and a larger empty box where we figured the search results would appear. The Options menu did contain a long list of languages with check boxes next to them, but we weren’t sure what that meant in the context of the program.

Features :

Smart Translation
Translate selected text with a hotkey
Full-Text Translation
Text suggestions
Single click without selected text
Translate a web page
Open File to Translate
Multilanguage List
Wikipedia Search

Finally, quite by accident, we stumbled upon the answer; a well-disguised button on the interface that opens a list of languages between which users can translate. We tried several languages and were able to easily translate back and forth.

Users should note that the program really is a dictionary and not a translator; you won’t be able to translate blocks of texts with it. But as a dictionary it works fine, once you figure it out. Dictionary .NET is free. It comes as a ZIP file and doesn’t require installation. Dictionary .NET is provided as freeware for personal use. We recommend this program to all users.

Write and Organize Documents More Efficiently with SSuite Office – WordGraph 8.0

randi — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 03:34:26 +0000

This freeware is a useful, powerful and easy to use word processor. Use WordGraph for anything from writing a quick letter to producing an entire book with embedded illustrations, tables of contents, indexes, and bibliographies. WordGraph is a complete and powerful software solution for creating, editing and viewing various types of documents. A number of available features give you a fine degree of control over the formatting of text, pages, sections of documents, and also entire documents. You may also save your documents in a variety of industry standard formats and even export them to pdf, jpg, bmp, png, gif, and our presentation format ssp.

WordGraph is a complete and powerful software solution for creating, editing and viewing various types of documents. Use the built-in PDF capabilities of WordGraph to share your work easily and with everyone. Adobe Acrobat is NOT required to create these handy files. Now, it is easy to turn your Word documents, rich text and presentations files into PDFs. WordGraph is everything you would expect from a word processing application. It is fast, reliable, pleasant to the eyes and senses, simply everything you need to manage your everyday correspondence. Useful features and functions assist you in writing serial letters, printing envelopes, or even help in finding spelling mistakes in several different languages{seven dictionaries included – American, British, Dutch, French, German, Italian, and Spanish}.

SSuite Office – WordGraph features :

Create presentations in WordGraph – Viewable in any web browser and EZPhoto album viewer – included
Optional extras for exporting to presentation format – SSP format
Create WordArt and Math Equations / Expressions in WordGraph
Envelope Printer has return address position feature
Export you documents to PDF, PNG, GIF, JPG, BMP, EMF, TIFF and SSP

Special features found in SSuite Office – WordGraph are the following, Create presentations in WordGraph – (viewable in any Web browser and EZPhoto album viewer – included). Optional extras for exporting to presentation format – SSP format. Create WordArt and Math Equations/Expressions in WordGraph, envelope. Printer has return address position feature.

WordGraph is everything you would expect from a word processing application. It is fast, reliable, pleasant to the eyes and senses, simply everything you need to manage your everyday correspondence.

FineCount : Office Software for Translators and Translation Managers

randi — Wed, 25 May 2011 03:13:51 +0000

This is a free tool that provides highly accurate document analysis and statistics; it’s sort of like word count on steroids. It analyzes a document and counts the number of words, numbers, characters, repetitions, spaces, redundant spaces, lines, sentences, pages, and file paths. It can export statistics, calculate rates, and create reports. with just a few clicks, you can prepare quotations and customer-ready invoices specifically tailored to your company and its needs.

It can analyze Microsoft Word documents, text files, PDFs, HTML documents, and other file types. It’s suitable for freelance writers, translators, editors, and others who provide document services. FineCount is free for noncommercial users, but you must obtain a free registration to keep using it after 15 days. The free version is a downgraded version of FineCount Pro, but all the features it offers are fully functional in the trial.

FineCount Features and Formats :

FineCount features and analyzes documents in many different formats:
Microsoft Word (doc, dot, docx, dotx, rtf, wri, wps)
Microsoft Excel (xls, xlt, xlsx, xltx)
Microsoft PowerPoint (ppt, pot, pps, pptx, potx, ppsx)
Microsoft Publisher (pub)
Adobe PDF (pdf)
OpenOffice & StarOffice documents (sxw, odt, ott, stw, sdw, vor)
Microsoft XML documents (xml)
HTML documents (html, htm, mht, mhtml, shtml, shtm)
Text documents in ANSI, UTF-8, UCS-2 formats (txt, ini, log)
Programmatic code and source code (pas, dpr, dpk, bpg, bdsproj, bdsgroup, dfm, xfm, c, cpp, PHP, java, js)
Exporting of text
Documents’ metainformation management
Site Grabber – web pages’ text Counter
Support of Unicode in all formats
Correct analysis of hirogana, katakana, hieroglyphs and other special alphabets
Text analyzing from the clipboard
Any other files in text format

FineCount’s businesslike interface displays file name and various totals in a gridded list view with expandable, draggable headings that we could edit and customize by right-clicking them. A summary panel on the right and a tabbed report panel below offered numerous ways to display and export results; most are available only in the Pro version, though. A small tool for calculating pay rates for services such as translations would display our calculations but not create invoices; that feature is only available in the Pro version. FineCount is easy to use.

If you like FineCount but need invoicing and other pro-level features, the software offers many opportunities to upgrade. FineCount’s freeware version offers much more detailed document analysis and statistics than any built-in Windows or Office feature, and it’s probably more than enough for many freelancers.