Windows only: Free application Ka FireTask is an automated task scheduler designed to run applications, copy files and folders, paste text snippets, take incremental screenshots, and more. The default Windows Scheduled Tasks utility is great for automating a lot of different tasks, but if you’ve bumped up against its limitations and clunky interface one too many times, Firetask offers a lot of flexibility that could come in handy if you do a lot of desktop automation. Granted, it’s yet-another utility cluttering up your system tray, but its meager 5MB footprint doesn’t ask too much. You can also export and share your tasks with anyone, so if you need to deploy automated tasks to several computers, Firetask makes it relatively simple. Firetask is freeware, Windows only; a commercial version is available for scheduling tasks across your LAN.
[via Life Rovks 2.0]A standalone, portable version of the latest version 2.6.1 of the GIMP image editor is now available to download and run from your USB drive, plus two useful plug-ins: the GIMP Portable Photoshop Layout plug-in, which approximates the Photoshop dock and toolbox, and the GIMP Portable Background Window plug-in, which lets GIMP occupy a single window. [via Download Squad]
The nightly builds of Firefox 3.1 have added a significant improvement to the session restore dialog you normally see after a crashed browsing session. The upshot: Rather than displaying a modal dialog that requires you to restore your old session or start from scratch, Firefox will display an about:sessionrestore tab in which you can selectively disable any tab or window from the previous session before you continue with the restore. If you suspect any web site of causing your crash, the option to disable it from the session restore is a real boon. It may not be as good as Google Chrome’s per-tab process isolation—which ensures that no single tab can bring down any other—but it’s still better than finding yourself with a choice between a crash loop or losing your saved session altogether. Thanks David!
turn the Session Restore prompt into an error page [Bugzilla]Firefox user Asian Angel loves Portable Firefox for projects like creating a Google Chrome clone, but you can also use it to run multiple, sandboxed instances of the browser at the same time. What’s the point? Well, it lets you log into multiple accounts at the same service (like Gmail) in different windows, and run certain extensions and styles in one browser instance but not another. Using Portable Firefox you can easily back up your customised installations and run them anywhere. Reader Asian Angel explains how she assembled a colorful “Firefox six pack” using the portable app.
TV-over-the-internet application Joost dropped its invite-only requirement last October, started offering web-based streaming with a browser plug-in just last month, and now the site has officially made the full transition to a web- and flash-based television-streaming site. [via TechCrunch]
The download may have hit a server near you last week, but today OpenOffice.org 3.0—the open-source Microsoft Office alternative—gets its official release. The OO.org servers have been hit hard, but so far download speeds seem to be holding up well.
The universal, high-speed-everywhere web isn’t quite a reality yet, as anyone who’s used a relative’s dial-up or a seriously weak airport connection can testify to. Web page re-formatting tool Finch gives you just the text, ma’am, from any site you plug into its address box, stripping Flash, JavaScript, stylesheets, and even images from the layout. Tools like this often crop up for mobile phones, such as Google’s Mobilizer, but Finch is made for the desktop browser. Some sites will work better with their graphical navigators removed than others, of course, but for anyone stuck with a fist-poundingly slow connection, or paying for every megabyte, Finch is a great bookmarket to keep handy. Finch [Adam Brenecki via Digital Inspiration]
Windows Vista only: Free utility Norton User Account Control replaces Vista’s default UAC with a more user-friendly and more secure UAC. The administrator password-prompting User Account Control quickly annoyed most Windows users when they made the upgrade to Vista—so much so that many of you preferdisabling it altogether to actually taking advantage of the enhanced security. Microsoft has responded, saying UAC will be less maddening in Windows 7, but that’s not of much help for current Vista users. Norton UAC promises less duplicate UAC alerts, a simple Don’t ask me again option, and more details so you have a better understanding of what’s actually causing the UAC prompt. How novel! After you install it, Norton UAC automatically replaces the default UAC whenever a UAC prompt would normally appear. Norton UAC is a free beta download, requires Windows Vista.
Norton User Account Control [via TechBlog]Kosmix, a technically-in-alpha search engine, doesn’t focus on driving you straight to the most accurate results for a search term. In other words (specifically their mission statement) Kosmix aims to help users whose goal is “not so much to find a specific needle as to explore the entire haystack.” Results pages include Wikipedia links, blog posts, reviews, Flickr and other image databases, and many more links. If you’re digging into something new, or just want to see more of what’s being said about something, Kosmix might be a nice forest to wander into, rather than singling out a specific tree.
Kosmix [via WebWorkerDaily]You want to get your act together this Monday morning but your usual set of digital tools just ain’t cutting it? Mix things up a bit and try going analogue. The Organize IT blog offers a free weekly planner PDF template for download and printing. For more ink-to-dead-tree workday boosters, check out our top 10 printable paper productivity tools.
