Windows only: Computer activity logger TimeSnapper takes screenshots of your computer desktop every few seconds as you work throughout the day. Then, you can play back your computer activity to calculate the amount of time you spent on certain tasks—great for filling out timesheets or just getting the hard numbers on how much of the day you burned reading celebrity gossip or, ahem, productivity blogs. The Pro version of TimeSnapper (which is not free), lets you assign certain a productivity score on apps you work in, and will run reports that show your productivity scorecard. A free version of the software, TimeSnapper Classic has fewer features than TimeSnapper Pro, which costs $US20 for a single licence, with a free trial available. TimeSnapper is available for Windows only.
TimeSnapper [via gHacks]If you don’t feel like you’re getting all you can from the iPhone App Store and other perks of the iPhone and iPod touch 2.0 software, then jailbreaking is for you. We’ve already shown you how to jailbreak your iPhone 2.0 on a Mac, but yesterday the Windows version of the iPhone jailbreak tool—called Winpwn—hit the streets, so now Windows users have a user-friendly way to jailbreak. Let’s take a step-by-step look at how to jailbreak your iPhone or iPod touch using Winpwn.
If you’re any sort of power user, you’ve bumped up against the limitations of your operating system’s default file manager on countless occasions. The fact is, for advanced file browsing and manipulation, sometimes the default applications—like Windows Explorer or Mac OS X Finder—just don’t cut it. Today we’re looking at your choice of the five best alternative file managers.
Windows only: Avanquest Connection Manager, previously a $US30 app, is now a free utility that could be seriously convenient for laptop users. The app lets you create profiles for your different wi-fi or LAN connections, changing email, printer, and network drive defaults depending on where you hook up, along with security settings and other concerns. The app’s basic connection-chooser is also more user-friendly than Windows’ own somewhat plain built-in version (though that might be what some road warriors like about it). The trade-off for its “free”-ness appears to be ads for other Avanquest software scrolling across the top, but I find them pretty easy to ignore. Avanquest Connection Manager is a free download for Windows systems only. Avanquest Connection Manager [via Boy Genius Report]
Windows only: Free utility HDDScan diagnoses whatever ails your hard drive. HDDScan works on ATA, SATA, and SCSI drives and (with some limitations) on removable drives such as USB and FireWire. Analyse drive temperatures, conduct S.M.A.R.T. tests, export and print reports to document changes in your hard drive’s health with HDDScan, which is a free download for Windows only. HDDScan [via gHacks]
Productivity writer and Inbox Zero advocate Merlin Mann shares some of his recent updates to his talk about email-wrangling, including a bit of advanced common sense about why stashing away your emails isn’t productive. Acting on them, and then killing ‘em off, Mann says, is where you want to be: The idea here is that you probably don’t have a place in your home or office where you store the shells from every peanut you ever ate. If you did, you’d definitely want to organise them by the year in which you ate them, perhaps keeping separate jars per-month or per-location where you ate the nut. You know. For posterity.
