Windows/Mac/Linux: Once upon a time people pounded out their memos and missives on a typewriter. There was no backspace, spell check, or fancy formatting only forward movement and muttered obscenities when you screwed up.
Windows/Mac/Linux: Java-based DirSync Pro provides cross-platform file synchronisation with an easy to use interface, incremental backup and a profile system.
Windows/Mac/Linux: MindRaider wants to be the place you stash all your sudden thoughts, organizational notes, and inter-connected ideas. That’s because it offers links, visualisations, and other tools to help you make sense of it all.
ScreenToaster, fresh out of restricted beta, is a web-based screencasting tool that can record your desktop from any computer with a browser and Java. It’s great for quick demonstrations, and for beginners.
After signing up for a free account (name, password, email), you’re pretty much set to go. Screentoaster supports Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari—actually, pretty much any browser that can run a Java applet. Get your desktop or apps set up, hit the “Start Recording” button on ScreenToaster’s main page, and you’ll end up with something like this:
Windows/Mac/Linux (All platforms with Java): Duplicate Files Searcher has a pretty modest name, but it’s a powerful program for finding exact matches of files on one hard drive, across multiple systems, or on a CD or DVD compared to other storage systems. The Java-based, no-install-needed app simply has you add directories (and their sub-directories) to its list of places to search, including shared network files and removable discs. By default, the app will compare the hashed indexes of each file, and also do a byte-to-byte comparison of any potential matches found. You can also have it look for exact matches of name and date, and create pre-loaded databases of files to save time on future dupe-hunting sessions. It’s also easy to switch the app’s look and feel to match Linux, Mac, or Windows environments. Duplicate Files Searcher is a free download, requires a Java runtime environment to run. Thanks, jsong78!
Duplicate Files SearcherWindows/Mac/Linux (all platforms with Java): GTD Free, a Java-based desktop app, is one of the most straight-forward implementations of the Getting Things Done organizational system you’ll see, but it also serves as a great introduction for the GTD-curious. Five tabs put your tasks in a sequential flow, and using them helps reinforce GTD’s basic tenets in your brain. Bang out action blurbs in Collect, detail them in Process, file them in already-labelled folders like Actions, Someday/Maybe, and Projects, and mark them off in Execute. It’s definitely not a lightweight, paper-like system, but it’s a fairly clean implementation if you want to try Getting Things Done as it was really intended. GTD Free is a free download, works wherever the Java platform does.
GTD-Free [via FreewareGenius.com]Windows/Mac/Linux (All Systems): One fine day in the future, Google will release a Picasa client for Mac OS X, making it possible for anyone to upload or download a Picasa Web Album from any system. Until then, tools like Bradley Beach’s PicasaWebalbumsAssistant will help a great deal. Beach’s Java-based tool lets ou grab either public albums by entering a username, or private albums from an emailed invitation link. Better still, it offers thumbnail previews of the album you’re about to download, and you can skip shots you don’t need. Combined with the previously-posted, OS X-only Picasa Web Albums Uploader and Exporter (original post), Mac users can easily use Picasa’s web features without a long series of file choosing and uploads. PicasaWebalbumsAssistant is a free download that works with any system running Java 5.5 or higher. Picasa Webalbums Assistant
If you only occasionally need to connect to an FTP site, or find yourself at a computer that lacks one, AnyClient, a free webapp that requires no sign-up, might be just the solution for a quick and easy connection. AnyClient’s Java-based interface is fairly similar to desktop-based FTP clients, and it appears that it can save your connection details for multiple servers, assuming you don’t wipe your cookies on a regular basis. For those not devoted to cross-platform clients like Filezilla or running FireFTP on their Firefox chrome, AnyClient is a free and worthy bookmark—if you really dig it, you can also download the client for Windows, Mac, or Linux.
Windows/Mac/Linux (All platforms): Join PDFs together, split them apart and pull out individual pages with pdfsam, an open-source, Java-based cross-platform tool that’s a free download. The program, just released in a 1.0 alpha, does basic PDF manipulation pretty quickly, and job processes can be saved for common tasks. As with the OS X-native Combine PDFs, it’s a handy tool to tuck away for when you need it, like pulling relevant chapters out of a manual or textbook. Pdfsam is a free download and works wherever Java can, but a Windows installation tool is available.
PDF Split and Merge [via Phorolinux]If you’ve come to know and love your OpenOffice.org platform, new online office suite Ulteo might just pull you away from Google Docs or Zoho, or even the upcoming Microsoft Office Live. Ulteo uses Java to re-create nearly the same interfaces as the deskop software’s word processor, spreadsheet, and database applications. While obviously geared toward OpenOffice enthusiasts, Ulteo can import and export to Microsoft Office and PDF files like its desktop brother. The beta webapp is accepting 15,000 users from North America and Europe at the moment; I got in this morning after fishing the confirmation email out of the spam bin. Ulteo requires a browser have both JavaScript and Sun’s Java Runtime environment enabled—Ubuntu users in particular might have to check their packages to ensure compatability.
Ulteo [via LH Australia]
